Recently I’ve been working a lot on the Zwoptex App. For those that don’t know Zwoptex is the Cocoa desktop app to replace the current web tool at http://zwoptex.zwopple.com. As I’ve been developing I’ve found more and more that I am still extremely new to Cocoa and Objective-C which has in turn slowed the development as I’ve been researching and reading documentation more than actual coding.

Because of this I’ve changed the route of development to allow for a more rapid desktop release of the current feature set on the web tool as well as some additional ones of course and then plan to enhance it with the original feature set in mind.

Alpha 1 – Mid March 2010):

Alpha 1 will be fairly barebones. Most unfortunately it will only support the Zwoptex Sprite Sheet document a new .zss file which closely resembles the current project binary from the web tool. You will however, be able to open multiple .zss files and edit them all at once. They’ll support things like drag and drop sprites from finder and in-between sprite sheets, undo, redo, and of course most all that is currently in the web tool.

Alpha 2 – Late March 2010):

Alpha 2 will be updates to version one mostly including bug fixes, feature requests and general tweaks. This version should release fairly quickly after the release of version one depending on the user feedback etc..

Alpha 3 – Early May 2010):

Alpha 3 should see the inclusion of the Zwoptex Project document .zwtproj files. The Project-Document behaviour will closely resemble applications like XCode and Textmate.

As a side note I am looking for extra help if I find the right person for Zwoptex. If you have a good understanding of Objective-C and Cocoa and want more information please send an email to contact[at]zwopple[dot]com.

-Robert