Pocket Boy has been really busy lately trying to collect a good sound library to make the interactive experience in each page even richer and inspiring. Thankfully, The Man of Sound (aka Kristian Johansson) came to his rescue.
Showing posts with label Pocket Boy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pocket Boy. Show all posts
Monday, February 20, 2012
Monday, December 26, 2011
Say hello to Pocket Boy 2.2!
Hello everyone, Pocket Boy's 2.2 update has just been released.
We are working a bit silently on this title, but we keep monitoring all the feedback we can get and try to make improvements for our users. Before the iTunes Connect service and the Apple Store went on vacation, we wanted to push a bit of extra work on it and improve the app even further before the holidays.
We are working a bit silently on this title, but we keep monitoring all the feedback we can get and try to make improvements for our users. Before the iTunes Connect service and the Apple Store went on vacation, we wanted to push a bit of extra work on it and improve the app even further before the holidays.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Pocket Boy's postcards
Le trovate nel "Tiramisu alle Fragole" negozio di abbigliamento in via Valperga Caluso n.7 a Torino. Fate un giro anche sul Sito e sulla pagina di Facebook: ogni settimana arrivano pezzi unici e primizie di stagione da non perdere!
PocketBoy's postcards arrived! There are two versions available: a buttons themed postcard and flowers themed one, on the back side we list our contacts info and our website's address. Do you like it?
You can find the postcards at "Tiramisù alle Fragole", a clothing store in Via Valperga Caluso n.7, Turin (Italy). Take a look on their website and on their facebook page too: they get new unique items each week and great season deals!
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Omino delle Tasche v2.1 sull'App Store di Apple!
Arriva la versione 2.1 dell'Omino delle Tasche!
Nel nuovo update dell'Omino delle tasche troverete un cambiamento evidente nel menù: abbiamo cercato di allargare lo spazio interattivo facendo scomparire il menù col bottone in basso nel frame e lasciando solamente una piccola freccia che punta in alto per farlo tornare visibile.
Anche nella pagina delle matite colorate troverete delle novità: abbiamo aggiunto la matita nera e una gomma, per permettervi di creare disegni sempre più belli!
E cosa non meno importante, toccando l'icona a forma di lettera nella parte alta dello schermo, potrete spedire i vostri disegni via e-mail o pubblicarli su Facebook! Che ve ne pare?
L'Omino continua a girare per il mondo e a scoprire nuove lingue: da oggi c'è anche la versione del testo in coreano grazie ai nostri amici che hanno aiutato a localizzarlo!
In the newest Pocket Boy update you will find many exciting new features like the new navigation menu system: we focused on creating more space for the player to interact with and to avoid some confusion in some scenes in which the old menu could create some problems. You are presented with a little arrow, indicating you how to bring out the full sized menu, and by clicking on it the arrow will disappear slowly and the full sized menu rises up from the bottom of the screen.
We also added a new black pen and modified the existing colors for you to paint with and we added an eraser to help you create better and better drawings! Touching the envelope shaped icon in that very page, you will be able to share your drawings by e-mail or Facebook. What do you think about that?
Pocket Boy keeps travelling the world and learn new languages too: this time he brought back a brand new Korean version thanks to our friends that helped with the localization!
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Scripting fun with Automator
Ok, I'll be the first to say that scripting and command line operations are not the first thing that I learned to like on computers, but a lot of times they really can save a lot of time or... destroy files at random on a disk (rsync with a few not too correct paths and parameters here and there) ;).
As GUI only tools cannot always do the best job possible on their own or do not have certain capabilities by default, scripting in the command line can have its fair share of drawbacks... most of the time, an efficient workflow will consist of making it possible to quickly open a GUI file explorer from the command line and open a command line terminal from a specified folder in the GUI file explorer.
Sometimes, what I really want to do with scripting on a MacOS X system is to extend the Finder, making a small Finder Service that allows me to quickly do operations on files and folders as if the Finder could natively do it on its own. Call it create an normal PNG from an iPhone retina resource (say with a -hd suffix for those of you using Cocos2D) or a batch of them, call it generate a PVR texture using PowerVR's tools, call it delete all header files (.h) or all non-header files (*.c, *.cpp, *.m, *.mm, etc...) from a folder or a whole hierarchy of folders, etc... Sometimes Apple's Automator actions are enough on their own or it is simply easier to do it with Automator actions chained together, but sometimes what you really want to do is for Automator to let you link a folder, set of folders, or files to a shell script.
The problem with that strategy is the concept of working directory for the script and the target folder you would like that script to work inside of.
