Dear Bobba users - since the launch of the Symbian phone client of Bobba, many have asked us when is the promised iPhone client coming. Well, I still won't give an exact date (I have before, and these dates have passed a long time ago!), but I want to tell you a bit what's happening down here at the Sulake HQ in Helsinki where the Bobba development team is located. We have now three iPhone programmers and two designers working on the project.
We have had a more or less functioning Bobba iPhone client since last September, and I have kept it up-to-date with the Symbian application that has been our first priority. As the product launch took most of our time and energy, we have started developing the iPhone client with a proper team since March 09. However - the task has turned to out be much more challenging than we thought! Apple's development kit is excellent, the iPhone has good performance and standard screen size - which makes developing fairly easy. But the big difference is the touch screen. At first glance one might think that it is straightforward to develop Bobba for touch screen: user just drags furniture around with her finger. In most cases it is like that, but in some cases our 3d-isometric world causes a big problem: for example, how can a user grab an item that is behind a tower of tiles? With joystick (as in Nokia phones) it is easier: just move one-by-one the selection around the tower and with the ingenious "x-ray vision" of the Symbian application user can see the item behind it and activate it.
In the pics below you can see some of our draft ideas how to solve the problem on iPhone. In the first picture, user double taps the tower to open an X-Ray vision tool that hides the tower and everything on the same distance from the camera. Another picture is drawn by me (actually I am quite proud how I was able to draw the 3d grid) and is a blueprint of a possible "tile editing mode" where user could easily modify the terrain from a 2-d map. Generally we would not like to introduce any new modes to the application, it makes it less fun and more technical - OR what do you think? (You can use our Feedback tool to give suggestions). As a side note, you might also note that the graphics are bigger on iPhone than currently.
This was just one of the issues we have faced. After we found out that the space editing is much more difficult to implement and design on iPhone, we have now decided to first bring a version which does not have space editing to the App Store. It is a pity, but we rather launch early and publish often: that way we get much faster feedback from the community (you!). By the way, please do not swear when the Apple officials are reviewing Bobba for submission! :-).
12th May
Bookmark or Share