Posts tagged ios

Photo Caption Apps, apps that literally just put, well, captions or text on photos. I think it’s those emo/inspirational quotes all over Tumblr that inspired these text over photo meme(?) thing. So a seemingly simple purpose, actually has quite a few apps that are dedicated solely to it. 

I went to Beitou, Taiwan today and took a couple of pictures, and placed a couple of captions on them.

So I played with InstaQuote, Typic, Tiny Post, Overgram and Instaplace (“Insta” and “Gram” is the new “i”?).

First  up it’s InstaQuote, it’s basically a text caption thing for Instagram, it’s actually it’s whole name- “InstaQuote - Text Caption For Instagram”. By the way, this app is free.

So being Insta “Quote” and all you can start off with writing a quote, but since am not a quote-y person, I just typed the name of the place I went to.

You can use one of your photos as the background or use one from the background packs. Oh you have to buy the background packs. Separately, and they cost about a dollar, each.

So stingy me used one of my own photos. Guys, check out the Thermal Valley in Beitou. Steam is literally rising from that body of water. Pretty, but smells like sulfur.

Oh and then you can pick one of the styles. A couple are free, but the rest requires a Pro upgrade.

You can change the Text Color and the Punch Color.

You can also change well, Text Size, Alignment, Line Spacing, etc. I don’t really get what Frame Width is though.

You can “Fine-tune” the font, like change the font, but it also requires the Pro upgrade.

And finally “Open in Instagram”.

So from this:

The photo came with a “natural” filter, with the steam rising and all.

+InstaQuote. Oh it comes with a watermark.

And finally Instagram-ed.

Should I rate these apps with stars? If ever, I’m not really sure what to give this app. It’s okay and all, but a lot of stuff requires the Pro upgrade or some In App purchase.

Next up, Typic, I noticed this app because it was featured in the New and Noteworthy section when it first came out. And app screenshots from iTunes look really pretty. I’m not sure if it had always been free, but anyway, it’s free right now.

The splash screen is kind of cute.

The featured picture is different every time you load the app, and I found that quite charming.

So you can take a photo or choose one from your library.

The app has a scroll view type interface, and you just slide across to go to a previous or next screen.

So this app actually comes with filters.

The filter made my photo really pretty, I think.

You can tap on the Caption button to type your well, caption. Adjust Text size, font etc. Some fonts need to be bought too. But the free ones are good enough for me.

And then you can, well type your caption.

This photo is taken at the Plum Garden. Plum flowers can apparently bloom in winter, or maybe these were just token.

You can also add frame, in black or white. And if you chose frames, you can even adjust the corners to be a little rounded.

And you can also change your text color, black and white is also the only option though.

You can make your picture a litter blurry, to emphasize your text, but I chose not too, since the flowers are just too pretty.

You can also adjust your text opacity.

And yes, “Open in Instagram”.

So from this:

To this:

No need to add filters and stuff in Instagram anymore. Oh and no watermarks either.

Next, next, is Tiny Post. It’s free.

Tiny Post is kind of interesting because it’s not just a caption app. It has a social networking thing going on too.

You have to sign up for an account first, and then you’d have this profile, and whatever photo with caption that you make will appear in your profile.

It’s pretty, pretty basic. You take or choose a photo and then you’d get to this page.

Where you can well, type your caption.

And then change the font of your caption. I’m not a big fan of the childish looking fonts though.

And look, filters! Filters named after places, quite pretty.

So this:

Became this:

Pretty basic, and slightly boring.

And there it is in my profile page.

This doesn’t have “Open in Instagram” in its Share options though, but you can share it to Facebook, Twitter though. Oh and Copy it’s URL, which means this photo is actually on the internet, then? Right, social network-y and all.

And then there’s Overgram. Over and Instagram, get it? This one is free too.

This app looks pretty hipster. Check out the splash screen:

This app can produce pictures like these apparently.

It starts off pretty standard. Choose one of your photos or take a new one. I like this user interface. It’s pretty slick.

You can crop it. Since it’s going to eventually end up in Instagram, it has to be cropped into a square.

Like the screenshot says, you can double tap to edit the text.

You can even change the color, while you’re at it.

