So by now probably everyone has heard about the very sadening things hapening in Haiti.

Writing my previous blog post, which is one of those typical lighthearted developer blog posts moaning jokingly on high level about this and that in the comfort of his relaxing chair, i suddenly had to think about Haiti again.

That made me think its time for doing something.

You know, when things happen like those in Haiti now i usually always get sad for two reasons:
First and foremost because seeing the suffering people go through is very depressing,
second, because i´m a poor guy and don´t have a lot of power or money to help as much as i would like to.

So i typically don´t and try to ignore it after feeling guilty. 
When i see a homeless person on the street i give him an euro or two in between, but besides that and looking after my baby nephew and teaching him new things the amount of really social things i do is kinda quite limited.
On the money side i sorta have to argue it out with myself because my indy stuff doesn´t bring much money yet so i´m still doing one client project after the other to pay the bills and only get to work on my own projects in my spare time, so not much money left to donate propper sums really.
Well, i thought i could maybe do something now though:
I now raised the price of stuntmanbob on the app store and will donate all the money i get from sales of it till end of february to help organizations doing their job in Haiti.
Right now stuntmanbob isn´t selling many copies and probably the price raise will not affect that very positively either, but yeah, i´ve got another update already submitted waiting for approval so that maybe it gets better when that comes out.

At least i feel like i´m doing my part, even if its a small one, so not all bad i hope =)
I´d be glad if you buy stuntmanbob on the app store and help that way, too, or, you know, just look up one of the many donation organizations and donate some money there =)

You can get stuntmanbob on the App Store here

So yeah, there i was praising  Apple not long ago because the previous stuntmanbob update was approved so quickly.

That motivated me to work on yet another expansion update right away and release that before client work or something else ”distracts” me again. So i worked on yet another update, improved the menus some, added 10 more levels to kite mode

stuntman bob iPhone kite mode

and more costumes, like this:

stuntman bob swimsuit

 (

Tangent:

For those not having played the game yet one first starts out with Bob being in underwear. When releasing one of the earlier versions of the game, which had no option to change costumes yet, so Bob would always be in underwear, one complaining reviewer moaned heavily, saying things in the vein of: “This app should be taken down from the store, its called stuntmanbob but its a baby, not a man because he is in diapers, so the app is about throwing babies around!!”

So yeah, dear misguided reviewer, this is for you and everyone else whos good for a laugh and doesn´t take things too serious =)

Bob doesn´t fit in everyone´s dress code expectations, but he is no baby either =)

)

Ok, so i submitted the update waiting for it to be reviewed and hopping it would go as quickly as with the previous update.

Sadly, no luck so far.

Its still waiting for review after a few days..

Ay, dear Apple people, you so teased me with that ultra quick one day review and approval timespan with the previous update, i so hoped it wasn´t just a temporary state of having caught up on the pile of apps to review during the holidays, but somehow a magical faster automated review process or just way more reviewers working on it, that yes, now waiting for going into review for days again just feels twice as painful..

(Yes, i know, i´m a spoiled brat after working on web content so long where between finishing a project and publishing it to the world its not much longer away than a single mouse click and an upload and yeah, compared to publishing on consoles apple´s way still is way faster, but man, less than one day passing between submitting an app/ update and it going live and that always, wouldn´t it be nice, no awesome?

=)

Wow, Apple is on fire! =)

I just submitted the update to Stuntmanbob the other day and it has already been approved and is live on the App Store, wicked =)

This update is special because i´m trying something new there: It features a preview version of the Cannonball physics editor which is still work in progress. Hence that message shown below which one sees when one uses it =)  I thought it´d be cool to get feedback from the players on a feature while i can actually still change it considerably. Let´s see how that goes =)

Here is the App Store link:

Stuntmanbob on the App Store

So yeah, i thought in between i could also write about some games by developer mates when they are noteworthy enough =)

And well, today the iPhone version of tumbledrop by my mate dock came out on the app store and it is very noteworthy =).

At its core its a simple physics based puzzle game, but man is it nicely polished =)

It has slick menus, smooth transitions between all screens and is stuffed full of cute animations. Its just way “oooh, adwowable” when the star gets the panic face expression before falling into the water =)

Its also not just a quick port of the online version, it has lots of new levels and other cool additions and its impressive how much time dock spent on adding and refining all that.

As game developer i also find it a great example for how something can be very simple at its core but when executed in such great way still really stand out a lot.

Definately one of the must have iPhone games =)

Have a look here:

or just get it here =)

Its been a while since i last posted on a blog. I´ve been thinking about setting up a blog again but never got to do it, always so many things to do..

Well, good thing my mate dock started a blog a few days ago, motivated me to finally do it again, too.

That, and also that i wanted to write about some things i´m working on =)

In the last few days i worked on a level editor update for stuntmanbob on the iPhone. Basically one can place and connect parts with joints, build levels or just goof around

For some reason it turned out more tricky to do than i expected (haha, yeah, this is an injoke to fellow developers cause that just happens all the time in development, no? ) to connect the wheels using my custom collider setup and still have them be able to spin freely, so once i got that working i was so happy that i made a second screen capture right away

I´m intending to release the update to stuntmanbob featuring a preview version of the editor on the app store shortly so more on this soon =)