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The Official iPhone/iPod Touch Gaming Thread
- Thread starter Matix
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jonnybryce
Member
:lolKhanage said:Edge 1.2 update is up!!! 3 new Levels!
GO GET IT NOW!!!
Edit:
Be aware... The update wiped my save file! But I'm not mad... How can I be mad at you EDGE!Just another reason to play through it again!
thanks
Just a quick rant.... I hate to do this, but I need to...
Developing for iPhone is a pain in the ass.
I have one game on the appstore, Star Ride, I wanted to add features, so I submit an update to Apple review. It's been almost 3 weeks, and the upgrade is still in review...
Meanwhile the lite version goes live(submitted a week ago)... what the hell? What kind of queue is that? a LIFO?
Anyway, there's a bug in the lite version. There was none when I tested it on my device, but when you upload the binary, you have to build and sign with the development certificate, and you can't test what you just built, so it's kind of a leap of faith. So now the italian version of star ride lite instead of the localized text has some nice debug test(btw, that's an xcode bug with the localized.strings in the it version). I submitted the patch an hour after the release, but now it'll take at least one week to go live.
It's so hard to get some visibility on the appstore(so hard that I'm spending most of my free time promotinig, instead of developing, and that sucks), and you have no control whatsoever on your app once it's live... so if something goes wrong, you're pretty much screwed. I just hope they do something to speed up the update queue over the new apps one, right now it's frustrating.
Developing for iPhone is a pain in the ass.
I have one game on the appstore, Star Ride, I wanted to add features, so I submit an update to Apple review. It's been almost 3 weeks, and the upgrade is still in review...
Meanwhile the lite version goes live(submitted a week ago)... what the hell? What kind of queue is that? a LIFO?
Anyway, there's a bug in the lite version. There was none when I tested it on my device, but when you upload the binary, you have to build and sign with the development certificate, and you can't test what you just built, so it's kind of a leap of faith. So now the italian version of star ride lite instead of the localized text has some nice debug test(btw, that's an xcode bug with the localized.strings in the it version). I submitted the patch an hour after the release, but now it'll take at least one week to go live.
It's so hard to get some visibility on the appstore(so hard that I'm spending most of my free time promotinig, instead of developing, and that sucks), and you have no control whatsoever on your app once it's live... so if something goes wrong, you're pretty much screwed. I just hope they do something to speed up the update queue over the new apps one, right now it's frustrating.
jonnybryce
Member
Bliddo said:
That does suck. Sorry about that. Can you update the description and say there's an incoming patch and to please check back in a week or something to that effect?
As for this Flow nonsense, it's out there for free and I really don't see the issue. Games copy eachother all the time, atleast this time there's no profit being made.
yurinka
Member
A Japanese site uploaded some screenshots and a gameplay video of Jungle Bloxx :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyu_DpB3lWw
The video shows the gameplay of some of the first levels, with normal rocks, fire rocks, and unbreakable rocks. The game features like 10 types of rocks, and match 3 minigames.
Source (more screenshots inside) :
http://www.appbank.net/2009/06/24/iphone-application/33439.php
IGN preview :
http://wireless.ign.com/articles/996/996008p1.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyu_DpB3lWw
The video shows the gameplay of some of the first levels, with normal rocks, fire rocks, and unbreakable rocks. The game features like 10 types of rocks, and match 3 minigames.
Source (more screenshots inside) :
http://www.appbank.net/2009/06/24/iphone-application/33439.php
IGN preview :
http://wireless.ign.com/articles/996/996008p1.html
Khanage said:
Nice, three more levels. I've been intentionally not finishing the game so I can space the levels out. Its nice to see them supporting the game with new content like this.
Thanks for the heads up about wiped game saves. 'Fortunately' for me my scores are mostly C's and D's on every level, so I could use the practice. :lol
Well well well, macrumors report that the 3GS might pack a lot more punch than initially thought: it was initially thought to have an SGX 520 (7mpoly/s, 250mpx/s) but a driver called "IMGSGX535GLDriver" has been discovered on the device, and a dev commented on the AnandTech article that at WWDC an iPhone engineer told him it was an SGX 535 (when he asked for which GPU datasheets to look up).