Do you remember seeing a yellow triangle in the previous, previous, previous screenshot? So you slide that out and you get this round dial of a UI, which you can slide to see a variety of options.

Like… oooh… cool fonts… Upgrade for more fonts. But the free ones are pretty cool already.

Align…

Size…

And of course, “Open in Instagram”.

This app doesn’t come with filters since it probably figured that Instagram already has them.

So from this:

This is the Beitou Library. It’s a pretty eco-friendly building, and it’s one of Taipei’s green libraries.

Overgram produced this. It has a watermark. But you can remove it with a Pro upgrade, which costs about a dollar.

Plus a filter in Instagram. Oh and when you use Overgram to share to Instagram, it by default has this description already, the pretty standard “I made this with…” spiel, plus a tons of hashtags. So people can actually find your post easily. And one of the hashtags is like #pleaselike, so the nice strangers on Instagram will actually Like it. And Likes are always give me a nice feeling.

Finally, Instaplace. Instaplace, given the key words in its name, it adds the name of the place where the photo was taken as a caption on your photo, which you’ll eventually put on Instagram. It’s free today, but for today only I think.

So you choose or take a photo and that it usually automatically adds the location. Or you can also use the My Place or Locate button to help it detect the location.

There are a bunch of skins:

I think the skins are pretty cute. Some went a little overboard with the logo placement, though.

And then you hit that giant share button there, to share.

From this:

To this:

Yes, it has a watermark too. But I like recently discovered that you can remove it in the Settings (hidden in the More button).

This adds a bunch of hashtags too to your Instagram post. So yeah, likes.

And that about sums up my trip to Beitou, but my photo caption apps (slowly becoming) addiction does not end there.

Some other pictures that I took and added captions to:

So follow me on Instagram? @purplelilgirl

If you guys want me to check out any apps that you made, feel free to contact me, I don’t charge for reviews.

50k30:

Hop on over to Crazy Mike’s Apps to get promo codes for 50K/30:http://www.crazymikesapps.com/50k30-iphone-productivity-app-get-apps-free/

Thank you, Crazy Mike for the short review and feature.

Thank you, Gear Diary for being so nice and writing about my app.

Link: http://www.geardiary.com/2012/10/28/chasing-word-counts-made-easy-50k30-for-ios/

And elsewhere on the internet:

So I recently “wrote” an app (50K/30 available for sale now at the App Store (https://itunes.apple.com/tw/app/50k-30/id570422816?mt=8) for $1.99) and I spent maybe an entire day and night (read “dev” blog?) gathering and sorting through App Review sites.

Now Maniac Dev has a pretty impressive list of App Review sites (http://maniacdev.com/2012/05/ios-app-review-sites/), but it has been months since that was updated.

I used that as my base list and just check out each and every site to see if they “fit” my app, well all the strictly game ones are out of the list, and obviously any site that is one break or stopped reviewing is also out of the list. I only ended up with around 50 sites, and that isn’t much for cold emails (the email version of cold calling?).

And then there are the review sites that charge you for expedited reviews. Now, I have no money, so no way am I going to go for that. Besides paying someone to review your app just seems kind of… wrong?

Now features are okay for me. If I have enough money, I’d pay someone to “feature” my app, I mean, that’s like advertising, right.

But yah, no money. My sister and I do call ourselves “2 Broke Girls”.

But hey, I realized that a lot of fellow indie developers are poor too. So what about us? How can we let anyone notice our app in that way way way too crowded App Store?

Okay, one idea, make my own App Review and Feature blog (I’m so poor, I can’t even afford a website). And then any indie developer can just I don’t know… shoot me an email or message me here or tweet me or toss me a paper note or whatever, and I will try my best to review or feature them, oh and I will not charge them anything, expedited reviews or what not (we’ll do it FIFO, first in first out?).

Okay, I know that my blog doesn’t really have that much page views (I take full responsibility for the lack of blog posts as of late). But if I have apps to review or feature (they should be easier to review than tech books, right?) and then I’d have more things to blog about. If I’m lazy to write, I can always make a video and ramble, I think.

So yeah, it’s just an idea. I will try to blog at least once a week and feature as much apps as possible (of course, that is if anyone will as me to review or feature them).

So that’s it for now.

So we made another game starring Maru Penguin (check out previous game?).

