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Even when I do not use multitasking (AUTOPAUSE FALSE, and in plist "Application does not run in background"=false) I can still reproduce the error. But I've stopped looking for a solution, because you cannot get it with "normal" use. To get it you have to:

1) Start PLAYMUSIC on a file, let it play for a while
2) STOPMUSIC and start PLAYMUSIC with another file
3) now immediately quit after second PLAYMUSIC
4) immediately restart the same app

That's just asking for trouble (it still annoys me that it's there though)

Actually, here is my GLBasic test project for the iphone, see attachment zip file. I didn't include the mp3 files (copyright issues), but you can just put any music1.mp3, music2.mp3, sound1.wav and sound2.wav files in the Media folder, in order to run the sound test.

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I was trying out the PLAYSOUND and PLAYMUSIC commands in my ipod game. It was working fine but then I found that sometimes when I quit the program the ipod wasn't responding normally anymore.

It took a lot of time to narrow it down, but I think I've found what is causing it. The bug appears when I do a STOPMUSIC and then PLAYMUSIC and then quit the app with the home button.

Here are the steps to reproduce it:
1) first you do something like "PLAYMUSIC "Media//music1.mp3", TRUE" let it play for a while (for example about five seconds)
2) do a STOPMUSIC
3) do PLAYMUSIC with another mp3 file
4) quickly (within 1 second) press the HOME button to quit the app.
5) now restart the app and sound isn't working

Actually, not only is the sound not working in the glbasic app... Any app or ipod function that want to make a sound will be silent and work slow. It's as if any sound the ipod wants to do waits and then time-out. For example if you go to the ipod search screen (on the home screen all the way to the left) and type something it looks like it is frozen (each letter typed wants to make a typewriter noise). After I shut the ipod down and restart, everything is back to normal.

I also think it has to do with multitasking, because when I set the property "Application does not run in background" to TRUE (checked) then the bug doesn't happen. (btw changes in the plist are not always installed correctly by xcode, always delete the app and then build-and-run to ensure the changes to the plist are also copied correctly)

Man, I spent the last hours starting and restarting the app and the ipod over and over i'm off to bed..

Browsing the web I found this game called Biolab Disaster which is a pure HTML5 game. It uses the HTML5 canvas element to full effect and this guy made an entire game engine around it.

Anyway, there is also a making-of video which can be useful to other game programmers. It's always interesting to see how other people program their games, especially when they know a thing or two about programming (which this guy obviously does). I especially like the sprite engine, every enemy powerup etc. is an entity which has animations.

http://vimeo.com/14920760

Despite the dry subject matter, it's quite humorous with some background jokes (mp3 on desktop and default search text etc.)

You can find a lot of graphics artist on elance who are willing to work fixed price for game assets. You can find many graphics designers and artist, also a few music artists.
http://www.elance.com/

elance is also a escrow service, meaning you pay the graphics artist through elance, that way you only pay when it is completed and the graphics designer knows that the funds have been payed forward and will be recieved on delivery of the graphics.

As I already posted here my first ipod/iphone game was put on the appstore (yay me! ). It's called "Break The Code" and it's a mastermind clone.
Anyway I have two questions about the whole iphone app submission ordeal.

First, it was put on the appstore three days ago, but I only found out today. I hadn't been checking my app's status, because I expected to get an e-mail about this. I haven't received any notice "accepted for appstore" or anything, so I checked the website today and found out. Did you guys receive any notice when an app is accepted?

Second, something went wrong when submitting the app the first try. Some technical stuff I had to enter was new to me, like the SKU and the namespace. What does the "com.yourname.yourapp" mean anyway, what is this info used for? If it is used only by Apple for appstore managing/administration, then why do I have to enter it myself?

Apperantly I had entered an incorrect namespace in the app ID and I couldn't use the name "Break The Code" anymore for some reason, probably due to Apple's "user-friendly" software(!). So now it will be forever known as "Break The Code2", hm. Anyone else had any problems with this?

Also, I'm feeling pretty relieved to finally have some results to show for the time I've been putting into this. (not just this game btw, other games are still underway)

Break The Code - by BdR Games
Price: 0.79€ / 0.99$
iTunes Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/break-the-code2/id402303430

Description:
Break the secret code before you run out of guesses. A classic game of logic and deduction. Break The Code features:

• Glossy graphics
• Code length of 3 up to 8 pegs
• Choose from up to 10 peg colors
• Three peg sets
• Set number of guesses
• Optionally allow duplicates
• Optionally set secret code manually (two player mode, sort of)
• Also accessible for color blind gamers
• Automatic save-game, also on iOS3

It's no killer app by any means, but hey you've got to start somewhere I'll also put up a free version with all the option settings removed.

The kerning option with PRINT command looks great, this is a great improvement. There's only one thing, it sets the font width as the width for space-characters, which looks a bit weird. You can work around this by changing the font bitmap, and draw a dark grey box in the space character. But then all spaces contain a dark grey box. See screenshot in attachment.

