As I’m sure plenty of people have already heard, the new game we built, Star Wars: Trench Run, has recently been announced. You can check out the trailer on youtube, or read about the details of the game on starwars.com. Infrared5’s CTO Dominick Accattato and John Grden also both wrote nice blog posts on it. People really seem excited about the game too, which pretty much matches my own enthusiasm for it. It’s a top notch game, and I’ve not seen anything comparable on the app store. Our team really pushed the limits of what’s possible with the iPhone platform with this game, and I simply can’t wait for folks to get it in their hands.

So, with that, here’s a little info on the team that built the game. Infrared5’s senior engineer John Grden led the development, and acted as the overall lead on the project. Creating this game has been a dream of John’s long before the iPhone even came out. He poured everything he had into making this one of the best games out there. John is an avid Star Wars fan, as well as one of the most talented programmers I know. He made absolutely sure that every detail of the game is true to the original Star Wars Episode IV movie as possible. All sounds are the original ones, the modeling of the space crafts are exact and even elements like the color or Yavin are precise and true to the movie.

Of course, John couldn’t have built such a stellar game all by himself. Our creative director Rebecca Allen’s attention to the details and beautiful treatment of the graphics at every point in the game really make it an immersive experience. I in particular really like the unique design of the shields display, and the opening menu is one of the most inspiring that I’ve seen. Additional art elements like expert modeling, effects and texturing by Ben Throop, as well as, icons and production art by Lizzie Martin really add to the experience.

John, was also supported by our world class development team. Andy Zupko helped with optimizations, and used his math wizardry to make this game run well even on the limited resources of the iPhone 3G. Todd Anderson and Keith Peters, with their special Objective C prowess built out the UI, and Paul Gregoire did the leaderboard programming.

The core game engine uses Unity 3D. A huge thanks to Unity 3D team for creating this amazing development tool, without which the game never would have been completed as fast it was. The menus, and other elements of the game were done with native Objective C. The very fact that Unity allows for this type of interaction within the iPhone environment was key, and is one of its biggest strength. This is one aspect that I hope Adobe pays close attention to with the new Flash to iPhone stuff they are working on. (Note, I’m planning on writing a post on this subject. )

So, to the game itself. There hasn’t been a ton of information announced publicly on the game play yet. And, I’ve been reading various comments out there, with people’s concerns, suggestions and criticism. I would like to address some of the most frequent topics that have arisen:

• Is it a game that you will download and play a few times, complete the entire thing in 10 minutes and then never play it again? - No, it’s actually quite an addicting game, with a ton of replay value. The very fact that I’m still opening it up and shooting Tie Fighters after so many months of testing and development proves it. I should be done with the game at this stage, but no, I just can’t put the thing down. There’s one mission mode with several difficulty levels, and two arcade modes that get progressively harder and harder.
• Are the graphics really as good as shown in the trailer, or is it faked in the hopes that we get the game to that level before it launches? - Those are the real graphics. The game is actually done, and that trailer was made from a video feed of John Grden playing it on his iPod Touch 2nd generation device.
• When will Star Wars: Trench Run be released? - I wish I could tell you. It’s in Apple’s hands at the moment, and from what everyone at Lucas, THQ Wireless and Infrared5 knows, it could be released any day now.
• Will we support in app purchases, upgrades and new features in the game? - This is something that we are certainly considering. In fact please do post on the features you would like to see built. We will take all of them under consideration, and we will hopefully be able to get some of those in the game for your enjoyment. Of course this is not all up to me, but the main message here is that we are seriously thinking about it.

I look forward to hearing the feedback on the game once its released, and of course if you have more questions or suggestions, by all means, leave them in the comments here. If you are going to be at the Unity 3D conference this week. Let me know, as I will be there too! I’ve got the game on my phone of course; find me if you want to play it. John Grden is also doing a talk on Unity development there, and he will be showing off some more details of the game.

If you’ve not heard yet about Flash on Tap, the first ever beer festival and Flash conference, then man have you missed something big. But it’s not too late to get a ticket! We at Infrared5 and Influxis are putting together this stellar event with top notch speakers including Grant Skinner, Keith Peters, John Grden, Hoss Gifford, GMUNK, André Michelle, etc… as well as some of the best craft brewers in the country like Stone, Haverhill, Boulder and The Bruery (plus eleven others). Of course I’m also going to be presenting at the conference. It takes place on May 28 -30, 2009 in Boston, MA, USA.

So, if you’ve been thinking of attending Flash on Tap, but haven’t yet registered we have a deal for you! You can attend FREE when you register 5 or more people. And, your 4 friends each get $100 off their registration–that translates into $1,100 of savings! Email deb@flashontap.com to register your group!

I hope to see you there!

I suppose “switching” isn’t the right word; perhaps “adding to their repertoire” is a better description of what I’m talking about. Anyway, as many of you already know, we’ve been doing a lot of stuff with iPhone development lately at Infrared5. See our latest game iFly for example. Keith Peters, has been spending much of his free time developing cool games for the platform, and others on our team like John Grden and Andy Zupko are doing the same as well. It’s seems it’s not just Infrared5 guys either that are making this move. Mike Chambers, Peter Elst, Aral Balkan are just a few from the community that have been tinkering with the platform.

So, after reading Keith’s post on the subject, I thought I would ask how many of you guys out there are making this switch as well? Is this something that you are considering in the future? Are you using something like Unity 3D? And, why the iPhone? Please leave a response in the comments section.

I just wanted to write a quick post saying how excited I am to announce iFly. This fast pased flying game is Infrared5’s first application to hit the Apple App Store. It is loosely based on the “Fly Me” feature on our website. Here’s a little video of John Grden showing off his flying skills with the game. Keep in mind that this is one the harder levels.

I want to thank John Grden, Rebecca Allen, Andy Zupko, Lizzie Martin, Hilary Michaels, Dominick Accattato, Keith Peters and Mike Oldham for making this thing possible. I know that John is planning on writing up a blog post on his experience developing the game. Expect to see that in the next day or two. In the meantime, if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, go get iFly now, and give it a great review! I think you will find it as fun and addicting as I do. Of course, as always, I would love to hear your feedback in the comments here as well.

If today wasn’t already exciting enough with the inauguration of President Barack Obama, Adobe announced that they would be opening the Real Time Messaging Protocol to the public. This is great news in my opinion, and it legitimizes (from Adobe’s perspective) projects like Red5.

I really don’t have much more to add to this at the moment, except to say well done Adobe! And thank you for listening!