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It's Insanely Hard to Make a Kick-Ass iPhone App

georgesaines.com

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Re: It's Insanely Hard to Make a Kick-Ass iPhone App

#71

Post by CJefferson »

Step wrote: post #67
CJefferson wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say my puzzle game ( http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/combination/id300288142?mt=8 ). It got good reviews from people who played it, a good review on ArsTechnia ( http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/04/minireview-comb... ) and was 99 cents. I only sold a couple of hundred, and after months of trying to get more publicity and sales I gave up and made it free.

It is a lovely little game. I think the first problem is in your marketing script. You call out negatives (doesn't have plot, soundtrack, etc) right away. I actually was expecting a silent game from this. Instead it does have sound effects, even if minimal. Regardless I don't think drawing attention to the negatives helps you. I also think the hole and wall graphics aren't helping sell it - they don't 'fit' all that…

No, they are very welcome. I learnt an awful lot about how to make a very good 'core' game engine, and how important everything else is (in some ways, unfortunately, more important).

One day I'll hopefully manage to make a new game, with both parts done well.

Re: It's Insanely Hard to Make a Kick-Ass iPhone App

#72

Post by RandallBrown »

davedx wrote: post #29

"For a generation of coders accustomed to limitless managed memory, high-level programming abstractions, and thousands of deeply functional opensource libraries, mobile is a step back to the Byzantine world of Commodore 64s." This made me chuckle. Maybe if you define "generation" as "this year's college output" then you might be right, but if we're talking "generation" as in the past lifetime of software development…

I think most major colleges are still teaching C++ as the main programming language. Sure, there are classes in Python or Ruby on occasion, but I think most are still in C++. I know a lot of schools teach Java, but that's a lot more similar to C++ than it is to something like Python.

Re: It's Insanely Hard to Make a Kick-Ass iPhone App

#73

Post by smackfu »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #7

Are there many examples of iPhone apps that are simultaneously (and somewhat objectively): (1) beautiful, (2) easy to use, and (3) useful, that still don't go anywhere? I've been trolling around the app store for awhile trying to understand the market and what I see are tons of novelty apps, fugly apps (by anyone's standards), buggy apps, and apps that break usability in all kinds of ways. And judging by the lack of…

I think a lot of the newer "social" free apps fall into this category, like that Oink menu item review thing. It's polished, a good app, and theoretically useful, but I wouldn't be surprised if it just dies off.

Re: It's Insanely Hard to Make a Kick-Ass iPhone App

#74

Post by alex_c »

ChaseB wrote: post #68
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #7

Are there many examples of iPhone apps that are simultaneously (and somewhat objectively): (1) beautiful, (2) easy to use, and (3) useful, that still don't go anywhere? I've been trolling around the app store for awhile trying to understand the market and what I see are tons of novelty apps, fugly apps (by anyone's standards), buggy apps, and apps that break usability in all kinds of ways. And judging by the lack of…

My iPhone app http://www.facemouth.com . Polished and went nowhere. Breaking the top 25 for an indie dev is hitting the lottery. It takes a big Ad budget and great PR.

That seems pretty novelty.

Re: It's Insanely Hard to Make a Kick-Ass iPhone App

#75

Post by diba »

CJefferson wrote: post #70
zmj wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I bought this after the Ars review. Thank you for your work on it! I got well more than 99 cents of entertainment value out of it. I'm curious: did you make the puzzles by hand or generate them algorithmically?

Thank you! Algorithmically. The game actually came out of a research project into generating and automatically ranking the difficulty of puzzle games. I have a long term plan to write a new game, with different puzzle games in it, using the same technique. The main slowness is a) Playing around with HTML5 and b) Figuring out how to make money off it (as with a webapp, you can actually lose a lot of money with hosting…

Do you have the results of that research project available somewhere?

