This is a post that we’ve been meaning to write a long time ago, but we were always so busy with the new updates. Well, now we took some time to separate this material and show you guys the process of building one gun application (well, ours at least). So let’s get started.
Initial tests and code.
Our initial tests and codes were done with some poor graphics (at least for us, some other guns app don’t think that way) downloaded from the web. At first we were only interested in building the interactions and animations. Set up the control of the accelerometer, the touchable areas and other technical aspects.
This video shows one of our first internal versions.
At that point some developers would have look at that first version and say: “Wow! This is great, let’s put it to sell right now!”. However, we didn’t think that way, we still had a lot work to do. So let’s follow with the story shall we?
The Design Process.
This was a fun part, in fact there’s much more to see here since the other part it’s just code, and we can’t show you that. Can we?
Ever since the beginning we wanted to create a real gun simulator, full of details of what would be a real gun operation. We wanted it to look and feel like a gun. So in this process we had todesign something that would fit the screen of the device and at the same time if it had to be used as real gun would, with a trigger, not pressing everywhere. So that screen isn’t fully covered with the hand. So this was our challenge and here are the initial sketches:
We tried these skecthes on the iPhone several times until we obtained the best fit.
After that we could move to the next step. All the following images show one step by step the amazing work of our interface
designer. Incredible Photoshop work, every detail painted by hand: shadows, textures, fire, bullets and even smoke. Seriously, just the “how to make smoke on Photoshop” is a subject for an entire tutorial. A real nice job done here, we are proud.
Mix it all together.
The next step in our process, wa to go back to the code and give functionality to everything. The buttons, displays and more animations. This new code even included random animation for the bullets and the smoke. Really? Yes, maybe you haven’t noticed, but if you have your mobileGuns right now, open it and shot a couple of times. Pay attention to this detail: the bullets always are animated in random directions. And the smoke also disappears in different directions. How would you miss that?
One last step: audio.
The last step was the sound of a gun. The amazing stereo sound effects were recorded and mixed by a professional studio and we took care that every single animation had its unique sound. The bullet cap’s hitting the floor, the echo of the shot, the trigger clicks. All these were created and then synchronized by code. Later we needed all our work to sound it’s best way on the micro-speaker of the Apple® devices. Wich is not a good speaker, we must admit.
That’s all folks!
It is a long post, but it is small when compared to the amount of work we had to put in to create this application. And we still continue to improve and update it.
We hope you liked to see this “making of”, it’s a way to show you that you are paying for something worthwhile. We believe that if you purchased a product from us, you deserve to get best. We started this project because we are convinced that is was a really fun game to play with friends, colleagues from work or which ever way you choose.
We like to think that even a simple application of this kind, must have some work behind it. We couldn’t have given you an application which consisted in a photo downloaded from Google with some free sounds downloaded from the web. Put some poor animations and boring menus with sounds and then ask you a dollar!! Yes, it’s just a dollar, but it has to be worth it.
So take care, compare very well before buying any gun application. And if you liked this one. You can get it here!
March 29th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Wow love the dedication to such a great app, the best one I have and well worth a dollar, needs to go to the top 50 apps!
March 29th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
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March 29th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
We’ve received this post from New Zealand, it’s in dutch. We are very happy that those guys come here to visit us. We did a Google Translation, we hope that it’s ok: “[...] If you are interested in how an application like this is put together, you can learn more about [...]. Thank you all.
April 5th, 2009 at 5:11 am
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April 11th, 2009 at 1:23 am
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