More iPhone Cool Projects: Cool Developers Reveal the Details of their Cooler Apps

354 Pages·2010·7.31 MB·English

by  Ben Smith

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M
ore iPhone Cool Projects features ten projects from eleven cool iPhone M Cool Developers Reveal the Details of Their Cooler iPhone Apps
developers spanning a wide range of topics. No matter what types of
applications you are interested in writing, there is something in More iPhone and Discuss Their iPad Development Experiences
Cool Projects that you will find valuable. o
Each one of the authors loves the iPhone and wants to share their experiences so r
that you will be able to create great apps! e
•
Danton Chin instructs you on the use of concurrency on the iPhone

to help you speed up your apps. i
• Claus Höfele helps you streamline your content pipeline with an FBX P
model importer.
• h
Ben Kazez sheds some light on the process of finding and utilizing
external data providers using his app FlightTrack as an example.
o
•
Saul Mora shows you how to use unit testing to greatly improve your
code stability and help speed up your iPhone development. n
•
Leon Palm introduces you to the exciting world of computer vision
e
and shows you how to integrate the very powerful OpenCV libraries
into your applications.

•
Scott Penberthy shows you how to make font rendering in OpenGL C
simple and easy.
o
•
Ben Britten Smith introduces you to 3D game creation using the
Unity3D engine. o
•
Chuck Smith gives an excellent tutorial on 2D game creation with the
Cocos2d framework. l
•
David Smith discusses how to handle large audio files and how he P
built his app: Audiobooks.
• r
Arne de Vries and Joost van de Wijgerd team up to tell you about
their experiences integrating push notifications into their popular o More
eBuddy application.
j
More iPhone Cool Projects is so chock-full of useful stuff you can enjoy it as a whole e
or just grab the bits that appeal to you. There is something in here for every
iPhone developer! c
iPhone Cool Projects
t
s
RELATED TITLES

Danton Chin | Claus Höfele | Ben Kazez | Saul Mora | Leon Palm
S Scott Penberthy | Ben Britten Smith | Chuck Smith
m
COMPANION eBOOK SEE LAST PAGE FOR DETAILS ON $10 eBOOK VERSION ISBN 978-1-4302-2922-3 it David Smith | Arne de Vries | Joost van de Wijgerd
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More iPhone Cool
Projects
Cool Developers Reveal the Details of Their
Cooler Apps and Discuss Their iPad
Development Experiences

■ ■ ■
Danton Chin Ben Britten Smith
Claus Höfele Chuck Smith
Ben Kazez David Smith
Saul Mora Arne de Vries
Leon Palm Joost van de Wijgerd
Scott Penberthy

i
More iPhone Cool Projects: Cool Developers Reveal the Details of Their Cooler Apps and
Discuss Their iPad Development Experiences
Copyright © 2010 by Danton Chin, Claus Höfele, Ben Kazez, Saul Mora, Leon Palm, Scott
Penberthy, Ben Britten Smith, Chuck Smith, David Smith, Arne de Vries, and Joost van de Wijgerd
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Development Editors: Douglas Pundick, Matthew Moodie, and Brian MacDonald
Technical Reviewer: Ben Britten Smith
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ii
My gratitude and thanks to Mom and Dad (they would have liked this), to my wife Carol for
everything over the years, and to our wonderful and artistically, musically talented son Tim. Also,
thanks to Robert and Elizabeth Bergenheim, Elise Falkinburg and Errol Frankel, and their
wonderfully intelligent sons, John and James Frankel.
—Danton Chin

Thanks to my wife and daughters, who inspire me daily to help make the world a better place. And
for letting me buy that awesome new MacBook Pro (you know which one).
—Saul Mora

To my mother, who taught me to pursue excellence, and to my father, who always inspired
creativity in me. Also to Andrea Zemenides, for being cute and little.
—Leon Palm

To the beautiful women in my family: Lisa, Julia, and Taylor. Taylor insists I mention our dog,
Jack, and Snickers too.
—Scott Penberthy

