bunnyhero dev

It’s generally usable now, so I’ve decided to release it, warts and all. I’ve created a Google Code project for it, bhcolourpicker, where ‘bh’ stands for ‘bunnyhero’ :)

It’s not particularly well-documented at the moment, but that will (hopefully) change.

Here’s an excerpt from the HowTo page on the project site:

To show the colour picker, use code something like the following:

    //  since it has 'new' in the method name, you own it...
    BHColourPickerController *vc = [BHColourPickerController newColourPickerController];
    vc.delegate = self;                    // the delegate
    vc.colour = self.view.backgroundColor; // the initial colour
    vc.titleText = @"Some kind of title";  // title to display
    [self presentModalViewController:vc animated:YES];
    [vc release];   //  ...and must release it

You must implement the BHColourPickerControllerDelegate protocol in one of your objects. Implement the following two methods (with examples):

- (void)colourPickerControllerDidCancel:(BHColourPickerController *)controller
{
    // the user just cancelled it; put the picker away
    [self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];
}
 
- (void)colourPickerController:(BHColourPickerController *)controller didFinishPickingColour:(UIColor *)colour
{
    // the user confirmed a colour; do something with it
    self.view.backgroundColor = colour;
    // and put the picker away
    [self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];
}

I’ve released it under a New BSD Licence. Share and enjoy!

This isn’t quite done yet, but I am working on a colour picker for iPhone. I plan to release it under the MIT Licence when I’m ready. I’m fairly shy about open-sourcing my code, I’m always embarrassed about the quality…

Till then, here’s a screenshot:

Not so much “gotchas” as “got-me”s, probably. It’s been so long since I’ve done any significant OpenGL coding that I keep forgetting little things that result in a blank screen or a white texture :) Anyway, I thought I’d record them here to remind myself.

Note that I’m currently using OpenGL for 2D drawing.

• Set glTexParameter for GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER to something like GL_LINEAR before calling glTexture2D. The default value for GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER is GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_LINEAR, and if you’re not using mipmaps, the texture won’t draw!
• I forgot that glOrtho manipulates the current matrix. Which means that if you don’t call glLoadIdentity beforehand you might not be getting the projection matrix you were hoping for!
• This one was particularly boneheaded :P Make sure that the type parameter in glTexCoordPointer is actually the same type as the array! As in, if you pass in a pointer to an array of floats, make sure that the type parameter is set to GL_FLOAT. I blame this one on copy/pasting without paying enough attention.

Well that’s enough embarrassment for today. And I also just found this article: Avoiding 16 Common OpenGL Pitfalls, which looks useful…

EDIT: Just needed to mention another oversight that had me scratching my head for a while when things weren’t rendering as expected. Note the difference between the GL constants GL_TEXTURE and GL_TEXTURE_2D! Use the former for the parameter to glMatrixMode. Use the latter for enabling/disable texturing with glEnable/glDisable!

I’ve just started to develop for the iPhone. I have the SDK and have joined the developer program. The last time I did any Objective-C was about 8 years ago, and that was just dabbling, too.

I will probably try to port one or two of my pets over to the iPhone, although the audience for iPhone apps is probably a lot different than the audience for MySpace Flash widgets (then again, with the prevalence of Fart apps on the iPhone app store, who knows?). Regardless, I’m hoping it will still be a good exercise.