Sky Burger has seen its first 10 days on the App Store and we here at NimbleBit are proud of what its accomplished so far.
Here are some juicy stats:
If you want to keep up with the latest Sky Burger news and discussion, be sure to become a fan of the Sky Burger Facebook page!
Gamasutra has just posted a feature article talking with leading iPhone developers, and getting their take on many aspects of the unique iPhone platform. Our own Ian Marsh was part of the feature, from the article:
Some developers — those who don’t subscribe to the Get-Rich-or-Die-Spamming school of iPhone development — are using this opportunity to rethink the art of making games from design, promotion, and updates.
We rounded up five heroes of the App Store and got them talking about not only how the iPhone is changing development, but how development is changing the iPhone.
Here are some screen shots from a new map that I have been working on for the last few weeks. It feels good to finally have some new ZG media to show off!
Another week, another IKWYDLW. As a secondary note, check out Eli Hodapp’s iPhone Developer PSA - it’s a great read for any developers wondering what else they can do to promote their app besides just submitting to the app store.
**Brian is unavailable today so I will be filling in for him** Last week I have been very busy with some non game related things, but I managed to hang out and work with the San Diego NimbleBit crew some, as well as get a shiny new dev laptop bought and set up to help test and develop ZG. Having 2 dev machines will come especially in handy as I continue to work on the networking framework. I have also spent some time getting all the libraries and dependencies that ZG uses up to date, a little spring cleaning!
Another week of banging away at my new ZG environment. I now have the scale and layout of the track pretty much locked down, all that is left is to light it and add sounds and effects. Then I will have to add all the scripts and entities to make it a working course and it will be ALLIIIVEEE!!!! I hope to have a video of it soon.
Last week I spent a lot of time driving around the incredibly flat state of Florida, drinking beer, laying on the beach, and sitting in airports and on planes. After Sky Burger was approved on Thursday I spent every spare moment trying to promote it from my iPhone with varying degrees of success. After I got back on Friday and over the weekend I was able to send out all 50 promo codes for Sky Burger to a multitude of review sites and blogs. So how is baby Sky Burger doing? Sky is now 5 days old and growing into a strong young app. Its sold over 2,250 copies so far, and is currently the #68 paid game, the #5 family game (Scoops is #4), and the #2 kids game (Scoops is #1). Sky also has 37 reviews and a 4.5 star rating so far. Hopefully once more reviews start popping up it will continue to grow and who knows, maybe it will get featured by Apple!
As of April 15th Sky Burger is now available on the iTunes App Store! Sky Burger has already gotten a mention on Touch Arcade, and Apple iPhone Apps is giving away some promo codes! Now get to stacking, those burgers won’t build themselves!
The fine developers (Rob Jagnow and Brendan Mauro) over at Lazy 8 Studios are releasing their debut game Cogs today!
If you like puzzle games I highly recommend it. You can buy it on Steam starting later today.
Woo, an entire month of IKWYDLW!
I got the ball controller working and improved the camera system (it is based on a priority system now, more on it later perhaps). I noticed that the networking thread was causing a lot of slow down. The solution was to completely remove threading in the networking system. It wasn’t even really needed. A simple method to verify that user script code implements an interface correctly was added. This will help users make sure the script code they are writing is valid earlier. In a forgiving language like Lua, this is a nice feature to have.This week I plan to implement better prediction in the network code (using the physics engine instead of simple velocity predictions that don’t account for things like collision or physical properties). This will not be an easy task but I believe it will really help to smooth out the jitter causes by the cheap prediction currently in place.
marshmonkey:
Pretty much my sole focus last week was working on a new environment for ZG named “Dustbunny”, I am close to getting it hooked up in game so expect some screenshots this week. Hooray for new ZG media! I also have been helping Brian test out his new networking inventions here and there.
eeenmachine:
**Ian is on vacation this week, so David will be filling in** Last week I pounded out the last remaining bugs in Sky Burger in order to get it off and submitted to Apple. I also was able to work out some memory and speed improvements to make the game run a little smoother. This week I plan on relaxing in the Florida sun, watching the co-eds frolic on the beach for spring break. I will be back this friday, hopefully to coincide with Sky Burger hitting the app store! Woot!
Tags: IKWYDLW
Most iPhone developers know that communication with Apple is most often a one way street. One can hardly blame them when the developers of all 30k-odd apps would love to email Apple and tell them how special their app is and why it deserves to be featured!
A regular day outside of Apple's offices.
While the prospect of Apple choosing your app to be featured in any capacity may seem statistically improbable, I’ve found out the hard way its always better to be prepared for it. When I was emailed a couple months ago by someone at Apple asking me for marketing materials I was grossly unprepared. I found myself hastily hitting Photoshop, my brow dripping with sweat, futilely attempting to create high resolution artwork from the low resolution art I had been developing with.
Read the rest of this entry »
When developers talk about the way a game is made, they usually talk about things like physics, graphics, AI, and sound. There is another big aspect however: Communication. I am not talking about players or game characters talking to each other or networking a game. I am referring to objects in the game sending messages to each other. When a button is pressed, the door must be told to open. When the player scores a goal, there must be cheering and confetti.
There are many ways communication is handled in games and I do not wish to compare all the methods. I want to write about a method I like and tend to use called Signals and Slots (specifically, my implementation). Signals emit messages to Slots. A Signal can be viewed as a radio tower that only sends messages while a Slot can be viewed as a boombox which can only receive the message. Signals only emit to slots they are connected to (efficient). Any Signal may connect to any Slot. Any number of Signals may connect to a Slot.
The radio tower (Signal) emits a message to the receivers (Slots)
Time for the 3rd installment of IKWYDLW! Exciting stuff! I also just read this great article comparing the games industry to the history of the print industry and how technology has put the power in the hand of small groups of graphic designers over time. It’s a good read - check it out.
I started last week implementing a new networking method. This involves simulating the client ahead of the server and then checking for errors and correcting. This includes predicting the movement of objects over a period of time. Predicting the movement of the kart is not an easy task (which is why we use a physics engine in the first place!) so I decided to get a ball character controller working (which is easy to predict) to test the networking method. Refactoring the code to support non-kart character controllers (any controllers!) took 4 full days of work but is going to pay off big time down the road. I also spent a night getting motion blur working (it looks AWESOME when boosting). I also got e-mail reporting of errors in the game thanks to Max from Unknown Worlds, Thanks Max!This week I plan on getting the ball character controller finished (need to provide a better way to control it) and test the networking method a lot before moving forward with it. I also plan to improve the way the different camera controllers are managed so that we can swap character controllers on the fly.
Last week I started up my modeling for ZG again and started on a new track environment. It’s a giant “rats” style environment where you are in a scaled up room that makes all the characters appear tiny. Should be a lot of fun! Also have spent some time play testing Sky Burger. This week I am going to try and finish up the new environment enough to post a pretty screenshot!
Last week Sky Burger inched ever closer to a release candidate with minor bug fixes and new music. I also built an in game browser for our custom “NimbleStore” to browse our games which includes video youtube reviews and live twitter searches. Final touches on the game icon and attempts to thwart Marshmonkey’s attempts at cheating kept me busy over the weekend. This weekend I also added an unobtrusive news ticker to the main player menu to keep players up to date with NimbleBit news. Sky Burger will absolutely, no matter what, be submitted by this Thursday!