I'm not sure how this could be solved. Maybe the space width should be the same as the width of the 'i' character in the bitmap (or the 'a' character?), or maybe the avarage width of all characters. Or maybe the PRINT command should only increase the x-position with the width of the space-character in the bitmap, but not draw it.

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Do you copy the entire XCode folder to mac everytime you re-compile it in GLBasic? When I change some GLBasic code, I only copy the new libPROGRAM.a file to the Lib folder on Mac (networked pc and mac).

Then in XCode at first Build and Run it gives this weird error "libPROGRAM.a was built for unsupported file format which is not the architecture being linked (i386)" see screenshot in attachement.

But when I close the project and reopen it, then it builds just fine. Any idea how this can be, or is it a bug in XCode?

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Okay I've found something if you don't want your iphone program to run in the background you can add UIApplicationExitsOnSuspend to your projects .plist file.

To do this, in the xcode project file double click the .plist file, then click on the key value of the last item. Now click on the plus button (+) to add an item, and choose "Application does not run in background" from the key-dropdownlist and check the checkbox.

I personally don't see the use of multi-tasking, at least not for games. I guess it might be usefull for some utilities, like a gps tracking program or something like that.

*small kick*

Question: how can I test if my program is multitasking-proof on my ipod? I've written a cool game in GLBasic and it seems to run fine on my ipod (ios 4.1). But before I sumbit it to itunes I want to know that it won't crash when it runs on an iphone and then switches to incoming call or something.

In my GLBasic program I haven't set AUTOPAUSE to TRUE or FALSE, so I'm guessing it's then set to FALSE by default? What happens then when the user presses the HOME button on the iPod? The help file isn't very clear on this.

When I explicitly set AUTOPAUSE FALSE the program seems to just quit when I press home, and it calls GLB_ON_QUIT which is good. If I set AUTOPAUSE TRUE is seem to do the same thing..? Or are there multiple instances of my program running when I start and then quit? How can I see all running programs?

Hi all,

so I've bought an iPod, and finally got my developer license (after faxing a copy of my passport because they could't verify my identity). Now, when I try to open my GLBasic project in XCode, I get a message "the project was saved with a newer version of XCode"

I have XCode version 3.1.2 so I downloaded XCode 3.2.4 and iOS 4.0. But when I try to install it I get a message "iOS SDK requires Mac OS X 10.6.2", it seems that I have Mac OS X version 10.5.8 (Leopard).

So my question is, is everyone here who uses GLBasic for the iPhone running Snow Leopard on their macs? Or is there another way to install the newest XCode?

regards,
Bas

I had the same problem, I hadn't updates GLBasic in a while and when I manually checked for an update I got this message with yes/no

A new Internet-Update is available
Do you want to install it?
web: 8.00000 > hdd: 7.34100

And then when I started the update it only gets this far:

Current Version:
7.341
Opening Internet-Connection
Opening Info-File
Reading Update Information
Version:
8.0
Opening Update-File
Installing Update

and then it shows a "Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library" dialog with a "Runtime Error!"

But it was solved by uninstalling GLBasic, downloading the current version from the website and installing it. I didn't even have to re-enter the license key.

btw oddly enough, when I uninstalled, the uninstall dialog said a different version "GLBasic SKD V.7.115 Uninstall" but maybe that was the version that I originally installed, I did run all of the updates up until 7.341.

And another (minor) side note, the GLBasic SDK V8.078 install executable defaults to the german language instead of english, not sure if that's supposed to be like that?

Is it possible to check if a spritenumber is already loaded or if it is empty? I ask, because I want to use this to "lazy-load" sprites. This would lead to a faster startup time because you wouldn't have to load everything at once on startup. So I mean in code something like this:

Code (glbasic) Select Expand

CONSTANT SPR_TITLESCREEN = 0
CONSTANT SPR_INTRO = 1
CONSTANT SPR_PLAYER = 2
CONSTANT SPR_TILES = 3

// ..
// do some stuff
// ..

// lazy loading of sprite, only load sprite at point where it will be needed
IF (spriteisloaded(SPR_TILES) = FALSE) // <- how to check if a sprite is loaded?
  LOADANIM "media/tiles.png", SPR_TILES, 48, 48
ENDIF

I guess you could use static variables like this..

Code (glbasic) Select Expand

STATIC Sprite_was_loaded
IF Sprite_was_loaded = FALSE
  Sprite_was_loaded = TRUE
  LOADANIM "media/tiles.png", SPR_TILES, 48, 48
ENDIF

..But then you would have to use a lot of static variables, so I was wondering if there is a way to check the spritenumber (or sprite pointer). Maybe by using some INLINE stuff to check if a sprite-pointer is zero or something like that?

The freelancer usually hops from project to project, never sticking around too long, while the data collecting takes around 2 to 3 year. I guess he doesn't want to be bothered with questions from the researcher about the program.

Anyway, no, there's no stem cell research here It's mainly data collection for statistical analysis; questionaires, importing labresults, input forms for data entry (length, weight, blood pressure etc.) that sort of thing.