Archive for June, 2009
iAssociate released
by edi on Jun.18, 2009, under iPhone development
iAssociate was this night finally released to the App Store. This time the review process actually took a bit longer than with any of the Mercury Mind builds. I originally submitted iAssociate on May 24th, after which I had to do a few re-submissions, as I added a few features and made some small changes to the maps, until I finally on May 28th got the final build submitted. So all in all it took three weeks this time until it was released, which is two weeks longer than with any of the Mercury Mind builds. I guess some of the reasons behind the longer review process could be the WWDC days, and probably more likely the launch of the iPhone OS 3.0, which probably has caused a bit more submissions from people who want to be among the first out there with apps that use the new 3.0 features. (Something I myself also will be adding support for later on, most notably support for downloadable levels, something which I’ve had in mind already for a long time. Hopefully this feature should make it to you sometime during the summer.)
Anyway, back to the game. iAssociate is kind of a re-launch of Mercury Mind. I decided to change the name to something more catchy, something that’d be easy to rememeber while saying what kind of a game it is. And since the iPhone(And Apple products in general) is the platform of the iGames, I pretty much immediately decided that I’d go with iAssociate, since it didn’t seem like anyone had used that name before (for games). And since I was changing the name I decided I’d change the whole look and feel of the game as well, so that it’d look more like a game, instead of the simple static graphics that were in MM.
Besides updating the game visually, the maps have also gotten a big tweak. Despite being the same maps as in Mercury Mind, they are all now much larger. The word count has gone up about 25% in the game, so even if you are one of those who already have MM, I still think that iAssociate is a worthwhile purchase.
Another new feature in iAssociate is that your progress in the game can now be shared with others. I’ve made it possible for you to submit your highscores to my webpages, so that you can see a complete listing of all players who’ve submitted their scores. Also, you’ll also be able to see your status in the game itself. Whenever you submit your scores online, your rank for every level will automatically be updated, so that on the level select screen you’ll see how you’re doing in each level.
The full highscore listings can be found from the link at the top of my page, or from here.
iAssociate Logo
Why I develop for the iPhone
by edi on Jun.05, 2009, under iPhone development
Ten reasons that I have for developing for the iPhone and not some other platform.
1. I’ve always been a Mac fan, the first computer I had (well, my parents had) was a Macintosh LC, which at that time totally kicked ass (256 colors, built in soundcard, System 7, you name it… =))
2. The iPhone is one of the coolest phones out there, nice and sleek design, plus a UI that you can actually use, unlike some other phones that I’ve had(or have), such as the Nokia 6600 (S60), HTC S710 (Worst phone ever!!!), etc. (Mind though that I’ve had a few good phones as well, the Nokia 7210 (S40) being one of them)
3. The App Store business model sounds to me pretty fair, getting 70% of the proceeds sounds pretty reasonable, considering that Apple takes care of the billing, sales channel, review process, etc, etc… The only thing left for me to do is the coding 
4. You have to use a Mac to develop for the iPhone. Seriously, while some might think this is a bad thing I actually think it’s awesome! As I realize that there must be thousands of developers out there, who all have heard about the various success stories on the App Store, and now have come up with some ideas of their own, this really limits the amount of those who actually end up turning their ideas into products. Which in turn means less competition, and a bigger chance for me to get some publicity for whatever I do. =)
5. One platform! One of the things that was a challenge back when we developed mobile games at SilverBirch Studios, was that there were TONS of different devices out there, which all had different system resources and screen sizes, etc, and all these would have to be taken care of in the code & design of the game. (Worst of all, they even had different API bugs…) Now with the iPhone (and iPod Touch) there is only ONE platform to develop for so you don’t have to create hundres of different SKUs of your game, instead you can just create one build, knowing that it’ll look the same on every device out there. So no need to keep in-house hundreds of different devices and testing the code on all of them.
6. Learning something new. Both Objective-C and the Mac platform are totally new to me, so this is a great opportunity to learn both =) Also, at work I don’t get too many opportunities to learn something totally different, so if it wasn’t for these kind of projects I would be limiting myself to much narrower field.
7. It’s fun!!! It’s really fun to develop products that you’ve thought of, and designed, yourself, as you get too see your ideas come alive and you get to share them with lots of other people out there. It’s been really fun for me to hear back from people who’ve played Mercury Mind, to know that there’s actually some people out there who really like that game (even though most would like more levels =))
8. Money. Even though I can’t say I do this for the money, I still must admit that the thought is there at the back of my head, that if I only could create something that people really would like (and find) then there’s a huge potential out there. It’s kind of like taking part in the lottery, assuming I did come up with something cool and then Apple in turn would lift that up to one of their Featured lists then who knows where that’d lead… =)
9. The dream of making something bigger than just a few random games. To one day be able to launch something bigger than just small one man projects.
10. Because I can
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iTunes Links
All these links go to the App Store in iTunes.