One way consists in getting from finder a set of files in one folder and its sub-folders and perform a batch action on them, say doing a simple scaling of a PNG using ImageMagick's tools, the script we can use inside Automator's Run Shell Script node (which would follow a Filter Finder Items node in which you can filter out the non .png files) could be:
for f in "$@"
do
cd $(dirname "$f")
/opt/local/bin/mogrify -resize 50% "$f"
done
A little bit of advice would be to alwas select the "pass input as arguments" option in the Run Shell Script node, for the above script to do what it is supposed to do. "$@" is a special keyword that basically includes a list of arguments to the current scripting node in Automator.
The following command
cd $(dirname "$f")
changes the working directory to the directory in which the provided file is located in.
In some cases that trick is enough, in others you just want to port your existing shell script so that it is able to run inside the folder you have selected in Finder in the simplest way possible (this is the meat of this post... or rather what motivated me to post this item tonight).
The Automator's Service workflow you are going to create is even simpler here:
1.) Service is configured to receive selected folders in Finder (top of the window).
2.) The Run Shell Script is configured to pass input as arguments.
3.) This is the code you write in the script src section (in this case I wanted to convert a bunch of .wav files into .mp3):
automatorInputFolder="$1"
export automatorInputFolder
/opt/local/bin/custom/convertWav2MP3.sh
The magic here is the "$1" element which we save in a shell variable we export in the script so that other scripts launched in this step can use. "$1" is the currently selected folder in Finder.
This is the script in question (using the lame-encoder-related script-fu found here: http://www.discogs.com/groups/topic/151711):
#!/bin/bash
#echo "$automatorInputFolder"
#echo "$(pwd)"
cd "$automatorInputFolder"
#echo "$(pwd)"
for i in *.wav; do /opt/local/bin/lame -b 128 -h "${i}" "${i}.mp3"; done
find . -name "*.wav" -exec rm -f "{}" \;
ls *.wav.mp3 | sed 's/\(.*\)\.wav\.mp3/mv "\1.wav.mp3" "\1.mp3"/'|sh
(you can still see some debug echo commands there... Automator allows you to run the actions inside the app using a pre-defined input and see the output of all commands like the echo one... very useful :))
After this step in the above script
cd "$automatorInputFolder"
the script can execute with the correct working directory, the folder you have selected in the Finder.
I hope this can be helpful to you too :)!
As GUI only tools cannot always do the best job possible on their own or do not have certain capabilities by default, scripting in the command line can have its fair share of drawbacks... most of the time, an efficient workflow will consist of making it possible to quickly open a GUI file explorer from the command line and open a command line terminal from a specified folder in the GUI file explorer.
Sometimes, what I really want to do with scripting on a MacOS X system is to extend the Finder, making a small Finder Service that allows me to quickly do operations on files and folders as if the Finder could natively do it on its own. Call it create an normal PNG from an iPhone retina resource (say with a -hd suffix for those of you using Cocos2D) or a batch of them, call it generate a PVR texture using PowerVR's tools, call it delete all header files (.h) or all non-header files (*.c, *.cpp, *.m, *.mm, etc...) from a folder or a whole hierarchy of folders, etc... Sometimes Apple's Automator actions are enough on their own or it is simply easier to do it with Automator actions chained together, but sometimes what you really want to do is for Automator to let you link a folder, set of folders, or files to a shell script.
The problem with that strategy is the concept of working directory for the script and the target folder you would like that script to work inside of.
One way consists in getting from finder a set of files in one folder and its sub-folders and perform a batch action on them, say doing a simple scaling of a PNG using ImageMagick's tools, the script we can use inside Automator's Run Shell Script node (which would follow a Filter Finder Items node in which you can filter out the non .png files) could be:
for f in "$@"
do
cd $(dirname "$f")
/opt/local/bin/mogrify -resize 50% "$f"
done
A little bit of advice would be to alwas select the "pass input as arguments" option in the Run Shell Script node, for the above script to do what it is supposed to do. "$@" is a special keyword that basically includes a list of arguments to the current scripting node in Automator.
The following command
cd $(dirname "$f")
changes the working directory to the directory in which the provided file is located in.
In some cases that trick is enough, in others you just want to port your existing shell script so that it is able to run inside the folder you have selected in Finder in the simplest way possible (this is the meat of this post... or rather what motivated me to post this item tonight).
The Automator's Service workflow you are going to create is even simpler here:
1.) Service is configured to receive selected folders in Finder (top of the window).
2.) The Run Shell Script is configured to pass input as arguments.
3.) This is the code you write in the script src section (in this case I wanted to convert a bunch of .wav files into .mp3):
automatorInputFolder="$1"
export automatorInputFolder
/opt/local/bin/custom/convertWav2MP3.sh
The magic here is the "$1" element which we save in a shell variable we export in the script so that other scripts launched in this step can use. "$1" is the currently selected folder in Finder.
