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Mac App Store live, with Angry Birds topping charts
Apple's Mac App Store has arrived right on time via the Snow Leopard 10.6.6 update, opening up a version of the ludicrously lucrative iOS storefront for Mac desktop and laptop users to peruse. The Store is accessed through its own application (separate from iTunes), but purchases and downloads are tied to an Apple ID, and any credit from iTunes is seamlessly applied to the Mac App Store upon logging in. The Mac App Store is as impeccably tidy as the iOS Store -- it's organized just the same -- and accessing the Games category is just a few clicks away. As of writing, there are 98 games listed in the "Top Paid" ranking (which shows up to 100), led, unsurprisingly, by a $5 (50 percent off "introductory price") version of Angry Birds. In fact, Rovio's phenomenon leads all Mac App Store sales, currently, and is joined by Chopper 2 ($1), Flight Control HD ($5) and The Incident ($3) among the top-ten bestselling apps. No Halo in sight, yet.
Chopper 2 out now
We've mentioned Chopper 2 a couple of times during development, once to show off the TV out function built into the game, and again when we met up with creator David Frampton at WWDC. Now, development has finally finished, and he's released the game out on the App Store. You can pick it up for a launch sale price of $2.99. It's an excellent game, very polished, and while it starts out simply, the combat builds up well. It controls about the same as the last game (tilt to fly the chopper, and tap the screen to fire), but the firing controls have been refined. The presentation is probably the most amazing thing, actually -- the 3D world looks terrific, the music is excellent, and the titles on screen are in a kind of 3D as well, so that they seem to actually float in the game's real-world space. All in all, it's a very cool game and some excellent work by Frampton's Majic Jungle Software. The game is universal for both iPad and the iPhone, and if you install it on both, you can actually play the iPad version with the iPhone or iPod touch as a controller. It's not a huge gamechanger, but it is a fun extra feature that probably required some coding work to get going. If you've been waiting for this one like we have, it's on the App Store ready for you right now.
Darts from the iPhone to the iPad
This is probably the coolest bit of iOS connectivity I've seen so far. KL Dartboard is an iPad app (for US$3.99) that serves as a virtual board for darts thrown by an app called KL Darts ... for the iPhone. So, the idea is that you buy the iPad app and set it up on the wall, and then you download the free iPhone app and connect the two using Bluetooth. Once the setup is complete, the position that you hold and shake the iPhone in determines where the darts land on the iPad's board. What a weird concept. Unfortunately, it's probably a better idea than it actually is a game; the iPhone app requires OS 4, you've got to have both devices, and the reviews on the iPad app say it doesn't really work that well. It's impossible for the iPad to know "where" the iPhone is, so you don't even need to face the screen to throw the darts correctly. Still, I think we'll see more cross-device interaction like this; Chopper 2 is a game that is due out soon, and it allows you to use your iPhone as a controller for the iPad version. I think there are plenty of possibilities like that for developers to play around with. [via MacStories]
WWDC 2010: Hands-on with Chopper 2
Chopper's been in the App Store since day one, and David Frampton of Majic Jungle Software is the guy who put it there. Since then it's garnered over a million downloads, he's made a number of other App Store titles (and brought the game to the Mac), and he's hard at work on the game's sequel. We've actually posted it here on TUAW before (more on that implementation in just a bit). but I got to go hands on with the game on the iPad at WWDC. As a game, it plays about the same as the first one -- you control a chopper across 36 missions in 12 different locations, doing things like blowing up enemies, rescuing hostages, and so on. But the intriguing part of the game is the control scheme -- while it uses the same tilt-to-fly method as the first one, the fire button isn't on screen any more. Instead, you just touch anywhere to fire, and then adjust your finger on the screen to aim. It's amazingly intuitive -- the lack of a UI solves the problem of graphics getting in the way, and Frampton's figured out a great balance of skill-based aiming and touch-anywhere-to-fire.
