Wednesday 27 June 2012

Lite/Free version nearly complete


In the last week or so I have been working hard trying to complete the major bits of code that is stooping us separating the App to one Full version and a Free version.  Yesterday we finished what I think was the hardest bit of code left to do, and all that remains is the finishing touches on all first 25 levels (first 25 will be on Full and Free version), a few graphics for world select and a touch up on some features to get it running smoothly.  I anticipate by next week sometime, we can get the free version into an Alpha testing state, we might even go straight to beta with the free version.  If all goes well, I'll go and add iAds in straight away.

For the full version, once we have completed the split between full and free, we have a lot of work to do.  The major part of this work is the GameCenter Leader Boards and Achievements.   We have decided on the achievements we were going to create, but no graphics have yet to be made for the notifications, badges and no code as been implemented to track the achievements.

We also have to create further 50 levels for the two extra worlds that are bundled in the full version (we are discussing adding extra levels in each world before release).  Once the free version is out in beta, I'll get straight to work with the achievements, as it seems that will be the most time consuming and most problematic.

We will also be testing the universal app feature with the free version, if that goes well, we will most certainly be introducing "Phoenix" as a universal app for all iDevices.

I have also been working on trying to get proper social integration working on my app so that users can post their score on Twitter or on Facebook.  I have spent a lot of time trying to sort it out, but kept running into problems, so it looks that a smooth social integration will be off the cards for now, and I will stick to the old simple way of social integration.

The difference being that the simple less hassle way and the proper integration is just a url that passes a string to twitter and allows the user to post.  The downside of this is, the text appears in an editable box, so the user can type anything he/she wants, which is not desirable really, but if they wan't to cheat that's fine.

The way I was trying to get it was, that it was passing certain variables from the app to my webserver, a php script would be dealing with the request, and send information back and forth between the app and facebook, but it proved to be too big job for me.





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