Icontrolpad Updates!

[quote]

Just thought I'd let people know that the iControlPad is nearly finished!
As you can see from the website, units will soon be sent out for review.

Craig has also given out some other info via his twitter:

It's padded with foam inside to give some adjustable space.

Wow! Cozy!

It looks like the iControlPad and at least some of the Pandora consoles will be assembled in the UK.

Village hall like the Pandoras?


Also, Zodttd, the main developer for emulators on the iPhone, has said this in a recent interview:

When it comes to projects for the iPhone I have my hands full getting my existing library of software ready for the iControlPad. The iControlPad is a joypad adapter for the jailbroken iPhone & iPod Touch.

So it's good to see the iControlPad will almost certainly be fully supported when it comes out!

 

[TaG]

Two Months[sup]TM[/sup] to release?

 

[quote]

Old joke. Boring now.

 

[cbox]

Old joke. Boring now.

What's your order number?

 

[christo930]

Old joke. Boring now.

What's your order number?

How much is this going to cost? Let me guess 30 pounds plus 20 more pounds shipping, $100 in USD?

Chris

 

[TaG]

Old joke. Boring now.

You are assuming it was meant as a joke.

 

[torpor]

I have a Zii Egg (Creative Labs iPhone clone) and would love to help getting support added to it for the iControlPad .. any interest? The Egg and systems like it are going to be available to consumers pretty soon - so it seems to me that adding support for this platform soon will definitely be beneficial. If you guys are interested, PM me and we can work out whats required - since the Egg is pretty close to the form factor of the iPhone, mostly whats going to be required is some wiring switches and some demos to make the controller work in software ..

 

[RodrigoCard]

Just a question.

Would be possible, that Apple store apps can use icontrolpad?

I´m planning to sell a game on appstore, and optional icontrolpad support would be great. I could even include an ad for it if possible... =)

 

[quote]

Just a question.

Would be possible, that Apple store apps can use icontrolpad?

I´m planning to sell a game on appstore, and optional icontrolpad support would be great. I could even include an ad for it if possible... =)

Well it uses the serial, and I'm not sure Apple allow AppStore devs access to this. You or Craig will have more idea on this than me .

If any game uses it first, it'll be Wizzley Presto. Same dev as the iControlpad (craigix on these boards).

 

[Sphinxter]

Just a question.

Would be possible, that Apple store apps can use icontrolpad?

I´m planning to sell a game on appstore, and optional icontrolpad support would be great. I could even include an ad for it if possible... =)

Think something somewhere said it works on jail broken phones only so support for it might get your app an immediate appstore ban.

 

[Illuminerdi]

Just a question.

Would be possible, that Apple store apps can use icontrolpad?

I´m planning to sell a game on appstore, and optional icontrolpad support would be great. I could even include an ad for it if possible... =)

Well it uses the serial, and I'm not sure Apple allow AppStore devs access to this. You or Craig will have more idea on this than me .

While I have no knowledge of Apple's official policies vis-a-vis serial access for appstore apps, there ARE apps that can interface with the iPhone/iPod serial port. The ones that spring immediately to mind are the GPS apps, which have optional GPS docks they can plug into (via the dock connector) which "enhance" the precision of the device's built-in GPS, as well as extending battery life.

These apps may have been granted some kind of exception, but I don't see why Apple would ban/kill apps that supported the iControlpad. They might squash ones that *require* it, as those would probably be considered misleading.

Personally, I'd throw in support for the iControlpad anyway, and worry about things if/when Apple took down your app for it. It's an unlikely scenario, and you could just resubmit the app without it, rather than trying to get an answer about it ahead of time from Apple.

 

[Illuminerdi]

One thing I've been wondering a lot about the iControlpad that really makes me want to buy one is if it would be possible to have an app/process on a jailbroken phone that would "map" sections of the touch screen to controls on the iCpad. I have no idea whether or not an app that "fakes" screen inputs could be created, it doesn't seem impossible.

I have tons of games on my phone that will probably never support the iCpad natively, but a program like this would allow me (or other people - think of the possibility if these could be downloaded with/from within the app!) to map sections of the screen, and more or less fool the phone into thinking I'm playing with the screen rather than a pad. Tons of commercial games (and apps!) would easily work great with this: Zenonia, Dungeon Hunter, iDracula, etc. This would greatly enhance compatibility of the iCpad!

(In an ideal world, this app would exist on non-jailbroken phones as well, but given that the iPhone doesn't do multitasking or background apps, it would probably require a jailbreak to make this happen since it would have to run as a sort of background process).

 

[quote]

Update! (sorry for the big-ish bump).
From the site...

I had fun today visiting the factory which is building the iControlPad (in the UK) and can report that everything is going well.
The staff at the factory are pretty excited to try the pad on their own iPhones. I was not allowed to take photos there today, but we can take photos on the next visit if we give them some warning in advance.
Oh, and thank you all for doing our little survey, it helped us get a good estimation of how many of each unit to build.
Now I've got to get back to work, but we will do a new and final (before shipping) newsletter in about 2 weeks.

Craig tweeted this:

Not taking orders yet, we probably won't until we have ~3000 units in stock ready to ship.

Sounds good.


Also, we have some news from the iControlpad's biggest only competitor, the GameBone (lawl). This device has the advantage of being a bit more official. However, I think it's safe to say Zodttd will not support it, and that the iControlpad will come out first. Also, it has no analog nubs.
http://toucharcade.c...one-controller/
Winner: iControlpad.



Edit: Some more info fresh from Craig's Twitter:

It has shoulder buttons on the back, they are angled to make them easy to use.

 

[quote]

Regarding the GameBone I posted about earlier: Craig has a rather confident comment on it.

It's a fake. I know from months of experiments that design would not work

 

[Exophase]

Regarding Gamebone, here's a recent update:

http://www.funkyspacemonkey.com/redesigned-gamebone-iphone-controller-support-c64-natively

Does that still look like an impossible design?

 

[quote]

That's the design I've been referring to throughout my posts, and it's the one Craig was talking about too .

The interesting thing is, it's almost the same as the original iControlpad design. So I don't know why Craig thought his idea would work and theirs wouldn't :/.
Edit: Zodttd even showed a video of the original iControlpad prototype working a while ago, I really don't know what Craig means here.

 

[mali]

^ As I understand it, Craig's tweet was refering to someone posting that updated pic.

edit:
I've been quoted.

 

[quote]

So to elaborate on my previous point,

<< That looks very similar to the new GameBone.
There's a video of Craig's working here, and yet he claims the GameBone's design 'Will not work'.
Hmmmm...

 

[Exophase]

That's the design I've been referring to throughout my posts, and it's the one Craig was talking about too .

The interesting thing is, it's almost the same as the original iControlpad design. So I don't know why Craig thought his idea would work and theirs wouldn't :/.
Edit: Zodttd even showed a video of the original iControlpad prototype working a while ago, I really don't know what Craig means here.

Sorry, I thought craig's comments were directed towards the original Gamebone pictures - which they still very well may have been. I agree that I don't see why this design is impossible and iControlPad's isn't.

 

[quote]

Sorry, I thought craig's comments were directed towards the original Gamebone pictures - which they still very well may have been.

Nah, his comment (on twitter) was a response to someone tweeting this link.