Work, despite being fun and challenging, is no doubt taking a lot of my time. In the few free moments I have, I’ve tried to work on both my iPhone applications and games. I also helped my dad with his hotel’s webpage, and I think its looking awesome.

Anyways, as part of my ongoing self-training for iPhone development, I’m halfway through “Beginning iPhone Development - Exploring the iPhone SDK”, a book by Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche. It’s been fun up to now and, even though I knew a lot of the initial stuff, advanced view handling with controllers was something I had lots of trouble with.

I leave you with a screen from my latest application:

A simple game using UIPickerView

I’ve been playing more Xbox 360 lately, and that is a good thing. I recently bough Command and Conquer: Tiberium Wars and it is a really great game! Best RTS I’ve played on a console and definitely up there with StarCraft and Wacraft 3.

The thing I like the most is the control scheme. Nobody ever though that an RTS with a game control would be almost the same as using a keyboard and a mouse. Sure you loose map navigation by not being able to click on the minimap, but still you get a really intuitive, easy to use scheme. I simply love it. Ohh and I love Mammoth tanks, even though they are cocky :p

Alfredo should be getting his copy next week so that means we can play online!!

A few weeks ago I finally decided I didn’t have enough time to develop a 3D Game Engine for the game I’m planning. It took me far too much time to get anywhere making my own engine and, at the end, I would still have to work on the game.

So I decided to shop around and found the Torque Game Engine. I had already read and seen it before, but it was not as polished or well kept before. So I didn’t hessitate and payed $150 for an indie developer license. I’ve been using it on my free time, trying to learn how to use it, how to add things to it and it has turned out yet.

I already compiled a modernization kit into the engine. This allows the engine to have Shaders, which make the game look way way better. This Shaders include water reflection, refraction, dynamic gamma, normal maps and some other effects.

When I have the first playable demo, I will post it and ask for comments. If you have any good ideas or want to work with me on this amazing project, please leave a comment. I’m looking for talented programmers (C/C++) and 2D/3D artists.