Dragon Forged Software

iPhone Paranoia

July 30th, 2008 by Kyle

For the last couple of months I have been working on getting some iPhone software out into the world. I have put in very long hours and have neglected a great deal of sleep to do so. The good news is our games are finished. While it is still too early to disclose exactly the nature of what I am releasing I can say that I will be submitting a set of 3 games to the App Store for Apple’s approval. I hope to have everything submitted by Monday the 4th, a bit later then I hoped but I want to make sure everything is working right the first time. Rumor has it that there is up to a 4 week delay for application approval which freaks me out a bit since it will be a painful month of watching and waiting. Hopefully I get lucky and get in quicker.

The paranoia comes from the fact that we currently have no competitors on the iPhone, not one. It is not like the software we have designed is especially original. It has just been a strangely overlooked market. Which also means that I have no comparison for how to price the software. Every day when I wake up a look on the App Store in utter fear that someone else has beaten us to the market. We have been very lucky so far since like I said it is not a complex idea, and I personally believe it has a very large market.

So through all these months of NDA and secrecy we are just about ready to finish the first official iPhone experiment here at Dragon Forged and I am very excited. I have picked a price point which I believe is very fair to our users, in fact my original price point was significantly higher when the project was started.

We still have a lot of loose ends to tie up before we can go live, the race is not over by a long shot. Granted the engine is done and the code is all but finalized. Our music is completed and working well, our graphics are inserted and all known bugs have been crushed. We are still waiting on our icon designer to finish up our 3 icons and most importantly one of our content providers (this will make more sense when I release more app details) is still finishing up the finial stages of his work. Our content provider has assured us everything would be done by “this weekend” and my original time frame for the icon designer was by this upcoming sunday. So pending any disasters, which wouldn’t shock me, you should see Dragon Forged in the App Store sometime in August.

Tags: App Store, iPhone
Posted in Programming, iPhone | 1 Comment »

Shareware and the iPhone

July 7th, 2008 by Kyle

The iPhone is an amazing platform for both an end user as well as a software developer. For the benefit of this post I will be talking about the iPhone strictly from a developer standpoint, although I hope that end users will benefit from some of my insights.

Programming on the Mac has greatly improved over the last several years. The tools have gotten better, the support is unmatched, and the users are amazing. Many developers will notice more Mac sales then PC sales for the same product even with the much smaller market share. This can be caused by several factors such as less programs available, but it is true nonetheless.

When talking about areas like NYC, LA, Seattle, Phoenix, and Chicago you could easily fit all the Mac shareware developers from each area into a single room. It has become a very tight knit community over the last few years and it is not uncommon to have heard of developers before meeting them.

Even with all these great benefits of programming on the Mac one of the hardest things to do is let people know about your software. It is hard to target only Mac users on the internet unless you are going to a mac specific site. Even then the majority of Apple users do not regularly visit sites like MacUpdate, TUAW, and VersionTracker. Apple downloads section is a bit better but still not great. In the Apple Menu on every Mac there is a link for “Mac OS X Software…” which takes you to Apple’s Downloads section, but how many of you have ever clicked it?

Well before I start to get even more off topic, I better explain what this has to do with the iPhone. The iPhone and the “App Store” that will be included with it is what we call a captive market. What this means is that every single person who owns an iPhone will have access to your software. Not only will they have access but they will have access wherever they go. This is something that really has never been available to shareware developers before.

Let me shed some light on how vital this is. You are in a bar and want to look up some new drinks, hop onto your iPhone and grab a drink mixer application. You are waiting to see a doctor, hop on the iPhone and purchase a $2 game to pass the time. You are lost in NYC’s Subway system and can’t find a map, again onto the App Store. The ability to purchase software when you want it anywhere in the country (world) is priceless. It will create a whole new type of software consumer.

