The game I worked on called YETIPEE is now available worldwide in the App Store. YETIPEE is the english version of YETIPIPI.
Previously it was only available to german users. Now you have no more excuses - get the game! 
If you’re interested to learn more about the technical details of this game, check out the YETIPIPI postmortem.
Beginning today until and including Dec 26th January 1st 2012 the Line-Drawing Game Starterkit is only $49,50 instead of $99,00 (50% off).
Just enter this coupon code when you make the purchase:
MERRYXMAS
Merry Xmas everyone - you deserve it!
PS: I’ll be practically offline until the first week in January, but I’ll make sure to have a short iDevBlogADay post ready for you on Dec 29th.
I opened an Affiliate Store page to be able to promote and sell other developer’s products.
Recently I decided to write one big post every other week (bi-weekly on Thursdays) as my iDevBlogADay post. I also wanted to create something exceptional each time. In particular the Compiler Directives list worked great. It bothered me that there was no such list. And apparently I wasn’t the only one looking for that.
That made me start regarding the iDevBlogADay posts essentially as paid writing jobs. Regardless of how little that payment may be, it is adding to my bottom line and it is a welcome additional incentive to put my best efforts into it. Continue reading »
I’ve been told that some of you won’t be able to purchase the Line-Drawing Starterkit during the 50% Easter Bunny special sales period if it ends as planned on April 27th (today). I extended the 50% off coupon code event during Easter until May 3rd, so that you’ve had time to cash in your paycheck and/or return from your Easter holiday vacation.
Check the Line-Drawing Starterkit product page for the coupon code. It’s (almost) impossible to miss.
PS:
Seriously, what kind of game developer are you if you’re going on a holiday vacation? For a whole week! Aren’t you supposed to be working yourself to death trying to finish that Quadruple-A game in time for Xmas? And this year you’re really, really going to finish it - not like the previous two years? It says so in your contract.
Sheesh, the kids these days. No idea what working hard means … 😀
It’s Easter weekend so why not have another coupon code event?
You’ll get 50% off ($59.50 USD instead of $119 USD) on my Line-Drawing Game Starterkit when you enter this Coupon Code during purchase:
LINE-DRAWING-EASTER-BUNNY
This coupon code is valid until Wednesday, April 27th. Not sure about the exact time, since this is a Plimus setting I’m guessing US Central Time plus or minus 3 hours. Feel free to share the code.
Happy Easter!
WasabiSoft published a very insightful 3-part guide for supporting your App Store customers, and serving them right:
Support Series Part I: Top DON’Ts for your App Store support link
As summarized by DaringFireball, Apple has loosened their restrictions of section 3.3.1 of its iOS Developer Agreement:
In particular, we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need.
Previously, the only programming languages allowed to write iOS Apps were C, C++, Objective-C and Javascript. This has now been removed. For cocos2d developers nothing changes, except maybe that you can feel more comfortable embedding a scripting language like Lua into your games. As long as you don’t allow the Lua scripts to be changed by users, or download or otherwise modify/replace bundled Lua scripts. That wasn’t illegal before, however, yet after the change in section 3.3.1 it put a lot of doubt and worry into developers looking into using Lua. So you can now feel much more comfortable using Lua in iOS games, for example by using iPhone Wax.
The removal of these language restrictions is essentially good news for Unity developers (read their statement), and those who wish to develop iOS Apps using a Flash cross-platform compiler and also those using Corona Game Edition, which is entirely Lua-based. And speaking of which, Corona offers developers to purchase Corona SDK and Game Edition at just $99 until only September 15th, after which you’ll have to pay for each product seperately and the price goes up to $249. Just in case you were eye-ing it.
WOS Blog has a post online which really sums up well how i look at the App Store:
“Don’t believe anyone who whines that it’s hard to make money with a really good game on the App Store, viewers. They’re either lying, or imbeciles, or both.”
It’s called How not to do it and covers some basis of why certain Apps succeed while others fall by the wayside. Sometimes it’s a matter of beating someone to the market, other times to learn from other’s mistakes, but mostly to price your Apps fairly.
A while ago i read about Indie game developers who eventually thought it would be a good idea to spend 3-6 months on their next game, to sell the App by means of quality and content. While there are chances that this will work and even reward you greatly money-wise, it also increases your risks by several factors. You’re going down the same path that leads to similar problems of the AAA game developers, albeit on a much smaller scale. It’s a hit-driven business. If you did moderately well on your 1-2 month games, and then you do a 3-6 month game, your chances of making it a success get slimmer and slimmer. It does help to understand the market and marketing but even that won’t help you if the game doesn’t vibe with players.
So, would you rather have a less than 50% chance of making it (relatively) big, or a 100% chance of doing moderately well?
Of course, if you can keep running the 100% part of your business you should really consider making the bet. But if you have no money to spare you should stick with moderately well and instead keep pumping out moderately well doing games. Make 8 of those over the year and you got yourself a respectable business nonetheless.
I wonder what happened to those Indies and their “big project”? Hmmm …
