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GDC 2011: Firemint's Agent Squeek
Australia's Firemint is perhaps one of the most popular developers on the iPhone. Firemint's games, Flight Control, Real Racing and Real Racing 2, can be found in any Apple Store, and likely on most iPhones, too. The company's founder, Rob Murry, and his new acquisition, Infinite Interactive's Steve Faulkner, were in San Francisco last week to show off the third original IP that Firemint is creating for iOS, another line drawing game called Agent Squeek. In Agent Squeek, you control a mouse on the screen by drawing a line for him to follow, and the goal of each level is to collect various cheeses while trying to avoid hungry cats. But while the game starts out easy, the complexity quickly ramps up, and you can do things like psyche cats into chasing you before dodging the other way, or you can even build gadgets from blueprints that you find.
Game developers looking at iPad 2's speedier A5
The iPad 2's Apple A5 processor may not be listed as faster than the existing A4 -- it's running at the same 1 GHz speed -- but the dual core architecture will be able to accomplish a lot more number crunching while still providing great battery life. Now game developers are getting excited about the possibilities for the new processor. MacNN is reporting that Unity's Chief Creative Officer, Nicholas Francis, has said that his company will use the A5 to "really fine tune and really optimize it to run fantastic on the iPad." The Unity game engine already runs on multi-core processors like the A5, and now Unity developers can start adding effects to iOS games that previously took a dedicated gaming console or powerful PC. Francis noted that some upgrades could include real-time shadows and shafts of light, effects not previously available on the iPad. Infinity Blade developer Epic Games comments that their gaming engine -- Unreal Engine 3 -- can already take advantage of the iPad 2's A5 dual-core processor. When PC games are moved to a more powerful PC with multiple cores, "you can ... turn up all the dials in your game to get more details, more textures, more shaders," says Epic's Mark Rein. He also noted that more CPUs brings up the possibility of more complicated physics or more enemies on the screen at once, or perhaps expanding the view of an environment. Firemint, developers of Real Racing HD, anticipates that the next version of the game will take advantage of another new feature of the iPad 2 as well -- the built-in gyroscope. The company is hoping that they'll be able to improve steering through use of the gyro, as well as kick the graphics of the racing game up a notch. There is a potential downside for developers: unless apps are coded to take best advantage of the hardware that they're running on, the new apps might need to be marketed for a specific iPad version or they might run slower on the original iPad. From the comments made by these top iOS game developers, it's apparent that they're doing their best to give all iPad users the best possible gaming experience.
Your first five iPad games
You weren't going to be that guy. Your friends could fall in line all they wanted, but you were going to be strong. You didn't need an iPad, after all, you had your iPhone! Besides, the thing can't even make calls, what's the point? But then, your friends started coming around, magically flipping through USA Today with a swipe of their fingers like news genies, and you cracked, guiltily sliding your last $500 bill across the Genius Bar and walking out of the Apple Store defeated, but one iPad richer. It's OK, could have happened to the best of us. But now that you have the thing, what do you play on it? We've tried dozens of apps specifically made for the device and have culled a list of the top five you should buy without hesitation. Don't have an iPad yet? No problem. Just bookmark this page and come back later, we'll be updating with the new hotness whenever it sweeps us off our feet.
WWDC 2010: Firemint's app success
We've met up with the folks from Firemint before -- back at GDC, they were kind enough to show us Real Racing on the iPhone and share their plans for the iPad. Just a few months later we've found them at WWDC with the extremely popular Flight Control HD and an Apple Design award for Real Racing HD. When we talked with Firemint's community manager Alexandra Peters this week, she was quiet on their future plans. What they don't want to do, she told us, is put pressure on themselves. In addition to all of their success on the App Store, both of Firemint's apps are also playing on iPads in Apple Stores, and all of that exposure for their first iOS titles means whatever they do next has some big shoes to fill. Firemint is flattered by the Design Award, Peters told us, but she admits it "may have added even more pressure."
TUAW's Daily App: Raging Thunder 2
Polarbit released Raging Thunder 2 a while back -- it's the sequel to their App Store launch title that's serving up solid racing on both the iPhone and the iPad. It's not the best pure racing game out there (Real Racing HD has gotten exposure, even in Apple stores, for that), but Raging Thunder has quite a bit of fun and depth added to it, allowing you to upgrade cars and even go for some Burnout and Mario Kart-style arcade action. And the latest update to the title, released about a week ago, adds online leader boards and touch controls for racing (in case you don't want to tilt your iPad or iPhone around as you play). Raging Thunder 2 is definitely a respectable racing title, especially good if you're an arcade racing fan, and the price is just as temptingl: US$2.99 on both the iPhone and the iPad. If you're in the mood for a little action with your racing, and a deeper experience than some of the pick-up-and-play racing titles, Raging Thunder 2 is worth checking out.
