One of our favorite iPhone games ever has just got a version 3.0 update and with this downloadable content that includes both new ships and levels. If you have missed our previous post on Infinity Gene you can read it here. Here is just a little snippet of what we thought about it:

The graphics are fantastic. Retro-vector just adds to the feel of fast paced modern shooter. The pace is just right, not too fast nor too slow, progression feeds sense of success and I just can’t put it down.

What’s included in the Ver. 3.0.0
1. Enjoy the game like a side-scrolling shooter by turning your device sideways and switching to horizontal display mode!
2. Your “OPTION” ship appears by filling your Evolution Gauge during gameplay.
3. Download ships and unique stages based on DARIUS, NIGHT STRIKER, METAL BLACK and other arcade classics!

At $1.99 a pop, the 3 upgrades may be considered somewhat expensive, costing you a total $10.96 (!) for the whole game. If you haven’t played the game before, it’s a must regardless. If you like it, like we do, you won’t think twice about downloading extra content. The basic install should keep you going for hours anyway or just try the lite version available here instead (itunes link).

That legendary shooter, “Space Invaders” has evolved once again with an unprecedented new system!
The game starts off looking like the classic “Space Invaders”. But the more you play, the more the game “evolves”. Unlock new stages and new system features for a whole new shooting game experience!

Platform: iPhone
Version: 3.0
Cost: $4.99
Developer: TAITO Corporation

addLib mixes the Grid System, a fractal theory, the golden ratio and the Facial Recognition System, and then lays out your photos acordingly leaving it up to you to choose which generated composition you like best. What may seem like random composition the pieces are created using rigorous systems mentioned above. If the composition generated is not to your liking, hit the reload button for the application to create a whole new composition.

In addition to being able to save generated images to your photo library, you can also post them to twitter (twitpic). addLib was developed by WOW.

WOW is a japanese development company developing innovative applications by a process of design, art and programming, from the webapps, iPhone and Android application with JavaScript and Flash, to art installations made with Processing and Quartz Composer.

(Thanks Mika)

Platform: iPhone
Version: 1.0
Cost: $1.99
Developer: WOW

Created by Diana Lange, this project is a visualization of Thedor Fontane‘s poem “Brücke am Tay”. Included are 5 different applications, each one visualising the poem in a slightly different way.

Built with Processing. More information at thesis.diana-lange.de + download the full archive including the applications and thesis PDF document (in german).

Links to 5 apps processing web applets:

Music in the video: While the Trees Sleep by David Nevue.

See also The Preservation of Favoured Traces [Processing]

iPhone development is red hot right now, with thousands of individual developers and big brands trying to carve out a miniscule piece of the Apple’s rather large pie for themselves. Aside from the profit aspect, there are many creative programmers looking to experiment with a powerful, hand-held, multitouch multitouch device. With it’s advanced features, such as audio input / output, accelerometer, wifi, bluetooth, and location awareness, the iPhone really is a device that many people have been dreaming about for years. To program for the iPhone, a developer typically has to learn ObjectiveC and it doesn’t hurt to know some C / C++ since a lot of iPhone libraries are written in that.

ObjectiveC is an object oriented language like any other, and takes a little time to become familiar with it, due to it’s specific brand of memory management and unique syntax.

The interface framework (UIKit) is good and very well suited to touch devices, though it’s clear that Apple doesn’t really want people to mess with it. Trying to change the look and feel of built in components can be a real challenge (or be downright impossible) sometimes, since the source code to those components is not available.

People looking to get the best possible performance or write cross-platform code will find that plain ObjectiveC has trouble meeting those goals.

For these reasons, I chose to look for an alternative that would let me work mostly in C++ which I am already very familiar with. The one I decided on was the libNUI framework. Having worked extensively with Juce, I’ve come to appreciate the value of a comprehensive cross-platform framework that compiles under Mac, Linux and PC and provides abstracted access to low-level hardware such as audio, networking and graphics. LibNUI offers the same thing – a set of code that handles all the OS specific stuff for you, and provides you with a set of GUI widgets that can be easily extended or modified to meet your needs. It also provides you with the full source code so you can see how everything works and make your own changes. Since it’s 99% written in C++, performance for stuff like audio is very good. Plus, I can compile the same application on my Mac desktop, my PC or my Linux box and it works with minimal changes. I’ve currently written two iPhone apps using libNUI – bleep!BOX and bleep!Synth. I am currently exploring a Mac/PC VST version of bleep!BOX as well, and was able to get it compiled and running in only a couple hours.

