Kenneth Weiss » Code

iSand-HD even more fun at the beach…

Kenneth — Sat, 01 May 2010 01:16:28 +0000

It’s iPad fever time and I just finished upgrading iSand for the big screen. More screen + More grains = more fun. Spent some time optimizing the graphics to maximize the amount of particles on the screen. The verdict is that the iPad’s processor rocks. I just doubled the amount of grains compared to the 3GS, and it’s smooth as can be. It also seems to handle multiple touch with no effort, which is all done on the CPU. It was challenging to get the orientation right. The main OGL view should not move while the toolbar and the status bar do.

Here are some screen shots:

And of course the link… iSand-HD

iSand – iPhone/iPod Touch Sand Art Particle Simulator

Kenneth — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 02:01:20 +0000

Apple just approved another app of mine, iSand. I know it’s cheesy adding the i but it was available and i wanted to be the one… Any way this is a sand art simulator with simulated particle physics. This app pushes the OpenGL ES on the iPhone to the limit. I wanted to be able to produce as many grains as possible without becoming unresponsive. Allot of optimizing and I got it to 9600 on the 3g and 17066 on the 3GS. The 3D hardware upgrade and the processor speed increase the 3GS makes a big difference. I’m gonna continue to try and push in more sand particles in the next update.

If you got it, make sure to give it 5 stars!

iSand – iPhone Sand Art Simulator

iPhone application – Infected Mushroom’s Smashing the Opponent

Kenneth — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:34:05 +0000

Things don’t get cooler then this.
An iPhone first person shooter game for none other then Infected Mushroom. I met Infected at their show in Dublin early this year. Erez Eizen wanted an iPhone game that would allow the band to get in touch with fans and promote their new album “Legend of the Black Shawarma”. Inspired by the album art conceived by Jeff McMillian, I worked on bringing it to life as a simple whacking game. But I got carried away and decided to challenge myself and create a first person shooter, something I had not attempted before. The challenging parts was getting a decent frame rate while rendering the forest. I found out that is was more efficient to do the transformations of the field objects on the CPU and not using the OGL matrices. Memory as always is tricky on the iPhone. I used the Oolong Engine for the texture compression and the audio streaming. Tip: Don’t mix this with the AVAudioPlayer, they will compete on mp3 decoding, I was amazed to find out that this gave me drops in frame rate.

Check out the game:
Smashing the Opponent at the App Store

iPhone application – We Both Know – See which contacts you share with others

Kenneth — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:49:23 +0000

WeBothKnow allows you to see who you know in common with others. Skip the name game – just launch WeBothKnow, have your friend or new acquaintance do the same, and see who you both know within seconds. WeBothKnow takes the age-old practice of trying to figure which common acquaintances you share with someone, and makes it quick and easy.

WeBothKnow was conceived and designed by Shachar Gilad, and programmed by myself (Kenneth Weiss). Shachar contacted me about a year ago with his idea of comparing contacts on your mobile phone over bluetooth. At the time the only way to do that on the iPhone was over WIFI. That was not exactly a smooth ride for the potential users. Both phones would have to sit on the same wifi network and it would not work unless you have access to wireless. Apple’s new Game Kit framework hit it right on the spot. It was easy to use and provided the blue-tooth communication needed for this app to be simple and easy.

Security of personal data is an important factor for the success of the product. We took great care in designing a system that would never expose personal information.

Phone numbers and email addresses are encrypted and garbled so that they can’t be decrypted
Nothing other than the encrypted phone or email address is transfered
Both people must agree to the compare process before it commences.
You can hide contacts you do not want to share with others.
The results are composed from the info on your phone and do not show any info from the other phone.

For any feedback please feel free to contact me!

We Both Know – on the iTunes app store

We Both Know product website

We Both Know on YouTube

iPhone application – Pointer Cards – Visual Translations in 11 Languages

Kenneth — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:02:44 +0000

Another freelance iPhone application I recently completed is Pointer Cards. Pointer Cards is a handy language translator for travelers. It includes translations of common words to 11 languages. The client needed a simple way for content management so I created a series of perl scripts that create a folder database. This is all done in Objective-C and some tricks were needed to make the card browser work. What happens is it takes time to load all the preview icons and that starves the main application thread. So I spawn a thread for each UIImage that gets loaded. I will post some source code soon.

Buy Pointer cards:
Pointer Cards on iTunes app store

PaperVision3D+ ActionScript3==funtime…

Kenneth — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 23:13:24 +0000

It’s been a while since I had done any decent flash/Actionscript programming. For some reason I had the feeling that nothing was really changing for the last few years. I was so wrong. I have been in a coma while some talented brains have been plotting and building 3D engines that actually work under (the not so optimized) flash player.

So I’m back at it with a papervision3d project for Barbie Shanghai’s website.
What seemed simple in the first glance was actually quite challenging. The site was designed with cover flow in mind. The problem with the design is that its a pseudo 3D scene, its not a mathematically accurate perspective. The solution was to create an individual Viewport3D scene for each object in the movie. For the movement on the y axis I am actually tweening the whole viewport of each object on the stage. For performance I only render the Viewport3D for each floor only when its changing in size or animating.

