Chewy Apps

[UPDATE: Well, it looks like I totally got this one wrong! Not only does the iPhone 3G(S) have a faster processor, it also supports OpenGL ES 2.0 while the original iPhone 3G will only continue to support OpenGL ES 1.1. OpenGL ES 2.0 games will not run on OpenGL ES 1.1 machines. This is more for developers to think about, isn't it?]

It’s amusing to see the many many rumours marching through the intranets about what Apple is going to announce at WWDC. “Get your iBaby here! Apple is now selling babies!” Some sound just that crazy. Others, like a 32GB iPhone sound very plausible.

One rumour I don’t understand is a faster iPhone. Just like Sony will never introduce a PSP with a second thumbstick, Apple won’t introduce a new iPhone with a faster CPU. Think about it. It would split the market. All of a sudden developers would have to have two versions of each of their games. A version for the fast iPhone and a version for the slow iPhone. Maybe they’ll skip the slow one altogether, or skip the fast one altogether. The iPhone, in this regard, is like a gaming console. Any changes Apple makes can’t affect the core functionality of the device. A better camera? Sure, why not? It doesn’t really affect anything. Faster CPU? That affects all the apps, so it’s off the table.

Well, maybe.

There’s one scenario I imagine might work. What if Apple released a faster iPhone, but only Apple apps benefit from its additional speed? So you can web browse faster, or play videos with cool effects, or whatever. But games would still run at the same speed as before.

One more thing - Apple could actually think about allowing multitasking with this approach. With a faster CPU, but apps still running at the same speed, it gives some headroom to make sure that apps don’t run into each other. While this is possible, and I threw it out there just ’cause, I don’t really think that Apple is going to announce multitasking anytime soon. But hey, it’s a cool idea.

The same client I mentioned last time also suggested a smaller game, geared towards kids. I think that maybe starting small is a good idea.

This new game is a somewhat simpler concept, but the execution will definitely be easier. (I hope!)

Now I need to iron out the details, get some art and music together, and create my first game! Fun times.

A client has proposed that I create a game for him. He gave me a rough idea for the game and told me that I’d be in charge of everything, from coding to art to sound.

I’ve never written a game before. Well, to be honest, I’ve written part of a game before. I was on the Wizardry 8 team for a while, so my credits are on that old game. But that’s it.

So now I’m wondering if I can do it.

I’m pretty sure I can get the mechanics down just fine. I can make little thingys that move and interact. I can keep score, I can put up “You LOSE” and “You’re a WINNER!” banners. No problem. I can find someone to outsource the art to. I can probably find some canned sound effects.

So what’s the problem?

I don’t know if I can make it fun. When you play a game, there’s a covenant between you and the person who created the game. You promise to try to beat the game and have fun doing so. He promises to try to make it fun for you, not too easy, and not too hard. It’s called play balancing. The gameplay has to feel just right in order for it to be fun. You can’t ever put the user in a no-win situation. They always have to blame themselves for failure, because it should always be their fault. If it’s the game’s fault, who wants to play a game like that?

So now I’m thinking about it.

I’ve been developing software for quite a while. Most of that time has been spent working for The Man. Places like Nortel, Corel, Alias, Cognos, and IBM. So when it came time to finding work, things were pretty simple. My boss gave me work, and I did it.

I became a freelance/contract developer last year. So now I have to find my own work. I don’t want to work on anything that’s not iPhone (or maybe Android) related. So I scour the boards looking for people who are looking for me. It’s tough. Many people looking for iPhone work fall into one of two camps:

1) People who want to hire you on site, full time.
2) People who want to split the profits “50/50″.

I have no intention of moving away from lovely Ottawa, and even if I did, I would try to find a place even nicer, and try to work from there. So moving to an arbitrary location to do work for a company is not in the cards.

As to people who want to split profits 50/50, I have two problems with that. One, it’s not really a 50/50 split. Remember that Apple gets their cut, so the split is actually 30/35/35. So I would do almost all of the work for 35% of the proceeds? No thank you. Two, I don’t deal in speculation. I have a family to feed and house payments to make. I can’t afford to spend weeks or months of my time working on a project that may not bring in a dime.

So that leaves people who are willing to hire telecommuting iPhone developers who wish to get paid for time spent. Take that group, and then remove all the people who want to pay $20/hour. Frankly, any good developer that charges this much little is doing himself a disservice. Now what you have left is my target market.

It’s not easy to break into.

I figure that once I build up a portfolio of projects, I’ll be able to bring in projects easier. I think that the group of people looking for quality developers who are willing to pay what they’re worth is big enough for me. I just need to build the experience and reputation and repeat clients to continue making a living at this. So I’ve been spending a lot of time looking for projects, and every once in a while I find one.

