hey im suffering a similar fate
stats shot up whn it went live and i had good downloads for 3 days,after that the dls dwindled,
im posting on this thread cuz you guys have ginve some good feedback,
would you please do the same for puchka?

please let me know what u feel, whr im going wrong etc...

the app is free,and i know that ads-annoy people so ive kept it add free too,
after giving away the game with 3 scenes each having 12 levels,the least i was hopin for was some constructive comments and stars,not five but at least 3...

heres the game,would you guys mind cheking it out and telling me the pros n cons ?

bit.ly/Puchka

@OP, i'll play your game n let you know what i feel...

Guy's

Thank you so much. Some of the tiles were from lost garden which I have credited. The problem with the blinking I think is to do with my tiles in tiled. As this is my first there was a lot of experimenting going on and I this was the first time I've used tiled.

I will look at the other sites and experiment some more I think.

The ad thing was an idea and I do agree but I was hoping that people would convert from the free to the full for 69p but obviously not...

100 games per day. that is amazing, I think it's going to take something amazing to stand out from the crowd then.

Thanks again guys.

James

Hi,

First of all: congratulations on your first game. It is really cool to get a game out and start waiting for the statistics on downloads.

I downloaded the lite version and tried it with my iPad. I have a couple of comments for you. Try to take these as a constructive feedback, not that I'm trying to push your game down or anything.
* The graphics could use some work: for example different textures for grass/water/etc. so that it doesn't look so "tiled".
* You could also make the borders between different tile types smooth - e.g. have different tile for borders and make grass and sand look like there is a natural edge between them.
* There seem to be some "blinking" with the background graphics when it is scrolling. I don't know if the sprite is positioned to the exact coordinates or what is happening there. It looks like there is a line between two background tiles.
* The ad in the game is somewhat disturbing. I know you're selling a full version without ads (I suppose that's the deal in addition to more levels?) but still: I don't want to click ads while playing. They should be placed to the menu. You can click the ad accidentally while you're playing.

In general, I can tell you that the market is not easy. I just released my third game (see another thread, not trying to advertise it in this thread) a couple of days ago and it sells only some copies per day. It is universal with real iPad optimized graphics and all. Still, one dollar seems to be too much (or my game just sucks). :D

If you look at the App Store statistics (http://148apps.biz/app-store-metrics/) there are over 100 new games per day. It means that your game gets buried there immediately after the release. I guess the only way to succeed is to publish something so great that people recommend it to their friends or have a large marketing budget.

Anyway, I wish you luck with your game and hope you want to keep on making games! :)

Hey! In my humble opinion, I'd say the cheapest, easiest things for you to do are:

Replace your graphics using other free online graphics... I think what you've got is clean, but maybe you can find something nicer and free at these sites:

http://www.lostgarden.com/search/label/free%20game%20graphics
http://opengameart.org/
http://subtlepatterns.com/

Gift your app to your family and friends and get them to review it for you.... It'll cost you 20$, but then you'd get 20 reviews that would probably be favorable ;-)

Good luck!

Hi guy's

I thought this would be a good place to start. Last week my first game a cocos2d multi directional shooter went 'live' on the app store.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tilt-tank/id494323726?ls=1&mt=8

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tilt-tank-lite/id492574745?ls=1&mt=8

There are two versions a lite with 3 levels and the fully with 14 levels. Both are supported by apples gamecenter. They are based on a tutorial by Ray Wenderlich.

I am a start out indie developer who is deffinately not an artist so I have utilised CC art available.

I am struggling to publicise the app outwith my facebook circle of friends. I have submitted 25 promo codes to various places but have seen nothing in return. Even the lite version isn't doing very well for downloads.

Is this just the game market in general or should I be prepared to spend money (haven't really got any free cash) on advertising to get the game out there??

I appreciate the game is not HD or anything amazing but it is addictive once you start playing. I am hopefully that should it be noticed it will actually do not too bad..

Any help would be extremely appreciated from this community.

James

@ayt: Nice find.

Any idea how they come up with those ranks? It's odd that they are able to determine rankings all the way down, even though Apple doesn't have an open API to show ranks... Weird.

Here they show you the ranking of all iPod/iPhone Apps: http://www.apptrakr.com/

I noticed just by changing the URL you can get top 400 from the RSS feed feed://itunes.apple.com/us/rss/topfreeapplications/limit=400/xml

But I don't know how they get top 1000.

I have an app that's sitting about 466 in overall free apps. http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/your-past-lives-your-future/id366801534?mt=8

I would love to be able to watch it's rank in real time. If it's starts to drop maybe I can do some advertising to keep it moving in the right direction.

I Got it working declaring following in .h file

<UIAccelerometerDelegate>

UIAccelerometer *accelerometer;

then in .m file where it is written

self.isAccelerometerEnabled = YES;

also write

self.accelerometer = [UIAccelerometer sharedAccelerometer];
self.accelerometer.updateInterval = 0.025;
self.accelerometer.delegate = self;

As has been said:

1. Don't define objects in the middle of a method, you should define in a header file that you can then import, I would guess that this is breaking the accelerometer function as it is trying to define something that is already defined 60 times a second.
2. You shouldn't reset your rollingX, define rollingX in your header file so it keeps its last number.

Just as some general tidy up:

1. #define kShipMaxPointsPerSec (winSize.height*0.5)
You are using the winSize.height here but your plane moves the width of the screen, is this an oversight?

