Things aren't looking good for my 35 day game
Just over a month ago I posted that I was going to build an iPhone game in just over 30 days. Things haven't quite gone according to plan, but luckily I have several excuses reasons for why I won't be making my App Store millions just yet.
Objective-C
Objective-C is a superset of C. I though that meant that I'd be able to use my knowledge of C/C++ to jump start my iPhone game creation. I was wrong. While technically you can take any C program and compile it in objective-C, that doesn't mean you'll be using much C in your app. Even the the basics like strings and integers have been replaced by NSString and NSInteger. Basically I was back to square one when it comes to the syntax and basic functions. Learning an entirely new language in the time I'd set myself was going to be difficult as it was.
New Xcode and SDK
Xcode updated to version 4 recently. It's definitely a lot better than the version 3 that I've seen in all the tutorials on the web. At the same time iOS 5 has come along with it's new features and deprecation of functions. Half the tutorials I've found on the web throw up countless errors when I attempt to build them. This wouldn't be a problem, except I'm still learning my way around the language as it is. Being unsure if an error is because of something I've done or something Apple changed since a tutorial was written is frustrating to say the least.
App Store Millions
I don't want to release a free app. I want to release an app that I can sell. This requires me to go through all the hassles required to accept international payments, which is made more difficult by my bank refusing to give me an IBAN in a reasonable amount of time. More than that though, a paid app demands a certain level of quality that I don't think is possible to achieve building an app whilst still learning the ropes. I wouldn't feel right taking payment for an app I know full well isn't as good as it could be.
As it stands I'm running through the excellent lectures that are available from Stanford on iTunes U. They also provide free access to all of the course materials, so it's like I'm a student again, which is nice. I'll be building a few free apps first, maybe with iAds if my bank gets it's act together, and saving my first game until I know I can do it some justice.