Plus the market is much wider then only people with Macs, iPhones are very popular and with the upcoming introduction of the iPhone 3G even more people will be buying them. Apple is handling all credit card and billing processing so that even eliminates a good deal of the support arm of the software. All in all it is a tremendous opportunity for a platform. It would appear that tons of non-mac developers are realizing this as well and starting to write software for the iPhone. This is where the problem (for me) starts.

There is currently an iPhone NDA, which basically states you are not allowed to talk about any code or anything you are writing for the iPhone. Add that to the surge of people making iPhone software and what you have is thousands of people coding applications with no idea what anyone else is doing. This creates several issues.

   • There will very likely be several of the same kind of application available. How many people do you think are working on things like tic-tac-toe right now?
   • There will very likely be a wide price range for similar products, since no one has any idea what to price their software at.
   • As a developer you have no idea what the requirements will be needed for software to be accepted, I would like to think that through Apple’s screening process it will be hard to get software into the App Store. Otherwise we could be completely buried by hundreds of “Hello World” applications.
   • As a developer I have no idea what anyone else is working on, whenever I come up with a good iPhone idea I convince myself that 10 other people are already writing it and plan to release it as freeware.
   • Navigating on the iPhone is as easy as it can get but it is still a small screen it will be very difficult to search through 10,000 applications.

In light of these issues I have taken a wait and see approach. Seeing what is in the App Store on launch and what the prices are will give me a good idea of what projects I can work on for the iPhone. It is going to be a very exciting year when it comes to iPhone development and I hope to be able to have enough time to write some software and contribute to a historic era.

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Renew Released

July 7th, 2008 by Kyle

Late last night I released Renew. Renew is a new application based off the time tested Looking Glass engine. A couple of months ago while handling some Looking Glass related business it occurred to me that the engine itself could be used to virtually download anything as a desktop image. The exact time that the idea for Renew occurred to me has unfortunately been lost to the ages.

With Looking Glass the user selects a webcam and displays the feed from that camera, one of the tradeoffs of using live images is the quality is normally very poor. What Renew does is scour the web for desktop images and adds them to a giant randomized list. Renew at a set interval downloads an image from this list and uses it as your desktop picture. The result is thousands of full quality images from all over the internet.

There was some hesitation to ever program Renew because the images it was finding and downloading did in no way belong to Dragon Forged Software. All the images it finds are on publicly accessible free desktop websites. Since the license for the images is typically for private and personal use we would be unable to bundle them with Renew in anyway, without contacting thousands of artist and photographers. This would also swell the size of renew to a couple of gigabytes. To keep everything on the up and up Renew downloads these images in exactly the same way that you would with a web browser, it does not store the images locally or on our servers at all. As a benefit this also means the Renew is constantly evolving and finding new images as well as removing images that are no longer available. This creates a constantly new and fresh desktop.

Renew was released in what we call a cold release. It is a technique that I have used for the last three software releases I have done. The software is released but we do not tell anyone. Only people who stumble across the website are aware that there is new software available. In the event that the software has a major bug the amount of effected users is much lower then would be with a typically full scale launch. Tuesday I will send out my normal press releases, thursday when initial demand has cooled I will publish to the update sites, and next week I will look into promotional ads on mac related websites. The software is slowly released over a period of about a week, which also greatly reduces the surge on our website as well.

I hope everyone enjoys Renew and I look forward to hearing back from our users with suggestions for future releases.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Contract Programming

June 24th, 2008 by Kyle

With the SDK(Software Development Kit) for the iPhone now available and the increase market share of OS X the need for companies to integrate the Macintosh platform into their work flow is greater then ever. Many companies have begun seeking independent contract programmers to code Mac software for them.

Dragon Forged Software is pleased to bring consulting and programming services into its mainstream product line. With over five years of Macintosh development experience and previous contracting experience Dragon Forged Software is the perfect solution to your Mac software needs. We are available to work on both the iPhone and OS X projects and look forward to diving into this blossoming market.