To my lovely wife Leonie.
—Ben Britten Smith

To my parents, who were always there for me and gave me the joy of reading. Also to my
professor, Dr. Gene Chase, who always brought an incredible amount of enthusiasm to everything
he taught, and made computer science inspiring.
—Chuck Smith

To my wife and best friend, Lauren.
—David Smith

iii
Contents at a Glance
■Contents at a Glance...................................................................................................iv
■Contents.......................................................................................................................v
■Preface.........................................................................................................................x
■Acknowledgments......................................................................................................xi
■Introduction...............................................................................................................xii
Danton Chin....................................................................................................................1(cid:1)
■Chapter 1: Using Concurrency to Improve the Responsiveness
of iPhone and iPad Applications...............................................................3(cid:1)
Claus Höfele.................................................................................................................57(cid:1)
■Chapter 2: Your Own Content Pipeline: Importing 3D Art Assets
into Your iPhone Game............................................................................59(cid:1)
Ben Kazez....................................................................................................................89(cid:1)
■Chapter 3: How FlightTrack Uses External Data Providers to
Power This Best-Selling Travel App........................................................91(cid:1)
Saul Mora, Jr.............................................................................................................107(cid:1)
■Chapter 4: Write Better Code and Save Time with Unit Testing..............................109(cid:1)
Leon Palm..................................................................................................................135(cid:1)
■Chapter 5: Fun with Computer Vision: Face Recognition with
OpenCV on the iPhone...........................................................................137(cid:1)
Scott Penberthy.........................................................................................................161(cid:1)
■Chapter 6: How to Use OpenGL Fonts without Losing Your Mind............................163(cid:1)
Ben Britten Smith.......................................................................................................189(cid:1)
■Chapter 7: Game Development with Unity..............................................................191(cid:1)
Chuck Smith...............................................................................................................249(cid:1)
■Chapter 8: Cocos2d for iPhone and iPad; It Is Easier than You Think....................251(cid:1)
David Smith................................................................................................................287(cid:1)
■Chapter 9: Creating an Audio-Centric App for the iPhone
with AVAudioPlayer..............................................................................289(cid:1)
Joost van de Wijgerd and Arne de Vries....................................................................309(cid:1)
■Chapter 10: Implementing Push Notifications at eBuddy.......................................311(cid:1)
■Index.......................................................................................................................577
iv
Contents
■Contents at a Glance.......................................................................................iv(cid:1)
■Contents..........................................................................................................v(cid:1)
■Preface............................................................................................................x(cid:1)
■Acknowledgments..........................................................................................xi(cid:1)
■Introduction...................................................................................................xii(cid:1)

Danton Chin........................................................................................................1(cid:1)
■Chapter 1: Using Concurrency to Improve the Responsiveness
of iPhone and iPad Applications....................................................3(cid:1)
Prepare for Concurrency.........................................................................................................................................3(cid:1)
Non-Responsive User Interfaces.............................................................................................................................6(cid:1)
Building the Interestingness User Interface.......................................................................................................7(cid:1)
Adding A JSON Parsing Framework to the Interestingness App......................................................................10(cid:1)
Composing a RESTful Request for a List of Interestingness Images...............................................................10(cid:1)
Using the RESTful Request and the JSON Parser to Parse the Response.......................................................12(cid:1)
Implementing the UITableViewDataSource Protocol Methods to Display the Results.....................................14(cid:1)
Concurrency Landscape.......................................................................................................................................16(cid:1)
Considerations When Using Concurrent Solutions................................................................................................17(cid:1)
Concurrency with NSThread and NSObject..........................................................................................................19(cid:1)
Concurrency with Operation Objects....................................................................................................................24(cid:1)
NSOperationQueue...........................................................................................................................................25(cid:1)
NSOperation and NSInvocationOperation........................................................................................................26(cid:1)
Concurrency with Operation Objects and Blocks..................................................................................................45(cid:1)
Blocks..............................................................................................................................................................46(cid:1)
Summary..............................................................................................................................................................53(cid:1)
Resources.............................................................................................................................................................54(cid:1)
Apple and Apple-related News........................................................................................................................54(cid:1)
Apple Documentation.......................................................................................................................................54(cid:1)