I used the Tweener package for all the tweens. I needed to tween the ColorMaterial’s fillColor. So I created a package based on how tweener splits the color hex value. Here is the code for the package: PaperVisionColorMaterialProperty.as – Papervision3D ColorMaterial property for Tweener. To use it you must call PaperVisionColorMaterialProperty.init(); somewhere in you code.

If you don’t know what PaperVision3D is about, check the following links:
Papervision3D - The source.
ROXIC - Nice “fake” 3D, notice that the spares are not real 3D objects.
MR-doob - This guy has really mad experiments going on in his lab.

Native iPhone Application: Tap-N-Flip

Kenneth — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 11:11:51 +0000

Ok some changes. Othello is just too easy. That is why there are about 10 different versions of the game in the app store. So this game is an arcade version of Othello. It has levels, Score, lives and can be played multiplayer. I implemented the GUI with OpenGL ES and added some sounds using the Open AL api.

Native iPhone Application:Wi-Reversi

Kenneth — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:31:54 +0000

I have been working for the past month on an iPhone version for the classic game Othello/Reversi. Basically its a board game where you need to flip as many of your opponent pieces that you can. Seems to be quite popular game as I have noticed 2 other developers have made their Cocoa Touch version. Anyways I will still persue this as I have 2 nice features that are unique.

Wifi mode – the if two versions of the game are located on the same wifi network, The players can play a multi player game where each player has his own view of the game on his iPhone.
Insanity mode – When playing multi-player mode, you can select the Insanity mode. There are no turns and each player needs to tap faster then the opponent to finish the game.
The AI part and game logic were coded by my colleague Aaaron Davidson. Aaron is an extremely talented AI and games systems developer.

I hope to have this released on the Apple Store soon enough. I need to give the UI some final touches.

Code: Trolltech QT Development

Kenneth — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:40:56 +0000

QT on Wikipedia: Qt_(toolkit)

QT is a cross-platform application development framework, widely used for the development of GUI programs, and also used for developing non-GUI programs such as console tools and servers.

I have been getting into QT development lately in work and at home. The framework is a clean cross platform C++ toolkit. Other then the GUI, it provides a simple and elegant abstraction to all the system API’s. I find myself spending less time messing with with writing another file manager or graphic manager, and focusing on the actual application. The documentation is great and covers the objects well. They have an object for any type of action you would need in an application and most of the times its written the way I would.
The most important benefit for me is the ability to see all the frameworks code. Unlike Windows MFC development, I would find myself stepping deeper into the objects and getting a clear understanding of what they exactly do.
So from now on if I need to develop any Cross platform applications this is my preferred framework.

Learn more about QT:
www.trolltech.com

Developing Native iPhone Applications

Kenneth — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:12:55 +0000

My first cell phone was an iPhone. It’s a decade late, but a good entry into the mobile world. So now that I am a proud iPhone owner and an experienced Apple developer, the next natural stage would be to develop some killer applications for the iPhone OS.

I have downloaded and installed the iPhone developer SDK. It’s basically a simplified Cocoa framework and proves to be extremely easy to learn.

So stay tuned for updates on future projects!

Waves Tune – Working on a new plug-in from Waves

Kenneth — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 14:54:09 +0000

A year and a half in the making, this is an awesome project that I was privileged to work on. Waves Tune is a Vocal Tuning Plug-in that is used for fixing out of tune singers or can be used as a modern vocal effect.
From Wave Tune Product Page:

The singer has just wrapped up an amazing take. The phrasing, the emotion, the delivery, it’s all there. But there are notes you’d like to change, and others that need to be fixed. You need perfect pitch transformation. You need precision realtime editing capabilities.
You need Waves Tune. With full ReWire support, formant correction, and an extensive palette of pitch shaping tools, Waves Tune lets you do all your editing right there within your DAW environment – no need to export sections or work offline. Better sounding and more flexible than any other pitch correction processor, Waves Tune will get your vocals back on track.

In this project I became more acquainted with OpenGL and 3d graphics programming. There was allot of room to explore, so I could focus on making the interface smoother and cooler. There is a nice zooming effect I created and when the pages are moved the screen will slide into the point of view. You can see the zooming effect on this video: Waves Tune Video on YouTube
Another cool aspect was using ReWire not for the audio capabilities but for the synchronization and ability to control your host application from within the plug-in’s GUI.

This Plug-in will be released soon and will support the following platforms:
VST – Window and Mac OS X
Audio Units – Mac OS X
Pro-Tools/RTAS/Audio Suite – Window and Mac OS X
MAS – Mac OS X

Nice Flash Actionscript Sample

Kenneth — Fri, 11 Apr 2003 19:35:19 +0000

This is a nice Actionscript flash animation I created. I used it for the chromosoniq site. It is some sort of a navigation panel and each planet represents a page in the site. It demonstrates a ‘fake’ 3D animation. All the planets are image sequences that have been pre-distorted in Photoshop. The light reflection is added to the Movie Object as a top layer with some gradient. I use some simple math calculations for placing the objects.

View full screen version