That's pretty significant, because the 535 pushes 28mpoly/s (and I'd assume the fillrate goes up accordingly), which puts it square in PSPGPU-land (33mpoly/s, fillrate of 664mpx/s according to the official specs).
That's pretty significant, because the 535 pushes 28mpoly/s (and I'd assume the fillrate goes up accordingly), which puts it square in PSPGPU-land (33mpoly/s, fillrate of 664mpx/s according to the official specs).
FWIW I've seen a post indicating that there's a way to test your final build, but not being an iPhone dev I didn't save itBliddo said:
Dreamwriter
Member
jonnybryce said:
Sure, they copy each other all the time. But when a game is such a blatantly obvious ripoff, only a jerk calls it a "new, unique game completely in a class of its own". Also, the controversy started because the author of Flow had released the source code to it, and thought this game may have used that source without crediting him, and *that* would have truly been wrong.
Cromulent_Word
Member
Furthermore, they were originally charging $0.99 for the game - otherwise known as profiting from thatgamecompany's work.Dreamwriter said:
Gamers should not support this type of blatant, disrespectful and dishonest copying of a game... it devalues and trivializes the insane amount of work Jenova and thatgamecompany put into making flOw a special game.
They copied the art (as literally as they could), the gameplay (again, as literally as they could) and then claimed ignorance. Then when people called their bluff, they changed their tune in an effort to save face. Thats not fair, in any way, to thatgamecompany... who are some of the best people in videogames today.
Even for free, I refuse to download this.
jonnybryce
Member
Dreamwriter said:
Oh. Well then that's reason to be upset, credit should always be given. I understand why it's an issue better now. As for it existing, that shouldn't be a problem in my opinion, but the politics behind it, sure.
I agree. A tasteful clone of a game is fine so long as you make steps to make the game "genre" (if you can call it that) your own. For example, I'm currently enjoying Mecho Wars which is clearly inspired by Advance Wars, but there's enough changes in there where it never feels like they should be paying Intelligent Systems royalties for sales of their game.
This flOw clone is blatant beyond belief and that guy shouldn't have made a dime, whether he wrote the code himself or not.
This flOw clone is blatant beyond belief and that guy shouldn't have made a dime, whether he wrote the code himself or not.
Stoney Mason
Banned
yurinka said:
Jungle Bloxx is a nice casual game. I think some accelerometer use added in with the physics would have been a good addition but still a good game even without it.
California Gold Rush
3D Rollercoaster Rush
Crazy Penguin Catapult 2
and Jungle Bloxx are all pretty good games you guys have put out recently. I think Digital Chocolate nicely hits that casual simple market.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
Ah, nice to see that Apple would allow a blatant ripoff game on the store, while they reject a perfectly legal C64 emulator.
Stoney Mason
Banned
Lord Error said:
To be fair generally speaking as long as a game tends to follow the rules in coding and certain other standards regarding sex and violence they let it pass and then if complaints crop up later they deal with it after the fact in a number of ways.
I'm not defending their approval process as I have issues with it in many cases but this is mostly consistent with their slightly inconsistent approval process if you catch my drift
Harbor Master is a pretty fun little game. Pretty blatant ripoff of the Flight Control gameplay, but still enjoyable. The added twist is that once you get boats in the dock, you have to wait for them to unload their cargo and then direct them out of the dock and off screen. Bigger boats move slower and take longer in the dock to unload. Comes with three different levels right off the bat and feels polished. My only recommendation is to turn off the horrible music 
Cromulent_Word
Member
and thus ends the day-long saga of Aquatica, a game that should have never existed.
jonnybryce
Member
dallow_bg said:
Damn. Good thing I downloaded it this morning when it was mentioned here. It'll stay with me forever now, right? Or will iTunes automatically delete it or some bullshit that I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple pull?
Lord Error said:
Apparently the issue with emulators aren't that it uses downloaded roms but that it goes against the Apple approval process, literally. You can use anything in the emulator, and code for the emulator, meaning things can be done without Apple's knowledge on a non-jailbreaked device. They don't like that idea.
Bliddo said:
You need to consider expanding your team. Find someone willing to handle some of the responsibility without expecting much in return. Lighten your load a little bit. Young programmers looking to get some experience can be found all over the place, and you could probably even find someone to help you build a website or otherwise gain attention for your game.
