Life would not be precious without the death we all will share.  We’re deeply saddened by Steve’s passing.  His death reminds us all how precious and how brilliant a single life can be.  It reminds us to seize our lives and create greatness.  Our hearts go out to those close to him and those touched by him.

Since 2004, many have shared the thought “Get well, Steve.“  Now we are all pained to say goodbye.

Godspeed, Steve.

We’ve made it trivial to throw together levels in Smoking Hot.  This lets us spend our time designing fun gameplay into the levels instead of worrying about the alignment of all the individual objects that make up the levels.  Currently, there are 20 different ground textures to pick from and 8 different skyboxes.  Some quick math says that makes for 160 world texture combinations.  With Smoking Hot, you’ll be able to test out every world texturing combination in your own levels.

Here are a few screenshots of different world texturing in one of our test levels.

Our latest secret project has been under wraps for about 6 months.  It’s finally time to let the cat out of the bag!  Smoking Hot™ is coming soon from Acceleroto!

Smoking Hot is a futuristic fast paced racing game where you pit your skill against challenging levels from around the universe!  Players can pilot their choice of space ship and unlock even more ships and levels as their skill improves.  In addition to the built-in levels, players will be able to share levels they design and download levels from other players online.  With Game Center and OpenFeint leaderboards and achievements, players can compare their skills against their friends.

Smoking Hot is built on the backbone of the latest Unity3d version 3.4 for an amazing 3d racing experience.  Smoking Hot will launch on iOS.  The lead developer is Bryan Duke.  Art for Smoking Hot is by Liem Nguyen from Pixel Reborn.  Sound effects are by Tapio Liukkonen from Kaamos Sound.  The music score is by Mark Cook from Herd of Instinct.

We previewed Smoking Hot to a select few people at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference in June 2011 and received glowing feedback.  We’re still adding a few more awesome features to the game.  Expect more details soon!

The Mac App Store opens for business on January 6th.  Acceleroto will be there with a special Mac version of our award-winning Air Hockey.

Air Hockey is currently the top-ranked paid air hockey type game in the iOS App Store on both the iPhone and the iPad.  Our free & paid iOS versions have been downloaded by millions of people.  Air Hockey’s been a staple in the App Store since the beginning and topped the charts as the #1 paid game.  Apple featured the iOS version numerous times in the App Store and in Apple Stores worldwide listed in “Our Favorite Games.”  Macworld said “Air Hockey from Acceleroto is the best.”  Patrick Norton of Revision 3 called it “my favorite application…it is so awesome.”

We took our well known gameplay graphics from the iOS version and make them look great on your Mac.  This isn’t just a quick port from iOS – everything was custom tailored for an outstanding experience on your Mac.  From the AI to the size of the pucks & table, everything was molded for Mac mega-awesomeness.

You can pick Quick Play from the freshly-designed menu, then choose your difficulty & number of pucks to play a single game. To try your hand at full Air Hockey domination, select Tournament to start at 1 Puck Kiddie mode & work your way up all the way to 2 Puck INSANE!  In each mode, Air Hockey saves your best winning time and compares each game to your best.

You can select from four different themes.  The default theme is the popular blue table from the iOS version of Air Hockey, but pick whatever theme floats your boat.  Pucks & mallets are automatically matched to each table.

Updates are already in work to add new features like full-screen mode.  If Apple ever adds Game Center to the Mac, Air Hockey will get that upgrade too.

Check out the in-depth Air Hockey review by 9 To 5 Mac – including 5 minutes of game video.

Air Hockey will be available from the Mac App Store on launch day, January 6, 2010.  Hit it!

The Christmas season is here and so is Christmas Air Hockey!  It’s the best from all of our games – Game Center and OpenFeint achievements and leaderboards & finely tuned difficulty levels for players of all ages & skill levels.

Christmas Air Hockey has full Retina Display support for your shiny new iPhone 4 or 4th generation iPod touch.  For older devices, graphics sized for your device ensure buttery smooth game play.

Choose between 5 table themes – all Christmas & holiday themed!  Pick a table with Christmas lights, wreaths and ornaments, or just a simple snowfield or ribbon background.  In every theme you’ll see star trail special effects on your fast-flying pucks – great to show off how great your iPhone or iPod’s looks and how fast you can win!

Check out some screenshots below and grab the game while it’s on sale for just $0.99!

