The last couple of weeks i have worked (on and off) on a system that implements .TTF fonts as bitmap (one to several .png files, depending on the font size) including an .xml file for info on character kerning and texture coordinates, so it can be used on any platform without being dependant on ttf support.

To generate a new font, you simply have to pass the font name (the .TTF font must exist in your system for the generation only), and the desired size.

Font Arial = new Font("Arial", 12.5f);

The font can then be rendered in any color, anywhere on screen.

Arial.Write(120, 20, "Text");
Arial.WriteCentered(250, 120, "Text is a nice text");

The latter function centers the text around the point given.

The latest addition i made is rotated text, so it works on either portrait or landscape layout.

Arial.Write(120, 20, "Text", 90);

However, the rotation can be anywhere between 0 and 360 degree.

Currently, each character is drawn dynamically, but it is planned to add a render to texture function, so we can draw static strings as a single sprite.

Of course, this is actually animated, rotating like it never could before.

If you are running a game studio like this, youre obviously doing it wrong.

However, it looks like a good merchandise.

Who hasn't heard of it? Companies and Indie developers are making millions with iPhone games. So, if you want to make money, why not develop for the iPhone? People say its fast and easy. And if you do it right, you can be a millionaire over night.

People hear those stories of success, and figure it's like that, or similar, for most iPhone apps released. The fact is, this is far from the truth. Only a very small percentage actually earns the bucks to finance another bigger project, or even make enough for a living.

It's a tough game to get some serious money on the Appstore, and you better be prepared to not succeed like the prime examples.

Ravensword: The Fallen King is a new RPG for the iPhone created by Crescent Moon Games. It is available in the AppStore for $6.99. Though the graphics look decent for an iPhone, the controls appear rather slow in the trailer/movies on youtube. Check it out and tell us what you think.

The iphone is a pretty controversial device. Some love it, some hate it, others couldn't care less and if you want to write software for it, you have to go with Apples AppStore, and they can be pretty picky before letting you submit.

It seems they aren't picky enough since a new case of Apps stealing your phone number arised. Apparently the developer Storm 8 released a number of games, which exectute malicious code to collect the number from your phone.

The respective games are

World War
IMobsters
Racing Live
Vampires
Kingdoms
Zombies
Rockstars and
Ninjas Live

It is probably too late to prevent them from stealing your number, but it wouldn't hurt to get rid of them, just in case theres more to it.

A preceding story was caused by the swiss developer Mogo earlier this year. They stole phone numbers of their free customers and called them to update to the paid version.

Is it possible that all the restrictions established by Apple still aren't enough?

So we eventually got our distribution keys after ~1month of waiting. Apple really disappointed us in that matter. And after figuring out how to get our application run on the iPod took us half a day. The setup is not exactly intuitive. You have to go back and forth from the Developer Portal on apple.com, the XCode IDE, Keychain and whatever else.

So now we can actually Build & Run our game from within Unity3D on our iPod, and not a second to early. Lots of issues showed up, some of them being casual freezing, not switching to wide-view, frame dropping, and not running as fast as we expected. Hopefully they will all be sorted out by the end of the next week as the deadline draws nearer and we dont plan to push our release back.

Also, for some reason, the live preview feature doesn't work at all, i'll have to dig into that, because compiling and running the application everytime is pretty slow and bothersome, and doesn't easy the process of debugging in any sense.

So far so good,... i'm glad it works at all.

I was just browsing the shmup-dev.com forums when I read about an algorithm to create and morph shapes dynamically developed by Paul Burke.

Curious as i am i followed the link to discover a vast collection of interesting articles.

The article that got most of my attention was about the iDome and the implemention with the Unity3D engine.
showcase
Unity3D implemention

I think the idea is ingenious, and possibly the most innovative thing since tilt sensitive game controllers.

He also composed a FAQ  for you guys that are trying to rebuilt that thing. If i had the space and a projector, i sure would give it a try.

Also, if you are into game development or just curious by nature, you should check out his other articles. Theres some really interesting stuff covered.