Well I a lot has happened since last update. Lets see if I can summarize.

Doodle Army 2 (DA2) has gotten a lot of attention this round. It was due. We have always had a serious hacker problem. It stems from an architecture choice made from its inception that makes hacking easy. At the inception it was easy to handle bluetooth near proximity networks, and community policed. You just walk over to the offender and knocked the device out of their hand and had words ;).  I could care less about the piracy of in app purchases. I give a lame kudo for keeping a buck or two out of my pocket per script kiddy using your hack. Its a game after all, and those purchases function within the normal expected bounds of the game experience, but what I can not abide by is people hacking to gain "1 shot" kills, infinite life, etc. That affects the positive multiplayer experience in a negative way, which effects the number of people who want to play, etc. So DA2 is getting some serious client and server tweaks as we take steps to make it annoying to hack, etc. The sad part is it ups the amount of work the servers have to do, so it actually costs us more. A downer, but that work has went well. We added some new weapons. Fixed some odd bugs (rocket launcher and map related. We had some issues integrating an ad framework into DA2, that slid us to the right several weeks.

In other great news we are still working on an Android for Doodle Army (the original) and now we are just starting a port to Windows 8. It is a matter of time before we are simply building games in an agnostic as possible fashion then porting to every platform. The days of use being a one platform pony show are coming to an end.

Zombie Road Rage is doing well enough. Not super amazing, but interesting to see how many people are still playing (about 1/15 the amount as DA2)

Flip the Bird... (Flop the Bird) Well the kids love him. We see him going free someday when we have a slow moment. Otherwise it is just underwhelming. We think we know part of the problem. It needs a tutorial, and a 

I am sure I am leaving out something interesting... In any case I better get back before someone realizes I have slipped out of my enclosure.

What I really want to do is fire up Dwarf Fortress and Tekkit (Minecraft)... But that will have to wait... There is much work to be done yet.


If you at first your app does not fly out of the app store... You will begin to ask yourself many questions about why... I suspect it's just the sheer volume of apps, you get buried, it is rare someone is just discovered (e.g., Tiny Wings). But a good app is a good app. Great apps elevate in popularity because they are great, right? Assuming they aren't overtaken by competitors in features (and thusly missing a window of opportunity) they still stand a good chance of making it... Maybe that is my hope springing eternal and my belief we truly do have a fun little game worth the coin... If I didn't why bother trying!

 

The following links detail the entire series. I found it very thought-provoking and relevant to our current efforts:

http://www.raywenderlich.com/11359/how-to-market-and-promote-your-games-and-apps-part-1

http://www.raywenderlich.com/11633/how-to-market-and-promote-your-games-and-apps-part-2

http://www.raywenderlich.com/11767/how-to-market-and-promote-your-games-and-apps-part-34

http://www.raywenderlich.com/11794/how-to-market-and-promote-your-games-and-apps-part-4

 

I really need to try some of these things for the next app(s)! If you develop apps what works for you? As a consumer what resonates the most?

I am just looking for magic marketing bullets... Rarer than a unicorn I suspect...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Sorry for the lag in getting out updates! For the few who even know we exist, follow us, and ask regularly.

We have been seriously heads down (Chad, Meredith, and myself) working on this next release. Which will officially take us out of what I call our 'commercial beta' we released and patched a couple times since Nov 2011.

We have a fix for the iOS 3.2 crash. Turns out we use a feature in 4.x that does not cause the tools in Xcode to not allow you to publish your app to support 3.x... Go figure, but we worked around it! That will be in the next release. Which will be bloody soon or a little later... See... (excuse time) I slipped my schedule some over the 2011 holidays (i.e., forcibly took a month off) and now my next kid is due to be born ANY day now (light contractions and effacing (look it up) have been had by my wife Meredith). There will be a release soon! It will be either a software release or a baby followed ASAP by a software release, you can not plan these things so close to the wire. As soon as I finish the tutorial levels to introduce all the players to every facets of game play this thing goes live (again) and we start marketing.

 

Thanks for all your help and feedback. It really has helped us make a better game because of it!

Stay tuned for a list of fixes and feature additions soon.


Appsomniacs.com and CodeWorx have started working on the next Flip the Bird update... Too early to talk details (we don't even know how some of the changes will work yet exactly...) No earth shaking changes, just items that clarify the game's intent and objectives, and we really want to put some achievements in there...

We got some stuff for the web site cooking too... My friend Chris Keller of CMK Productions is making this all happen. Without him the CodeWorx web effort would be floundering due to me being spread to thin, if not just a complete flop...

Hey check out (and like) our Facebook landing page for the Flip project. http://www.facebook.com/FlipTheBirdGame

There is a contest on the Facebook landing page... like it and get into a drawing for a promo code to (use or gift) every month just for being a fan on Facebook.

I will close with a thought... I have not heard truer words... Software is never done... We have so many more projects in the queue we want to work on it boggles my mind, but I feel the need to finish this title adequately... before spreading myself even more thin...

Well I better stop muttering to myself and get to work...


Happy New Year!

Published 1/1/2012 by Hunter in CodeWorx

May the new year be a prosperous one for you!

 

Welcome the temporary landing site for CodeWorx Studios! We have moved hosting (and switched platforms...) and intend to consolidate the older information onto this new site as time permits between gigs (like RIGHT NOW!). This includes converting the old site content for perusal, setting up the forums, and importing the development blog (into this blog).

 

For now here are some helpful links to follow to learn about us and out products as we get this site set up:

Our old development blog - http://codeworx.blogspot.com

Our latest game app release (Nov 2011) "Flip the Bird" - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flip-the-bird/id452552250?mt=8 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


CodeWorx Studios

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