As planned, Smiles Zen 1.3 and Smiles Drop 1.3 were sent late Friday night (technically 5 AM the next day). I made the mentioned addition of arrows after discovering some people didn’t realize you could click on the icon. Here’s a snap of that from the iPhone build on the PC. Cross promotion, now with arrows! I had some friends look at this screen, and got a good reaction from the “love hearts”, so I made a similar change to free version....
Here’s something I hope to start doing more often. Technically, I’ve been hoping to actually start all year. Short development video logs. Today’s video is a demonstration of the cross promotion features in Smiles Zen and Smiles Drop. Inspiration hit last night, and I added something amusing to it I’d thought I’d share. Both builds should go out tonight. I’ll be adding a pair of arrows beside the icon, just so it’s even clearer that you can click on it right here....
Smiles 1.3 is already in the Apple queue, but not Zen and Drop yet. Something “new” in 1.3 is that I removed the “how to play music” instructions from the game. This used to be in the upper right corner of the screen. The description used to say you could “double tap” the home button to bring up music playback, but it seems that was wrong on the iPhones and 3rd gen iPods....
I figure there’s no reason not to share these. Smiles Zen‘s “FREE ZEN WEEKEND” download statistics: 1022 – Thursday October 29th (started at noon) 3544 – Friday October 30th 1826 – Saturday October 31st 1361 – Sunday November 1st 144 – Monday November 2nd (ended at 1 AM) The 29th was a fraction of a day. I flipped the switch roughly around noon, which kicked in about 4 hours later....
Today marks the 1 year anniversary of the launch of Smiles. … Yeah, it’s been that long already. This weekend I’m giving Smiles Zen away for FREE. Also, I’ve discounting Smiles to $1.99 to reflect the price. I guess that’s how we celebrate 1 year on iPhone. 😉 In other news, Smiles 1.3 is on the way. I discovered a graphics performance bug on the newer iPhones and iPods (SGX), so that is now fixed....
The title says it all. Finally, after 10 months in the App Store, I’ve decided to try out the infamous 99 cent iPhone price with Smiles. I sent an early pre-release note to some of the iPhone press, as well as my twitter. So far it’s been picked up by Touch Arcade which is always a good place to start. I’m hopeful. The new trailer is out there in the wild now, and-a… now we wait....
Yes yes, I’m awfully quiet. What else is new? Let me tell you. First things first, a brand new trailer for Smiles. Why does Smiles need a new trailer? I’ll tell you when you’re older. This ended up taking a couple weeks longer than I’d hoped it would (spontaneous summer vacation?), but it’s done. The new trailer combines the tidbits dropped in the last post (mushroom animation, new logo), some gameplay footage, and a nice audio track....
Been caught up with a number of things. Here’s one I’m rather proud of, an animated Smiles mushroom animation. Click for 400k animated gif Animated in ToonBoom Studio. Something else, an updated Sykhronics Logo animation. That one is me goofing off in Sony Vegas. Fun fun....
First on the agenda, the book is real. As you can see above, my three complimentary copies showed up in the mail today. Word from the Dread Pirate himself (i.e. Lead Author/Tech Reviewer) is the books should be en route, if not already arriving at book stores all over the place. After all, the guy in Canada got his. 😉 – – – – – Next, a Smiles update. Smiles 1....
Smiles has been available for nearly 6 months in the App Store now. From the stories you may have heard, not all iPhone titles necessarily do well. But if you consider that the game was developed by one person in 4 months, it lives under the charts, and has only 1 Apple mention to it’s name, it’s actually done alright. I’m hardly “rolling in the dough”, but I can make ends meet....