Some caveats about libNUI – it’s still very heavily under  development and things are being added and fixed all the time. Documentation is a little sparse but it’s getting better. There are tutorial applications you can build to learn your way around. But if you are not comfortable digging into code and figuring out how it works, libNUI may not be for you. Expect to spend several days just learning how things work.

For those looking to experiment with graphics and sound, there is also Open Frameworks which was used in the Thump app. It’s a very basic framework around OpenGL and audio/networking protocols. It’s nowhere near as exhaustive as libNUI, but if you want something basic that you can pick up quickly, OF is a good option. Like libNUI, it’s also cross platform and open source (and C++).

If games are what you’d like to get into, a couple of the major open source 3d engines, Ogre3D and Irrlicht now compile on the iPhone. No doubt they can be used for creative coding too.

Have another iPhone framework that we missed? Post it in the comments.

untitled 246 is a video for a song with code and music created by Eduardo Omine.

Video was made with Processing, toxiclibs, penner.easing lib, Robert Hodgin’s perlin noise movement, and Paul Bourke’s 2D line intersection algorithm.

Music made with FL and MDA JX10.

Eduardo Omine is a creative developer working with Flash, Processing, OpenFrameworks, etc.

See blog for more info.

NodeBox 2 is a new Mac and Windows software application for creating generative art using procedural graphics. Written in Python, and inspired by it’s written code Mac only predecessor NodeBox, the new version is object based oriented programming at its front with ability to create your own operations by changing code for any existing nodes.

Similarly to QuarzComposer or Graphic Toolbox, you create effects/modifiers by combining different nodes. Nodes, for the time being are a collection of basic shapes and standard modifiers such as copy, translate, grid but of course considering you can modify all of these and create your own, you knowledge of Python will decide how far you can take the app.

NodeBox is free and open-source and developed by Frederik De Bleser and Tom De Smedt.

You can download and try the application here.

See also NodeBox research site.

(via interactiondesign.se)

Created by Kunal Anand, Looks Delicious is a collection of visualizations for different Delicious users displaying their tagging behaviour.

The looks del.icio.us project is my first attempt to combine graphics design with programming. The concept is to see how users develop and sustain their tagging methodologies on del.icio.us.

Looks Del.icio.us was created in python with a custom layout engine and graphics library. Although stylised / post processed they are nevertheless a wonderful collection.

looks del.icio.us

Kunal worked at Grockit, MySpace, and NASA. Before all that, I graduated from Babson College and attended courses at Stanford, Harvard, LSE, and Olin. I enjoy visualizing data, writing music, obsessing over the Superman universe, and creating mixed media pieces. more..

(Via Datavisualization.ch)

X3 Studios just launched The Wallpaper Application, web-application that allows anyone to create personalized wallpapers on the fly.

You begin with a simple background and from the left hand side menu you can choose a number of graphics elements you want to add. These can be scaled, coloured and rotated all with drag and drop. Text is also included with some pretty cool fonts as well as ability to share and download your creations.

You can find it here + see a video tutorial here.

(via designyoutrust.com)

Space Invaders Infinity Gene is now in the AppStore! Exactly what we hoped for, the game is absolutely incredible. I have now reached sector 3 and the game is getting seriously more difficult. I have collected three weapons; rapid fire, seeker and wave and for now feel most conformable with the first. I can see how other weapons will be more useful later but we’ll see as we go.

The graphics are fantastic. Retro-vector just adds to the feel of fast paced modern shooter. The pace is just right, not too fast nor too slow, progression feeds sense of success and I just can’t put it down. Seems like this is not going to be a particulary productive day, and no, I don’t get paid to play games, unfortunately.

I can comfortably say Infinity Gene has just become on of my top 10 games for the iPhone!

Get it! An absolute must! Why are you still reading this? =]

That legendary shooter, “Space Invaders” has evolved once again with an unprecedented new system!
The game starts off looking like the classic “Space Invaders”. But the more you play, the more the game “evolves”. Unlock new stages and new system features for a whole new shooting game experience!
How your game evolves is entirely up to you!!!

Platform: iPhone
Version: 1.0
Cost: $4.99
Developer: TAITO Corporation

Space Invaders Infinity Gene [iPhone] from CreativeApplications.Net on Vimeo.

Siggi Eggertsson has just posted this awesome new video: Supernova. Very Siggi signature style if you haven’t seen his work before.

I don’t want to be  human, I want to see gamma rays, I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of I am, I cant even express these things properly, I have to contextualize complex ideas….in this stupid limiting human language.

Contemporary-Pixel-Graphic-Fiesta. (After Effects?)

A music video by Siggi Eggertsson for artist / musician Lawrence Cepstral.

Best watched in HD

Supernova from Siggi Eggertsson on Vimeo.