Kira's Blog

Designing iPhone-Friendly Websites

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 09:39:57 CDT

I've posted my collection of notes about designing iPhone-friendly websites.

I haven't applied it to my own site yet, but there are several pages on the SJ Games site that are now mobile-friendly.

Eggster

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:22:53 CDT

My new iPhone game "Eggster" is finally out! Eggster is an easter-egg-hunting game in the match-3 style (like Bejeweled). The goal is to collect eggs; you get them by lining them up at the end of a match. The game pieces are spring-themed - flowers, rabbits, and other critters.

I created all of the art for this one myself, using my Wacom tablet and Photoshop. I did refer to photos for a few things, but everything was drawn and colored by hand. I love how they turned out, especially the flowers (and the ladybug). :)

After Holiday Bells I thought I wasn't going to do another seasonal app, but... I've been working on the match-3 game code for a while, and the game I originally intended it for isn't going to be ready for a while. I sketched out the idea for Eggster one day (back in January...) and liked it, so here it is. :) It's been fun to make, and it's a lot of fun to play!

Gemmed!

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:09:10 CDT

I've been meaning to write about this little gem for a while. I found it in the iPhone app store a few weeks ago while I was looking for matching games. Like Bejeweled, the mechanic is to match 3 of the same kind of gems on the board. Unlike Bejeweled, however, that's not the goal of the game. The goal is to get the little monsters to their exits. Each monster eats gems of its own color to progress across the board. A level doesn't end until all your monsters are out. There are also several different power-ups that affect the board.

The monsters themselves are just square little guys with big eyes and funny mouths. They don't look like much in a still image:

But they're really quite cute and charming once they get moving. When two or more monsters are side by side, they'll start dancing. If a monster hasn't moved in a while, it gets bored and falls asleep. (zZz)

I downloaded the free version (Gemmed! Lite) first. The lite version has just 6 levels; the full version has 50. This seems to be a common trend for lite vs. full games on the app store. I ran through all the levels of the lite version in less than 20 minutes, and went ahead and bought the full version right then.

I've been playing the game a little every day since I bought it, even though I've completed the 50-level run a few times. The cuteness of the monsters is compelling. :) And the more I play, the more I appreciate some of the developer's choices and attention to detail. For example, if you're stuck on a level for a while, the game will automatically help you out, so you can finish the level rather than quitting the game in frustration. And if you run out of moves, you can retry the level, rather than having to start over from scratch.

Gemmed! is a really cute match-3 game; if you like games like Bejeweled, I definitely recommend checking it out.

Why The App Store Doesn't Need Demos

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 09:32:44 CST

I continue to see posts around the net from developers wanting Apple to enable demo versions of apps on the app store. I think it's a bad idea, and if implemented, will lead to complete armageddon on the app store... and a huge loss in revenue for Apple and developers.

Here's why.

Pinch media recently posted a presentation on app store trends. On page 13 there's a chart showing paid app usage over time. After just under 11 days, 90% of users no longer use an app.

Image copyright Pinch Media

Now imagine that you had a 7-day trial for an app. You've seen all the app will do, played through the game from start to end, finished every level. There's nothing more to see. What reason is there for you to buy it?

Granted, 7 days is a long time in appsville. I'd say 24 hours is more realistic. But according to Pinchmedia's stats, 70% of users don't use an app even after day one.

How many of your apps do you still use regularly? Would you still buy them after having used them for a few days?

Personally, I prefer the current situation: the developer can create a lite version (their "demo") of the app and post it on the app store. This way the developer chooses which features to include in the lite version. The developer can craft it in such a way that compels users to buy. ("The Amulet if Yendor is just beyond this door! But you'll have to upgrade to get it! Click here to buy the full version of DungeonCrawlies!")

And similarly the user can decide if they want to try the lite version, or just go ahead and pay a few bucks for the full version.

I love demos, don't get me wrong. I expect a demo for a software application that costs $30, $50, or $100 or more. But I don't expect a demo for a 99-cent app on the app store. At current app store prices, an app costs as much as a can or two of soda. The entire app store model right now is that of a cheap treat, a throw-away bit of fun. And that's fine. But if all apps have full-featured-but-time-limited demos, then a lot of apps will make nothing at all. And developers will have to raise prices on apps to make up for the loss.

That $2 game sure was fun, but would you still have bought it after having played it for 24 hours? What if it cost $10? $20?

I hope that if Apple does decide to enable demos, they make it optional for developers. This way the developer can choose whether to allow a time-limited demo, or to create their own lite version.

Auditorium

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 11:03:51 CST

I discovered this game a few weeks ago, and was really enchanted by it: Auditorium. It's a game of light and music... and math, of course, although there are no complicated equations to figure out. The goal is to use the control circles to redirect (or split) the flow of light particles so that they hit the music targets.

They say that this is only a demo; the full game is coming soon. I can't wait.

My First iPhone App: Holiday Bells

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 14:43:14 CST

I've just completed my first iPhone app for the app store. It's called Holiday Bells and is a handbell-ringing app. I'm so pleased at how it turned out; I think it looks and sounds great.

