I am happy to announce that iDOS v2.2 is now available in AppStore.
This is a major update for iPhone, with brand new UI redesign for
iPhone. The work on iPad is still going on, but I figure it would be
more safe to release iPhone version first, so we can get feedbacks in
time.
iDOS was first released in Oct 26, 2010. If you remember well, the resolution of iPhone at that time had always been 320x480@2x, a lovely number by the way, up to iPhone 4S. After that point, there has been a Cambrian explosion of iPhone screens, and iDOS wasn't very good at using the extra screen space. And frankly, there was no point to update UI, since all you can do in the app was to play three bundled demos. Later on, we weren't even allowed to update with any bundled games at all.
After hybernating for almost 10 years, iDOS finally can live a normal life, and now I want to give it all the nice things it deserves.
Gamepad
The gamepad has been totally rewritten, both graphics and code. Given the larger working space, two more buttons have been added to the gamepad. If you don't like them, you can hide them. Tap on the small screwdriver icon at the bottom, the gamepad will enter editing mode. You can tap on any button to change its keybinding or disable it. You can't hide dpad though.Gamepad buttons can be mapped to a text command. For example, if
you are a text adventure gamer, you may find it handy to bind one
of the buttons to LOOK, or INVENTORY.
You can even bind arrow up button to NORTH, and down
button to SOUTH. The key binding of gamepad is saved
under the config directory of each iDOS package. So that any game
can have its own settings.
Previously, the dpad works only in 4 directions, that is, only one arrow button can be down at a time. Now if you move your fingers to the northeast direction, the two arrow buttons, up and right, will be down simultaneously. This makes movement control more interesting in games like wolf3d.
Keyboard
The soft keyboard is also updated with fine tuned layout so that keys line up better than ever. On tall iphone models, you are going to have an extra row for all sorts of symbols. If you are using iDOS for programming purpose, you will find it much more convenient than having to tap fn all the time.Floppy drive
The floppy drive button can be used to mount an external folder. After you tap the button, in the file browser, tap select button on the top, so that the file list enters selecting mode. Then you can tap on a folder, .idos or not, it will be automatically mounted as disk D. Right now, it simply issues mount commands, but we hope to find a better way in future.I hope you will enjoy the new look and the new features. Going forward, we will implement the same changes on iPad. There are still rough edges, but we will sort them out in upcoming releases.