“Amiga forever!” shouted the man as he ripped off his shirt and ran nowhere in particular.

On This Episode:

Episode Cast:
Host: Carter Dotson
Guest: Marco Di Timoeteo, Studio Evil
Guests: Michał Szymerski & Rafał Staszewski, Spokko

Music:

• “Beatnes7 (Theme to The Portable Podcast)” by The Eternal – Download on iTunes here:
• “Nanocarp” by The Eternal

How to Listen:

Click Here to Subscribe in iTunes:

• Click Here to Subscribe via RSS.
• Listen Here:

  Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Apps From This Episode:

$1.99

Syder Arcade HD

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2013-01-28 :: Category: Games

FREE!

Zombie Road Trip

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2013-01-29 :: Category: Games

What makes iOS great for users with disabilities is that there’s a selection of options to make using an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad much easier. Many of these features are designed for the visually-impaired, the hard of hearing, or those with motor skills issues, to open up their devices to them in a way that most people take for granted. However, there are a few features here that even able users can take advantage of – custom vibration settings started out as an Accessibility option before becoming standard in iOS 6. Here’s a rundown of what the Accessibility features in iOS are.

To find and configure ACcessibility options, open up Settings, tap on General, then scroll down to Accessibility. All the iOS Accessibility options are here.

VoiceOver is primarily designed for visually-impaired users, as it makes it easier to select specific items, which the device will then speak what that feature is, and double-taps are used to then select the item, making it harder to accidentally tap on certain items. Various other settings for devices like Bluetooth-enabled Braille machines, and typing feedback, can be configured here.

Zoom makes it possible to use 3-finger gestures to zoom in and out of the screen, making it easier for visually-impaired users to see certain items when necessary.

Large Text increases the font size in certain Apple apps.

Invert Colors will invert the device’s colors, which can help users with different vision issues.

Speak Selection and Speak Auto-text make it possible to have text-to-speech enabled on selected text.

Hearing Aids is the settings section for Bluetooth hearing aids. Once connected, the options will be made available.

LED Flash for Alerts makes it possible for the LED flash on the iPhone to go off when new alerts come in. This can be handy for any user that wants a way to see that they have new notifications, even when they’re not looking at the screen.

Mono Audio sets the device’s audio to be only in monaural, making it possible for users who only hear out of one ear (or for users who use mono headsets) to hear both channels in one ear. The audio balance can also be set here.

Guided Access makes it possible to restrict a device to one app, with certain screen sections able to be configured as untouchable. This makes it possible to use a device in a demo mode, or to let a child use an app without leaving it or changing any settings.

AssistiveTouch enables a gray button that can be dragged around the screen. This calls up several system functions, that make it possible to do things like multitouch gestures, take screenshots, and more. For users who have a broken home button, AssistiveTouch can make the device still usable.

Home-click Speed makes it easier to double-click the home button, by not requiring it to be double-clicked so quickly.

Incoming Calls can force the audio from incoming calls to either go to a headset or to the speaker.

Triple-click Home allows for VoiceOver, Invert Colors, Zoom, and AssistiveTouch to be toggled by triple-clicking the Home button.

These settings and features are all designed to make it easier to use iOS devices. Have you found any that make using your device better, or have helped other people use their devices? Let us know in the comments below.

PagodaWest Games are soon to release their upcoming title Major Magnet, a physics-based platformer where players tap on magnets and swipe to jetpack around levels filled with orbs, cannons, and secrets, all in the name of getting high scores. It’s a uniquely-executed concept, but one thing stands out when playing the pre-release build of this upcoming game, due in February: it’s very much like the Sonic series.

The resemblance is not so much in gameplay as it is in terms of style: character designs, level backgrounds, even the fonts, all bear the kinds of hallmarks that the series has been known for. It’s very familiar, yet somewhat new. And it was no accident, as PagodaWest Games was partially born out of the love of Sonic, as the team of Jared Kasl, Tom Fry, Khoa Ngol, and Tee Lopes explain in this interview about the game.

148Apps: How exactly did your team come together initially?

PagodaWest: Tom and Jared initially met through the fan game Sonic 2 HD. After only a short amount of time spent socializing outside of the project, it became apparent that besides the obvious love of classic Sonic, our philosophies on game design were perfectly aligned, and so a close friendship was born.

At what point did you folks decide to make a mobile game?

Before our time on Sonic 2 HD was over, we started discussing the idea of starting our own game company. Due to circumstances in both our lives, we were at a point where it felt right [to] start PagodaWest Games, so that’s exactly what we did. With mobile gaming on the rise and the many game design possibilities a touch screen can provide, going mobile seemed like the way to go – added to which, the start up costs for development on a mobile platform were far slimmer than developing for home console or handheld.

