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2012.11.01Poor man simulator

As they don't have an iPad nor an Android tablet, My friends are pushing me to create an iPod/iPhone version of Bloblocks.

Since the tablets sales do not allow me to buy an iPod or iPhone yet I have to find a way to simulate how will Bloblocks behave on these small devices.

I'd like this version to be:

  • easy to read,
  • easy to control.

How can I achieve that without a real device?

I decided to experiment the "poor" man way.

I already have one iOS device: the iPad 3.

Let's just scale the app and constrain its proportions to what it would exactly looks on an iPhone (inch for inch and not pixel for pixel).

Dude, it's small!

Ok the result is not retina pixel perfect and I see what's out of the canvas (I'll have to mask what's outside) but it works and give me a real idea of what my players will experience on their phone.

Of course I can't test real device performances which is another thing which will surely break my heart later…

The good thing is I can test any DPI/resolution and it gives me the exact same real screen size on my laptop (but of course more blurry). No need to push on the iPad if I am just improving readability and I can test any device look and feel with the iPad (and not only iOS devices).

For instance the new iPhone which is a little bit longer:

Hey, I could use that space!

And when I'll want to ensure that images and fonts aren't too ugly on the device, I'll just have to remove the zoom to check on my computer that everything looks sharp enough.

In an ideal world I would create a separate version of the game with assets and layout adapted to each screen but we will keep that for when the game will have at least 100k users :)

Now let's work to improve this little game :)