v
■ CONTENTS
Blocks and Grand Central Dispatch.................................................................................................................55(cid:1)
General.............................................................................................................................................................56(cid:1)
JSON................................................................................................................................................................56(cid:1)
POSIX Threads.................................................................................................................................................56(cid:1)
Claus Höfele......................................................................................................57(cid:1)
■Chapter 2: Your Own Content Pipeline: Importing 3D Art
Assets into Your iPhone Game.....................................................59(cid:1)
Starting an iPhone Game......................................................................................................................................59(cid:1)
Why Write Your Own Tools?..................................................................................................................................60(cid:1)
Creating a Flexible Content Pipeline.....................................................................................................................61(cid:1)
The Tools Problem...........................................................................................................................................61(cid:1)
Data Exchange vs. In-Game File Formats........................................................................................................63(cid:1)
Outline of the Example Code.................................................................................................................................64(cid:1)
Exporting 3D Models.............................................................................................................................................65(cid:1)
Reading FBX files.............................................................................................................................................66(cid:1)
Traversing the Scene Contents.............................................................................................................................69(cid:1)
Distinguishing between Different Types of Scene Nodes.....................................................................................70(cid:1)
OpenGL Triangle Data......................................................................................................................................71(cid:1)
Converting FBX Models into Triangle Data......................................................................................................73(cid:1)
Converting Triangle Data into an In-Game Format..........................................................................................76(cid:1)
Handling Textures.................................................................................................................................................79(cid:1)
Image Compression vs. Texture Compression.................................................................................................79(cid:1)
Imagination’s PVRTC Format...........................................................................................................................80(cid:1)
Reading PNG Images.......................................................................................................................................82(cid:1)
Converting Images into the PVRTC Format......................................................................................................84(cid:1)
Rendering the Converted Data on the iPhone.......................................................................................................86(cid:1)
Running the Converter Tool.............................................................................................................................86(cid:1)
Creating the iPhone Project.............................................................................................................................86(cid:1)
Summary..............................................................................................................................................................87(cid:1)
Ben Kazez.........................................................................................................89(cid:1)
■Chapter 3: How FlightTrack Uses External Data Providers
to Power This Best-Selling Travel App........................................91(cid:1)
Choosing a Data Source........................................................................................................................................92(cid:1)
API Design........................................................................................................................................................93(cid:1)
Data Coverage and Accuracy...........................................................................................................................94(cid:1)
Economics.......................................................................................................................................................95(cid:1)
Trials................................................................................................................................................................96(cid:1)
Source-Driven User Interface Design....................................................................................................................96(cid:1)
Challenges.......................................................................................................................................................97(cid:1)
Techniques from FlightTrack...........................................................................................................................98(cid:1)
Design Patterns for Data Source Consumption.....................................................................................................99(cid:1)
Direct-Client Consumption...............................................................................................................................99(cid:1)
Server-Intermediary Consumption.................................................................................................................100(cid:1)
Data-Driven Cocoa App Architecture..................................................................................................................101(cid:1)
Data Model Design.........................................................................................................................................101(cid:1)
Connecting Data to UI....................................................................................................................................102(cid:1)
vi
■ CONTENTS
Choosing an Approach...................................................................................................................................104(cid:1)
Release!..............................................................................................................................................................105(cid:1)
FlightTrack Today...............................................................................................................................................105(cid:1)
Saul Mora, Jr..................................................................................................107(cid:1)
■Chapter 4: Write Better Code and Save Time with Unit Testing..................109(cid:1)
Mock Objects.................................................................................................................................................120(cid:1)
Testing Your Core Data Models......................................................................................................................127(cid:1)
Summary............................................................................................................................................................134(cid:1)
Leon Palm.......................................................................................................135(cid:1)
■Chapter 5: Fun with Computer Vision: Face Recognition
with OpenCV on the iPhone........................................................137(cid:1)
What Is Computer Vision?...................................................................................................................................140(cid:1)
Why do Computer Vision on an iPhone?.............................................................................................................141(cid:1)
Your Project: Creating a Face Detector...............................................................................................................142(cid:1)
Setting Up OpenCV.........................................................................................................................................142(cid:1)