Re: It's Insanely Hard to Make a Kick-Ass iPhone App

#76

Post by dev_Gabriel »

CJefferson wrote: post #70
zmj wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I bought this after the Ars review. Thank you for your work on it! I got well more than 99 cents of entertainment value out of it. I'm curious: did you make the puzzles by hand or generate them algorithmically?

Thank you! Algorithmically. The game actually came out of a research project into generating and automatically ranking the difficulty of puzzle games. I have a long term plan to write a new game, with different puzzle games in it, using the same technique. The main slowness is a) Playing around with HTML5 and b) Figuring out how to make money off it (as with a webapp, you can actually lose a lot of money with hosting…

Cool. I'll wait for it (:

Re: It's Insanely Hard to Make a Kick-Ass iPhone App

#77

Post by forrestthewoods »

ovi256 wrote: post #48
forrestthewoods wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have $420 revenue from 285 sales (started $3, dropped to $1) in 6 months from my side project. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/alcohology/id437180278?mt=8 . Getting attention is hard. Ridiculously hard. Insanely, impossibly hard. I couldn't get a review from a single website. I submitted the app to dozens of review sites, food/drink blogs, and tech blogs and didn't get a single response. Actually, that's not true. I…

This may sound harsh, but, from the screenshots, your app would fall in the fugly category. On the cocktail screen, you use a bunch of fonts and clashing colors. At first look, I thought the "Tall" text thingy is a slider for glass size. It isn't. Compare with the Martha Stewart app. It is extremely polished and the photos look gorgeous.

Harshness is fair and appreciated. It's not particularly beautiful and it has some usability issues. It's lack of success isn't a total shock, but it is certainly disappointing. The minimum bar for entry right now on iOS is pretty damned high.

Re: It's Insanely Hard to Make a Kick-Ass iPhone App

#78

Post by roc »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #45
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #7

Are there many examples of iPhone apps that are simultaneously (and somewhat objectively): (1) beautiful, (2) easy to use, and (3) useful, that still don't go anywhere? I've been trolling around the app store for awhile trying to understand the market and what I see are tons of novelty apps, fugly apps (by anyone's standards), buggy apps, and apps that break usability in all kinds of ways. And judging by the lack of…

I have $420 revenue from 285 sales (started $3, dropped to $1) in 6 months from my side project. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/alcohology/id437180278?mt=8 . Getting attention is hard. Ridiculously hard. Insanely, impossibly hard. I couldn't get a review from a single website. I submitted the app to dozens of review sites, food/drink blogs, and tech blogs and didn't get a single response. Actually, that's not true. I…

Also, compare to Cocktails+. It's more stripped down in many ways, but the overall effect is more pleasing to my eye.

Also, the random feature on Alcohology is really interesting and would be incredibly useful. But why is it limited to an urbanspoon-style restaurant finder? Drink components don't seem to map well to that layout.

Perhaps allow for the input of an arbitrary number of components into a "bar", which then generates a list of potential drinks.

Or at least simplify the roulette selection to: primary component, style (cocktail, mixer, shooter, etc) and difficulty.

e.g. I have Whiskey, I want a cocktail and I don't want to spend a lot of time straining and cutting fruit.

Re: It's Insanely Hard to Make a Kick-Ass iPhone App

#79

Post by smspence »

RandallBrown wrote: post #72
davedx wrote: post #29

"For a generation of coders accustomed to limitless managed memory, high-level programming abstractions, and thousands of deeply functional opensource libraries, mobile is a step back to the Byzantine world of Commodore 64s." This made me chuckle. Maybe if you define "generation" as "this year's college output" then you might be right, but if we're talking "generation" as in the past lifetime of software development…

I think most major colleges are still teaching C++ as the main programming language. Sure, there are classes in Python or Ruby on occasion, but I think most are still in C++. I know a lot of schools teach Java, but that's a lot more similar to C++ than it is to something like Python.

If there can be considered a "main" programming language that is taught at most colleges, and that most students spend the majority of their time with, I would say it's Java.
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