This is the script in question (using the lame-encoder-related script-fu found here: http://www.discogs.com/groups/topic/151711):
#!/bin/bash
#echo "$automatorInputFolder"
#echo "$(pwd)"
cd "$automatorInputFolder"
#echo "$(pwd)"
for i in *.wav; do /opt/local/bin/lame -b 128 -h "${i}" "${i}.mp3"; done
find . -name "*.wav" -exec rm -f "{}" \;
ls *.wav.mp3 | sed 's/\(.*\)\.wav\.mp3/mv "\1.wav.mp3" "\1.mp3"/'|sh
(you can still see some debug echo commands there... Automator allows you to run the actions inside the app using a pre-defined input and see the output of all commands like the echo one... very useful :))
After this step in the above script
cd "$automatorInputFolder"
the script can execute with the correct working directory, the folder you have selected in the Finder.
I hope this can be helpful to you too :)!
Monday, October 24, 2011
Pocket Boy vincitore del concorso Faber
We are proud to announce that "Pocket Boy" is one of the winners of the 2011 Faber meeting Contest.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Pocket Boy fra anime e manga
Una cara amica di AddictiveColors, Acalia Fenders, ha voluto pubblicare un articolo per parlare de L'Omino delle Tasche sul suo blog.
La sua chiara e completa descrizione dell'app ci lusinga ancora di più sapendo dello uno strappo alla regola che ha voluto fare dedicandoci un po' del suo spazio dato che il blog tratta "prevalentemente" recensioni di serie anime e manga, di cui Acalia sappiamo essere una minuziosa collezionista ed esperta.
Il Blog di Acalia è "Prevalentemente Anime e Manga". Qui potrete trovare un'infinità di recensioni su tantissime serie di fumetti e cartoni per lo più giapponesi per gli appassionati del genere, ma anche, come si è visto per Pocket Boy, qualche argomento extra.
A dear friend of AddictiveColors, Acalia Fenders, published an article about "Pocket Boy" on her blog.
La sua chiara e completa descrizione dell'app ci lusinga ancora di più sapendo dello uno strappo alla regola che ha voluto fare dedicandoci un po' del suo spazio dato che il blog tratta "prevalentemente" recensioni di serie anime e manga, di cui Acalia sappiamo essere una minuziosa collezionista ed esperta.
Il Blog di Acalia è "Prevalentemente Anime e Manga". Qui potrete trovare un'infinità di recensioni su tantissime serie di fumetti e cartoni per lo più giapponesi per gli appassionati del genere, ma anche, come si è visto per Pocket Boy, qualche argomento extra.
A dear friend of AddictiveColors, Acalia Fenders, published an article about "Pocket Boy" on her blog.
Her clear and complete description of the app is especially flattering because she stretched her website's rules a bit by giving us some space on a blog dealing "mainly" with mangas and animes, which Acalia is a meticulous collector and expert of.
Acalia's blog is called "Prevalentemente Anime e Manga" and here you can find many reviews on various comics series and cartoons, mostly from Japan, but also on some extra material like Pocket Boy.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Incipit
Ho mostrato "L'omino delle tasche" ai miei cuginetti Martina e Florian (7 e 5 anni).
Appena ho letto la prima riga del libro "Avete mai visto l'Omino delle Tasche?" Florian ha risposto prontamente:"no! mai!"... mi ha fatto sorridere.
I showed "Pocket Boy" to my little cousins Martina and Florian 7 and 5 years old respectively. Just as I finished reading the first line of the book "Have you ever seen the Pocket Boy?" Florian's unespected:"Never!" made me smile.
Appena ho letto la prima riga del libro "Avete mai visto l'Omino delle Tasche?" Florian ha risposto prontamente:"no! mai!"... mi ha fatto sorridere.
I showed "Pocket Boy" to my little cousins Martina and Florian 7 and 5 years old respectively. Just as I finished reading the first line of the book "Have you ever seen the Pocket Boy?" Florian's unespected:"Never!" made me smile.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Inspiration sketches
Some sketch showing Pocket Boy's look before his "birth", luckily he did get a head after-all!
Friday, September 2, 2011
Pocket Boy 1.1 is out!
So, the update to version 1.1 of Pocket Boy has just landed on the App Store, but what a week!
The story behind this update has its own fair share of small twists and turns, including rejecting our own update, before it got reviewed and a few days after submitting it. There was a problem with memory not being properly released when the app would transition from one page to another. We did not feel that giving it the chance to reach into people's hands was the right thing to do, so we pulled the binary before the review even took place and risked waiting more days as we lost our spot in the review queue. The problem has been fixed and we were able to add a few more improvements while cooking up the new update too :).
