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I just finished writing up a post for the Flashbang Technology Blog about integrating custom Cocoa content with Unity iPhone projects. I spent about two and a half weeks in December developing a system that would work for all of our Unity iPhone projects. The goal was to allow me to develop all of our menus and other non-gameplay content using Apple’s super-slick UI development application, Interface Builder. I used this in !Rebolt! and managed to finish all the menus in a couple days. Here’s a snippet:

So I set a goal: Make an easily extensible Cocoa frontend for Unity iPhone that supports Blurst logins and supports any menus we might want. It should work for any project we add it to, so we don’t have to do tons of custom code for every game. Further, it should require changing as little of ReJ’s existing Objective-C AppController code as possible, in the event that it changed in a later build. Finally, I wanted an easy way to add my additional files to the XCode project once I created a build. This is particularly important because, to maintain rapid iteration times, there must be a minimal amount we have to do in XCode between creating a build and installing that build on the phone.

You can read my full article at technology.blurst.com.

Just a quick update on !Rebolt!, the excellent little robot-combat game Adam and I have been working on the last couple months. We’re just about done, having spent a good deal of time optimizing the game for the phone. I’ve been pretty much eating, sleeping, and breathing iPhone since we got Unity’s first beta. We both love how it’s been coming along, and I’ve just spent the last couple weeks integrating login for Flashbang’s Blurst.com accounts. You’ll be able to save your high scores and track your achievements online using the same kickass system (and account!) we developed for Off-road Velociraptor Safari. Here’s the final !Rebolt! trailer, which Adam whipped up today:

We’re also releasing another iPhone game, Raptor Copter, simultaneously, along with our new web game, Minotaur China Shop. That’s three games being released in one month, oi am I gonna need some vacation in December!

Adam and I have been hard at work continuing development of our robot game the last couple weeks, which we are now calling !Rebolt! A lot of this has been simply fleshing out gameplay flow (doing the weapon equip menu, etc), and optimizations to make it run well on the iPhone. However, we’ve also made two new weapons, the Torch, a little flamethrower, and the awe-inspiring Singularity Cannon, a weapon which rips small black holes in the fabric of space, crushing your enemies inside. I made a new video last night to show off this piece of work:

!Rebolt! Singularity Cannon Trailer from Matt Mechtley on Vimeo.

Yes, that’s part of the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field image inside the black hole. ;)