Maru Penguin had been many things: flash drive, mug, piggie (rather, penguin) bank, wrap, strap, etc…


And now, in our latest game “Maru Jump Lite”, Maru, who keeps craving for fish which he believes exist above the clouds, and finally decided to jump towards the sky to take a look.






Show Maru some love? And download the game, please and thank you? http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/maru-jump-lite/id552254820?mt=8

Even though it’s called Lite, this is a full game, and it’s ad-free. The full version of the game will be available soon in select countries (with some additional features, like *hint* win IRL prizes…? *hint*).

That’s it

Throughout the year(s) I have accumulated a number of mini tutorials, code bits and links, but they are just scattered in this blog like.. um.. sprinkles? And they need to be organized. So here, I am going to attempt to create a link list:

Unity-related:

• Mini Tutorial: How to post score of your Unity iOS game to Facebook?
• How to find out the language of your iPhone when using Unity?
• Mini Tutorial: How to create only one set of GUI for different iOS resolutions in Unity3D?
• Mini Tutorial: How to batch replace textures with different file formats in Unity?
• How to make a First Person Shooter Part 1

Cocos2D-related:

• How to create physics objects in Cocos2D with just one click? (well, more or less one click)
• Mini Tutorial: How to capture video of iPhone app in Cocos2D? with audio
• Mini Tutorial: How to capture video of iPhone app in Cocos2D?
• Mini Tutorial: How to add Facebook to your iOS Cocos2d game
• Making that Talking App!
• Audio Processing silly mistake -.-
• Tutorial: The step two to making a ‘Talking’ iPhone app, when to record and when to stop recording
• How to make animated sprites in Cocos2D? (using 3rd party sprites and TexturePacker)
• Tutorial: Other ways to chipmunkify your voice
• Tutorial: The first step to making a ‘Talking’ iPhone app, chipmunkifying your voice!
• How to make fancy labels using Cocos2D?
• How to Flip Y? in Cocos2D Code Bit: How to flip your Cocos2D sprite?
• Transition between cocos2d scene & UIView
• How to load a UIView and display it
• CCUIViewWrapper - wrapper for manipulating UIViews using Cocos2D
• How to have an “add” effect in Cocos2D?
• How to load and animate multiple spritesheets in Cocos2D?
• Code Tip: How to move your Cocos2D sprite in the direction of a rotation?
• Code Tip: How to pass C++ objects to Objective C classes?
• Code Tip: How to optimize bullet hell shooters?
• Code Bit: How to speed up or slow down your Cocos2D game?

Mac-related:

• Mac can turn jibberish into Chinese automatically?! 0.0
• Huh, who knew that you can batch rename files using Automator

Misc. iOS and game development-related:

• Mini Tutorial: How to batch convert image files to PVR (for iPhone app development)?
• How to create a game like Tiny Wings? Links
• Games Plant - Kickstarter for games
• How to add social media icons to Tumblr
• How to batch create SD images from HD in 1,2,3 steps :)
• How to optimize your PNG images?
• How to Send Email from an iPhone App without POP Setup
• Unwrapping a Mushroom
• Tools of Trade

Book reviews and overviews:

• Quick Review: Unreal Development Kit Game Programming with UnrealScript Beginners Guide
• Quick Review: Unity iOS Essentials 
• Review: Cocos2d for iPhone 1 Game Development Cookbook
• Unity 3D Game Development by Example Beginner’s Guide: Game #2
• Cocos2d for iPhone 1 Game Development Cookbook
• Review: iPhone JavaScript Cookbook
• New iOS and Android Books from Packt
• iPhone JavaScript Cookbook
• Core Data iOS Essentials
• Cocoa and Objective-C Cookbook
• Review: Unity 3D Game Development by Example Beginner’s Guide
• Build fun games even if you’ve never coded before 
• Yeah for free books!
• Unity on Kongregate and Unity books
• Review: Cocos2d for iPhone 0.99 Beginner’s Guide
• Cocos2d for iPhone 0.99 Beginner’s Guide

Games, apps reviews and self-promotions:

• So we made a game for a penguin : Maru Penguin
• Talking Trio: Birds by Mobilistudio
• I’m always out for energy!
• Games Scoop - Apps & Games News: The Sims Social on Facebook
• KKB Update!
• Visual Travel Checklist features :)
• What’s Hot: Absolute Instant
• Need to split the bill? “KKB” will help you! Get it for your Android phone now!
• Visual Travel Checklist
• “Must Get Candy” is out!