Are there games besides the Sonic series that you feel are influences on Major Magnet?

As we were growing up, every so often a game would come along that would bring us pure joy the whole way through. We wanted to recreate this feeling in Major Magnet, so naturally the games that influenced us when we were younger have found their way through. Don’t be surprised to see a hint of NiGHTS into dreams… or the old Kirby’s Dreamland games as you make your way through Lastin Magnetic!

What kind of lessons from the Sonic 2 HD project were you able to apply to Major Magnet?

Shortly after we finished with Sonic 2 HD, we were able to reflect on what went right and wrong on the project. Even though it was just a fan game using an IP owned by SEGA, there were a few of us on the Sonic 2 HD team that tried to treat the project with a professional attitude.

We also learned, whether through ourselves or others, not to treat any piece of work too preciously. For example, there were some pieces of art that should have taken a matter of days to complete, yet they were taking months! With Major Magnet, we give ourselves a deadline for any feature, piece of art, or asset and plan accordingly to make sure it’s finished on time.

One of the most important lessons we learned from Sonic 2 HD was to formulate a team of people we can trust and depend on. It’s important to know if you ask for something to get done, you can trust that it’s going to be taken care of in a timely manner and to the very best of their ability. We chose our team very carefully for Major Magnet, and so far things have gone off without a hitch!

How did the magnet gameplay mechanic come about? Was it a big part of the title initially, or did it become an important part of the game later on?

The concept of tapping button-like magnets within the level was conceived from the get go, working along the lines of Newton’s law of universal gravitation for attracting Marv to a given point. However, it was the “swing ball”/“orbiting” mechanic which is now core to the gameplay that was refined and honed a couple of months into our prototype development.

We had initially planned a hybrid system that allowed the player to select between standard attraction to a magnet or forcing Marv into orbit by either tapping the magnet once or holding down on it respectively. Due to the fact that the game is rather fast paced and holding the magnet would not only require the player to “track” the magnet if the camera moved but also obscured the screen with their finger, we settled on a tapping and timing system using only the orbiting physics, solving these problems and streamlining the gameplay.

The animation for the game is very crisp and clean; is this just a case of high production values on your end, or does the Corona engine that you worked in have any effect on that?

With regards to the engine, our only base requirements when going into using Corona was that it could display sprites cleanly and plentifully without a loss in performance across a wide range of devices. Having satisfied these criteria with aplomb and having a clear idea of what aesthetic we were after, the rest of the power was indeed in the artist’s hands.

For all of the character animation, every single frame (for which Marv’s in-game sprite has roughly 200 alone) was painstakingly hand-drawn adhering to the strict principles of 2D animation that have been well established in the West for over 80 years. A few animations used for special effects like Marv’s particle trail use a mix of “baked in” animation and real-time particle effects making the trail look rich and dense without stressing the CPU.

Major Magnet does appear to have a currency with upgrades, and there’s the ability to buy additional currency. In a world where many retro-focused developers are eschewing IAP, was there any reason why you felt like this was an acceptable inclusion?

From the beginning of development we felt IAP could have a place in our game, but only if we really felt it added something meaningful for the player and would not hinder their experience in any way if they did not want to use the in-game store. Firstly, our system uses an in-app currency, Magnorbs, which you collect in the game’s levels and mini-games. If you save up enough Magnorbs, you can spend these in the store to purchase useful items to help you along if you’re having trouble – such as the Super Boost which can be used at any time during gameplay, freezing Marv indefinitely until the player swipe-boosts him in the direction they choose.

If the player chooses to rely on these items more frequently, they may wish to buy additional Magnorbs to purchase more items at their discretion. However, unlike freemium games whose sole income is from IAP, there is absolutely no obligation for the player to spend more money in Major Magnet in order to progress, it is simply a means to enhance their enjoyment of the game by saving them time if they ever come unstuck.

Thanks to PagodaWest Games for their time. Major Magnet is scheduled to be released in the first quarter of 2013.

Running away from evil monkeys.

On This Episode:

Episode Cast:

Music:

• “Beatnes7 (Theme to The Portable Podcast)” by The Eternal – Download on iTunes here:
• “Nanocarp” by The Eternal

How to Listen:

Click Here to Subscribe in iTunes:

• Click Here to Subscribe via RSS.
• Listen Here:

  Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Apps From This Episode:

FREE!

Temple Run 2

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2013-01-17 :: Category: Games

FREE!

