The 1.9 update for Air Master 3D has been submitted, and should be live on the App Store soon!

What’s New:

• Added asteroids space level
• Added skies to all levels
• Detect tilt out of range and prompt to calibrate controls
• Volume slider added to options menu

The 1.8 update to Air Master 3D has been submitted for approval to the App Store, and should go live soon! The biggest change in this version is the addition of the turret mode, which is toggled by the turret button, next to the missile launcher. While in turret mode, the AI will fly your fighter for you, while you can touch on the screen to shoot at enemies. Here’s the change list:

• Turret / chase camera (touch to shoot)
• Adjusted UFO fire rate, accuracy, and damage
• Wingmen are less likely to attack shielded targets
• Updated water textures
• iOS 4 tested

Anthony from the Touch of Gaming podcast briefly reviews Air Master 3D in ToG podcast #58 at the 30:57 mark. Thanks Anthony!

Straight Aces (and Straight Aces Free) are now available in the iPhone App Store! Straight Aces is a poker-themed puzzle/combination game where you attempt to form high-value poker hands as quickly as possible while fighting the clock. I’ve been working on this game for a while now with fellow developers Aaron Calta and Zack Wallig, so I’m excited that it’s finally out there for people to enjoy. More games following the familiar casino theme can be found at the Royal Court Games website.

Air Master 3D v1.7 is available on the App Store now, with the following changes:

• iPad support
• 3GS/3rd-gen touch optimizations
• Auto-detect device orientation

Creating the native iPad version was fairly straightforward, mostly involving changes in the Apple UI guidelines (app must launch in the correct orientation, and menus must auto-rotate). I was a bit disappointed with the 3D performance of the iPad, though – triangle throughput is good, but pixel fill rate doesn’t scale up to the higher resolution. Particle effects (the clouds) and dependent texture reads (the explosion distortion effect) are especially slow in the iPad version. On the bright side, optimizing the game to run decently on the iPad has made it run silky-smooth on the 3GS!

Feel free to put your legs up and stay awhile.

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