Right now I’m finishing off a project, and I think I may have finally nailed the last bug. After seeing how much work I put into the project, I’m sure I underbid. But that’s all part of the learning process, I guess. Yesterday I put in a bid for another project, and I’m told that my bid is neither the lowest nor the highest. I like that. Frankly, if I bid the lowest, I probably underbid. If I bid the highest, I probably wouldn’t get the job. So I’m happy with my positioning.

Now I’m waiting for the phone to ring.

I’ve been hiding nothing. If you read my other blog (at PS3Blog.net) you know that I have a PS3 and that I love using it.

Chewy Xbox was actually created when I wanted to create a similar app for the PSN, but I couldn’t because Sony has no public API for me to get the information from. So I created Chewy Xbox because duncanmackenzie.net had the Xbox Live info, and I thought it would be a fun first app to create. (I was still a noob to iPhone development at the time.)

Now Sony is showing how wonderful online access can be with their eu.playstation.com website. Now, more than ever, I want to create a PSN app for the iPhone. I want it to show both your online PSN friends and your Trophy information.

Unfortunately, I have no contacts at Sony to call. I’m just a cog in the huge wheel of capitalism. I’m not one of those in-the-know journalists with PSN executives on speed dial. So if any of you out there have any idea how I can contact the Sony powers, please send me a shout.

Today I had to pull Chewy Xbox from the AppStore.

Like I said earlier, my data provider has been bandwidth limited. Which means that my app only works some of the time. Which means that hundreds of people were trying my app and giving it one-star reviews because it didn’t work.

I contacted Microsoft about getting into their Xbox Community Developer Program, but they ignored me.

I don’t know what to do.

Duncan told me that Microsoft is now accepting applications again to get into their XCDP (Xbox Community Developer Program). So I sent them an email a couple weeks ago, but I haven’t received any word. I hope that I get accepted into the program. I think that Chewy Xbox is a really smart app, and I think it’s superior to its competitors in several ways. I think that all competing apps are experiencing the same problems I have, but some of them aren’t handling it nearly as well. Maybe I’ll send Microsoft a follow-up email.

In the meantime, Chewy Xbox will still occasionally work for you depending on how hard Duncan’s site is being hit.

In totally unrelated news, have you tried out Google’s webmail interface for the iPhone lately? There have been a lot of improvements that just came out, and the app is more functional than ever. I never liked using iPhone Mail app to read my Google mail because it wouldn’t thread them. With this latest update to Google webmail, I’m not missing it at all.

Hello all. Right now I’m using DuncanMackenzie.net for my Xbox Live data. He’s been very kind to make the Xbox Live data available for free to developers such as me. But it looks like the free ride may be over. The amount of data he’s allowed to retrieve has been capped, it seems. So sometimes you may see invalid data (just 0’s, in blue) when using Chewy Xbox.

Duncan says that the official XCDP program may be re-opening soon, so if/when that happens, I’ll update Chewy Xbox. In the meantime, you should still be able to use my program, but you’ll have more downtime than before. I apologize for that, but there’s nothing really I can do about it until I get a new data source.

Chewy Xbox is now available on the iTunes store! Yay. Great day for me. You should check it out. You don’t have to have an XBox or an Xbox Live membership to try it out either. Just start it up and enter some handles you think might be taken.

Okay, it’s been out for almost two weeks now, and I’m only now posting about it. I know I know. What’s up with that? Simply put, there are two reasons.

One, Apple never sent me an email telling me that the app was now for sale. I was waiting for a long time for my contract to be approved, and then one day BAM it was and the app was up, but I never got an email.

Two, I’m having a problem with people not being able to post replies to my Chewy Xbox page here on the site. Maybe that’s why nobody has commented. Since nobody has commented, I didn’t know there was anything to comment about. I’ve now fixed that so people can comment.

At any rate, I’m excited that my app is now up and that people are finding it useful.

UPDATE: I’ve since contacted Apple a couple times, and they’ve created a ticket for me. But there’s still no action on it.

I really shou ld have checked the iTunes Connect website. Because it says that I need to have my contract complete before I can put even a free application up on the online store.

My contract isn’t complete.

Now I could argue that since I became an official iPhone developer almost half a year ago that Apple should have approved the contract by now. But that’s just shirking my responsibility. I should have checked to make sure that it was complete and approved.

So now, my application is approved, but it is awaiting the approval of the free applications contract.

Doh!

I sent an email to devcontracts@apple.com five days ago, but I’ve heard nothing so far. A friend tells me that they used to be quite responsive, but not so much anymore. Time to give them a nudge I guess.