7 bub iOS game developer

Long life to read these lines.
The article summarizes the three-year experience of creating iOS games for personal use.
Examples of software code will not be. For examples of software you go to stackoverflow.com .

The article deals with the creation of the application on the example of the unpublished game Five Diamonds.
Stern editors warn that the application is not laid out in any stores, please do not move me to unnecessary sections.

I suggest lazy people to watch the video.

')
I invite the rest to the world of letters and amusing events.


The development of the game for the iPhone consists of 7 stones. Idea, Pictures, Icon, Mu Sounds, Programming, Help, Description .

There 7 gems Google translates as 7 diamonds .
Back 7 diamonds Google translates as 7 diamonds .
So, 7 of my iOS development.

Idea

The idea of ​​the game Five Diamonds (in Russian Bryuliki ) grew out of the mega-hit Lines . 1989, 5 or more balls of the same color, lined up, are eaten.

First of all, I checked the availability of analogues in the appStore . Upon request, Lines found more than 500 games, all good, but poor.
It is clear why. Classic Lines has an oversized 9x9 cell board. The iPhone is comfortable on the 6x6 margins. This is the limit for poking a finger at the screen.
How to solve the problem? Either reduce the size of the board, or do not smudge the screen. I implemented both options.
First, I reduced the board for Lines to a size of 6x6 and reduced the number of burning balls in the line to 4-e. The game became interesting, but dumb.
Just for the American market.
I did not want to enter the American market, I wanted to play myself.
I returned the burning of 5 objects, but added the ability to collect figures not only by color, but also by form. 4 colors, 4 shapes. 4x4. I was lucky.
This solution turned out to be the best option for a new game.

Pictures

I took pictures from the Internet on request gems icon .

The rest, from the same place, from google.com .
Apple and Xcode 4.5 use the device to support old aluminum iPhones and force developers to make three splash pictures.

Default.png  320x480. Default@2x.png  640x960. Default-568h@2x.png  640x1136. 

I make other pictures for the game in good resolution. For example, for a button with a size of 60x60 pixels , I create a picture with a size of 240x240 . I do not save other people's megabytes. But I save the screen energy.
The background for solitaire games should be black, with a light bright gradient to the center.

Icon

The icon must be created at the finish of development. Play the game. Soak up the atmosphere. There must be harmony between mood and image.
I chose a draft icon from the Internet at the request of the free template ios app icon .
By the way, there are links to habr. I repent, took without asking.
You need a little bit of Photoshop knowledge to modify the icon.

The icon should be stupid, contrast and simple.
The store is littered with bright icons, which does not stop looking.
My 4 year old son has 20 applications. 20 races. Good applications. But I do not distinguish them by icons from each other.
As if made a carbon copy - checkered flags, screaming colors.
Only karmageddon stands out - a red 4-bit muzzle with EGA resolution. I play it sometimes. Although the control of the turns there is done poorly - do not use a gyroscope, strange guys.
Apple and Xcode 4.5 are forced to make three icons for the iPhone .

  Icon.jpeg  1024x1024 Icon@2x.png  114x114 Icon.png  57x57 

Sounds and melody

The sounds on freesound.org are full. The main condition is the duration of the sound no more than 1 second.
The background tune for the menu screen can be played by yourself on the guitar. With working noise from neighboring cubes. Surprisingly pleasantly it turns out. Although this is a personal opinion. I'm still 50 years old, not 20.
For Five Diamonds, I downloaded an album of the old Soviet VIA "Zodiac" running by Janis Lusens . We must remind the world about it.
Melody plays on all screens except the game. I respect the silence and the user. The duration of the sound should be about 30 seconds, so as not to weigh more than 500 kilobytes. Although I promised not to save memory, I saved here.
Copyright? piracy?
I wrote a letter to the author of the composition 02-Pasifik.mp3, Janis Lucens, asking for permission to use his melody in the game.
The secretary answered
- 500 euros, and your song.
500 euro for 5 minutes stereo?
“Excellent,” I replied, “I take the first 30 seconds from your composition.” 50 euros. Turn them into mono. 25 euros. I save the signal with a bitrate of 128. Total - 10 euros, do you agree?
Something the answer is still no. Apparently, agree.

Programming

I think like an 8086 processor . Therefore, I can not teach you modern programming.
Moreover, I am a categorical opponent of using someone else's popular frameworks like Unity3d.
Standard tools make standard applications. They can be cool, but not interesting to anyone. The train is gone, guys, the market is full. Ideas rule the world and original implementation.
And, of course, I eat only pure Objective-C. I could not recognize the taste of this language for half a year. But the brain turned over, I loved it and with horror I look at C ++, Java and PHP.
For symbolic making money, I put in an advertisement. Sooner or later I will publish the game. I think in December.
For earning on advertising, I use a standard bundle of iAd + AdMob.
In America and the surrounding area, iAd works, in Russia and the rest of the world of AdMob. Binds them together service adwhirl.com .
Although google has introduced a new admob mediation service since this year, but I am a conservative, I have not switched to new rails.
The new Xcode adds support for iPhone 5. It is necessary to duplicate xib files and visually place elements for two screen resolutions.
And in the body of the main viewController, I use the code to determine the type of screen.

 CGRect screenBounds = [[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds]; if (screenBounds.size.height == 568) { iPhone5 = 1; } else { iPhone5 = 0; } 

Hell, was it all the same code?

Help

Help should be good. No more than one text line per screen. Animation and calculation on stupid.
Help 100 times more important icons. Verified by personal experience. In the Five Diamonds app, kids just go to the Help page.
Kukhelp and continue to watch cartoons. Good intellectual tips that monitor the reaction of the player. For a beginner, they throw out hints, for experienced people they are silent in a rag. Such Help requires more programming than the game itself.

Description

Description for appStore includes text, screenshots and video. Video is needed exclusively for Habr.
From the app and the store on youtube nobody comes !!!
For example, in my game, Chapay has 95,000+ players and a button to watch the video How to Play inside the application. Before the publication of the article on Habré there were 60 views. After the publication of the article on Habré - 7000 views.

How to play, without poking a finger at the screen, I will write in another article. If interesting.
Thanks for attention.