TUAW Review: Real Racing HD rocks the iPad
Update: Want to see a spiffy video of Real Racing HD? Here you go. I fell in love with racing games thanks to Ridge Racer for the original Sony Playstation. I played the whole franchise, beat every track and learned the intricacies of every car. Even today I'll pull out the Playstation Portable for a run around Ridge City. Could another racer grab me the way RR had? Thanks to Firemint, the answer is yes. Real Racing HD (RRHD) looks great, sounds great, features well-conceived depth of play, effective use of the accelerometer, customization and more. In fact, it's one of the apps I use to show off the iPad. When the game is first launched, you're presented with a cinematic* and then the welcome screen. Before you go tapping around, take a moment to enjoy it. The camera gently sways back and forth. Your current car can be seen in a bay (more on that later). Light plays across the car in the foreground. All right, enough of that. Let's get behind the wheel. %Gallery-91921%
iPad apps: games that stand out
Now that we've had a couple days with the iPad, some apps are rising to the top and monopolizing our lounging time. We'll have some more roundups for you in just a little bit, but we thought we'd start off with one of the iPad's most natural talents: gaming. The large screen and hardy processor offer a wild in-between space, much more immersive and "stunning" than a PSP, DS, or iPhone game, but hardly on par with modern laptop or desktop graphics. We haven't leapfrogged any platforms here, it's just an evolution, but it's a pretty fun evolution, complete with multitouch gestures, accelerometer tilts, and cheesy soundtracks pumped out over the iPads surprisingly loud speaker. Of course, these games aren't cheap anymore -- most clock in at $9.99, often with the threat of "introductory pricing" -- so we thought we'd wade through the masses and pluck out some of our favorites as well as a few titles to be wary of. Follow along after the break.
iPad apps: defining experiences from the first wave
There are now over 1,348 approved apps for the iPad. That's on top of the 150,000 iPad-compatible iPhone programs already available in the App Store. When Apple's tablet PC launches, just hours from now, it will have a software library greater than that of any handheld in history -- not counting the occasional UMPC. That said, the vast majority of even those 1,348 iPad apps are not original. They were designed for the iPhone, a device with a comparatively pokey processor and a tiny screen, and most have just been tweaked slightly, upped in price and given an "HD" suffix -- as if that somehow justified the increased cost. Besides, we've seen the amazing potential programs have on iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and webOS when given access to a touchscreen, always-on data connection, GPS, cloud storage and WiFi -- but where are the apps that truly define iPad? What will take advantage of its extra headroom, new UI paradigms and multitouch real estate? Caught between netbook and smartphone, what does the iPad do that the iPhone cannot? After spending hours digging through the web and new iPad section of the App Store, we believe we have a number of reasonably compelling answers. Update: Now includes Wormhole Remote, TweetDeck, SkyGrid, Touchgrind HD, GoToMeeting, SplitBrowser, iDisplay, Geometry Wars and Drawing Pad.
More iPad games revealed
It looks like the crafty folks over at MacRumors have figured out how to snake their way into the not-yet-public listing for top revenue iPad apps. Now, we've got a flood of information coming out about software for the device that's not coming out for another week or so. As you can see above, quite a few rumored and revealed games are already charting on the iPad store, and it looks like prices are running from $3.99 to $9.99. "HD" appeared to be the preferred nomenclature for iPad games yesterday, but "for iPad" is in there as well. It also looks like Enigmo for the iPhone will be Enigmo Deluxe on the iPad. MacRumors says that some of the "released" dates on this listing go back as far as March 19th, which is presumably when Apple started approving iPad apps. We've spoken to some of the developers whose games were revealed, and they are not very happy with the leaks. A few other details are showing up, presumably from App Store descriptions linked off of this top revenue list, but we've confirmed with at least one developer above that all of those details are still pending and not yet confirmed. It's no surprise that Apple wanted to be on top of getting apps out on the iPad store before the device's launch, but they've inadvertently revealed some of their developers' hands prematurely. Update: 9 to 5 Mac has a full list of the App Store chart. It's not yet clear where all of these shots are coming from, but it seems like they're being taken in the dev kit's iPad simulator, which is supposedly still under developer NDA.
