Here is an extremely belated note to let everyone who reads this website know about my twitter account. I’m username livingtech over there.
In related social networking news, I also started a page for ActionChess on Facebook. You can become a fan! (At present, this serves no purpose, but I may do contests or something with it in the future.)
I made this short presentation for my 15 minutes of fame at the local IGDA meeting last night. Enjoy.
I’ve finally gotten around to creating a gameplay video for ActionChess. It stars the finger (and iPhone) of my lovely wife Florence.
ActionChess Demo from Martin Grider on Vimeo.
Just thought I’d write a quick note to let you all know that the bug-fix-only release has hit both ActionChess and ActionChess Lite today. (Yesterday now.) I don’t think I’ll have the next update submitted until at least this weekend. I’m planning on at least one of the following features (but hopefully all of them) in the next update:
Realistically, if I shoot for all of them (and I am), it might not be until the following weekend. But we’ll see. I’ll keep you posted.
Update (5-10): I may have been a bit ambitious guestimating two weeks for these three features. It’s been two weeks now, and I’m partway through all of them. I should finish the multiple saves tonight. Maybe I’ll push that to apple for approval before the other two, but I’m not sure yet. So far, I’ve got about a half-dozen puzzles for puzzle mode. It’s harder to make puzzles than it is to solve them, but I’m far enough along that I’m now confident it’s worth the effort. My only worry is that it may be difficult for me to make mid-level difficulty puzzles. So far all of them have been really easy, or really pretty hard. We’ll see. I’d like to launch the feature with 100 puzzles. I don’t know how realistic that is, but it’s my goal for now.
I still haven’t sent out the ActionChess press release to any of the iPhone app review sites I’ve been cataloging, but my list is a lot more complete thanks to some additions and suggestions made by Ben over at Spigot Games.
Anyway, onto the numbers (after the link).
ActionChess 0.1.1 was released last Thursday (along with ActionChess Lite). I submitted another update to ActionChess tonight that fixes a bunch of bugs (see below). I think ActionChess Lite will probably lag a day or two behind it, since I just need to port these changes to it. I wanted to get a lot more into the second ActionChess update, (how about a new game mode or two?!?), but alas it was just not to be. I had too much going on this weekend, and too many bugs to squash.
Here’s the changelog:
* fixed bug with saving multiple high scores after a game
* fixed can click start game from the info screen (and possibly config)
* fixed can click “(opens in safari)” text to open a text input box
* fixed game didn’t save when sleep button is pressed
* replaced Icon.png with better render
Special thanks go out to my friend and co-worker Justin (Dez) for finding a lot of these bugs the day the update was released. Thanks Dez!
This is the first of probably a whole lot of posts about how well ActionChess is doing in terms of sales. In general I am a proponent of radical transparency, and since this isn’t my full time gig anyway, I feel no compulsion not to share this info.
Read on for all the nitty-gritty sales data from the first two weeks of ActionChess in the App store.
On monday night, I found out that the update I’d submitted about a week previously was rejected. Specifically, it was because I had been using the standard “reply” icon (UIBarButtonSystemItemReply) for a sort of back arrow in my user interface. Here’s most of the relevant bit from the rejection letter:
“Applications must adhere to the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines as outlined in iPhone SDK Agreement section 3.3.5. The Reply button is to be used to send or route an item to another location. Implementing standard buttons to perform other tasks will lead to user confusion.”
They also mentioned that it would be appropriate for me to use a custom icon, and linked me to the “iPhone’s Human Interface Guideline” document, which I have read (or at least scanned), which was why I knew this was bad in the first place.
Here is the way the “return to menu” button looks in the game right now:
…and here’s the way it looks now that I’ve changed it for the update:
Yes, that is the “up” arrow turned on its side. I actually think it looks better in-game than it does floating disembodied and out of context here, but it doesn’t matter, because I’ll be changing the whole UI quite a bit when the designer that I’m working with comes through anyway.
I spent some hours last night and re-submitted the update, and also the Lite version (since it had the same problem, it seemed the safest thing to do).
I spent some time yesterday… and again some time today… getting ActionChess Lite all ready to go. I decided on allowing three game types, 3-minute Timed Mode, Specific Piece Mode: The Whole Set, and Specific Piece Mode: Bishops. I went back and forth about that last one. I thought about choosing Queens, but feel like it’s too easy. Thought about Pawns, but that’s too hard. Bishops is a nice compromise, I guess.
I also gave away a bunch of promo codes for the game today on Touch Arcade. I hope that got it some much needed eyeballs, and I also hope it wasn’t premature. The impending 0.1.1 release should fix a whole bunch of bugs, and generally performs much better than 0.1 did. (I hope that gets approved soon.) If it’s not approved by Wednesday, I’ll probably send an email. It’s been a week and a day already, although I suppose technically I re-submitted the binary a week ago today. I don’t know what that does for the app submission “queue”.
The other big thing that took the most time about the Lite version is that I decided to incorporate AdMob ads into the menu screen. They’re at the top of the screen, where you don’t click anyway, and as soon as the app is released, I’m going to switch it to display (as much as possible) only the link exchange ads. This means it’ll just show ads for other games that show ads. And then those games will show ads for ActionChess Lite… hopefully exposing more people to ActionChess who might not otherwise have seen it. It’s all about the evangelism here, not about making money. (I’ve seen the statistics on how many views you have to get to make money on iPhone ads, and it just doesn’t seem worth it at this point.) Anyway, hopefully the ads won’t detract from anyone’s enjoyment of the game.
There’s also a handy button to purchase the full game from the App store. The button doesn’t take you there before asking if you’re sure though. I don’t want anyone getting pissed off about that. Obviously, the screenshot shows that dialog in action.
So I’ve heard from some folks that they couldn’t play the game without 2.2.1 installed. It sounds like this is because I compiled the binary for 2.2.1 without thinking about it. I “rejected” the previous update that I submitted last night, and submitted a new one that should work with everything back to 2.1. I can’t see a way to change the date I said that update should be live though, so it looks like I’ve missed my chance to get onto the “recently released” lists again. Oh well, there should be plenty of updates in the future. (I have so many plans for this game that I can hardly wait to work on them all!)