NRA: Practice Range

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2013-01-13 :: Category: Games

$1.99

Gunslugs

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2013-01-16 :: Category: Games

FREE!

Joypad Game Console

iPad Only App - Designed for the iPad
Released: 2012-12-17 :: Category: Games

$0.99

Pinball Arcade

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2012-02-09 :: Category: Games

$2.99

Momonga Pinball Adventures

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2013-01-17 :: Category: Games

Our phones have become a significant part of our lives, holding large quantities of our personal data on them. Apps that use our data are also a significant part of them, especially given the rise of free apps and services – if you’re not paying, you’re the product – and what these apps have access to is often quite extensive. While Apple’s walled garden does keep many of those with malicious intent away from the App Store, they’re not perfect. There may just be an app that you trust that is doing something with the data you gave it permission for. Here’s how to manage these privacy settings.

The first and most obvious destination is the Privacy section in Settings. Here, you will see sections for various types of data that apps have requested.

By going to one of these sections, and switching the toggle for that app off, then it will not have access to that data any more. So an app that requests Photos access can have it be restricted. Or, if you initially denied access and wish to grant it, you can now do so from this section.

The Location Services section is particularly worth delving into because not only can the icon appear at random times for no apparent reason, but the section to manage it has many wrinkles that the others do not. One, there are variably-colored location icons next to each service, and they may not be apparent to what they mean until you scroll to the bottom, where iOS explains what each icon means.

What this means is that you can see on this section which apps are currently requesting your location, not just which apps have access to your location. If an app is continually causing the location services icon to appear in the status bar (and potentially draining your battery), you can see which apps are the culprit here. Often times, apps that use location services can have settings disabled from within the app to have their recurring location check disappear, as having loaction access enabled periodically may be key to your usage of the app. As well, the System Services section shows several system functions that use your location, including one for Location-Based iAds that can modify the types of ads you see.

Hopefully these tips have helped you manage your privacy better, and you have a greater understanding of the types of access that iOS apps and system functions have to your data.

Now, there’s one particular advertising-related privacy setting that’s not in Privacy that’s worth considering. Go to Settings→General→About and scroll all the way down to Advertising. Tap on this, and you’ll see a setting for Limit Ad Tracking. By enabling this, then services that identify your device by the Apple Advertising Identifier cannot track you based on this. This means that advertisements will be less targeted to you.

Oddly familiar…

On This Episode:

Episode Cast:

Music:

• “Beatnes7 (Theme to The Portable Podcast)” by The Eternal – Download on iTunes here:
• “Nanocarp” by The Eternal

How to Listen:

Click Here to Subscribe in iTunes:

• Click Here to Subscribe via RSS.
• Listen Here:

  Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Apps From This Episode:

FREE!

The Blockheads

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2013-01-10 :: Category: Games

$0.99

Time Surfer

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2013-01-09 :: Category: Games

Safari is an app that’s been around for a long, long time, having been on iPhones since the original one! It’s easy then to get into a rut where you use it and don’t consider what else it can do. Well, let’s go through Safari’s section in Settings to poke through some of the options that can tweak your Safari experience to be much better.

Search Engine allows you to set Bing or Yahoo as your search engine. Sorry, AltaVista fans and Pawnee residents.

AutoFill makes it easy to enter passwords and personal info in website forms. Enable Use Contact Info with your contact card, set as the iOS default but something that can be changed from here, to have names and addresses in forms filled automatically with your data. Names & Passwords will fill in usernames, passwords, and other info from your contacts in forms as appropriate. Tapping Clear All will reset this data.

Private Browsing changes a Safari session to not store any history or browsing data once completed. Open tabs can be saved or closed when switching back and forth. If anyone gets suspicious as to why you’re using private browsing, just tell them it’s for the sleek dark interfaced that indicates you’re in private mode.

Clear History will clear your list of previously-visited sites. Clear Cookies and Data will delete any tracking cookies stored on your device, and also clear out any logins. Reading List’s Use Cellular Data toggle will allow for you to save on data usage by only letting Reading List sync over wi-fi. Fraud Warning will warn when you’re on a suspicious website. JavaScript allows you to disable this for any sites that may be slowed down by this. Block Pop-ups allows you to let pop-ups open as new tabs.

Finally in Advanced, the Website Data section allows you to clear up some storage space by deleting saved data from websites. Web Inspector is a feature for developers who are working to optimize their sites for Safari on iOS.

 Hopefully this guide has shown you some useful features for Safari that you never even knew existed or had no idea how to use!

You’re the best around, no one’s ever gonna keep you down!