There are several areas that were touched upon in this update: some are clearly user visible changes and some other are under the hood changes which, in turn, have some consequences on the user experience, but are not limited to that (not all of them :)). As we already posted, the iPhone/iPod Touch (normal and retina) version are indeed coming!
Physics are now screen resolution independent, readjusting the points:meters ratio dynamically at runtime. This allows physics playing back at the same speed on all supported platforms.
The size of the app has been reduced to 29.6 MB, which is nice, but still 9.6 MB more than the limit for over the air downloads. So, WiFi and iTunes downloads only. We want this to become a Universal app and not release separate versions of the app, iPhone and iPad versions as separate packages), but this works against the 20 MB limit.
I now wanted take some time to touch upon the main user visible changes in this new version of Pocket Boy and offer an update on our ongoing performance boosting effort:
- The app is now available in Spanish and the iTunes store front should now be localized in all supported languages too.
- An index has been implemented as an horizontal scrolling menu with page thumbnails. Going back and forth in the book is now much easier. You can quickly activate it by double tapping on the main button icon on the bottom of each page. In the effort to create this new index, the whole menu system has been revamped and rewritten almost from scratch. Some physics cleanup and initializations issues have been uncovered thanks to the new index menu. With a new Physics management singleton object together with a change in the pages' transition system, we found an interesting way to fix those issues and cleanup resources without impacting the transition between pages.
- There is a new graphical instructions overlay which can be quickly pulled up by pressing the new "gears" icon on the bottom right of each page. It will show up when you tap the main button icon.
- New "credits" page with the new official AddictiveColors logo and a link to the official blog for you to browse directly from your device.
- We are transitioning the art assets pipeline towards PVR textures. There are several options, each with its own set of pluses and minuses. Uncompressed PVR textures, 16 bits with alpha (RGBA4444) or not (RGB565), are great for single large resources such as backgrounds, but suffer from color banding artifacts with some of our art assets. They load very quickly although they eat a bit more disk space than PNG's. PVRTC, compressed, textures are not very suitable for the current art style, but zipped PVR textures (PVZ) could offer both load speed and storage space savings when used for resources such as texture atlases (sprite sheets). The 1.1 update already contains a lot of resources transitioned to PVR format and should feel snappier to use, but there is much more coming up. We are not done optimizing the memory footprint of our app yet :).
Questa è una delle novità che trovate nella nuova versione dell'"Omino delle Tasche": una pagina pop up per le istruzioni! Per rendere più intuitivo l'utilizzo dell'app non abbiamo descritto cosa dovrete fare pagina per pagina ma vi esortiamo come sempre a scoprire cosa nasconde ogni illustrazione, divertitevi!
Here is one of the new features in the 1.1 version of "Pocket Boy": pop-up page instructions! To make using the app more intuitive we have tried to offer a graphical representation of the user experience, but we have not described what you should do it page by page in detail. As usual, we urge you to discover what is hidden in each illustration, have fun!
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Spanish version
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Work in Progress
We started working on the new version of Pocket Boy to make it even more functional and improve some things. At first we want to make it compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch, so you can take it in your hand (or in your pocket!). We have already started to change the layout of the pages to fit the iPhone, but there are other news that we will explain in future posts, stay tuned!
Abbiamo iniziato a lavorare sulla nuova versione dell'Omino delle Tasche per renderlo ancora più funzionale e migliorare alcune cose. Quello che ci preme in primo luogo fare è renderlo compatibile con iPhone e iPod Touch, in modo che possiate portarlo sempre a portata di mano (o in tasca!). Abbiamo iniziato riadattando il layout delle pagine al formato iPhone, ma ci sono altre novità che vi illustreremo nei prossimi post, rimanete connessi!
Friday, July 29, 2011
What's this chaotic field of buttons?
Here are various tests that were made before deciding the final art style. They may seem a bit chaotic and abstract, but Pocket Boy's world is a bit crazy and it did not seem right to submit to the perspective's rules and build the scenes in a 3D space. Remember: in the field of illustration, you can always plant what you want ... eh eh!Qui ci sono varie prove tecniche che sono state fatte prima di realizzare la grafica definitiva. Può sembrare un po' caotico o astratto, ma in fondo il mondo dell'Omino è uno spazio un po' pazzo e non ci sembrava giusto sottostare alle regole della prospettiva e costruire le scene in uno spazio tridimensionale. Ricordate: nel campo dell'illustrazione si può sempre piantare ciò che si vuole... eh eh!
