Quick and Easy Guide to Make an Assistive Menu for iPhone App

The assistive menu on iDevices is a cool feature that nobody misses out. Every iPhone user is using it. Together with the stability of iOS, the assistive menu is highly efficient for quick navigations across iOS.

Now imagine if you could make an assistive menu exclusively for your app. Sounds interesting? Well, this is what we have done at OpenXcell for one of our clients. Since, the navigation went more complicated than we thought, we created a custom assistive menu for the app itself.

You won’t come across an assistive menu made exclusively for an app that easily. So. here is an opportunity to learn the trick and apply to your app/game.

Design and Animation:

What you see here is a basic working assistive menu. It is comprised of a couple of concentric areas that employ effects to appear three-dimensional in nature. The region at the centre points towards the direction where the swipes are made. The direction and magnitude of the swipe also ascertain the 3D effect demonstrated by the outer area.

You can also make your assistive menu pop out options that you want your users to access frequently. The animations can be vivid based on your choice and menu options.

How to make one?

With the reference of iPhone assistive touch, we want something like within the entire app for displaying the menu. Hence, we create a global view and add it  to the UINavigationController’s view.

NSArray *arr = [[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@”BouncyView” owner:self options:nil];

BouncyView *bouncy = [arr objectAtIndex:0];

[self.navigationController.view addSubview:bouncy];

To learn the complete tutorial go to http://www.openxcell.com/how-to-make-an-assistive-menu-for-your-own-iphone-app/. Hope you have a nice time learning and come back for more

Common Animations Aberrations You Should Avoid

Animation mistakes are common and sensitive too. They are sometimes conscious or  unconscious. If you are working with animations since years, then most of times you remain with conscious mistakes. Still, once your animations go live before people, you get heard about those small mistakes that might make a positive difference in your work, if they were absent.

Ok now, we are not here to make you realize about your mistakes. We are here to tell you about the most common animation mistakes that you make unknowingly because of which your game fails to achieve the top place it actually deserves.

Visual Animation Mistakes

No doubt that most of visual animations from cartoonish to photoreal are valid, beautiful, artistic and special. But more important is a feel of joyousness that only comes from cheerful visuals. If you are a fan of endless running games, you must have played Temple Run and Subway Surfer. Ask yourself which one you liked the most? Or which one filled you up with gladness? We know most of you are raising hands for Subway Surfer.

Temple Run and Subway Surfer have completely different visuals. Temple Run possesses serious looking visuals while Subway Surfer possesses cute looking features for which your heart attracted the most since birth. No matter that you are grown up, you still like the cartoonish characters with joyous environment; that’s why you like Subway Surfer more than Temple Run.

Lack of Realism

To bring a realistic style in your animation, you need a high level of detail associated with complex effects. For example, if we compare Real Racing 3 with Asphalt 8, we can understand the different between their detailing and complex effects.

Real Racing 3 is full of sharp car models, great presentations, inspiring graphics, and different city levels. It possesses everything to achieve an A grade in terms of visual animations. But Asphalt 8 is something different than Real Racing 3. Asphalt 8 shoots dazzling particle effects, destructible environments, and lens glare to give you a feel of realism and excitement which you never feel with Real Racing 3.

Lack of Resources

Rail Rush and Jetpack Joyride, both are the popular endless running games. But Jetpack Joyride has 100+ million downloads and Rail Rush has 10+ million downloads.

Rail rush has a cart ride with a character within. The cart rides through rails, collecting gold and skipping obstacles and that’s it. Jetpack Joyride is well-equipped with various Jetpacks, new outfits and other stocks. Each time when a player completes the level with enough coins, he achieves new Jetpack, outfit and new powers. Jetpack Joyride is a good example of game with exciting resources.

Conclusion

Animations are redefined many times until they get a good shape as per the game environment and users’ demands. To improve your animations and to avoid common mistakes, you need to know the world game players like to live in. For example game players love to be in world of Subway Surfer, Asphalt 8 or Joystick Joyride. These worlds distract users with the real world. You also have to create a world for users that distract them from real world.