I've seen jailbreak apps like Snapture can use volume buttons for other stuff like camera shutter, etc.

Say I have a jailbroken iPhone, how do I do it?
(I don't really care if my app went to AppStore or not. Just want to know how they do it)

AFAIK, jailbreaking your iPhone is against Apple's policy.

i know, i just want to know how they do it.
I googled the Net and read iPhone Open Application Development book (a book on jailbreak app dev). But found nothing.

Is there some way to do this without breaking Apple's policy?

This forum does not talk about how to do anything regarding jailbreaking. Apple requires you use the buttons appropriately. If you want to bypass that, you'd need to use private APIs which means jailbreaking etc etc blah blah blah and we don't discuss it.

FreakSoftware Wrote:This forum does not talk about how to do anything regarding jailbreaking. Apple requires you use the buttons appropriately. If you want to bypass that, you'd need to use private APIs which means jailbreaking etc etc blah blah blah and we don't discuss it.

You mean it is illegal to even discuss it ?
You just gonna cover your ears or what ?

warmi Wrote:You mean it is illegal to even discuss it ?
You just gonna cover your ears or what ?

As many of the iDevGames members are signed up to the iPhone developer program, the site's policy is to not break any of the terms and conditions of that program's agreement so as to reduce any conflict of interest they would have.

There are plenty of hacker sites covering coding for jailbroken iPhones so iDevGames doesn't need to cover it.

And further, we get a little help from Apple engineers once in a while. They surely will not be hanging around long if we start allowing jail-broken discussion.

jaber Wrote:Is there some way to do this without breaking Apple's policy?

Nope. The public APIs only allow access to the touchscreen and accelerometer. You can't read the silent switch, volume buttons, home button, or sleep button without private APIs, which is against Apple's TOS.

Zwilnik Wrote:As many of the iDevGames members are signed up to the iPhone developer program, the site's policy is to not break any of the terms and conditions of that program's agreement so as to reduce any conflict of interest they would have.

There are plenty of hacker sites covering coding for jailbroken iPhones so iDevGames doesn't need to cover it.

Thanks alot for the info. Could you point some of these hacker sites? Thanks again.

I hope Apple do something about this in GameKit in iPhone SDK 3.1. We know Apple somehow always turned deaf ears to us developers (their new dev forums just only started and still in beta)

I've never seen a good iPhone FPS because of this.

FPS developers for iPhone need to understand that there are many people that have a highly contrasting opinion on what the best control schemes are, some like the mouse, some like a joystick, some like console commands , some like touchscreen. You will never have a control scheme that everyone likes, the best that can be done is allpw variety. Look at the many control schemes and see which ones can be adapted to fit your game.

And foremost, DON'T RELY ON HACKS! Because someone out there will say "OMG WTF I catn cahnge me volmue this developer sucks this game breaks my itouch WTF :| "

True grammar.

Oddity007 Wrote:FPS developers for iPhone need to understand that there are many people that have a highly contrasting opinion on what the best control schemes are, some like the mouse, some like a joystick, some like console commands , some like touchscreen. You will never have a control scheme that everyone likes, the best that can be done is allpw variety. Look at the many control schemes and see which ones can be adapted to fit your game.

And foremost, DON'T RELY ON HACKS! Because someone out there will say "OMG WTF I catn cahnge me volmue this developer sucks this game breaks my itouch WTF :| "

True grammar.

Okay. I know that. We just need to tell the player some warning about those buttons.

About Handheld FPS:
Have you even played some fps on PSP, DS, or GBA?
You use the
- shoulder buttons to shoot
- analog buttons to move (or stylus in DS)
- directional buttons for jump, crouch, switch weapons, etc
- face buttons (circle-square-tri-cross) to walk and strafe

The point is you won't use face buttons to shoot. Developers have to misused those buttons for movement for best controls on a handheld. Or you have big time dodging and shooting enemies.

The same controls applies for gamepads in PS3, Xbox, 360, etc.

Just look at video reviews of iPhone ports of Duke, Prey, iFPS, etc. Everyone says movement and aiming simply sucks because of this.

jaber Wrote:Okay. I know that. We just need to tell the player some warning about those buttons.

About Handheld FPS:
Have you even played some fps on PSP, DS, or GBA?
You use the
- shoulder buttons to shoot
- analog buttons to move (or stylus in DS)
- directional buttons for jump, crouch, switch weapons, etc
- face buttons (circle-square-tri-cross) to walk and strafe

The point is you won't use face buttons to shoot. Developers have to misused those buttons for movement for best controls on a handheld. Or you have big time dodging and shooting enemies.

The same controls applies for gamepads in PS3, Xbox, 360, etc.

Just look at video reviews of iPhone ports of Duke, Prey, iFPS, etc. Everyone says movement and aiming simply sucks because of this.

I do understand your point, and matter of fact, I have all those consoles (minus Xbox) and have played shooters for all of them. I even went through that exact same question to myself, so has John Carmack in his postmortem of Wolfenstien, and I bet thousands of other developers have as well. However, if there is one thing that I have learned about Apple, its that the final user, not the developer, should have a straight forward experience. If a developer could change this, then you have an inconsistancy that will confuse or frustrate the user. Most users are whiners, give them thousands of warnings and they will still complain, so cater to them.

I am not from Apple. I do wish I could access the volume buttons for an FPS. I have gone through this, as have many others. Yet, I believe that in the end, it is up to us to adapt to how things are, not as how we want them to be. Thats what makes an Indy Wii Game (Like World Of Goo) ten-fold better than a "Professional" Wii Game (Like Jenga).

Be creative.

Maybe you should be asking yourself whether a traditional first-person shooter really makes sense on the iPhone. To me, it seems like a poor fit for the types of input that are available. Now, if someone were to make a game controller peripheral with real buttons using the OS 3.0 dock connector API, things could be different...

The volume buttons would be a really bad idea for FPS controls even if you could use them. For starters they're in different positions on each device and there's no guarantee they'll stay put in future iPods/iPhones or even be there if Apple works out a nice way to do them without buttons.

The other thing is that they're not game style buttons. So if you tried using them as fire buttons, players would be wearing them out within a few days. Along with complaining that they're not getting a good response from them anyway.