Future of the Obj-C Mapping

[lastkevin]

Hello,
I'm a upcoming developer of an iPhone game, and I finally found the solution to all my networking problem in ICE. This an very interessting framework and I hope it gets even better in time. But to my request, I have to ask, if the features, mentioned in the IceTouch 1.0.0 release notes, the Ice for Obj-C mapping currently lacks, will be implemented isoon? Although the current implementation is already useful, I would appreciate to extend my networking ability as soon as possible to the bluetooth ad-hoc pairing the iPhone supports. It would be nice to see a implementation of freeze, too, but this is not so important, because one can use CoreData instead.
So, will most of the features be supported by IceTouch in a near future or is there another way to implement a bluetooth endpoint easily?

best regards, kevin

[benoit]

Hi Kevin,

Could you detail what you are looking for regarding the Bluetooth support?

The next IceTouch release will provide support for bluetooth communication with iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad accessories. However, it won't support peer-to-peer bluetooth connectivity. We don't have immediate plans to add this but if there's enough commercial demand for it, we could change our mind .

There are also no plans to add support for Freeze with IceTouch, it's probably best to use the CoreData APIs here instead.

Cheers,
Benoit.

[lastkevin]

Thanks for the quick reply! If you going to implement a bluetooth endpoint, in how far should it work? I considered an automatically discovery of potential available iOS devices or at least the user can start a discovery on his own. The purpose is to let the user play against friends or people with iphones directly, omitting the battery depleting way over the cellular network and to challenge iPod Touch owners, when there is no WiFi.
If you are planning to release a new version of IceTouch, can you at least give me hint when this may happen? The last release is almost a year old and I need this information to plan my development.

Another question that come to my mind is if the next release will at least support implicit contexts, because these are very important for a session management.

I appreciate the decision to implement a built-in bluetooth-support, and like to hear a bit more of how it will look like.

[benoit]

Hi Kevin,

I don't think the The Ice Touch bluetooth transport will work for you. For now, it only allows communications with accessories. Peer-to-peer communications between iPhone/iPod Touch won't be supported with the next release.

I can't really provide a release date for the next Ice Touch version but it will probably be released in the coming months...

I've added support for implicit contexts to our TODO list but I can't promise the next version will support it.

If you have a commercial interest for these features, we could consider implementing them for the next release, if this is the case, please contact us at sales@zeroc.com to discuss it.

Cheers,
Benoit.