The first time you log in with the Special Edition, you’ll get at least one free Christmas  item gift. As you level up, you’ll earn more free items! Make sure you log in and play often to collect all 35! The first time you sign in you’ll also get a free gift of 30 Spectral Credits!

But remember, you must be playing through the Holiday 2010 Special Edition app to earn the awards, and they will only be available for a limited time! Get it now!

The iDuel Online Holiday 2010 Special Edition also includes a new Winter duel background and more new Christmas themed art.

All the latest updates to the normal version of the game (iDuel Online 1.1.1968) also apply to this special edition.

Celebrate with us all month long!

This update includes 19 new items. You’ll also notice a brand new Equip Screen background. We’ve also fixed many bugs and made several optimizations to improve performance.

Keep your eyes open for our upcoming Christmas update, the iDuel Online Holiday 2010 special edition!

All users must update if they wish to continue playing, since server updates are also going into effect with this app update. You must also be running iOS 4 to play. You can read about all the changes on our previous blog post.

As always, your feedback is greatly appreciated. If you have any comments or suggestions please be sure to send them our way, and if you enjoy the game please take a moment to rate it on the App Store!

Update:

Our apologies for the slight hiccup some of you may have experienced as our servers switched over to the latest version. Everything should be running smoothly now!

Here’s a brief rundown of the changes in this version:

• Removed the Unranked Duel Lobby.
• Listen to iTunes music while you play or make a playlist for iDuel Online from within the game!
• Added the option to turn off battle animations.
• Apprentice classes with a lower level requirement give players access to classes earlier in the game!
• 21 new items!
• Overhauled the game’s server to improve performance and stability.
• Bug fixes to take care of crashes and other issues.
• Game balance changes: There is now a Match Point penalty for fighting sleepwalkers or players that are too far below your level.
• The game now requires iOS 4 to run.

I’ll post again as soon as the update is actually live.

CustomAlertView Screen Shot

With some of the changes in iOS4, it has become more difficult to create UIAlertViews with UITextFields as subviews and have it look right.  So I went ahead and made a fully customizable alert view replica called CustomAlertView (clever huh?).

One thing I didn’t want to do was re-factor a bunch of my code, so I recreated most of the methods in UIAlertView based on the description of their functionality in the API.  Some of the names are slightly different, particularly in the CustomAlertViewDelegate.  I have attached a sample project that should show how to use it, but I’ll also paste it below.

Two things to note in the project are that I connected the UITextFields in Interface Builder and that I set the main view to be the RootViewController of the main window.  The code relies on being able to access the root view controller, you you need to make sure it is set.  Here’s an excerpt from how I did it in CustomAlertViewSampleAppDelegate.m. The sample project at the end of the post contains the complete source.

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions {

// Override point for customization after application launch.

// Add the view controller’s view to the window and display.
[window setRootViewController:viewController];
[window makeKeyAndVisible];
return YES;
}

Also, be sure to get the images from the sample project as well if you want to use this as is.

I hope you find this useful!  Please let me know if you find any bugs or ways to clean this up!  Also, I didn’t include the animation to move the CustomAlertView up to make space for the keyboard, but I can if people want

Download: Custom Alert View Code and Sample