ActionChess available in the App store …and the first update has been submitted

I just received the approval letter, but I don’t know how long it’ll take to show up in the app store.

I spent all afternoon working on a bug where the up button will occasionally get stuck, ending your game prematurely if you’re not quick enough to pause or hit the physical home button to “unstick” it. I hope the bug is not terrible to play with, but I’ve already submitted the update to apple, and I think the way the up button works now is a significant improvement.

Also in the update is a new menu image. The designer of my chess pieces, Peter Wong, saw the previous menu image and sent me an upscaled version without my even asking! Anyway, hopefully apple won’t take a week to approve the update.

ActionChess 0.1 submitted to Apple!

I just completed the long and rather arduous task of submitting ActionChess to apple. I think everything went well. The hard part was generating a new development “code signing certificate”, and getting that all hooked into xcode and building the game again using the new certificate. This seemed to go off without a hitch. I guess gathering all the “stuff” necessary for submission was also a chore, particularly the 512×512 pixel “large version” of the icon. Since I was working from tiny icons when I built the icon for the game, scaling it up looked mostly awful. I just have to hope that the only place it’s used is in the game description page in iTunes, where it appears to be scaled down quite a bit.

I also gathered a bunch of screenshots, and took the 5 that I thought were the best to include with the game. I didn’t spend terribly long on that portion, so I don’t know that the screenshots are really all that great. (Read more to see all the ones I chose.)

I also created a new page on this website withe the current game description.

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Anouncing: ActionChess

The game formerly known as Chesstris is finally nearing completion! ActionChess is a cross between Tetris Attack (Panel de Pon), Tetris, and the classic board game Chess. It turns out to really make your brain work in interesting ways. It will be released for the iPhone sometime in the coming weeks, and if it does really well, I may think about porting a limited version to flash.

Please comment below (or send me an email) if you’d like to put on the ActionChess announce list, where I’ll be letting everyone know when the game finally hits the app store.

Chesstris Development

Development of Chesstris has been delayed. I’m working on Go Tetris for the time being. Chesstris will have to come later, probably after I feel like Go Tetris is feature complete.