One of the greatest adaptations of the iPhone/iTouch platforms is the fact that it’s a vast playing field for developers to romp and explore to their heart’s content. Some developers decide to try their hand at an untouched genre, others recreate classics that for many whom have been gaming since the dawn of Commodore, Atari and Coleco Vision platforms (now that’s a warm fuzzy feeling) can relate to and really appreciate how far gaming has come.
One such developer is InMotion Software. The enthusiastic Brian Howard (Founder and Programmer) gave me the opportunity to discuss how their new release I Dig It came to be I Dig It follows a classic genre popularized by the 1982 retro-classic Dig Dug, and more recently Motherload. Let’s take a look at why I Dig It had me mesmerized for hours on end.
On the surface
I Dig It main campaign revolves around a character introduced as Farmer Lewis; he has basically dug himself into a hole ‘ financially and literally. With that he had a brilliant idea, converting an old bulldozer into a high tech digging machine, all in an effort to dig underground to collect items ranging from junk to the rarest of gems in order to raise money to save the farm; you can instantly begin to see the charm in the title.
From the initial “wouldn’t it be cool if’” napkin discussions at a restaurant with fellow co-workers, I Dig It went from concept to completion with a development period of seven weeks.
The scope of the game not only focused on digging, but micro management of resources such as fuel, temperature and hull protection from the harsh element that is earth, but now I think of it, water/rain would make an interesting obstacle in game play but I digress.
Gaining control of a digger
Operating a digger requires refined controls that can accomplish the job in an enjoyable and timely manner, InMotion Software thought ahead to give us full control over the digger’s movement. Utilizing a single on-screen analog stick and alternatively touch-screen controls, the latter being the least used as I found the virtual analog stick handled tasks surprisingly well. Although I mentioned in a recent article, that I felt it will be a long time coming until iPhone implemented controls replaces the tactile feel of raised buttons, I was pleasantly surprised at the responsiveness of I Dig It’s implementation.
I Dig It’s control stick was born out of the need for a good analog control stick on the iPhone. We had briefly toyed with the more popular D-pad control but found that it didn’t provide the desired level of control for the digger. So we spent some time looking at what was out there already and found that nobody (that I knew of) had really done a decent job at emulating an analog control stick. None of them had that realistic look and feel, so we took a pass at it and we are pretty happy with the results. “
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After playing for roughly 4 hours, I was quite happy the controls worked as well as they did, since one of the best features of the game is exploration, and after free-falling to the depths of the level, you will need very agile controls to get you back to the surface before you fuel tank runs dry.
Keeping up with tech
Farmer Lewis wasn’t the only one sporting high-tech gear; the team at InMotion had everything they needed to get the job done. Art Director Bradley W. Lewis outfitted himself with 3ds Max and Adobe Photoshop to accomplish his pixel and polygon pushing tasks. Xcode was used alongside a set of shiny new Unibody 13′ Macbooks and one PC to run the aforementioned 3ds Max.
More impressive was the Emblazed engine ‘ a custom 2D engine created by the team which dramatically improves programmer productivity with texture management, common rendering related tasks, and game physics by tightly integrating with the open source Chipmunk physics engine. Developers should take note in knowing that the Emblazed engine is currently being prepared for release as a third party middleware engine to those who require its functionality.
Gaining familiarity with the platform, there weren’t many hurdles InMotion came across that couldn’t be resolved, hence the impressive seven week development period.
Really the technical hurdles were pretty small, especially compared to our last title “Dungeon Defense”. By the time we started work on “I Dig It” we were actually getting pretty comfortable with the platform so there weren’t any real surprises. With that said, the trickiest part to get right was the tunneling system. What we came up with was an ingenious way of making it look great while making it really simple to implement. There were a few technologies we started playing with but they weren’t ready for prime-time, but they’ll make it into our next title… “
Being a 2D game, polycounts aren’t much of an issue, and even though the digger was created as a high poly model in 3ds Max, the resulting in-game polycounts were very modest, usually well under 100 polys in a typical scene.
Texture wise the digger used a 256×256 texture sheet and it’s rendered at a reduced size on screen, which kept the memory footprint light and quite manageable.
Although small, one of the coolest additions was the subtle particle effects, it added life to the little digger and give it character which really connected me subconsciously to game ‘ one of the most important traits for any object on screen.
In I Dig It, the particle effects are subtle, from the small exhaust puffs at idle, to the dust clouds rising from the diggers treads, to the smoke from the thruster flame. These all combine to give the digger some character and really bring him to life. Our particle effect system in I Dig It is actually very basic; the real magic is in the artwork itself. “
It takes more than one to operate a digger
Like most developers I’ve interviewed, many of them are a team of up to five talented individuals that have a common goal in mind ‘ namely to create a fun, memorable title in the shortest amount of time possible. InMotion Software is no different, I Dig It’s team consisted of three people working fulltime ‘ Bradley W. Lewis (Art) and programmers Jeremy Howa (lead) and Brian Howard. They also enlisted design support from Chris “Cookie” Graham and Jeff “Jello” Robinson’ don’t ask. 
Coming away from it all, the biggest lesson learnt was in relation to teamwork. Knowing where everyone fits in the team and their executions of their specific roles, made the entire process go much smoother.
As usual with most small scale dev teams, operating budgets are kept to a minimum while the fun level bar continues to rise and rise, in my books this is a trade off that I, and I’m sure most of you are more than happy to welcome. Priced at a modest $0.99 (as of writing), you can’t really go wrong with picking up the title, heck I guarantee you spend more than that on coffee a day. So when I asked Brian how he felt about developing for the iPhone market, he had this to say;
Why did we pick the iPhone platform? Because the mortgage industry sucks right now! In all seriousness it’s really the only platform where a couple of guys can come together and build something in such a short amount of time with only a modest investment. The App Store isn’t without its challenges (like how to stand out among 50,000 apps), and we’ve had our fair share of approval and submission frustrations, but all in all it’s been a pretty good platform. “
No argument here, I can honestly say I’ve spent greater amount of time playing titles $2.99 and under on my iTouch device than on my PS3 PSN titles, and at a fraction of the price I’ve even had lots more fun doing so.
Exploring new depths
I Dig It is definitely a title that I would love to see more improvements added ‘ such things as more obstacles, possibly even more of a story would all be things that are welcomed. As a testament to any well designed game, always leave them wanting more. And although there’s no specific plans to expand on the title, Brian Howard reassures that the possibility is always there;
I can honestly say that there wasn’t much we had to cut. We had a few ideas for expanding the digger’s world that didn’t make it in the initial release, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of an expansion update at some point. There are no specific plans for expansions to the game right now (other than bug fixes and minor improvements), but as I alluded to I wouldn’t rule out the possibility.
Rest assured there will be another update incoming, as of writing the next update to I Dig It has been sent off for approval by Apple, and it’s touting more game content with lots of improvements. And according to Brian, the submission process isn’t the real culprit here, it’s the wait.
Thanks to Brian Howard and his team at InMotion Software for taking some time out in order to conduct this tech interview. Best of luck in the future and here’s looking forward to many more hours gaming.
I Dig It Game Summary:
Developed by: InMotion Software
Published by: InMotion Software
Platforms: iPhone and iPod touch
Development time: 7 weeks
Number of Developers: 3 in-house
Purchase price: $1.99
Purchase link: I Dig It- itunes
Official websites: InMotion Software
Tito A. Belgrave is currently employed as a 3D artist at Bedlam Games in Toronto, Canada. He's also an avid freelance game journalist. 
Great game, Could not stop playing it,
To bad the campain is only 1 level but i took me 3 hours to pass this one.
Really nice game