The app has three views: jingle bells (shake to ring 'em), a single handbell (swing the phone to ring the bell), and a set of eight handbells that you can tap out Christmas tunes on. Of course you have to know the tunes you want to play. Maybe next year I'll modify it to include some tap-along tunes...

It's definitely been a learning experience. It took me a lot longer to finish than I expected it would, between writing the code to detect a swing/ring, and finding good bell sounds to use after I decided that synthesized sounds just didn't cut it. Then I had to find (or make) nice art for the app. I got a lot of the background art from iStockphoto, which allows iPhone developers to use art under their standard license... at least until you sell 500K copies. (I know I won't get anywhere near that, though if I sell even 1% of that amount, I will gladly buy extended licenses for all the art I used.) Then I had to make a nice looking icon for the app, a bigger (512x512) icon for the app store, and screen shots to show on the app page. I definitely spent a lot of time in Photoshop while polishing off the app.

I also ended up changing some of the functionality; originally I had wanted the single handbell to change pitch depending on how you twisted the phone. I had it kinda working, but accelerometer noise often resulted in stray bell tones, so you couldn't play an accurate tune that way. It was more frustrating than fun. I also found that twisting the phone a lot resulted in wrist strain. So I changed it to just play one tone, and then added the musical scale panel so you can change the pitch of the bell:

I debated whether to make the bell play a sound when you tap a new note on the scale. Ultimately I decided not to - if you change the note, you still have to swing the phone to ring the bell. My theory there was that in the remote chance someone were using this for a performance, they would not want it to make noise when they re-tune the bell. I'll probably make this a preference in a future version though.

So, there it is: my first iPhone app. I'm proud of it, and I hope it'll be well received in the app store. You can download it here from iTunes.

Snow!

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 21:07:11 CST

Well... so much for the bananas! We had a rare snowfall in Houston tonight. I hope some of the plants will survive...

Baby Bananas!

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:08:37 CDT

I have a banana plant in my back yard. It's monstrous - maybe 15 or 20 feet tall. I've been brutal to it... I cut it to the ground in January of 2007, and it came back with a vengeance. I cut it back again this past January, and again it grew back to its full height. The recent hurricane shredded most of its leaves, but they're still green so I've left it alone.

Today, much to my surprise and delight, I discovered a big pod on it, filled with blooms and baby bananas. How cool! I've no idea if they'll be edible, but its very neat to see.

Full album here.

iPhone Bootcamp

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:07:21 CDT

Last month I attended "iPhone Bootcamp", a 5-day intensive programming class done by the folks at Big Nerd Ranch. I'd read good things about their classes, particularly the Cocoa Bootcamp; if I'd been able to afford it, I would have done both. But at $3500 per class (which does include room and board for a week), I had to pick just one, so the iPhone class was it.

It actually worked out pretty well for me that way. I bought Aaron's book, Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, back in May, and spent much of the summer working through it. I found learning Cocoa to be hard; sometimes it'd take me a whole week to work through one chapter. But I wanted to take my time and be sure I really understood it. (Arguably this process might have gone faster if I'd gone to the Cocoa class, but then again I might just have been lost. we'll never know.) :)

So by the time the iPhone class rolled around, I felt comfortable with Objective-C and with XCode. I'd also messed around with the iPhone SDK; had looked at Apple's example code and had even tried writing some apps of my own. (Though I hadn't gotten very far; I was still pretty confused about a lot of things.)

We got a spiral-bound book full of info and examples on most every aspect of iPhone programming, from text handling to view controllers to advanced stuff like OpenGL and Core Animation. Our instructor, Joe Conway, would lecture a bit on each chapter, then we'd have time to work on the example code from that chapter. (And each chapter also had some challenge projects to do, if you finished up the example code in time.) Joe was great about helping out if you got stuck or had questions on anything.

Classes ran from 9am to 6:30pm each day (9am to 12:30pm on Friday), with breaks at 12:30 for lunch, and a mid-afternoon break. You could also return after dinner and work on code; Joe stayed in the lab for several hours each evening helping anyone who had questions. (Admittedly I didn't take as much advantage of this as I should have, but after sitting in a chair for 8+ hours, I was usually more than ready to go kick back in my room.)

So, was it worth it? Yes, absolutely. The class made things a lot clearer for me. I got good experience by writing lots of code (and I got to see lots of errors, too, so I'm starting to recognize just what those cryptic error messages mean now). ;) I got good examples from the book, and learned how to do stuff I'd not done before. In particular the discussion of view controllers was great. And we learned (and got plenty of experience with) how to install apps on our phones.

Anyway, if you're wanting to learn iPhone programming and can muster the funds to go, I definitely recommend it. And in theory, once you *do* learn, you'll be able to sell apps on the store and recoup the cost of the class. (Though I'm still working on that part of the evil plan...) :)

Home Finally

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 12:17:05 CDT

Power was finally restored to my house on Wednesday, after 12 days without. Life's getting back to normal here...

I do feel fortunate that my house wasn't damaged in the storm. Still, I'm seriously considering moving elsewhere. Somewhere a bit further inland... :)