Setting Up XCode...........................................................................................................................................145(cid:1)
Adding Image Conversion Functions..............................................................................................................147(cid:1)
Creating a Simple GUI....................................................................................................................................149(cid:1)
Loading Images from the Photo Library.........................................................................................................151(cid:1)
Loading the Haar Cascades...........................................................................................................................152(cid:1)
Performing Face Detection............................................................................................................................154(cid:1)
Bonus.............................................................................................................................................................156(cid:1)
Performance Tweaking.......................................................................................................................................157(cid:1)
Going Further......................................................................................................................................................159(cid:1)
Summary............................................................................................................................................................160(cid:1)
Scott Penberthy..............................................................................................161(cid:1)
■Chapter 6: How to Use OpenGL Fonts without Losing Your Mind................163(cid:1)
History.................................................................................................................................................................164(cid:1)
Terminology........................................................................................................................................................165(cid:1)
Pragmatic Fontery...............................................................................................................................................167(cid:1)
fCookie................................................................................................................................................................167(cid:1)
Creating a Font’s Texture Atlas...........................................................................................................................168(cid:1)
Texture Mapping............................................................................................................................................171(cid:1)
Opening Your App..........................................................................................................................................173(cid:1)
The Fontery Classes............................................................................................................................................173(cid:1)
APGlyph..........................................................................................................................................................174(cid:1)
APChar...........................................................................................................................................................175(cid:1)
APText............................................................................................................................................................177(cid:1)
Putting It All Together.........................................................................................................................................179(cid:1)
Setting Up the Display.........................................................................................................................................181(cid:1)
Creating Your Fortune.........................................................................................................................................182(cid:1)
Displaying the Fortune........................................................................................................................................184(cid:1)
Summary............................................................................................................................................................187(cid:1)
vii
■ CONTENTS
Ben Britten Smith...........................................................................................189(cid:1)
■Chapter 7: Game Development with Unity...................................................191(cid:1)
What Is Unity?.....................................................................................................................................................192(cid:1)
Why Use Unity?...................................................................................................................................................193(cid:1)
Exploring the Unity Interface...............................................................................................................................195(cid:1)
The Scene View.............................................................................................................................................196(cid:1)
The Game View..............................................................................................................................................197(cid:1)
The Project View............................................................................................................................................198(cid:1)
The Hierarchy View........................................................................................................................................198(cid:1)
The Inspector View........................................................................................................................................198(cid:1)
How the Pipeline Flows..................................................................................................................................198(cid:1)
The Transform: Everybody Has One...............................................................................................................199(cid:1)
Meshes, Renderers, and Materials................................................................................................................200(cid:1)
Importing Assets............................................................................................................................................204(cid:1)
Custom Scripting...........................................................................................................................................205(cid:1)
Playing Your Game.........................................................................................................................................208(cid:1)
Coroutines Not Updates.................................................................................................................................209(cid:1)
The Game View..............................................................................................................................................210(cid:1)
Adding Lights.................................................................................................................................................213(cid:1)
Using the iPhone as a Game Pad...................................................................................................................214(cid:1)
Your Game..........................................................................................................................................................215(cid:1)
Adding a Base to Work From.........................................................................................................................216(cid:1)
The Main Character........................................................................................................................................218(cid:1)
Inputs and Colliders.......................................................................................................................................224(cid:1)
Your First Design Iteration.............................................................................................................................228(cid:1)
Adding More Touchable Objects....................................................................................................................230(cid:1)
Prefabs...........................................................................................................................................................231(cid:1)
Animations.....................................................................................................................................................232(cid:1)