A new update to our long time best selling Air Hockey is now in review at Apple.  The great news about this update is Game Center!

Game Center is Apple’s latest major addition to the iPhone & iPod touch.  If you’re familiar with OpenFeint or Plus+, those are somewhat similar to what Game Center brings to iOS.  It’s leaderboards and achievements wrapped around a social network of your best online friends and millions of other gamers.  For now, Game Center is available on iOS4.1 iPhone and iPod touch devices.  Game Center will come to the iPad in iOS4.2 this November.

Don’t worry, your hard-earned OpenFeint high scores and achievements are still there.  In the latest version of OpenFeint, version 2.7.1, you’ll see Game Center high scores sit right in there with your OpenFeint scores.  The game even automatically submits your previous accomplishments to Game Center!

When the Air Hockey update hits the streets, just sign in to Game Center using the standard Apple “Sign In” pop up and you’ll be on your way to OpenFeint and Game Center world domination.  Air Hockey version 1.11 with Game Center will be out soon!

If you don’t have it, go grab Air Hockey now!

If you haven’t checked out Doodle Hockey, you really should.  We took the core fun from our #1 best selling Air Hockey and made it run buttery smooth and even more fun.  It’s complete with multiple themes, real-time particle effects (explosions!) and rocket-fast real physics action.  Here are a few promo codes for Doodle Hockey.  The first to redeem these in iTunes will get the full version of Doodle Hockey for free.  Check it out & post back what you think.

To redeem a code, open iTunes on your computer, click “iTunes Store” on the left, then click “Redeem” on the right.  If you’re on your iPhone or iPod touch, open the App Store, go to “Featured,” then scroll to the bottom & select “Redeem.”

Doodle Hockey promo codes:
EEL6KWHFTL4N
3AEWXHWWWHFE
EXMA9F6X9H6J
6KKLKFTWE3K3
73LHPW36AFAP

Happy Labor Day!  Share with your friends & have fun!

The 2010 Mac Pro is a nice bump in CPU performance and also has some great new graphics specs.  Be careful though, there are some caveats that Apple doesn’t tell you about before you order your $2,500 to $17,000 new computer.  Just because you can buy Apple adapters to connect three monitors to your 5770 or 5870 doesn’t mean they’ll all work.

If you look at the current 2010 Mac Pro specs, it says that with either one ATI 5770 or one ATI 5870 the Mac Pro can drive three monitors.  In a caveat at the bottom of the page, it says:

2. Connecting more than three displays requires installation of two ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics cards.

This led me (and many others) to believe that connecting three displays was as simple as plugging them in.  The Mac Pro’s 5870 can display on three monitors, but that’s not all the story.  After spending several days working on this and an hour on the phone with two levels of tech support at AppleCare, I’ve learned the whole story (well, most of it).

If you read ATI’s specs on the 5870, it says (in a caveat at the bottom of the page):

Driver version 8.66 (Catalyst 9.10) or above is required to support ATI Eyefinity technology and to enable a third display you require one panel with a DisplayPort connector

Sure, Macs don’t use the PC Catalyst drivers, but this seemed like the 5870 should be able to display on three monitors without much headache.

After my Mac Pro was shipped, Apple posted a support article to their website that talked about supported display configurations of the new Mac Pro video cards.  This was the first indication from Apple that if you used DVI monitors, you were in for a few surprises.  In that article it states that to connect three monitors with DVI, you had to use two of Apple’s Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapters (part number MB571Z/A).  Given the ATI spec on the 5870, it doesn’t make sense to me when you need two of these.  The folks at AppleCare verified this though.  You need two of them.  I asked AppleCare why this appears to differ from the ATI spec on the 5870 and they didn’t have an answer.

A new Apple Support article just showed up that further details the issues with three displays on the new Mac Pros.  In that article, Apple states that if you connect three monitors one of them “may turn black” or “no longer appear in the Graphics tab of System Profiler.”

… one of the following issues may occur:

• When using a DVI connection, a Mini DisplayPort, and an HDMI connection, the display connected via DVI may turn black.
• When using a DVI connection and two HDMI displays, the display connected via DVI may turn black.
• When using a DVI connection and a HDMI connection, adding an additional HDMI connection or a Mini DisplayPort connection may cause the initially-connected HDMI device to no longer appear in the Graphics tab of System Profiler.