Also
The amount of Blatant ripoffs on the store is astounding, I've seen two games today just browsing the different categories that have pictures of Mario (yes, the Nintendo mascot) in the fucking icons of their games! How is this possible?
It really really seems like apple needs to hire a few more people to handle the app approval process. They need people who actually know a great deal about games and have the balls to say "Our store would be worse for having this game" when a game like Aquatica or whatever ripoff or fart app appears on his desk.
Stoney Mason
Banned
Kodiak said:
Meh. I have lots of problems with apple's approval process but I think that's overstating it a bit .
jonnybryce said:
If you have the app stored on your computer or on your iphone it will never be deleted unless you delete it. I have plenty of apps on my iphone that are no longer in the app store.
so after a long hiatus of leaving this thread and ignoring iphone apps in general, i bought a prepaid credit card and downloaded 2 apps yesterday.
1. Flight control...for the money you buy, its really really good but i hate that its only a score attack thing.
2.air mouse control. this thing pisses me off and i cant believe i wasted money on this crap. 2 things, 1 the accerlerometer control doesnt work on xp it seems and 2. theres a ton of lag when moving it...any one else have this app? any fixes?
1. Flight control...for the money you buy, its really really good but i hate that its only a score attack thing.
2.air mouse control. this thing pisses me off and i cant believe i wasted money on this crap. 2 things, 1 the accerlerometer control doesnt work on xp it seems and 2. theres a ton of lag when moving it...any one else have this app? any fixes?
Stoney Mason
Banned
Kodiak said:
I think they need consistent standards (and probably more intelligent legal standards) which in the past hasn't always been the case. I've very much for loose standards as it is however. I think there are lots of things apple can do to promote quality apps and organization of the store which they aren't necessarily doing right now but I'm not generally in favor of a strict approval process with apple as gatekeepers.
Stoney Mason
Banned
ravien56 said:
Probably get more of a response asking in the app thread in off topic that relates mostly to non gaming apps.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Stoney Mason said:
Exactly. Let the flood of shitty apps continue and work on strategies to allow customers to sort shit from gold. The main problems now is a lack of genre categorization, a lack of featured items, a lack of Apple-sanctioned "on sale" feeds, SKU-flooding (MAFIA WARZ RESPEK POINTZ / 14 dictionary apps by the same company for different languages) that will be greatly helped by DLC, the unit-sales-only sorting on the "Top Games" list, the overall lack of importance placed on item quality ratings, etc.
Literally every platform that currently has a "STAMP OF APPROVAL" process (XBLA, PSN, WiiWare, DSiWare, anyone else) still has a massive flood of shit, and in the mean time there are more new games on the app store every day than on those services every month.
It's like when Microsoft pitched the delisting thing for XBLA. The problem wasn't that the shitty games existed, it was that the shitty games existed on a level playing field with the good games, no one could arbitrarily control their product price, and there wasn't a robust way to find out about old and potentially good games.
Bliddo - others out there feel exactly your pain. Hang in there. It's a mystery to me how some terribly-reviewed games stay really high in the rankings - it's really an issue of popularity breeding more popularity. Honestly, I attribute it to the structure of the App Store - it's much easier to find popular games than non-popular ones. Fall out of the top 100 of the categorized lists, and you're basically invisible.
The crazy thing is how much of an enormous spike there must be, sales-wise, at the top. 'Cause Taxiball's been at ~50 on the paid arcade lists, and ~80 on the paid action list, and our sales? Still not anywhere near enough to sustain development for our four-person team on its own. It's pretty crazy.
I dunno what the answer is, but I aim on trying to find out as long as I can.
seppo
The crazy thing is how much of an enormous spike there must be, sales-wise, at the top. 'Cause Taxiball's been at ~50 on the paid arcade lists, and ~80 on the paid action list, and our sales? Still not anywhere near enough to sustain development for our four-person team on its own. It's pretty crazy.
