Asking For Artwork Is No Guarantee You’ll Get Featured
A few weeks… well… no it’s almost a couple of months… ago I got the email every “indie” developer waits for. The one asking for additional artwork. Wahoo! I started seeing $$$. I quickly, but quite professionally IMHO got together the requested artwork and sent it the very next day. Crickets chirping… more crickets chirping… hmmm… let’s send an email and see what’s up. Nothing… ok, maybe it just got buried in their spam, I’ll try just once more… oh good… a response. So turns out a request for artwork isn’t a guarantee of getting featured. I asked why waste everyone’s time? Especially if you are an indie and paid someone good money to get artwork together for you (I know… I know… Apple says to already have it ready, but who does this?)
Needless to say, disappointed. So… if you ever get this email, do not get your hopes up. I’ll still muddle through this quagmire of apps, trying to get exposure. I was really excited that Apple was going to help me out. Instead a couple more fart apps and zombie apps got featured. Is my stuff the best out there? Hell no… but I think it shows creativity, effort, and originality. For a 1-man shop I’m pretty proud of what I’ve done.
They asked me what I had coming down the pipe (the nice way of telling me… ummm ya… we aren’t gonna feature any of your current stuff). I told them I was working on Jiggle Balls Studio for the iPad. They asked when it would be ready for iOS4 and I said, well… when you guys are ready for iOS4 on the iPad. Perhaps a bit smug and sarcastic… maybe I need to hire a PR person. :) Their response… well… good luck with that. Ouch!
Retina Display
With the release of the iPhone and Apple recent policy on not accepting iOS2.x apps into the app store anymore, I decided it was time to rebuild the entire product line with SDK4.0 and target 3.0 and above devices.
Part of that process is including a new 114×114 icon in the bundle that the retina display uses to give a sharper icon on the springboard. If it’s not provided, the old 57×57 icon is used. It will look just like it did on previous hardware, because the iPhone 4 doubles the pixels since the resolution is exactly 2x the size in both directions.
After reading through the Apple forums, it appeared there were several different approaches to getting this to work. This is the approach I found worked for me.
First I went back to my original 512×512 icon and scaled in down to 114×114 (don’t scale up your 57×57). I then named this icon114.png and dropped it in the same location as my icon.png. Then I edited my info.plist and added CFBundleIconFiles as follows:
I only had the simulator to test with, so I couldn’t visually tell any difference. So I then put a red X through my icon and verified that that’s the one that came up in the simulator. Still… I wasn’t 100% sure how it was going to look on the iPhone 4, but I released anyway.
Yesterday I put out a call on Facebook and Twitter for help from anyone with an iPhone 4, because the update to Jiggle Balls Spikes was approved. A guy named Rod helped me out and sent me the springboard v1.4 and v1.5 screenshots which proved that the new icon is being used on the retina display. See for yourself.
Notice how smooth the Apple Mail icon is compared to all the other non-iOS4 apps. The spikey ball looks a little pixelated. Now lets see what happens when the update was applied.
Wallah! A big improvement. So that’s how you get the new icon in your bundle. I haven’t decided whether to update all my app with all new higher resolution assets. I’m leaning towards not, but focusing on doing that for future projects.
The Portable Podcast
Check out my interview on The Portable Podcast. Thanks guys! You’ve been a great help to indie developers.
Lots of News
It’s been a busy couple of weeks at Funky Visions.
First we ran a promotion with freegameoftheday.com for “Jiggle Balls: Spikes!”. It went really well. In fact, if you hurry you can run over there and still get it for FREE!
We also got a GREAT “Jiggle Balls: Spikes!” review from the guys at AppVader.com. 5 out of 5 stars! Wow! We are so flattered and glad they like it. A lot of hard work went into the level designs.
And… the BIG NEWS… last week we were contacted by Apple and they want to feature “Jiggle Balls” in the App Store! WooHoo! I sent the artwork over, but no indication as to when that promotion will begin. We’ll keep ya posted.
Good things happening!
This Vader Is Nice!
