We're at it again. . .

*sounds of computers and other machinery starting up in the background*

Well. . . it's been. . . a little while.  Almost a year, in fact, since we've made a blog post.  (Although, to be fair, I think we have done some dev work in between that blog post and now, so we haven't been totally slacking; just kind of totally slacking).  But here we are (again).  I'm sure there are more than a few previous blog posts about how we are going to really start trying to blog more and how we are getting back into the swing of things and all of that, so I'm not going to repeat myself.  This post is mainly to say that, for the near future, Austin and I are back and hard at work on some new and exciting stuff.

Old News Updates

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For anybody who used to follow the blog and might want a little bit of an update on some things we had previously talked about (mainly block'd! and Collar Fall (or Spectrum))  the next section is for you.  If you're knew to the blog or don't really care about any of that stuff and just want to know more about our new and upcoming ventures, feel free to skip ahead to the "New and Exciting Stuff" section further down this post.

If you're wondering what happened to all the stuff we were talking about a year ago (like the block'd! version 1.1 update and the game we were working on Spectrum (formerly known as Color Fall!)) the short answer is none of that stuff is going to happen.  Or, rather, none of that stuff is going to happen in the near future.  As far as block'd! goes, we have 30 new levels and a new color scheme that are all almost ready to go.  The only thing left to do is make sure all the new levels are beatable.  But as for some of the other features we were hopping on adding to it. . . I wouldn't hold my breath.  If we find that we have a little bit of down time in between projects or we need to take a break, we might push out a quick little update with the new colors and levels, but probably nothing more than that.

Spectrum (or Color Fall!) was actually, kind of, almost ready to go but then. . . something happened. . . I think it was cleaning up the UI. . . and we just kind of let it die.  Also, we noticed that someone had beat us to the punch on the general idea and game play of Spectrum so we lost a lot of moment there as well.  So, similarly to block'd!, if we find some down time or want to take a break, we might end up releasing Spectrum, or we might not, who knows.

I think that's all for old news so no onto the fun and exciting stuff!!!

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New and Exciting Stuff!

Yes, we are working on a new game!  And I don't know about Austin, but I'm pretty excited about it.  It's taking us in a new direction that I think will really help us grow and reach more people.  I don't really want to talk too much about the game here (because there's a lot to talk about) but our working name for the game right now is Zen Balance.  We've been working on the game for a little less than a month now and over the course of only four or five meetings I think we've made a lot of progress.  I'll be making another blog post soon to talk more about the specifics of the game so make sure to check back for that.

Other than that I'm not really sure what else to talk about as far as new stuff goes.  We've updated the website a little bit.  It's fairly similar to the look of our previous website but we decided that our new game called for a new website so here it is.  If you have any input about our website feel free to let us know.  Also, Austin and I are now living in the same area (for the first time since we founded Symbiotic Studios, I think) so we'll be able to meet more often, which will hopefully improve our output (in both blog posts and games).

I think that's all I really want to talk about in this post.  Make sure to check back for our post about Zen Balance.  We're really excited about it and we think you guys will be too.

As always, thanks for reading.

-Matt. 

Sharing is Caring

Back from a long weekend so I figured I would let you guys know some of the dev stuff accomplished over the weekend.  First off, you should go check out the sneak peak of the new color scheme for Block'd!, if you haven't already.  I'm pretty excited about the new colors and I'm also excited about the updates to the UI we are going to be implementing for our v1.1 update.  But that's a post for a different day.  The main thing that got accomplished over the weekend was setting up sharing for Color Fall.

Having people share your game is probably the best, and cheapest, way to get more people playing.  So our job is to make sharing as easy as possible.  We got our first taste of this when we were developing Block'd!  Or I guess I should say Austin got his first look at sharing when we were developing Block'd! (since he was kinda in charge of that).  So he set off to learn about all of that stuff and then next thing I know, we have a button that will post a predetermined message, link, and photo to Facebook.  But then it was my turn to get sharing set up for Color Fall.  