Monday, July 25, 2011
On the App Store!
Finally "Pocket Boy" is on the App Store of Apple! Here's the link:
Finalmente "L'Omino delle Tasche" è sull'App Store di Apple! Ecco il link:
Pocket Boy on the App Store
Finalmente "L'Omino delle Tasche" è sull'App Store di Apple! Ecco il link:
Pocket Boy on the App Store
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Available Languages
We know there are curious young readers worldwide and for this reason Pocket Boy speaks English, Italian, French and German. We hope he will soon able to speak other languages and travel to many more countries. On the home page of the app you will find buttons that correspond to selectable languages, the tale will be automatically displayed in the language of the button you have pressed.
Sappiamo che ci sono bimbi curiosi in tutto il mondo, per questo l'Omino delle Tasche parla Inglese, Italiano, Francese e Tedesco e speriamo che presto possa imparare altre lingue e spostarsi in molti altri paesi. Nella pagina iniziale dell'app troverete dei bottoni corrispondenti alle lingue selezionabili, automaticamente la storia verrà visualizzata nella lingua del bottone che avete schiacciato.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Sketches and Colors
Pocket Boy was born on paper, just a series of sketches to define his character. So He is smart and cute at the same time: He is a sweet brat you can forgive everything to. His eyes are lively and he has squirrel-like tiny and laborious hands.
L'omino delle Tasche nasce sulla carta e prende forma in una serie di schizzi che ne definiscono il carattere. Ha un aspetto furbo e tenero allo stesso tempo, è un “monello” a cui però si può perdonare tutto. I suoi occhi sono vispi e le mani piccole e veloci proprio come uno scoiattolo.
He wears a rough, creased, and smudgy suit because he loves to play and get dirty, so I add some stain of rough color to his sketches!
Veste una tuta grezza sempre un po' macchiata e stropicciata perché ama giocare e sporcarsi, così ai disegni ho aggiunto una passata di colore che esce dai contorni come una macchia d'inchiostro.
L'omino delle Tasche nasce sulla carta e prende forma in una serie di schizzi che ne definiscono il carattere. Ha un aspetto furbo e tenero allo stesso tempo, è un “monello” a cui però si può perdonare tutto. I suoi occhi sono vispi e le mani piccole e veloci proprio come uno scoiattolo.
He wears a rough, creased, and smudgy suit because he loves to play and get dirty, so I add some stain of rough color to his sketches!Veste una tuta grezza sempre un po' macchiata e stropicciata perché ama giocare e sporcarsi, così ai disegni ho aggiunto una passata di colore che esce dai contorni come una macchia d'inchiostro.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
What is Pocket Boy?
“Pocket Boy” is an interactive tale for curious young readers who are eager to play with a book, identify themselves with this little clumsy boy, and interact with his little yet very rich world.
Every page is a tiny world for you to explore and change, an urge to create new shapes, draw and play around with everyday objects from a new perspective. There are no strict rules binding this adventure, the reader will experiment with the elements the story provides and figure out what to do page by page.
“Knowledge is made of surprises” -Bruno Munari
“L'Omino delle Tasche” è un racconto interattivo per piccoli lettori curiosi, che hanno voglia di giocare con le pagine di un libro, immedesimarsi nel protagonista, un omino pasticcione che ne combina di tutti i colori, e interagire col suo piccolo, ma ricco mondo. Ogni pagina è un micro ambiente colorato da modificare, uno stimolo a creare forme, disegni e nuovi giochi con gli oggetti di tutti i giorni. Non ci sono regole precise, è il lettore che sperimenta pagina per pagina cosa fare con gli elementi della storia.
Every page is a tiny world for you to explore and change, an urge to create new shapes, draw and play around with everyday objects from a new perspective. There are no strict rules binding this adventure, the reader will experiment with the elements the story provides and figure out what to do page by page.
“Knowledge is made of surprises” -Bruno Munari
“L'Omino delle Tasche” è un racconto interattivo per piccoli lettori curiosi, che hanno voglia di giocare con le pagine di un libro, immedesimarsi nel protagonista, un omino pasticcione che ne combina di tutti i colori, e interagire col suo piccolo, ma ricco mondo. Ogni pagina è un micro ambiente colorato da modificare, uno stimolo a creare forme, disegni e nuovi giochi con gli oggetti di tutti i giorni. Non ci sono regole precise, è il lettore che sperimenta pagina per pagina cosa fare con gli elementi della storia.
“La cultura è fatta di sorprese” -Bruno Munari
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Demo
Touch and drag the objects on the screen, watch what happens!
Play and draw with Pocket Boy, enjoy it!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