On This Episode:

Episode Cast:

Music:

• “Beatnes7 (Theme to The Portable Podcast)” by The Eternal – Download on iTunes here:
• “Nanocarp” by The Eternal

How to Listen:

Click Here to Subscribe in iTunes:

• Click Here to Subscribe via RSS.
• Listen Here:

  Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Games Of The Year:

Rob Rich:

FREE!

Spaceteam

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2012-11-29 :: Category: Games

Blake Grundman:

$2.99

ARC Squadron

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2012-11-01 :: Category: Games

Brett Nolan:

FREE!

Walking Dead: The Game

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2012-07-26 :: Category: Games

Carter Dotson:

FREE!

Punch Quest

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2012-10-25 :: Category: Games

The beauty of individualized ringtones is simple: it’s nice to know who’s calling solely by sound when not looking directly at your phone. But who calls anyone any more that isn’t one’s parents? It’s all texting nowadays. And how about vibration? Well, there is a way to do this, and though it was once only available as an accessibility feature, it’s possible for all users to do this as a system-level feature. While it’s somewhat buried, it is easy to setup.

Go to Contacts. Find the contact you want to set up the custom sound/vibration for, and open up their listing. Now, tap Edit in the top right. This doesn’t just open up the various fields for editing, but it also unlocks the custom sound and vibration settings.

Choosing a ringtone will make that sound play whenever the contact calls. The vibration setting directly below that will be the vibration that goes off when they call. For text tone, this will be the sound that plays when they text, and the vibration setting below this will be the one that goes off when they text.

For vibration, it will be set to the pattern you have set by default, and the other built-in ones can be selected here. To create a custom pattern, scroll down to the Vibration section and choose Create New Vibration.

This will open up a screen where the new vibration pattern can be made. Tap on the screen in various lengths and frequencies in order to create the pattern you want. When finished, tap Stop in the lower right corner to stop recording. Tap Play to play back the pattern, Record to re-record it, and Save in the upper right corner to name and save the pattern.

Saving a vibration pattern makes it available for other contacts, in case you just want a more defined vibration pattern, or want to create vibration patterns for certain groups of people, for example. You can also set a custom vibration pattern as the system default by going to Settings -> Sounds, and then each sound category’s vibration setting can be found by scrolling up.

So iWALK came out with a useful little external battery pack recently, the iWALK Link 1700i. It claims to offer just about a full phone charge in an adapter that could fit on a keychain. It’s more convenient than lugging around a separate power brick with USB cable, or using one of those bulky Mophie cases. For iPhone 4S and earlier owners, it promises to be an extremely useful device. Just one problem: it’s got the “old” 30-pin dock connector, not Lightning. So, iPhone 5 owners are out of the loop with the Link1700i, right?

Well, not necessarily. Apple does make a 30-pin-to-Lightning adapter, which provides charging and audio support to the iPhone 5. Which means that the Link 1700i may just be useful for iPhone 5 owners just yet.

Using it with the adapter on the iPhone 5 gives it one big advantage: it’s actually more comfortable to use it in portrait versus on a 30-pin device, as the Lightning adapter provides enough space to grip the phone and do things like typing and scrolling with the Link 1700i safely out of the way. Landscape is a different story, as the i-Walk already provides a bit of an uncomfortable barrier; it’s ludicrously bigger on the iPhone 5. I’d suggest not playing games while charging with this thing, though I could hold it in a way where my thumb was not reaching over the battery. Still, I don’t recommend it.

While the box claims that it has 1700 mAh battery capacity power, in practical circumstances, I could rely on it to recharge about 3/5 of my battery, particularly with it being used occasionally in that time. Part of the problem could be the connection: I noticed that the iPhone would act as if the Link 1700i was being occasionally disconnected and reconnected when unlocking the screen, or even just periodically while it was in my pocket. I haven’t noticed this when using the adapter otherwise, and haven’t seen it in testing on my iPod touch 4th gen either. Using it with the dock adapter does leave some space for headphones, but it’s a tight fit, and would likely cause damaged headphone connectors.

The Link 1700i comes with two lids by default: one with a slot for the loop to be put on a keychain and one without. As well, it comes with the micro-USB cable to recharge it, the port being conveniently located on the side of the battery.

While it’s hard to measure the device’s actual effectiveness because it’s working in a roundabout way on the iPhone 5, it is far from an ideal solution. However, this is in part thanks to Apple: by using a new proprietary connector and then only selectively licensing it and not giving it to peripheral manufacturers before its unveiling, those looking for a convenient external battery are forced to turn to less-than-ideal options. Have an iPhone 4S or earlier? This seems like a perfectly fine solution. iPhone 5? Be prepared to deal with the imperfections thanks to Apple.