2. #define kRestAccelX (xCallib)
If you aren't letting the user calibrate by themselves then you are better just using
#define kRestAccelX 0.0f

The purpose of the rollingX function is that it smooths between the last position and the current position of the device to smooth out any sudden movements/jitter, your current implementation is just making the jitter smaller not averaging between the movements.

I am assigning

kFilteringFactor 0.5

In #define so the value of acceleration.x will be increased because it have very less amount between -0.99 to 0.99 so its a filtering technique is used for improving motion. I will try resubmit it store then see weather it works fine or not.

I don't have any special code, I just set one of my floats in the

- (void)accelerometer:(UIAccelerometer *)accelerometer didAccelerate:(UIAcceleration *)acceleration
{
variable = acceleration.x;
}

and then use it wherever I need it.
Just looked at something in your code
You have the defines inside a function. Is that a good idea? Shouldn't they be in a Config.h that gets included by the .m you want on in the .h of the m? but at the begining?
I don't have any defines after the start of my @implementation so I don't know what happens.

To get the game on the appstore to run via debug do this:
Install in from the appstore.
Use the same code you submitted and use debug not build and debug (xcode3) then set a breakpoint in

- (void)accelerometer:(UIAccelerometer *)accelerometer didAccelerate:(UIAcceleration *)acceleration

and see if it gets called.

Just noticed something @varedis said. What you are doing there isn't a high pass filter but rather you are multiplying the value you get from accelertion.x with kFilteringFactor. The second part of this:

rollingX = (acceleration.x * kFilteringFactor) + (rollingX * (1.0 - kFilteringFactor));

will always be 0. This is a bug.

Hi "unrealaz"

I have try to add the archive file to device but its giving the error that entitlements are not valid. This same problem is also getting in one of my other games. Must be a problem in the code. Can you provide me any accelerometer code that was approved by apple and works fine. Also it moves the sprite very smoothly.

One more thing, try deleting the game, cleaning everything and reinstalling. Maybe you save something that affects the accelerometer.

Are you sure the unsetted static variables are zero? I remember once having problems with numeric variables of undefined content but I do not remember the exact context.

Try testing the archive you sent to apple to see if it works. Look it up in the organizer and try to drag it in itunes and sync in with the device.
See if that works.
Indeed cocos2d needs to have skip install set to yes so it doesn't get copied twice.

I had tested it in the debug mode but after getting the problem i have also tested the same code in release mode that also worked fine. I have checked accelerometer is toggled on in the info.plist. Before submitting the app to app store i just on the skip installation of the static cocos2d libraries. Because without it was not submitting the app to app store and was giving error..

During your testes on devices did you test the game on release build?
Also did you by any chance modify the cocos2d version right before submitting?
Another thing that comes to mind is that the info.plist has an accelerometer option for the requirements of the game that define what devices the game runs on. Did you toggle it off/delete it?

There may be problem that i have not added following lines to my code so its not calling any delegate function of accelerometer. May be in release mode it does't work properly?

[[UIAccelerometer sharedAccelerometer] setUpdateInterval:(1.0 / 60)];
[[UIAccelerometer sharedAccelerometer] setDelegate:self];

float movementX;
float xCallib, yCallib;
BOOL willMoveX;

All are declared in the .h file but has not assigned any value so its value will be 0.0 by default.

May be food for thought in this thread: http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/forum/topic/10521

One possible cause, you are resetting your rollingX value to zero everytime but then trying to use it in an equation.

I am pretty sure it keep the value of the last rollingX so it can work out the difference.

What is the value of xCallib?

I am pretty sure whatever number returned in movementX is always over 45

Applying some pseudo math:

rollingX = (0.2 * 0.5) + (0 * (1.0 - 0.5));          // 0.1
accelX = 0.2 - 0.1;                                  // 0.1

float accelDiffX = 0.1 - 0;                          // 0.1
float accelFractionX = 0.1 / 0.1;                    // 1
movementX = 240 * 1;                                 // 240 - Way over 45 with a tiny initial tilt

Yes it does perfectly fine on when development devices and tested on iPhone 4, iphone 3GS and ipod 2nd generation and also on iOS 4 to iOS 5... But did't work after approval....

Just to clarify, this app works when testing on your device in development but then doesn't work on device when downloaded via the App Store?

My game is approved by the apple but the accelerometer is not working is my app. Here is the link of my app.

http://itunes.apple.com/in/app/the-plane-game-lite/id489110251?mt=8

This problem is occurring in my other too more apps which are build by using COCOS2D accelerometer code. Please help me out i have stuck here with no functionality. Here is my code. This is working fine in released code but not after approval from app store.


-(id)init
{
self.isAccelerometerEnabled = YES;
[self schedule:@selector(nextFrame:)];
}

[plane setPosition:ccp(newX,60)];
}

we've just updated AnimalBlocks to v1.1 and it's on sale. Features include;

- take snapshots and add them to your iPad's Photo Album!
- added four extra blocksets (computer, ice, fridge & dymo)
- added more backgrounds
- some dictionary updates

Have fun! :)

Thank you very much for the review! I really appreciate it.

Fun game Jose! I'll be giving it a nice Rating & Review in the App Store. :-)

Thanks! I used ScreenFlow to capture the Simulator using a black background on my desktop. Then I edited the videos using iMovie.

this is awesome!

side question: what tool was used to make the trailer video?