The article goes on to say:

Resolution

When three displays are in use with Mac Pro (Mid 2010), only one DVI or HDMI device should be used.  Note: The Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter (different from the Apple Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI adapter) is considered a DVI device.

So, now we know.  It’s easy to connect three DVI monitors to your shiny new 2010 Mac Pro, but it’ll cost you.  The solution is to use two of the $99 Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI connectors.  There are several frustrating things with this however.  First, $200 is a (how shall I say this…) “silly” amount to spend on adapters when that’s roughly what an entire 5770 video card costs.  Because the 5870 uses both of the Mac Pro’s PCIe power adapters, you can’t add a 5770 to a system with an existing 5870.  When I asked AppleCare about adding a 5770, they told me it wasn’t a supported configuration and my system was already “maxed out.”  There may be a way to get power from a non-used SATA power connector to drive another graphics card, but that’s not a supported configuration by Apple.

The second frustrating thing is that Apple isn’t currently upfront about these limitations in their sales information. The only caveat about monitors on their sales pages tells you to buy the two 5770 option if you want more than three monitors.  Two 5770s and one 5870 are in the same order of magnitude in speed.  If you want to drive three (or four) non-DisplayPort monitors, the best way to spend your money is on two 5770s instead of a 5870 with a bunch of $99 adapters.

I sent Apple a request to update their sales information to be more clear.  It’d be much better customer relations if they were upfront about which Mac Pro configurations supported each display configuration.  If you’ve been bit by this, you should do the same.  You can leave feedback to Apple here: http://apple.com/feedback

In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t the end of the world.  I bought the new Mac Pro mostly for the power.  In my “real world” benchmark tests, the new 2010 8-core 2.4GHz Mac Pro is roughly 5 times as fast as my 2008 iMac at compiling my iPhone games Air Hockey and Doodle Hockey.  It’s loads faster at After Effects renders.  On OpenCL tasks that can jump on the GPU, the new Mac Pro with a 5870 should really shine.  It crushes my old computer in everything it does.  A new $4000 computer better crush an old $1200 computer though.  I won’t be taking back my Mac Pro.  Still, it’d be nice for everyone to know about all the caveats with new equipment before they drop the cash on it.

So, you still want to drive three DVI monitors with your single graphics card 2010 Mac Pro?  Get two Apple Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapters for $99 each.  If you want to stray from Apple branded products, you can try similar adapters from MonoPrice at $67 each (these don’t have USB output though and I haven’t verified that they work).

Now you know.  Good luck!

UPDATE. 18 Sep 2010 – Monoprice was out of their $65 adapters, so I bought two of the $99 Apple Mini DisplayPort to Dual Link DVI adapters.  I’m happy to have three monitors finally working.  Unfortunately, when I use those adapters, the monitors do not properly wake up from sleeping.  The monitor connected directly to the 5870′s DVI output wakes up fine, but the two connected with the adapters show static after waking up.  It takes 2 to 5 power cycles of the monitors to get them working again.  This is apparently a problem with both the 5770 and 5870 Mac Pros: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2566723

I thought Apple products were supposed to “just work.”  Hmmm.

2009 was my first WWDC.  I had a ton of questions going into it on how to make it the best experience.  Here are some thoughts & lessons learned on how to make your 2010 WWDC the best.

Be ready to learn. Grab your thinking cap & be ready to learn from every session you go to AND from every developer you meet.  No matter who you are, there are things that someone else is better at than you.  Soak up all the knowledge you can.  If you have problems doing certain things (or questions about best practices), ask questions to any one who will listen.

Map out your sessions & labs. In addition to the WWDC web site, there’s a great app for the iPhone & iPad to help you figure out what sessions to attend.  Scan through the whole week before you get there.  Some sessions will be offered more than once.  There are sessions that will be announced after Monday’s Keynote.  Check the schedule often to make sure you don’t miss anything.  Make sure you check the labs.  There are wicked smart people there who can quickly solve that pesky UIScrollView problem you’ve been working on for weeks.  You can get the app here: https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/app/

Embrace new things, but be afraid. You’ll have access to the latest OSs and sample code once you’re there.  It’s extremely tempting to quickly download all the new stuff & install the latest OSX on your computer or iPhone OS on your phone.  Slow down.  Think about it first.  There are pros & cons.  For example, if you install the latest Xcode version or operating system on your only dev machine, you’ll be able to see first hand what they’re talking about in the sessions.  However, your old projects may take work to compile with the new tools.  After installing Snow Leopard last year, I spent an entire day trying to get my iPhone OS 2.0 app to compile under 3.0 (because 2.x was no longer supported).  Because of that, I was barely able to ask questions about my app in one of the labs.

