Cellular Automaton Lab

Just released my first OpenGL app!

Cellular Automaton Lab is a fully customizable cellular automaton application. It is a simulation of cell "life" whose birth and death are defined by a set of rules. The best known of these rulesets is Conway's Game of Life. This application includes customizability of the Life series of rules and Generation series of rules. The Life series have 2 cell states, dead or alive. The Generations series have up to 8 cell states, dead, alive, and the rest are dying. The dying states are represented by different colors.

The difference between this app and other apps is the high degree of customizability available to the user. And the inclusion of a unique coloring mode called Allele mode. In allele mode, the color of the cells are not defined by the state of the cell but by the two color "alleles" each cell spawns with. When a new cell is spawned, it chooses at random from two of its live neighbors to determine its own color. In addition to this, there is a 5% chance for a mutation to occur, changing the allele chosen to a different allele.

This application includes the following features:

- Step mode to walk through the generations one at a time
- Clock mode
- Pinch to zoom
- Touch to spawn a cell
- Sixty of the most popular rulesets included
- Allele color mode
- Full customization

This application allows for customization of the following parameters:

- Live neighbors needed for a cell to continue living
- Live neighbors needed for a dead cell to spawn
- Colors of all states
- Define and save your own rulesets
- Wrapping the edges of the grid
- Hide/Show grid
- Speed of animation
- Size of the cell
- Clock settings

OpenGL

So I decided to start on learning Open GL only to find out the tutorial I wanted to use was pulled offline. So I had to look for a new one and none of them were quite as good as the one I wanted to use but I might be able to piece together a good learning experience by using a few of them. I did finish a tutorial on the basics though. So success! I now have a rotating cube lol.

New app released!

I just released a new app on the app store. It's called World of Darkness: Vampire Sheet. It's a character sheet for the old World of Darkness game. I may do the expansions depending on response.

Working on a new app

Started working on that new app my friend put me onto. It will probably be another 3-4 weeks before it is completed. I will release more details when I submit it. It's a niche app but there's no app for it on the app store.

After that, I plan on doing those tutorials on OpenGL for the iPhone. I already have an idea lined up for it.

Update Released

1.1 has been released.

It fixes the bug with the server names that have spaces and the bug where an item would show the set name instead of the item name.

It also threads all the internet connections so they don't hold up the app while it's connecting and downloading.

Warcraft Gear Compare FAQ

1) Is this app an account phisher?
- No, it does not ask for any account information. It is not required for full functionality.

2) Isn't there already a World of Warcraft Armory app from Blizzard?
- There is but that app and this app provide different functionality. See Below.

3) Can't I just use RatingBuster or the comparison function provided by Blizzard's UI?
- You can but this app takes things a few steps further. RatingBuster and the native Blizzard UI provide raw stat differences between the items. For example, you would see something like the following.

+16 Agility
-56 Critical Rating
+69 Haste Rating
+10 Attack Power
-11 Expertise Rating

This is useful, but not meaningful unless you know the weighted value of each stat. And if you knew those numbers, you would have to calculate the pluses and minuses to determine which one is better.

What this app does is take those raw differences and using the default weight values included, or ones defined by the user, and calculate a weighted score difference between the items. So instead of what you see above, you would simply see +121 or -189.56.

Warcraft Gear Compare Update

An update is in to fix a couple of bugs that were found and to thread the internet connections so they don't hang the app while they're connecting to armory. It's awaiting approval and should be in the app store sometime next week.