Tag: 3.0 »

Fincon, which won Facebook's Studio to Watch award in 2015, has announced that pre-registration is now open for the massive 3.0 update for its award-winning hack and slasher Angel Stone.

Angel Stone is a post-apocalyptic action RPG in which the angels have fallen and you have to join The Resistance and face-off against hordes of demons trying to wipe out humanity.

There are three classes to choose from: Gunslinger, Berserker, and Shadow Mage. Once you've selected, you can start hack and slashing your way through the numerous game modes.

There's a few different PvE modes for those who prefer to go it alone, and cross-platform co-op and PvP modes if you'd like to join your friends.

Camera+'s 3.0 update releases today on March 14th, and with it comes many new features, most important of which is the introduction of new APIs to integrate Camera+ features anywhere. For users, a widget to easily share Camera+ features is available and testable from here, allowing users to display their shared photos on their personal spaces.

Developers can also integrate Camera+ access in their app. For example, it's now possible to take a photo using Camera+ in Tweetbot, preaparing and editing it there before sharing it with the world, or to easily edit already-taken photos in Camera+ before sharing them with the world. The apps supporting these new Camera+ 3.0 APIs at launch include Tweetbot, WordPress, Foodspotting, Twittelator Neue, and Twitteriffic. Interested developers can read the documentation and download the necessary files from here.

As for the app itself, now it is easier to work in multiples: namely, multiple photos can be imported from the Camera Roll at once, and sharing to multiple services at once is now possible. The free update is available now.

Facebook 3.0 has finally been approved and is in the app store, much to the delight of Joe Hewitt, the Facebook engineer who submitted the update to apple. I won't go into his issues with the app store, but needless to say, he's not a fan of the review process. Regardless, after a solid two week wait, Facebook 3.0 is here, and it's quite nice.

It has quite a few small but worthwhile fixes, but the major thing, at least to me, is the inclusion of video from the iPhone 3GS. It's a pretty logical inclusion to me, but I'm sure AT&T is peeing themselves due to what I'm sure will be ridiculous bandwidth usage.

If you don't have it yet, go ahead and download the Facebook app from the app store. It claims that it is version 2.5... but it lies... you'll get a shiny new copy of 3.0. Apparently you just can't handle the truth.

For a full rundown of the update features, click on the jump.

Random musings of the App Store.

Retro Invasion

Retro games are appearing in the App Store in droves! Pac-Man Remix, Q*Bert Deluxe, and of course, the incredible Space Invaders Infinity Gene. All of these are updated in some way from the classic games. Q*Bert has updated graphics, Pac-Man Remix has updated graphics (though they are still not too hot on the iPhone) along with power-ups that sometimes feel gimmicky, and Space Invaders is a complete re-imagining of the classic game. Of these, the only game that really captivates me is SIIG. In my opinion, retro games are retro for a reason - frankly, they're boring and outdated. However, the concepts are still good, and if they're updated for modern gamers, they can turn out like SIIG. To go with these retro games, there are plenty more on the way: Snood, a classic match-3 shooting game, TAITO's Bust-a-Move, and most importantly, Pac-Man Championship Edition. Pac-Man CE, for XBLA, is, along with SIIG, one of the best re-imaginings of a retro game I have ever played and, if the controls are changed from Remix, should translate fantastically for the iPhone.
[caption id="attachment_15570" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Pac-Man CE, a great re-imagining of the classic game"]

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Gameloft coming on strong (maybe)

Along with NFL 2010, Gameloft has an upcoming FPS, Sandstorm, and a GTA knockoff, Gang$tar in the works. These games are particularly of note because it seems as if Gameloft is attempting to directly compete with other developers. NFL 2010 was notably released before EA's upcoming Madden 2010, and at a lower expected price point - $7.99 compared to $9.99. Sandstorm seems to be in line for direct competition with ngmoco's upcoming FPS (as yet unnamed). Gang$tar looks to have a huge advantage on current App Store GTA-a-likes with a fully roam-able 3D world. If I was a betting man (ok, I am a betting man), though, I would count on the other two games losing out. If there's two things Gameloft games have in common, with the notable exception of Castle of Magic, it's lackluster, on-screen controls, and uninspired gameplay. Gameloft seems to put all of the genre "requirements" in their games, without doing anything truly unique to make the game their own. They seem stubborn about their controls as well, always opting for mediocre on-screen d-pads or joysticks, rather than attempting any innovation for the iPhone. NFL 2010 is a solid football game with licensing, and I'm sure Sandstorm will be a decent FPS. However, neither if these titles, probably, will be great.