Gamasutra blogs and reblogs:

• This is the song (game) that doesn’t end…
• The App Store gamble continues…
• The App Store is a gamble – so what should you put your money on?
• Gamasutra Member Blogs: From Narrative Pacing To The Mobile Marketplace
• I want my games in bite size chunks!
• Walking in a Character’s Shoes - literally
• Getting that Game Job
• A Non Gamer’s Story
• How to simplify “Hard Core” Games for “Social” Gamers?
• A Peek into the Mind of a Social Gamer

-without shelling out $65 ;)

Well, if you have $65 to spare, just check out Prime31’s Social Networking plugin (you can even get Twitter!).

Link: http://www.prime31.com/unity/

If you don’t, like 1-broke-girl/me, read on…

There are two parts to this, Unity side and Xcode side. We must find a way for Unity and Xcode to be friends and talk to one another, you know call each others’ functions, access each others’ variables etc.

First let’s take advantage of NSUserDefaults and PlayerPrefs to save some variables (you may encrypt the score variable if you are afraid of cheaters).

PlayerPrefs in Unity…

PlayerPrefs.SetString(“score”, score.ToString());

… can be read in Xcode using…

NSUserDefaults *defaults = [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults];
NSString *score = [defaults objectForKey:@”score”];

There, we know how to pass variables, what about functions…?

In order to do that, I read this tut, which is in Simplified Chinese!  (http://xys289187120.blog.51cto.com/3361352/705415). The gist of that tutorial is that you create this other class (let’s just call it Facebook.cs):

using UnityEngine;  
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;  

public class Facebook : MonoBehaviour {

    [DllImport(“__Internal”)]  
     private static extern void _PressButton0 ();  

     public static void ActivateButton0 ()  
     {  if (Application.platform != RuntimePlatform.OSXEditor)   
        {   _PressButton0 ();  
        }  
     }  
}

The _PressButton0() will actually call some code in Xcode (we’ll get to that).

Someone else in Unity has to call ActivateButton0, a GUI button, perhaps?

if(GUI.Button(new Rect(0, 0, 130, 235), “Facebook”))
{       Facebook.ActivateButton0();
}

So when the player clicks on the GUI button, ActivateButton0() will be called which will in turn call _PressButton0().

But where’s _PressButton0()?

We create a ViewController class in Xcode (let’s just call it MyView.m):

#import “MyView.h”
#import “AppController.h”

@implementation MyView

void _PressButton0()  
{   AppController *appController = (AppController*)[[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate];

    [appController feedDialogButtonClicked];
}  

@end

So there’s _PressButton0()!

Now let’s do the Facebook related things. Go to Facebook’s Developer site and follow the tutorial: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/mobile/ios/build/

Instead of putting some stuff in ApplicationDidFinishLaunchingWithIOptions… I placed everything in a function I called feedDialogButtonClicked.

- (void) feedDialogButtonClicked {
   
    facebook = [[Facebook alloc] initWithAppId:@”221872691249521” andDelegate:self];
   
    NSUserDefaults *defaults = [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults];
    if ([defaults objectForKey:@”FBAccessTokenKey”]
        && [defaults objectForKey:@”FBExpirationDateKey”]) {
        facebook.accessToken = [defaults objectForKey:@”FBAccessTokenKey”];
        facebook.expirationDate = [defaults objectForKey:@”FBExpirationDateKey”];
    }
   
    /**
    if (![facebook isSessionValid])
    {   [facebook authorize: nil];
    }
    **/
   
    [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] synchronize];
    NSString *level = [defaults objectForKey:@”level”];
    NSString *score = [defaults objectForKey:@”score”];
   