Animation Import Settings.............................................................................................................................233(cid:1)
Interacting with Something Besides the Floor...............................................................................................237(cid:1)
User Interface................................................................................................................................................240(cid:1)
Multiple Cameras...........................................................................................................................................241(cid:1)
3D Objects As GUI Items................................................................................................................................243(cid:1)
Building for Your Device................................................................................................................................247(cid:1)
Summary............................................................................................................................................................248(cid:1)
Chuck Smith...................................................................................................249(cid:1)
■Chapter 8: Cocos2d for iPhone and iPad; It Is Easier than You Think.........251(cid:1)
Origins of Cocos2d..............................................................................................................................................251(cid:1)
Why Use Cocos2d?.............................................................................................................................................252(cid:1)
Getting Started with Cocos2d.............................................................................................................................252(cid:1)
Installing Cocos2d..........................................................................................................................................254(cid:1)
Configuring Sample Code..............................................................................................................................254(cid:1)
Installing the XCode Project Templates.........................................................................................................255(cid:1)
Starting a New Project...................................................................................................................................256(cid:1)
Introduction to Video Poker.................................................................................................................................257(cid:1)
Making a Scene..................................................................................................................................................258(cid:1)
Creating a Game Menu..................................................................................................................................260(cid:1)
viii
■ CONTENTS
Game Logic.........................................................................................................................................................261(cid:1)
Card...............................................................................................................................................................262(cid:1)
Deck...............................................................................................................................................................264(cid:1)
SimpleHand....................................................................................................................................................266(cid:1)
I Like the Sprites in You.................................................................................................................................270(cid:1)
Putting It All together.....................................................................................................................................272(cid:1)
Events: Making It Interactive.........................................................................................................................275(cid:1)
Adding Sound......................................................................................................................................................280(cid:1)
Supporting the iPad............................................................................................................................................281(cid:1)
Further Exploring cocos2d..................................................................................................................................286(cid:1)
David Smith....................................................................................................287(cid:1)
■Chapter 9: Creating an Audio-Centric App for the
iPhone with AVAudioPlayer.......................................................289(cid:1)
Design.................................................................................................................................................................290(cid:1)
Designing for Your Target User......................................................................................................................290(cid:1)
Our Design Process........................................................................................................................................291(cid:1)
Implementation...................................................................................................................................................295(cid:1)
Example Project..................................................................................................................................................296(cid:1)
Getting Started...............................................................................................................................................296(cid:1)
Setting Up the UI............................................................................................................................................298(cid:1)
Coding the Audio Player.................................................................................................................................302(cid:1)
Summary............................................................................................................................................................307(cid:1)
Joost van de Wijgerd and Arne de Vries.........................................................309(cid:1)
■Chapter 10: Implementing Push Notifications at eBuddy............................311(cid:1)
Introduction to eBuddy........................................................................................................................................311(cid:1)
The eBuddy Messenger.................................................................................................................................312(cid:1)
The eBuddy iPhone Application.....................................................................................................................312(cid:1)
Apple Push Notification Service..........................................................................................................................313(cid:1)
The Communication Flow..............................................................................................................................314(cid:1)
The Client Implementation.............................................................................................................................314(cid:1)
The eBuddy Push Implementation......................................................................................................................317(cid:1)
Client / Server Protocol..................................................................................................................................317(cid:1)
Server to APNS...............................................................................................................................................318(cid:1)
Fitting the Parts Together..............................................................................................................................322(cid:1)
Changes along the Way......................................................................................................................................323(cid:1)
Introducing eBuddy Pro.................................................................................................................................323(cid:1)
Extending the Beta Program..........................................................................................................................324(cid:1)
Summary............................................................................................................................................................325(cid:1)
■Index............................................................................................................577
ix