Did I say it was the end of that book?

Hey, look, it's running on my telly:

Postface

It's the end of this book. I've made a few final changes to the game and am now looking forward to starting another project.

First, I've gotten a few friends to translate the app for me. Thanks to Anton, Bruno, Javier, Wes, João, and OnTranslate (I couldn't find friends in all languages that I could bother to do work for free). As a result, the app is much better now!

 

Then I added support for Bluetooth game controllers. Once the device is pared with the iOS device, it just works with the game. This meant adding focus support to menus and in game buttons so everything is navigable without touching the screen, using a d-pad, and then controlling the spaceship with the analog sticks. The navigation means each element in the menus knows where the focus goes once up, down, left or right is pressed. It also makes the game half ready for Apple TV.

The focused element is slightly enlarged and there's a dust of particles around it:

While in the menus, I've also updated the high scores table to show up to 100 scrollable players. GameCenter only allows me to query 100 at a time, so I settled with that.

Next in line was the virtual joystick, which was due a redesign. Here's a snapshot of the final look:

A couple of things I added really showcase what this project was all about: have fun while creating it!

One is the odd shooting star that dashes across space once in a while. It's so fast that it's hard to take a good screenshot of it.

The other one is the lightning bolt that shows up when the rocket gets too close to a blackhole. This was a cute trigonometry exercise, as it's generated in real time. Screenshot does it no justice.

Ah, yes... I've also renamed it NAVICELLA. It's Full of Stars! was such a common name.

Now that it's finished, I'll just let it sail away in its lonely interstellar voyage.