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Blog Revamping

June 24th, 2008 by Kyle

As some of the frequent visitors of the site may have noticed the blog has recently been revamped. I migrated from Moveable Type to WordPress and removed all the personal blog post. My personal blog has been moved to weirdinternets.com and this blog is now strictly a Dragon Forged development blog. If you are looking for my old blog here it is achieved at www.dragonforged.com/blog.

Well it is kind of a moot point since I won’t update the links to the new Blog until Renew is released in the next couple of weeks and I add the product links for it.

Yes this blog will remain ad supported for the time being, it takes a slight load off the company and allows us to absorb the hosting fees for the entire site. So in the end it saves everyone a couple of cents on the software. I have tried to keep the ads as unobtrusive as possible, hopefully they won’t get in the way.

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Totus Copy

May 27th, 2008 by Kyle

Early this morning I released Totus Copy. Totus Copy is a utility that was born out of necessity. As some of you may know, I work as an Apple Certified Technician. I see a lot of failing and plain out dead hard drives in my line of work. I also spend a lot of time painfully pulling data off failing hard drives.

Once we get a hard drive showing in the bus, there is still a lot of work left to do. OS X doesn’t have what is referred to as resumable copying. What this means is that if a file fails in the middle of a copy, the entire copy will fail. This is all well and good for normal use, but for copying data where you expect 20% or more of it to fail, it is a total pain in the butt. You can spend many hours locked in front of a system.

What Totus Copy does is solve this critical problem. If a file fails, Totus Copy will attempt to retrieve as much data as possible. It will then move onto the next file and continue the process. Many technicians know the pain of going directory-by-directory trying to salvage as much data as possible. Totus Copy makes this a problem of the past.

While writing and field-testing Totus Copy over the last several months, an impressive feature set was developed that makes this software a very practical and powerful data recovery tool. It has the ability to skip over invisible files or applications and you can set it to target specific directories or files of a certain type. It will never transfer a bundle or a directory rather it recreates them. Totus Copy will never give up and has been known to grab working copies of files that other data recovery tools left behind.

Totus Copy will unquestionably save data that would otherwise been lost.

Tags: Data, Recovery, Totus Copy
Posted in Life, OS X, Programming | 3 Comments »

Multitasking and my Current Projects

May 14th, 2008 by Kyle

When I returned to actively working on my own software after a two year hiatus working on other people’s projects I had a list that was slowly building of things I wanted to code. Every time I got one of those “I should write that” moments I tossed it into my iPhone. After I rewrote Looking Glass to slow the number of emails I was getting about it I was ready to move onto new projects.

I am currently working on 3 projects right now as well as rewriting my graphics base code for future games. One of the projects is all but done and is waiting on my icon designer to finish his job as well as finial testing and polish so you should be seeing that in a couple of weeks. The second project is well on its way, the proof of concept stuff is all done now I just need to make it practical. The third project is just getting underway, the GUI is designed and I am starting to get the basics done.

My true passion is game development though. While I have several ideas for some really cool games all of them as very large projects that I am just not ready to jump into yet. I have started to rewrite my base graphics engine. My old engine which BCC3 was made in is sorely outdated. Once I get the engine up and going I need to sit down and think of a game to break the ice and get me back into OpenGL programming.

Once I release a project everything comes to a stop for a few days while I deal with bug reports and initial user rush. I would really like to be able to knock out these 3 projects in the next 6 months then try and devote some time to game programming but I have the feeling that I will spend a lot of time on customer service. Plus depending on my income from said software I may need to do some freelance programming to be able to stay afloat.

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Looking Glass 2.0 Released

April 22nd, 2008 by Kyle

Late last night I uploaded the finial version of Looking Glass 2.0. It has been a busy couple of weeks while I tried to tie everything together mostly so I didn’t have to think about it anymore. We did hit a slight bump but quickly tossed out 2.0.1 to fix issues with 10.4. Oddly enough Apple made some sharp changes to system preferences between Tiger and Leopard and since Looking Glass was a complete rewrite I missed them. My bad guys.