My first instinct was to just copy and paste the code from Block'd! and see what happened.  Well, as I'm sure you could have guessed, this did not go exactly as I had planned.  It turned out I was missing the Facebook SDK library which caused a number of errors.  So I headed over to the library selector in Xcode, eager to add the SDK to my project and have all my problems resolved, when I discovered that there was no Facebook SDK in the default libraries.  So off to the internet I go to try and figure out what this Facebook SDK is when I stumble upon this

This magical little thing that, will not only let you share to Facebook and Twitter, but also let you e-mail or text it to someone!  And the best part, it's pretty much built into iOS 7.  The share sheet, as it's called, seemed to be the solution to all my problems.  So I start doing a little more research and finally find everything I need to implement it in Color Fall (on another note, I actually found it a little difficult to find a good tutorial on how to implement this.  This is the one I ended up using, in case you are looking for the same thing)  The second best part about using the share sheet instead of the Facebook SDK and Twitter SDK is that the roughly hundred lines or so of code it took to implement just the Facebook Sharing can be condensed into about 20 lines of code. So with those 20 lines written I press run on the iOS simulator, press the share button and. . . nothing. . . (although I'm not sure I expected anything less)

Long story short is that the share sheet is really a ViewController and I was trying to implement it in an SKScene which is already in a ViewController.  So I had to access the Scene's view controller to present this new view controller.  Once again, the internet did not fail in supplying me with all the knowledge I needed.  So with two more lines of code I run it again, press the share button and. . . nothing. . . again . . .

So at this point I think the code I got from the internet is a little on the iffy side so I go back and start looking for other ways to do it.  But after wading though pages of google and trying different search phrases I can't find anything.  So at this point I'm starting to get a little more than frustrated with the code.  Finally, I decide that it's time to turn on the debugger in Xcode and get this figured out once and for all.  The first thing I notice with the debugger is that the method setting up and presenting the share sheet . . . is never getting called. . . because when I copy and pasted the share button code from another button I forgot to make the proper changes.  So with the proper changes made, I run the code, press the share button and . . . the share sheet comes up! YES!!  (Also, here's what I ended up using to deal with the ViewController problem)

So finally, after a couple days of internet searching and fiddling with a couple lines of code, I had sharing set up for Color Fall.  There are a few things that make the share sheet less than ideal.  The main one being that you have to be logged into Facebook and Twitter on your iPhone (like in the settings part of the phone) to have them show up.  I'm also not sure if it's going to work with devices not running iOS 7, which is a little bit of a problem.  But despite all of that, I still think this is the best way to get Facebook and Twitter and all the other sharing stuff set up.

So that's basically what I accomplished over the weekend.  We also did a touch of theoretical development on Block'd!, figure out exactly what we want to implement in v1.1 before we actually start dividing up the tasks and getting to work on that.  Anyways, keep checking back here for more updates on the stuff we're doing.

Thanks for reading,

-Matt.

Block'd! Sneak Peak

So I though I would give you guys a little sneak peak at the new color scheme we're going to be adding in version 1.1.  If you've looked at the "coming soon" button you probably already have a rough idea of what the colors are going to be.  I thought I would give you a better, clearer, look at the tiles and what some of the new and old levels look like with the new color scheme.  So here are the new tiles we are going to add in version 1.1

We decided to go with more of a brighter pastel kind of look for this next version.  Our last color scheme was a little darker so we thought this would add a nice balance to it.  Here are what some of the group one boards look like with the new color scheme.

And here's a quick look at some of the new levels and new boards we are going to be adding in group two in version 1.1.

So that's kinda all the pictures I have to show you right now.  One other thing about the new color scheme is we've run into a little problem with the appearance of everything else.  If you've played the game then you know that all the buttons for the tutorial and the credits and the win buttons are all based on the red, blue, and yellow color scheme we were using in group one.  So we are having to go back and take a look at all those and decide how we want to change them (if we want to change them at all).  But that's kinda all there is on the color side and new levels side of the things for the upcoming version of Block'd!  We'll be posting some more about the other features as we start the development on those a little more so keep checking back for some more of those updates.

As always, thanks for reading,

-Matt.

Getting Back Into the Swing of Things

So I had really wanted to have been blogging more but for some reason it just seems to always be harder than I think it's going to be.  My excuse this time is having to deal with the start of classes.  So now that we are pretty much two weeks into the semester I think I've gotten back into the swing of things and now it's time to put a little more focus not only on blogging but also on game development.  So here's kinda what we've been up to the past couple of weeks.