Bring your code. There will be times when you either sleep in late or decide to skip out of a session.  There will also be times for you to go to the labs.  You’ll really want your code then.  Bring everything you’ve done & everything you have at even a prototype stage.

Bring the right tools. You should bring a computer and whatever devices you develop for.  Your computer should be set up with all your provisioning profiles, etc.  You should also bring the 3-prong extension for your MacBook’s power cable (so you don’t take up 3 plugs in the power strips in the sessions).  Last year there was free wifi in Moscone that worked remarkably well.

Keep track of your stuff. Everyone at the conference was extremely honest & trustworthy.  There were, however, people last year that got MacBooks & iPhones stolen during non-WWDC hours.  Make sure everything you bring has a password set.  If you need to get up in the middle of a session to go to the bathroom, ask your session neighbor to watch your stuff.  Make a backup of EVERYTHING before you go to WWDC.

Shake hands. Many developers by nature aren’t outgoing people (no offense, just calling it like I see it).  This is a great week to meet people.  You already have lots in common with everyone there.  In between sessions is a great time to shake somebody’s hand & introduce yourself.  Ask where people are from, if they have any apps in the App Store (or out for the Mac), what their latest project is, where they live, what their favorite session has been so far, where the best party is that night, etc.  Go out to lunch & dinner every day with other developers or other folks in town for WWDC-related things (like the press).  If you’re out at a party, offer to get drinks for people.  If you have a plan for lunch or dinner, invite other people along.  The relationships you make while at WWDC will do you more good over the next year than the actual sessions.  (Bring business cards – even if you print them out yourself.  Put a picture on your twitter account that actually looks like you.)

Be nice.  Be patient. There are lots & lots of people all trying to get to the same sessions, parties & restaurants.  You are going to have to stand in line.  You are going to have to wait for a table.  Chill.  Everything will be ok.  Everyone’s experience will be better if you throttle back a bit.  While you’re waiting in line is also a good time to shake hands with someone new.

Show off – when it’s time. Every big name Mac, iPhone & iPad-related press company will be in town.  Keep your ear out for where they’ll be.  Last year TUAW had someone who tweeted that they’d be someplace for a couple hours.  He looked at quite a few apps & wrote lots of stories.  People sold lots of apps because of those stories.  However, don’t be a pain about it.  Writers are really no different than anyone else.  They are people too.  Shake hands first.  Take your time if you can.  Be nice.

Go to the parties. There will be more parties each night than anyone could possibly hit.  It might be tempting for some to stay inside & code.  Don’t even think about it.  Go out.  You don’t have to be a drinker or partier to have a good time.  In fact, taking a couple “health nights” and not drinking is definitely a good idea even if you are a full-time party machine.  This is what’s important:  meet people, share stories, learn from each other, buy each other’s apps, follow each other on twitter (to keep in contact later…not at the party), have fun.  You can check out http://wwdcparties.com for the latest on what’s going on.

Eat & sleep. You need to learn a lot this week. It takes energy & concentration to do that.  Eat well (good food, not huge food).  There will be snacks at Moscone in between sessions.  They’re mostly sugar though – don’t plan on the snacks getting you through the day. Eat a good lunch and a good dinner – with your new friends!  You know how much sleep you need each night to stay functional.  You can maybe skimp for a day, but you’ll seriously lose out on the conference if you try to get by all week on less sleep than you normally do.

That should get you started in the right direction.  I hope to meet everyone there.  Please follow me on twitter, figure out where I am, then walk up & shake my hand.  I’ll do the same.  It’ll be great to meet you.

-Bryan Duke

p.s.  Oh yeah…you’ll also need a copy of Doodle Hockey to play when you don’t have enough time to shake someone’s hand.  It’s awesome.  You can get it here:

Doodle Hockey is getting close.  It’s currently being scrubbed by the test team.  It’ll get a few more features added and any problems that the test team finds fixed in the next couple weeks.  Doodle Hockey’s on track for a launch in May 2010!