I dunno what the answer is, but I aim on trying to find out as long as I can.
seppo
Diablohead
Member
Aww I missed out on owning a nugget of app history, oh well 
Stoney Mason
Banned
It's definitely a tough market nowadays. With so many apps its very hard to stand out at this stage without some advertising. And I mean real advertising. Hell, Real Racing is at #67 on the store in games and if ever a game deserved to be top 10 for an extended time it's that one. Compare that to Need for Speed which has always been consistently top 40.helava said:Bliddo - others out there feel exactly your pain. Hang in there. It's a mystery to me how some terribly-reviewed games stay really high in the rankings - it's really an issue of popularity breeding more popularity. Honestly, I attribute it to the structure of the App Store - it's much easier to find popular games than non-popular ones. Fall out of the top 100 of the categorized lists, and you're basically invisible.
The crazy thing is how much of an enormous spike there must be, sales-wise, at the top. 'Cause Taxiball's been at ~50 on the paid arcade lists, and ~80 on the paid action list, and our sales? Still not anywhere near enough to sustain development for our four-person team on its own. It's pretty crazy.
I dunno what the answer is, but I aim on trying to find out as long as I can.
seppo
We may have exited that phase of the app store where just a quirky original game can do it alone on word of mouth. Or at least it's a lot more rare.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
You couldn't use just anything in his emulator - onlygame packs that they would have to approve independently. Besides, they approved Frotz, interactive fiction interpreter, that not only lets you download new games from some random website, but it lets you create an FTP connection to your computer to copy any Frotz-compatible game you want onto it.jonnybryce said:
helava said:.
The crazy thing is how much of an enormous spike there must be, sales-wise, at the top. 'Cause Taxiball's been at ~50 on the paid arcade lists, and ~80 on the paid action list, and our sales? Still not anywhere near enough to sustain development for our four-person team on its own. It's pretty crazy.
I dunno what the answer is, but I aim on trying to find out as long as I can.
seppo
Thats tough, man. Especially in your situation where you know you have a quality product.
Have you thought about doing something like the Plushed(?) game that was mentioned a day ago, using your Twitter feed in a contest where the amount of followers you get will directly correlate to the price of your next game, or something like that? Hell, I don't know, next update change the name of the game to ObamaBall or BikiniModelBall or something, shamelessly use familiar word-recognition to get more attention. :lol
Seems like with the cut-throat nature of the App Store pricing, you almost need to catch lightning in a bottle to gain traction over the licensed IPs and big name titles on the store. This thread makes me wish I knew more about marketing / advertising. The App store is a fascinating place; like some kind of fast food joint where millions of people line up every day looking to spend a few bucks; the store has countless items on the menu, but they only advertise a few at a time. Must be frustrating trying to figure out how in the hell to get more eyeballs onto your product.
Sidenote - anybody know why Stone Loops keeps climbing the list? Is it because Apple has it on the "Hot" list for so long? Seems like they should keep the "Whats New" and "Whats hot" lists more random. Every time I go there I see the same stuff over and over and over..
Stoney Mason
Banned
1.) It's really good and has great production valueslawblob said:
2.) It's arguably intentionally underpriced.
3.) It's has a big Sale 75% Banner on its icon even though it's been priced 99 cents pretty much the whole time. People like to think they are getting a bargain.
4.) It's a really simply concept that is easily understand but different enough from traditional match 3 games to be unique.
5.) Zuma isn't on the Platform and even if it was it would be priced above Stoneloops like Puzzloop.
6.) Great app store reviews.
With the constant flood the only real solution will be if Apple changes the App Store and iTunes in general. Using the App Store on the iPhone is limiting due to the screen size of the phone, particularly for games, and if you aren't on WiFi you can't download anything over 10mb which hurts impulse buying. As for iTunes, at this point the App Store should really be either a separate application or much less integrated into the main morass of iTunes content, because even the game genre categories (which are somewhat buried) seem to act much too overly broad, can cause confusion if an app sounds like one of the millions of songs, and the iTunes application is simply not designed to handle the kind of browsing that a software store needs.lawblob said:
IMO a better (although not necessarily best) solution would be to have something like MS has with the XLB marketplace where you can log in on a website and buy things through that to download onto your devices. At the very least that would allow for tabbed browsing and more accessible marketplace sorting on the user end.
jonnybryce
Member
I just lost 45 minutes to Aquatica without even realizing it. What a fun, pleasant and *different [credit going to flOw]* experience from other games. I really like the tilt controls.
