I’ve been waiting to hear about the success of the legal contracts all being approved by Apple, expecting an email of some sort – it wasn’t until I decided to search the App Store the other night for Tasted that I actually found it! What a nice surprise! I logged onto iTunes Connect ( the front end that an iPhone developer uses to interact with Apple ) and all of the contracts had been approved – excellent!

So head on over to Finger Collision and explore my new world of iPhone applications and games.

I’ve already begun on my second app, and am really excited about revealing it once I’ve met my first deadline and have something to showcase. Until then feel free to purchase Tasted and enjoy some good wines.

I kept it small and simple and spent my time focusing on well engineered code as well as an extremely polished look. I’d like to maintain the same high standard for my applications that Apple ( and it’s customers ) would expect from a developer and felt that jumping in with too bold an application to begin with would have been premature.

I’ve been hard at work putting together the branding and customer support side of things relying on Get Satisfaction as a conduit for users to interact with myself, as the developer, and make feature requests, report bugs and generally discuss the project. Although it may be overkill for such a small app, I’m trying to lay the groundwork for larger projects and truly believe that keeping these lines of communication open is going to be the key to developing even greater applications in the future.

I must commend the folks that built the wonderful Get Satisfaction site, as an independent developer the idea of implementing a support and user interaction system with the same breadth is overwhelming and likely wouldn’t happen. This new forum now offers us the means of addressing customers on a more individual level pulling the wool off our eyes and giving us the ability to really see how an application is being used.

So what is the application you ask? Well, as I’m a superstitious git I’m not going to reveal all the details until it’s been approved and available – but if you have a look here you might gain some insight.

Which leads me into another introduction, Finger Collision, my new “brand” for releasing iPhone/iPod Touch applications and games – I wanted to separate the software I write for these mobile devices from my desktop applications and personal page, I feel the market is slightly different, and rather than trying to accommodate the different markets in one location it would be more appropriate to target each of them individually.

If I can think of anything intelligent to write, I’ll try and share iPhone development stories – until then I can only reveal interesting tidbits starting with Unity for the iPhone. As far as indie game development goes I don’t think I could recommend a product highly enough – not just for the iPhone platform, but general Mac, Windows and Wii games too. Having worked in a large game studio and with a fairly good understanding of what goes into the production of a successful game, the ease of producing and integrating art into the Unity system alone is well worth the the purchase price, and I imagine there will be a release or two from myself taking advantage of this great tool in the not so distant future.

The two development projects that I’m now focusing on are underway and I’ve happily set up a local SVN repository to make sure they’re both managed correctly. My first introduction to some form of source control was when I was developing Liquid many moons ago and I used a rudimentary RCS system.  From there I was exposed to more professional and production proven forms of source control while working at EA using Perforce which seems to be one of the more popular commercials packages.  I’ve now moved into Subversion territory, I know that git exists and is apparently better but there’s no x-code integration as of yet and I’d prefer to work lean and mean.

Happy Monday!