Richard McKenna's Blog

Wireframing – the first few views

Richard McKenna — Fri, 14 May 2010 17:38:43 +0000

I’ve now completed the first few wireframes for the application views. Obviously they are still subject to change as the rest of the views are wireframed, but at least it gives me a starting point.

I’ve also been playing with a logo which you can see glimpses of in the wireframes. I’ll do a separate post for the final logo.

The Plan

Richard McKenna — Tue, 11 May 2010 21:11:02 +0000

Ok so the plan. I always aimed for quite ambitious goals when doing personal projects and is certainly quite ambitious as I have no previous experience building iPhone apps. What I didn’t want to do was build a torch like hundreds have done before me. I wanted to go for some thing a bit more fun.

I’ve always been a Sci-fi/fantasy fan and love the whole text based browser games like Outer Core and would love to see something like it on the iPhone. I know there are similar games out there now but the ones I have played haven’t kept me coming back time and again like the browser equivalent.

So to sum it up. A Sci-Fi game where you develope your resources to build fleets, colonise planets, destroy your enemies and dominate the galaxy.

Codename: nova

Here is my initial overview plan of the major sections of the game:

The main sections will be:

Resources – Used to manage and upgrade the production of the games main currency/resources
Facilities – Used to manage the building and upgrading of factories, research labs, ship yards etc.
Research – Discovery and enhancement of different technologies, allowing for building more advanced defense systems, ships etc.
Defence – Building and upgrading of defensive structures
Fleets – Building and managing fleets of ships
Galaxy – Exploration and interaction with the various planets of the galaxy
Research/Production Queue - Displaying and management of current research/production jobs and their time to completion
Notifications – Lists recent activities and their out come

Obviously this is just the beginning of what I’m sure will be a rather long project, but I’m determined to push it along. If anyone is actually reading this and has any suggestions you can always contact me here. I’d love to hear what people think.

What’s it all about eh?

Richard McKenna — Mon, 10 May 2010 12:41:50 +0000

Welcome to all, hopefully this will be the first of many post about my adventures (if you can call them that) in learning Objective-C and how to develop Cocoa Touch applications for the iPhone and iPad.

I’m a total beginner when it comes to developing iPhone apps. I know many languages but have never dabbled in a C based language before, so it should be nice and challenging for me. I have a vision for a game and I plan on documenting everything here from learning the language, designing the app and interface, building the app and finally deploying it to the app store.

I have no time frame for this and I’m sure it will take me a while but hopefully I’ll have a complete app by the end of it.

Anyway, more posts will follow shortly.