So it wasn’t my smoothest release yet but not too many people ended up downloading a malfunctioning version, and it only effected Tiger machines. Already I have a list of features to add to the next version that is slowly growing. I am happily going to take a break for at least a couple of weeks from Looking Glass and work on a new project that I have been toying around with.

Incase you were wondering about my to-do list on the new version:

• Automatic update downloading and installing, instead of forcing the user to install the update will install and relaunch itself.

• Better interface handling for 10.5 and 10.4 changes, my fix in 2.0.1 wasn’t as clean as I would like it and I would like to fix this a little better in the future. The solution I used called for a slightly odd looking 10.5 interface.

• Automatic reporting of failed webcams so we can better maintain the list.

• Sorting tables, right now the database is in alphabetical order but when the application downloads it the order gets scrambled, I need to add code to properly sort the tables.

• Include the daemon and launcher in the bundle for the prefpane, this will eliminate the need for a third party installer and kind of simplify the whole install process.

Of course these features are barely in the planning stage and what makes it to release versions may vary greatly then what is posted here but I like to keep a running list.

Posted in Life, Programming | 1 Comment »

Looking Glass 2.0 Progress

April 17th, 2008 by Kyle

The number of emails I had been receiving to upgrade Looking Glass finally became just too overwhelming. Besides the previous version not being Intel compatible it did not function on Leopard. For the last several weeks I have been slaving away on a new version that not only adds Leopard and Intel support but dozens of other new features. It has been a complete rewrite from the ground up and reuses no code so it has taken me a lot longer then I would of liked.

I wish I could say it would be out on X date but being a lone programmer with a lot of other things going on I can never be sure. However it is in its finial stages of testing now. All the features have been added and are working correctly. So the good news is it will be out “soon”. Just thought I would give everyone an update on my progress.

Here is a sneak picture of the new interface.

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My Macworld Opinions

January 9th, 2008 by Kyle

I think we will almost definitely see a 16 GB iPhone, there has been some industry speculation on a 32 GB iPhone but I think we aren’t there yet. We will more then likely see the push of the 1.1.3 patch which has been public for couple of weeks now on the internet. As far as iPhone 2.0 less then 1% chance, we aren’t there yet, check back in 12 months.

With the Mac Pro’s and Xserves updated right before the event I think that area will be left untouched, there is a slight chance (10%) of a CTO blue-ray option but I wouldn’t hold my breath. The only reason I can see it being delayed is Apple wants to use Macworld as a platform to announce its full support of Blue-Ray.

Moderate chance of iMac speed bump, also the slight chance of Blue-Ray CTO on them.

Macbook Pros although not typically upgraded during Macworld will most likely see a revision. They are long overdue for a form redesign and this might be the time to fit in with the rumored ultra-portable macbook pro.

The ultra-portable laptop will almost certainly be a macbook pro as opposed to a macbook and has a very very high chance of release. The chance of using flash storage as the only HD is very slim still the size doesnt warrant the cost yet. Now using a smaller flash drive to store OS is possible, not going to rule that one out.

I doubt there will be any iPod changes

I doubt there will be any macbook changes

10.5.2 Will be released in the coming weeks, whether they do it at macworld or not is anyone’s guess.

iLife and iWork will go untouched, they will continue the trend of not being updated at macworlds.

Displays are due for the some update love but I don’t think we are there yet, I figure they would of bumped them at the same time as the towers and xserves.

Macbooks and Mac Minis should be fairly safe from revision for a while still.

The rumor mill has been pretty quite this time around (all things considered) and there was no pre-warning on the Pros or Xserves so the chances of a pre-show leak are slim.

In the end it is anyones guess, I hope I am right but we wont know till the keynote.

Posted in OS X | No Comments »