The guys over at AppVader gave Tramp Stamp a glowing review. 4 out of 5. Thanks guys!
http://appvader.com/2010/05/tramp-stamp
Box2D and OpenGL for iPhone Presentation
Here’s my presentation I gave at the Columbus iPhone Developers User Group the other night. It includes a PDF slideshow and an Xcode project. Let me know if you have any questions.
Presentation
It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Been busy working on my presentation for CiDUG (Columbus iPhone Developer Users Group). It’s in 15 days. I’ll be speaking on Box2D and OpenGL. It’s taken A LOT of my time lately. Mostly because I wanted to clean things up and update to the latest Box2D. But now I have a REALLY clean framework for future projects.
Once I’m done with the presentation I intend to totally focus my efforts on the iPad. I’m planning on writing “Jiggle Balls Studio” to take advantage of the screen resolution and the blazing speeds of the new graphics chip. I also want to go back and revisit my current apps, specifically get some new levels into Spikes and rework the trampoline in Tramp Stamp. I also have a color matching game idea that shouldn’t take too long to implement.
I’m holding off playing around with OS4.0 just yet. It’s a distraction and I don’t really see anything I can take advantage of in it yet except for Game Center, which I’m hoping OpenFeint will integate with and I’ll just get for FREE.
That’s it for now. More after my presentation (which I will post links to).
Some AppModo JuJu
Thanks to the guys at AppModo for a great review of Tramp Stamp.
http://appmodo.com/13340/tramp-stamp-app-review-for-iphone-and-ipod-touch/
Starting to get some momentum.
The App Store Analysis
I’ve been developing iPhone apps for just over a year. I’ve got 7 apps in the App Store and have done 32 app submissions (initial + updates), none of which have ever been rejected, some of which were approved in less than a day, and some that took over 3 weeks for approval. The App Store process has improved. What hasn’t improved is exposure or Apple’s compassion towards the developers making 30% for them in the App Store.
Recently (and I understand the problem is still persisting), the App Store was stuck for 5 days, meaning no new apps were showing up in the recently released list. For the big software companies who have done tons of pre-release marketing, etc. this isn’t a big deal, because they’ll get exposure via there websites, review sites, and usually Apple themselves promotes the app. But for the little independent developer, not being seen for those first 2 days is suicide. What did Apple do to appease the developers when they finally did resolve the problem? They opened up the floodgates and buried everyone that had released an app. If Apple cared, they would have slowly released the apps so at least they had a days worth of exposure. This is not the first time this has happened either. It seems to be a monthly occurrence. It is obvious something is serious wrong with the iTunes and App Store backend architecture. Even if they are getting alerted when it’s stuck (which I’m starting to doubt), it doesn’t make sense that it takes over 1 day to fix the issue.
Exposure is key. I’ve tried numerous marketing methods. I’ve emailed plenty of review sites (with no response — not even the courtesy to tell me they received my promocode). I’ve contemplated how Apple picks the “What’s Hot” or “What We Are Playing” apps. I’ve determined that there is an inner-circle, because some of the crap shown there is certainly not worth the exposure. I’m trying OpenFeint now and going to give freegameoftheday a try. My advocates in all this? The Portable Gamer. These guys have been terrific. Unfortunately, their good reviews don’t seem to have too much of an impact on my bottom-line. The guys at Touch Arcade seem to be the biggest. They have a great forum with good message boards that help me get exposure, but in my experience, the reviewers from the site are not easy to get “in” with. I’ve received no acknowledgments from them.
The store is saturated. My first app (Jiggle Balls) is still my best seller (and probably the one that took me the least amount of work). My new one (Tramp Stamp) took quite a bit of work, but is barely getting recognized, even though I’ve gotten great feedback about it’s playability, uniqueness, and addictiveness. I have some enhancements I want to make to all my apps across the board. I am going to get to that, but for now I’m gonna try a few more marketing things for Tramp Stamp.
UPDATE: March 7th - today was my freegameoftheday promotion. How did the day start off? The App Store was down for an entire 3 hours this morning. Argh! The OpenFeint guys are going to try and work with me and get me promoted a bit more. I doubt Apple will make it up to me.
Follow-up Review By TPG
Thanks guys! Hard at work on the enhancements you suggested.