We were devastated to learn that our friend and colleague Nick Kruse died at the weekend after collapsing while participating in the Gobi March. We're still piecing together exactly what happened, but we wanted to share some of our memories of Nick.
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Nick Kruse, 1979 – 2010
July 6th, 2010 by Matt MayerNicholas Kruse participating in Gobi March 2010
June 28th, 2010 by Stephen Ceresia
Not content to sit around in a pub watching the World Cup like some of us, ReignDesign's own Nicholas Kruse is currently participating in the Gobi March, part of the 4 Deserts series of footraces that take place in the "hottest, coldest, windiest, and driest places on earth."
The Gobi March spans 250km over seven days, and takes place across China's Gobi Desert.
Some quick facts:
- Temperatures for the Gobi March (China) can vary greatly – in 2010 average temperatures will be about 10°C / 50°F on the early part of the course and 35-40°C / 95-104°F on the later stages.
- Competitors come from more than 20 countries with roughly 1/3 from North America, 1/3 from Asia and 1/3 from Europe.
- The fastest completion time is around 25 hours and the slowest around 80 hours.
- The average backpack weighs 20 lbs (8-9 kilograms).
You can check out daily updated coverage of the competitors' progress here.
Best of luck, Nick!
HTML5’s missing tag: sarcasm
June 16th, 2010 by Matt MayerI attended Barcamp Shanghai (Twitter: #barcampsh) at the weekend. It was an entertaining day with talks and demos on a variety of geeky topics. Here's a reproduction of my talk about HTML5's missing tag: <sarcasm>.
Creating a button using CCMenuItemToggle in cocos2d
June 15th, 2010 by Stephen Ceresia
Last time we talked about creating a simple menu in cocos2d. This tutorial will show you how to use CCMenuItemToggle to create a simple sound on/off button using images to represent the two states.
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ReignDesign visits Shanghai World Expo 2010!
June 7th, 2010 by Stephen Ceresia
Last Friday the ReignDesign team spent the day at the Shanghai Expo. The weather called for rain, but luckily it decided to co-operate with us and hold off. Also, being a relatively quiet day with only 432,000 people in attendance, we got to check out the massive Expo grounds and different pavilions about as crowd-free as one can expect.
Some highlights included:
- Lunch at Sri Lanka's pavilion
- Beer and fries at the Belgium pavilion
- Wine and cocktails at the Chile pavilion
- Mojitos at the Cuba pavilion (started seeing a pattern here...)
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Creating a simple menu with scene transition in cocos2d
June 3rd, 2010 by Stephen Ceresia
cocos2d for iPhone is a fast, free, flexible, community-supported and easy to use framework for making iPhone games.
In this first tutorial, we'll discuss how to create a main menu scene with transition to a second scene using cocos2d.
10 Xcode power user tips for iPhone devs
May 19th, 2010 by Stephen Ceresia
If you're developing apps or games for Apple's iPhone/iPad/Touch devices, chances are you're using Xcode. Xcode has a lot of great features that can help increase productivity, so we thought we'd put together a list of ten power user tips for those new to the environment.
Crash the Crib released to the App Store!
May 18th, 2010 by Stephen Ceresia
ReignDesign partnered recently with Red Rocket Games to help develop their latest iPhone/iPod Touch game, Crash the Crib.
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Pig Rush featured in Apple’s New and Noteworthy section!
March 16th, 2010 by Stephen Ceresia
A few weeks back we released a major update to our loveable little pig game, Pig Rush. We've received a ton of great feedback from users all over the world, and the response has been great.
That said, it still took us by surprise to see Pig Rush featured in Apple's New and Noteworthy section in the US App Store. Thanks Apple!
Next stop, "What's Hot!" section!
Why is our app twice as large as what we submitted? “Contagious zeros”
February 24th, 2010 by Stephen Ceresia
As you probably know, Apple has an app download limit for users downloading over 3G. Up until recently, this limit was 10 MB. If your app's file size exceeds the limit, users attempting to download it over 3G receive an error and must try again later over wifi. Needless to say, this can lead to frustrated users and lost sales and if you can get your app under this limit, it's definitely worth the effort.
So, when we submitted our latest update of Pig Rush to Apple for review, we worked hard to get it under the (then) 10 MB 3G app download limit.
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