Issue 87

23 June 2021

by Lori M Olson

OPED ― Lori’s Unvarnished Opinion

I Have No Time

I hear this all the time:

I’d love to create an app, but I have no time.

I’d like to finish my app, but I have no time.

Pro Tip: There is infinite time. YOU are finite. If you want to create (or finish) your app, you need to plan. One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is failing to plan, and failing to have an definition of done for their app before they start.

Remember: hours of planning can save weeks of doing. — WNDXLori

GAME ― All Things Gaming

It occurs to us that we announce game jams quite often but, less often, do we report back on how it went. So we thought that now the DragonRuby Classics Jam: Gauntlet Edition is complete we would curate a short list of our favourites from all the entries, presented in (mostly) no particular order:

Valkyrie Junior by Akzidenz-Grotesk which was our favourite.
It might have made our list for the title alone, but You Do Not Have Infinite Swords (You Have 99) by thegrimsqueaker was worthy of inclusion on its gaming merits.
Finally, almost exclusively for how different it looks compared to all the other entries, Gone Nora by keysha3 is well worth a look.

In the honourable mention category we put Black Void by Rabios. In particular we like that the source code is available! That’s always a nice touch, particularly as an educational tool for those who may want to jump on the next game jam.

Well done to all who participated…you produced some amazing work!

APP ― All Things App

Normally, a new version of a product which was fairly good in the first place is cause for celebration. Not the kind of thing that would justify on-stage pyrotechnics, perhaps, but just a sense that the ball is moving steadily down the field toward something really good.

Such would have seemed to be the case with StoreKit 2, Apple’s “secure way for users to purchase digital goods or services in your apps”. However, the real headline for us is—wait for it—no Objective C support. The real real headline is therefore, we’re sad to say, no support for RubyMotion.

All that said, if you still want to get the inside scoop on StoreKit 2, Gui Rambo has produced an excellent tutorial: Working With In-App Purchases in StoreKit 2

SPOT ― Spotlight On…

Not an issue of DRD goes by that we don’t have some reason to mention the pater familias of the DragonRuby/RubyMotion empire Amir Rajan. But rather than mentioning him in passing as we do quite often, we want to present an opportunity for you to hear the man speak at length: he recently appeared on the Polyglot Podcast hosted by Rachel Wright-Munn. You can listen to it, of course, or if you prefer read the transcript. It’s a great discussion.

TALK ― Talk of the Tech

Unless you have been under a rock which is ten feet underwater for the last couple of months, you couldn’t help but have seen the new Apple ad called Tracked. It makes a pretty compelling visual case for why all that fuss over App Tracking Transparency might actually be justified.

In any event, the reason we mention this at all is that there was an excellent discussion on the Motioneers Slack recently that is a pretty good primer for how to get started. And, yes, you should probably get good at this sooner rather than later.

Oh, right, and the nihilistic theme music by Delta 5 was a brilliant choice, Apple. Makes us feel young and hopeless again.

TWIL ― This Week I Learned

Our perspective on the predictive text feature in iOS is that it’s a two-edged blunt axe. On the one hand, we like it tirelessly changing egads to regards. It’s done it a thousand times and will no doubt do it a thousand more without a peep. On the other hand, changing img (our Twitter abbreviation for ‘image’) to omg is nothing but a big PITA. But netting it all together, it is worth having. We guess.

Ah, but it turns out that we’re the last ones to know that they are actually more useful than we thought. Joshua Mauldin explains. Egads, that’s great.

HAHA ― And They All Laughed

This is the kind of humour we really like. First it makes us laugh, and then makes us think “should we really be laughing at this?”

That’s a Wrap!

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“The first indication that we are killing our dreams is lack of time.” — Paulo Coelho

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