Though it’s been slightly unplanned, I’m currently in the midst of a fairly comprehensive overhaul of how controllers are implemented within Pocket Dogfights.

In some regard, it’s not a surprised I’ve had to do this - the interface Unity abstracts is rather limited in a number of areas, the biggest being that it’s not possible to redefine a control once in game. In addition, the amount of variation between how buttons are defined between platforms, between controller types (even the same controller on different platforms), means that there’s a lot of complexity you need to manage.

Plus, when I originally added support for them in the desktop versions, I went for a path which was fairly limiting. In the end, especially with the recent launch of the standalone Windows/Linux versions, I felt that this had to be done.

I was wondering a bit on how to cover the weekend. I absolutely enjoyed it on a number of levels, and to be incredibly honest - when it’s going to come to something like PAX, it really felt like a celebration of gaming in all its forms, and thus, it’s best to just make it happen in your own way.

For some people, it was the table top games - whereas for others, they just preferred clocking up Streetpass hits, or wanted to check out the panels. In the end for me, I think it was a combination of panels, the Indie Pavillion and the Classic Gaming space.

Yet another quick post - this time to celebrate Pocket Dogfights v1.1.0 going live, along with a couple of surprises!

Officially, this is being written right about the half-way point of the year. It feels odd how it’s gone by so incredibly fast, and by consequence, the fact that it’s just shy of 3 months since Pocket Dogfights went live as well.

I’m writing this at the start of the week post-WWDC. The conference itself this year was an epic event, and not just due to the announcements relating to both iOS 7 & OS X Mavericks - those both were just the beginning of everything.

Like quite a few of my friends & peers in the iOS space, I spent last Friday at the third One More Thing conference. Against other conferences, OMT (to save my typing fingers) has always been about the stories, and has been a great way to think about why I do what I’m going (especially in light of some personal changes in the last few months, let along my thoughts & experiences with the Pocket Dogfights launch).

Just a quick post to announce that after a few little hiccups, the Macintosh version of Pocket Dogfights is now out on the Mac App Store. I’m quite happy with the result, primarily with the retooling of the control scheme (supporting the mouse directly over a touch-style scheme, as well as both Xbox 360 & PS3 controllers), and sharing leaderboards over Game Center with the iOS version.

If you’re interested, you can grab it from the Mac App Store.

Besides that, there’s a small sale for both the iOS & Android versions which will be ending in a couple of days - certainly a great chance to grab it if you’ve not already.

As always, if you’re digging the game - I’d really love it if you could take the time to go and leave a review :)

It’s been a bit of a busy week last week - what with finally finishing up the work to get the Mac App Store version of Pocket Dogfights done & submitted to the review queue, along with the release of the 1.0.1 update for iOS coming out last Friday.

It’s given me a bit of a chance to reflect on a few things - some of which have been in my mind for quite a long time, and when I do so, there are a number of common threads as to what I do think about.

Primarily, there are the feelings I have in which I struggle with the feelings of legitimacy - that I don’t feel good enough as a developer (or that I deserve to even have a chance). But there’s also the feelings of frustration with visibility - the feelings of shouting out into the wider internet and only hearing the echoes of my own words out there. Plus, there’s just the frustrations of just dealing with & trying to grow a Fan base.

Whilst this has been swimming about for a while, I finally decided to put this together after a random conversation about some of it over the weekend. I definitely am not posting solutions, but I am hoping to at least reach out a bit - and hopefully make some connection with the wider interwebs.

With 33% of the year behind us (at least in Australia so far), it’s inadvertantly become the first part of Conference Season.

Over the next month and a bit, there’s two big ones I’ll be attending (and rightfully looking forward to).

First off, there’s One More Thing on May 24. For those who haven’t heard of it, it’s a conference aimed at the stories behind independent developers on iOS, rather than the technical aspects of the platform.

It’s always great hearing those stories - and being able to help refuel one’s own sense of passion with one’s own projects - which for me has come at the right time, post release of Pocket Dogfights in particular.

After that, it’s a short break, before a trip to the US for Apple’s own WWDC. I was shocked at successfully being able to get a ticket this time round. I’ve previously been in 2009, right as I was starting out with doing iOS development - in fact it was during that trip that the earliest parts of Eventbook were originally put together ;)

As a counterpoint to the developer stories & passions behind OMT, WWDC is purely about getting access to the latest technologies on both the Macintosh & iOS platforms. Whilst I’ve been more focused on the latter, I’m tending to look back to the Mac at least regarding a potential project I’m looking at.

Besides being connected to the metaphorical firehose, it’s also a chance to catch up with friends both in & outside of the development scene, as well as take a small break (being the first time in quite a while I’ve had the space to organise a real trip anywhere).

Certainly looking forward to all of it - and hopefully I’ll be inspired for some new projects afterwards. It does however mean that any further update work to PD might be delayed - as I’d like to have some questions for the labs come WWDC time :)

With the 26th Ludum Dare just past (at least the compo part of the competition), I thought I’d write a little bit of a post-script about the development of my game Onslaught In Space.

If you’ve not already seen it, the game is available here to play. If you have an account with the Ludum Dare site, I’d love if you could also vote & post some feedback. Otherwise, enjoy it :)