    NSMutableDictionary *params =
    [NSMutableDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
     [NSString stringWithFormat: @”I just scored %@ in the %@ Level of Maru Penguin!”, score, level], @”name”,
     @”“, @”caption”,
     @”Get Maru Penguin for free in the iTunes Store”, @”description”,
     @”http://itunes.apple.com/tw/app/maru-penguin/id521096937?mt=8”, @”link”,
     @”http://a2.mzstatic.com/us/r1000/082/Purple/v4/3a/42/b5/3a42b5dc-5452-9dde-cdc8-24e24fb82363/486SkNsbbo2zaF3glfCuo0-temp-upload.iomrjeon.320x480-75.jpg”, @”picture”,
     nil]; 
    [facebook dialog:@”feed”
           andParams:params
         andDelegate:self];
}

I had a little problem with fbDidLogin (the one mentioned in the tutorial), good thing this other tutorial solved it for me: http://ebrentnelson.blogspot.com/2012/02/fbdidlogin-never-calledwhy.html

I ended up commenting out:

/**
    if (![facebook isSessionValid])
    {   [facebook authorize: nil];
    }
    **/

Because I seem to be able to post feeds to my Facebook wall even without it (don’t know why, anyone care to explain?).

Another helpful link: How to include a link in my feed-post using FBConnect from iPhone app? (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5574433/how-to-include-a-link-in-my-feed-post-using-fbconnect-from-iphone-app) This answer in this post explains stuff that you can include in your Feed Dialog pretty clearly.

And um, I think that is it. That bunch of codes can post your scores from Unity iOS to Facebook.

Now my other problem is, how to add a share link to the feed my app posted? Anyone, help?

Also check out an old blog post of mine about how to post pictures from Cocos2D iPhone to Facebook: http://purplelilgirl.tumblr.com/post/9406805856/howtoaddfacebooktococos2diphone

EDIT:

Since generated feeds don’t get the share button (I Google-d for 2 days and found nothing, at the end of it, it was a Which Avengers are You? quiz that helped me solve my problem) , do you know what I eventually did? I went back to that Cocos2D blog post and did it that way (That’s what the Avengers app did, by the way, I’m Hawkeye :D). I posted a photo of the results screen, lol, which is actually what my boss suggested in the first place. And since when you post photos, you can include captions (no advertising though), so there. Problem solved -ish.

EDIT:

Okay, I am apparently not a very good Googler, since only saw this today: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/122681-Free-facebook-Plugin-for-Unity-iOS Free, Facebook, Unity, iOS, all the keywords that I’ve been searching for, all along was in the Unity Forums!

.

.

.

By the way, we made an app (the one in the sample), it’s a game and it’s free and it stars a penguin named Maru in search of yummy fishies around the world (so far he only got to Asia)…

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/tw/app/maru-penguin/id521096937?mt=8

For localizations and stuff, you know? Like say if you want your game to support different languages like English, Chinese, Japanese and stuff.

There’s Application.systemLanguage (I think it’s supported on iOS now, since I tested it on my device and it returns the correct language). It supports these languages: Afrikaans, Arabic, Basque, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hugarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese and Hungarian. And if your selected language is not on that list, it returns: Unknown. So if the language that you want to support is on that list, you don’t have to read the rest of this post. Application.systemLanguage is all you need.

But, but, if you are like me (Taiwanese/Chinese), you might need to support not just Chinese, but Simplified and Traditional Chinese (there is a difference), unfortunately Application.systemLanguage, doesn’t know that difference. But the iOS SDK does.

So I want to use iOS SDK’s way of identifying languages using the code:

NSUserDefaults *defaults = [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults];
    NSArray *languages = [defaults objectForKey:@”AppleLanguages”];
    NSString *currentLanguage = [languages objectAtIndex:0];

I then save the current language to NSUserDefaults:

[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] setObject:currentLanguage forKey:@”language”];
[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] synchronize];

So I can access it in Unity, using PlayerPrefs:

PlayerPrefs.GetString(“language”)

So here’s the thing the iOS code needs to be added in AppController.mm that’s generated when you build Unity iOS.

I added that part before Unity gets called ([self startUnity:application]) inapplication didFinishLaunchingWithOptions.

But, but, every time you build, AppController.mm gets overwritten, so, so, what now?

After Unity 3.5, all you have to do is to drag and drop your AppController.mm file into Plugins/iOS folder inside Unity Assets folder and that copy will automatically overwrite whatever that is generated.

And that is it! :)