My one year adventure on the AppStore

good read for sure, thanks for sharing

It's been one year (plus a couple of weeks) since I began my own iPhone endeavor with my biz partner. We released our 1st game last August and the new one should hit next week, if all goes well. (I know, that's a lot of time for just 2 games, what can I say...!)

Very excited to see how #2 does after the huge wealth of information we learned from the 1st one. Wish me luck!

 

My game has been out slightly over 1 year, but the most interesting part has definitely been the past few weeks. Somehow it crawled up into the top-10 list of a category (in the Dutch app store) and sales suddenly took off. The game has sold more in the past month than in the preceding year. I am very aware that this rush will be temporary (it's already moving down now that I dropped out of the general top-10 in the Dutch app store) but I'm certainly enjoying it while it lasts. Story here...

 

Whoa, how weird. My 5 year old son loves mazes and last weekend I started research on maze generation / solving. Little did I know it was such a huge subject! Currently I have a depth-first search maze generator / solver working, but I have to figure out how to display the output on my iPad. Just mentioned this because I went looking for a maze program and could only find marble labyrinth games, I didn't even find Mazer.

 

Great thread, really enjoyed your link CurlyBrace it was fantastic, thanks a lot for posting.

 

The maps for Flickitty are actually based on a randomly generated depth-first maze algorithm. The code was completely written in Lua and still exists in the Distribution, although I disabled its function so that users couldn't randomly generate maps. Looking at the maps for Flickitty, you wouldn't realize that they are based on a maze, because I do a lot of erosion, and wall destruction to make the maps more wide open.

The generator basically keeps track of the starting point, and keeps track of the depth to find the farthest endpoint. That function isn't used in Flickitty, but it exists.

I could probably provide some information about maze generators if anyone is looking for pointers and tips. I also have a fast and functional A* algo that works with the Flickitty maps, but that isn't used either. All of this is completely written in Lua.

 

I'd be interested although it sounds like I'd have to learn Lua. Really want to make this maze program for my son.

What I need to figure out is how to get my maze drawn on the screen. Then, once I have it drawn on the screen, how to provide functionality for someone to draw their way through the maze. Currently looking at CoreGraphics for drawing but am not sure if I should use OpenGL but draw in 2D?

 

I was browsing the promo code forum and stumbled on a game that seemed like a direct copy of your game. It's called Galactic Untangle. It has the stars, points, strings, everything.

 

Very insightful story, thank you so much for the link. Being on the path of developing and publishing my first iPhone game, it's made me re-evaluate the App Store sales model to adopt. I was 100% sure to market the game at the 99c price point, but you've given me a convincing argument to consider the free ad-supported model, or maybe both...

 

oops, posted in the wrong thread.

 

Strange, I did add both "maze" and "labyrinth" to the keywords. I'll look into it (although I'm probably too late, since I just got a new version approved with improved controls, and AFAIK you can only change keywords when you upload a new version).

But you're right: maze generation is a huge subject, and there are algorithms for various types of mazes. Part of the fun of writing apps, of course, is learning about this stuff.