Tuesday, October 16, 2012

10 develop, 20 test, 30 goto 10

Still wainting (a mix between want and wait) for that first Loopr update? We too...

It's definitely been too long a road since v1.0 and to that first update. iOS is a great platform, but building healthy foundations to an app like Loopr is some pretty serious business. We could have expected. It's a bit more that 2 month old now, and while it's probably normal for a 2 person team already working 100% on something else to be swamped by the extent of the task, it's still frustrating not to be able to share more with the final users (beta testers cheer please ;) ).

In terms of development iOS is fantastic, but for serious programming it requires great knowledge of many things. Not only do you need to be fluent with many crucial libraries (Core Audio, Cocoa, Open GL, ...), but the mix of C++ and objective C, the differences in SDKs, hardware, ...  and the necessity to take in account the machines' performance limitations (iPod Touch 4G, we're looking at you! ;) ), well, makes it easy to get swamped with. And that's evidently only the tip of the iceberg. We could speak of UI development and using at best the real estate offered by the oh-so-diverse resolutions available (iPhone5, iPad, ...), the integration of ergonomical principles harmonizing hand and foot control, ...

that was yesterday or issues++;

It gets tougher when we synthesize feedback from the community and our own musical requirements: what shall we focus on? We constantly compromise and balance trying to fine-tune towards efficiency and creativity. While it's just a looper, it still means loads of trial-and-error, no way streets, and cliffs (it's a bit like Apple maps right now). And having so many simultaneous development threads running, with issues ranging from 'what color looks best' to 'what about audio watermarking', definitely makes it more than a one sheep flock to handle (where's the sheepdog!).

So as long as the engine isn't N2O supercharged, our minds gently rocked by its steady idle, I'll guess we'll have to restrain from uploading the v1.01 . We can rejoice however knowing that the lengthy process is indeed already well implicated with the many future versions down that never ending road to the ultimate looper... ;)

No comments:

Post a Comment