[caption id="attachment_15571" align="alignright" width="184" caption="Get out of my games, stupid pygmy"]

[/caption]Games requiring 3.0 software

I wanted to briefly address a common complaint springing up various places: games requiring 3.0 software or higher. Developers are excited to utilize 3.0 features and making their apps 2.2.1 compatible takes a lot of time, resources, and extra testing. Look, I know that the update is $10 for iPod touchers (whoops, that sounds weird), but that's really not a lot for a major software upgrade, and if these stubborn users don't update soon, they're going to find themselves left out in the cold for some of the App Store's best apps and games.

This week's sign of the apocalypse

First Doodle Jump, now Harbor Master; the Pocket God pygmies are invading other games! It was bad enough that I had to look at those stupid pygmies while playing Pocket God, thinking I would eventually like it. But no, that wasn't enough, now they have to ruin games that I actually play! I really want to kill a pygmy, and in a way so that they can't be magically dropped from the sky a few seconds later.

Apps of the Week

Gomi

[caption id="attachment_15572" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Gomi, an app of the week!"]

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Last week, I previewed Kevin Calderone's new game Gomi, mentioning the staggering amount of content. Now, the app is out, and not only is it huge, but all that content is actually worth playing! In Gomi, you clean up the world by eating pollution and the like while spitting (?) out trees and flowers. You have to eat smaller things to build your appetite, eventually building up to shopping malls and the like. The regular levels are great, the boss battles are challenging and clever, and the game is seemingly endless with 140+ levels, eight mini games, achievements, and online scoreboards. At the low price of $1.99, Gomi is a unique game and a highly recommended bargain. Expect a full review soon (sorry, I'm on vacation).

BargainBin

BargainBin is an app that allows you track other apps; creating wish lists with target prices and viewing the newest apps, updates, and price drops. BargainBin recently was updated with two major improvements: a nice UI update and a killer feature: push notifications. Now, whenever an app you're tracking reaches your desired price, you'll instantly receive a push notification without ever having to open the app. Finding the App Store's best deals has never been easier!

Well, that's it for this week, and I'm still loving writing this column! Apparently, I messed up the links for the previous articles, so commenting was impossible. This has been fixed, so hopefully this week my begging for feedback/comments will succeed!

So Apple had a big day yesterday announcing new computers, the new iPhone 3G S, and of course the long awaited software upgrade to 3.0 with Copy & Paste, MMS, and the new Video Recorder (3G S only). As great as these features are though, I think they’ve completely over shadowed some other great additions, many of which, on a daily basis are going to be far more useful than being able to receive that picture message of my parents dog in a pig costume, scary...I know. I’ve gone through all of the information I could find directly from Apple’s website (these aren’t rumors) and pooled together some of the new features that have slipped through the cracks.

iDisk
MobileMe got some major revision with the “Locate My Phone” feature and the “Remote whipe” but there is also a free application coming out called iDisk. Yup, you will now be able to remotely view you iDisk content straight from your phone, sorry MobileDisk and Air Sharing Pro. An added bonus is that through this app you can send a direct link to any file on your iDisk via e-mail so that anyone you like can view it, this is especially useful for content that is just too large to be sent through an e-mail itself.

Contact Syncing
More good news for MobileMe and Exchange users are the new advances in over the air contact and calendar syncing. Right now turning on syncing from a cloud to a phone will erase all information currently on the phone and replace it with the new info. With 3.0 though users will get the choice between erasing, merging all data, or creating separate profiles.

Apple also states that on top of MoibleMe and Exchange the phone will be able to sync contacts and calendars from Yahoo!, Google, iCal, and Microsoft Outlook. At this point it’s unclear if these are going to be new over the air features or more likely ones that need to be synced through iTunes. We do know though that you’ll be able to add subscription based calendars directly from the phone over the air, this is great for some one like me who needs an alert every time the Cubs are going to play a game or Special Holidays are coming up.

Apple today sent out invites for an event on 3/17 to announce the iPhone OS 3.0 (I'm sure ours is still in the mail). Turns out that March 24th event that everyone was speculating about was actually March 17th.

Apple will likely announce the early details of iPhone OS 3.0 including the changes that will impact developers. We're likely to see an updated SDK well before the OS ships to consumers to allow developers to build and test their apps with the new OS. It's unclear if Apple will ship the 3.0 SDK on 3/17 or just announce it.

We're not likely to see any updated consumer facing features demonstrated next week. That would be very unlike Apple. Those Apple will likely hold of on and show at the keynote of WWDC.

The timing of this announcement matches up well with the time line Apple followed for the 2.0 release with the SDK announced on 3/6/2008. This was followed up with detail announcement at WWDC and consumer release in July alongside the iPhone 3G. This also lends some credence to the idea that a new iPhone will be announced at WWDC this year.

This announcement means that WWDC is a lot more relevant for iPhone developers now. There should be lots of talks on the new iPhone OS features.

What features do you think we'll see in 3.0? What do you want to see? Hit us up in the comments and let us know your thoughts. We'll have a wrap up post next week to talk about what was announced and how it compares with what you'd like to see.