I was honored to judge at the 5th annual 2012 OPGC event as a "Middle School Professional Judge". Which really boiled down to me playing all the games and pick my top three favorite and order them. Easy! Well not so easy, but nothing worth doing is easy! Right? Ok well maybe a few things, but really this was great and took a lot of focus to give everyone a few minutes to review their games from there gameplay. I wonder if this is what the guys at Slide to Play, or JakeIsGames.com feel like when they get slammed with reviews. At least I didn't have to publish copious well written notes on my experience (I'll leave that up to the experts.) There were 12 teams to score. which gave me about 10 minutes with each one and chance to go back afterward. Which I had too since I had a serious case of indecision on my hands at the end of it. Pick 3... who knew THAT would be so exhausting.

The kids are smart and clever. They are paying attention. They did some amazing stuff in 3 months. Really amazing stuff coming out of these middle school kids efforts... 6th-8th graders... just getting stuff done on an epic scale (relatively speaking, but it is still great!)

I feel hopeful for the future after seeing such bright kids in action. I am inspired to make sure there is a reasonable world there for them to enjoy. I am embarrassed at some of my own projects are not done (or showing marked progress.)

I met some real great industry folks. Jake from Brainium Studios, who was also one of noble sponsors of this great event. The keynote speaker, Kate Edwards, was great too and many interesting and inspiring stories to share with the kids.

I expect to do this again next year. I expect to become a coach in years to come as my own children become of age! Head over to the http://www.ogpc.info web site and see what you can do for them! 


If you at first your app does not fly out of the app store... You will begin to ask yourself many questions about why... I suspect it's just the sheer volume of apps, you get buried, it is rare someone is just discovered (e.g., Tiny Wings). But a good app is a good app. Great apps elevate in popularity because they are great, right? Assuming they aren't overtaken by competitors in features (and thusly missing a window of opportunity) they still stand a good chance of making it... Maybe that is my hope springing eternal and my belief we truly do have a fun little game worth the coin... If I didn't why bother trying!

 

The following links detail the entire series. I found it very thought-provoking and relevant to our current efforts:

http://www.raywenderlich.com/11359/how-to-market-and-promote-your-games-and-apps-part-1

http://www.raywenderlich.com/11633/how-to-market-and-promote-your-games-and-apps-part-2

http://www.raywenderlich.com/11767/how-to-market-and-promote-your-games-and-apps-part-34

http://www.raywenderlich.com/11794/how-to-market-and-promote-your-games-and-apps-part-4

 

I really need to try some of these things for the next app(s)! If you develop apps what works for you? As a consumer what resonates the most?

I am just looking for magic marketing bullets... Rarer than a unicorn I suspect...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Here is the list of known issues we have well documented going into the v1.1.0 release:

  1. Game crashes after 2-3+ starts and quits to menu (while show story is on it happens quicker) - We are pretty certain the frequency of this crash is based on the active devices memory state (how much is in use). We need to gather more information, we have devices this does not fail on after countless attempts (well we stopped counting after 10)
  2. Turtle Gets stuck on rocks. We need to investigate this to some length. We got a sticky spot on the rock if you hit it absolutely perpendicular to the rock (tilted back).
  3. If game is started with home button on left the tilt controls are inverted. There is a workaround to this. Flip your device around till the game flips (and flip it back if desired). This 'un-confuses' the orientation state of the device.
  4. Options panel enable sound does not work if sound was toggled off on title screen: Pesky oversight on are part. We will fix it as soon as figure out what got bumped.
  5. GameCenter button does nothing (on options panel): But it should! It's probably a typo in the link to call up game center. For now we will just rely on OpenFeint for Achievement viewing.
  6. Flip in the nest is smaller than the Flip in the game once launched: it's a visual bug and super low on the priority list right now (and has been since the first commercial beta release).
  7. Custom audio levels (music and sound FX) not restored when game is restarted after being completely shutdown in device interface): You'll come back to either full on or full off audio volume settings.
  8. Enabling audio once in-game will only allow sound FX to be played, and upon return to title screen all sound is still disabled: This is a persistence bug to be worked out. Not enough to stop shipping, but clearly it is not working as designed.
  9. "Tap to Flap" hint is showing at games end when ending close to and/or near negative score.
  10. Parallax bug seen (trees popping in and out) when going reverse for some distance. It wasn't really designed to go backwards! Easy enough to fix, probably why it's not done...
  11. Second generation devices (running iOS 4.2) do not have enough memory to support the music being played in the background.

Here is the link to where we will be posting videos from games and such:

http://www.youtube.com/user/CodeWorxStudios/ 

Feel free to subscribe, like, or even share! Every bit helps keep us able to do what we do by getting the word of our existence out there. And we'll promise to always strive to make better games to honor the spreading of the word worthwhile!


Game Engines...

Published 4/6/2012 by Hunter

I always like to see what  engines are out there. I wrote one once, it was a great exercise in my inability at the time. It will never see the light of day in any way, it was at a time I thought I could do better. I got to choke down some humble pie after a few weeks of effort. It ended up being a kludge of low level wrappers I used in other projects...

 

So anyone looking to find a list a game engine to make your next game with... This is a pretty good list!

http://www.indiedb.com/engines

 

But if you are looking for an engine that requires little knowledge of coding look at Construct 2... This looks interesting enough for me to consider it for whipping up a prototype in a few minutes to try out a game feature idea... I'll let you know how that turns out...

http://www.indiedb.com/engines/construct-2


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