#swiftappdev

pacificNW afternoon

a bit of rain today

rainy days are for coding
while the roots
of the forest
recharge with water

i am in my cabin
burrowed in cozy blankets
ready to begin
delving into a new project

i have decided to branch off
into using hex pillars
instead of cubes
as the next puzzle medium

an idea has been
percolating for a while
in my brain

time to sit down
code it to life
see the final shape

hopefully
a fun and interesting one

I started on my #SwiftAppDev journey to build apps that fully used the larger landscape iPad screen. 17 iPad apps later, I have a full suite of interesting things to keep me occupied, puzzle games - good focal points to shift me out of loops, art and music apps for expressing my creative side and one more to create organization and save stuff. Now, in a nod to the iPhone user, I have built small portrait versions of 11 puzzle games, entertaining if I find myself in wait mode while out and about.

It has been a long #SwiftAppDev slog, but all apps are now updated to my current graphics resolution standard - crisp and clear! A trade off to tread between how high the resolution for graphics clarity and the memory and capability of the processors in the hardware. Hardware is very capable of crisp and clear these days. I am not sure why a significant slice of apps still cling to low resolution bleary bits and pieces, my eyes look at that and just get tired trying to distinguish the shapes.

From 1 day ago... Inspiration struck to solve the latest #SwiftAppDev dilemma! I found an acceptable positioning of 3D and 2D controls with no need to reposition the 2D controls. That left finding a way to programmatically mimic the 3D resizing and apply it to their height. I finally struck upon the idea of subtracting a ratio of the total screen height to solve the issue. It held up well thru final testing. The upgrade to my productivity app went in to the apple app store and is now available.

From 2 days ago... todays #SwiftAppDev dilemma: how to get SceneKit 3D controls and a couple of 2D ones (for which I could find no equivalent 3D ones) to be positioned properly together on the screen regardless of resolution changes. The conflict arises because 2D controls are tied to corner 0,0 while 3D controls are anchored to center point 0,0,0 and auto resize to fit the screen. 3D may be more complicated to envision, but is worth it for the flexibility and the broader range of possibilities.

I couldnt resist expanding my #SwiftAppDev goal after learning to code a custom 3D shape and adding a right triangle shape to my iPad design app for widgets. So in went a custom 3D pillar where you choose 3 to 9 equal length sides for another new shape. A couple of days later than initially planned but the upgrade posted in the apple store this morning.

Whoo Hoo! - one of my top joys in life - figuring out how to make something work - was accomplished today. Todays #SwiftAppDev goal of figuring out how to code a custom 3D shape is done and a new shape is added to my widget building app upgrade. After test - test - test seems error free, but decided to sleep on it and retest everything in the upgrade again tomorrow before submitting to the store.

Todays #SwiftAppDev goal is to figure out how to code a custom 3D shape, add it to the upgrade for my widget building app - test, test, test - and get the upgrade submitted to the app store tonight.