Firstly, Block'd! v1.0.3 is live in the App Store, so go check that out and make sure you've downloaded the update if you haven't already.  Basically, this should be the first version that's bug free.  We had a few major bugs in our release version, followed by some more minor bugs up trough this version.  The most notable bugs were the Facebook sharing button issues, the win animation timing issue on iPhone 5s, and then accidentally unlocking all the levels.  All of those have been fixed with this version and right now we have a relatively stable game up on the App Store and it's time to focus on the next steps for Block'd!

There are two major things we are continuing to work on for Block'd!  The first of which is trying to spread the word out there and get some more people playing the game.  This has proved harder than we expected and we are still grappling with this crazy concept of marketing.  I think what's making the marketing process difficult is that we are only two people who are trying to not only sell the game, but are also trying to keep working on development on the game and working on development of other games and not to mention school and jobs and everything else that people have to deal with to keep there lives running smoothly.  So I think we just find ourselves spread a little thin and when it comes to marketing or developing I think we both lean toward developing (partly because we kinda know what we are doing on the dev side, and not so much on the marketing side)

But speaking of the dev side of things. . . we have a lot of new features planned for version 1.1. Not only are we adding some more levels and color packs, but we are also working on adding in some different mechanics to the overall way you play the game.  The most notable (in my opinion) is we are going to add a star ranking system for completing the levels.  Instead of having to beat the level in a certain number of moves to move on, you'll now be able to move on as long as you fill the board with color, in as many moves as possible.  However, if you beat the board in the specified number of moves you'll earn a star for the level.  Stars can then be used to unlock the next group or unlock different color schemes early or some other stuff.  We haven't worked out all the details yet, but it should be a root roaring good time.  We're also talking about adding some bonus levels that you would play every day and if you beat all of them (probably around 5 levels) you would earn some more stars.  We are also going to add the ability to skip levels so hopefully if you've been frustrated that will ease some of the frustration.

This feels like a rather long blog post so I think I'll kinda wrap things up here.  We are super excited that we've got a stable version of Block'd! up on the App Store and we'll be starting to ramp up our marketing a little more.  We've also got a some major new features that we're going to be adding to hopefully make the game a little less frustrating and a little more fun to play on a daily basis.  Additionally, we've also got the new colors, and some more levels coming your way which should make things even more super fun.  So yeah.  Hopefully I'll be blogging more because we really do have some exciting stuff I'm looking forward to sharing with you guys.

As always, thanks for reading

-Matt.

Color Fall

So.  Just thought I'd give you guys a quick update on some things going on around here.  Obviously, we are still working on Block'd!  Version 1.0.3 is going live in the App Store today and that should be the first bug free version 1.0 so that's pretty exciting.  Austin and I are also working on some awesome new features and some interface redesigns for version 1.1 that we think you guys are going to love.  But I'm going to save the majority of that stuff for another blog post.

Today, I'd like to officially announce the development of a new game: Color Fall.  The basic idea of the game is that your player is a certain color at the top of the screen and then color bars, made up of six different colors, come up from the bottom of the screen.  Your job is to move the player left and right to match the player color to the corresponding color section of the color bar to break through the color bar.  So it's a pretty simple game.

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Game play screen shot form the iOS simulator

The idea for this game basically came from looking at all those really simple but addictive games, like "flappy bird" or "stay in the line" and thinking, why not just make one of those?  So that's pretty much what happened.  I started on it while we were waiting for the first approval and release of Block'd!, and since it's such a simple game it's pretty much almost ready to go.  There are just a few features missing and then some polishing of the graphics.  One of the main features we are looking at adding is Game Center, so that should make things a little more interesting.

All-in-all I'm pretty happy with the way this game is turning out and I'm excited to get it out there and see what you guys think.  Right now I don't really have an exact date, or even a good time frame, for when you can expect Color Fall to hit the App Store, but if I had to guess I would say sometime around November 2014?  Maybe a little sooner? . . . So stick around for more updates about that.

As always, thanks for reading,

-Matt.