Diablohead
Member
£1.79 at first I think, so $2.99 or something.Prezhulio said:
yurinka
Member
Even the game was focused mainly to the iPhone, it was released first as a game for stardard mobile phones. It means we must consider like 2000 families of handsets and design the game to work in all of them. We considered to add accelerometer support, but it didn't work well with thi game because it breaks the strategy as a puzzle.Stoney Mason said:
Smaller / slower / older handsets had a non-physics, more Tetris-like version of the game with its own 100 levels. To design 100 more (300 in total) for handsets with accelerometer support would be too much.
Thanks. This is our target: good, fun and simple casual games.Stoney Mason said:
apple needs a better store stat, I hate browsing via iTunes, I prefer browsing a website which links to the app.
but guess what, the store is filled with unlimited crap, like slider puzzles with a hot chick. How many of these ffs?
I heard a stat today that although there's a billion apps or whatever the absurd number is, only 116 have sold over 100,000. Thats why we see the same apps floating around.
Some real nice mobile games on there though, they should be fun throwaway games, like the kind you get on facebook and on flash sites. I dont care so much for more fleshed out iphone games
but guess what, the store is filled with unlimited crap, like slider puzzles with a hot chick. How many of these ffs?
I heard a stat today that although there's a billion apps or whatever the absurd number is, only 116 have sold over 100,000. Thats why we see the same apps floating around.
Some real nice mobile games on there though, they should be fun throwaway games, like the kind you get on facebook and on flash sites. I dont care so much for more fleshed out iphone games
jonnybryce
Member
Prezhulio said:
I want to love it but it got so hard. I'm at one of the later upside down levels where the foundation is a fucking triangle so everything I do ends up collapsing. So frustrating.
kaizoku said:
Hell no. If I didn't have games like Castle of Magic or Need For Speed I wouldn't be loving iPhone gaming nearly as much.
jonnybryce said:
I've only tried stuff like monkey ball, hero of sparta and they just make me think I'd rather be playing on a real games machine.
stuff like rolando strikes a good balance, but things like flight control, sally's spa and airport mania are my thing right now.
pinball and puzzle games too.
Stoney Mason
Banned
ColR100 said:
No date. They've only said summer and the app approval process is backed up right now anyway so it would be awhile.
Stoney Mason
Banned
dream said:
They will definitely drop the price soon whether its a temp price sale drop or not. You can sort of predict these things with the sales trends. I would probably try $6.99 or $5.99 first if it was me to maximize profit.
A lite version would help also as would have sticking a promo page and to buy link in Flight Control. You already have a million customers and it's like free advertisement at that point to a large amount of people. I'm always surprised when companies don't do some of the smart simple basic marketing strategies.
Every EA Game or Ngmoco game advertises the other games those companies put out.
Stoney Mason
Banned
And to for the billionth time point out the tyranny of the 99 cent problem.
Of the top 20 games at the moment.
13 of them are 99 cents.
Of the 7 that aren't.
3 are big EA Franchises. (Sims 3, Need for Speed, Tiger Woods)
1 is Tetris
1 is Bejewled 2
1 is Let's Golf which is now $1.99 but rode the 99 cent price to get to the top.
The last of the 7 is F.A.S.T. at 3.99
So you have the massive top end heavy bulk of sales going to 99 cents dominating the charts because they can destroy on unit sales, probably the worst way to track in a system with such variable prices and the top 10 or top 20 itself works as free advertising so it's a self reinforcing cycle. Or you have them going to really big franchise titles for the most part.
These are issues Apple can work on and hopefully will in the future through a few different ways.
Of the top 20 games at the moment.
13 of them are 99 cents.
Of the 7 that aren't.
3 are big EA Franchises. (Sims 3, Need for Speed, Tiger Woods)
1 is Tetris
1 is Bejewled 2
1 is Let's Golf which is now $1.99 but rode the 99 cent price to get to the top.
The last of the 7 is F.A.S.T. at 3.99
So you have the massive top end heavy bulk of sales going to 99 cents dominating the charts because they can destroy on unit sales, probably the worst way to track in a system with such variable prices and the top 10 or top 20 itself works as free advertising so it's a self reinforcing cycle. Or you have them going to really big franchise titles for the most part.
These are issues Apple can work on and hopefully will in the future through a few different ways.
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