JohnnyWorks

A reporter had some questions for me about the Palm Pre, and I just spotted an article with some of the interview posted on Bloomberg.com. You can read the entire article here, or read the section about StickWars below.

18 Applications

The Pre will go on sale with about 18 applications available in its App Catalog, including programs from Pandora music player, movie ticket service Fandango and a digital version of the checker-stacking game Connect Four, Letts said.

Some popular games may not make it to the Pre at all. The creator of “StickWars,” where you defend a kingdom against invading armies of stick figures, said he’s not willing to put in the extra effort to re-design the game if it’s not going to make any money back. The game is the third-most popular paid application in Apple’s library.

“I would need a real direct incentive in order to be willing to once again commit months of my evenings and weekends behind a computer screen coding,” said Eric Hartzog, who created the game as a student at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Designing for the iPhone was easier because other developers shared resources in free online libraries, said 22- year-old Hartzog, who has since graduated and joined the U.S. Navy. He said he would only consider doing the same for the Pre if its popularity reaches the level of Apple’s phone.

I’ve been looking more at the Palm Pre and am getting more excited about it. I’d love to develop for a device that has a faster processor, but in the end it comes down to the tools available. I’m still a ‘newbie’ coder and wouldn’t be able to create a game like StickWars from scratch. We’ll see though…I’m a strong fan of competition and am really looking forward to a real competitor to the iPhone.

You can get the latest version here or read the changelog. The new version has much cleaner graphics and runs quicker.

Unfortunately, I think I introduced a bug that can sometimes disable the in-game buttons (pause, bomber, and deploy defenders). While it auto-fixes itself at the end of the round, it is rather annoying so I’ll be rushing to finish 1.5 to correct it as soon as possible.

I sent 1.4 to Apple sometime last week, it should be going live pretty soon now. Also, they finally dropped StickWars off Staff Favorites today. Looks like the Apple guys got bored with StickWars already . Let’s hope they dig the new features I’ll be rolling out next week.

On a side note, I finally got paid by Apple for the first time today, so I can finally start paying off the credit debt I built up paying for services and equipment needed to work on StickWars . I was afraid what would happen if I didn’t get paid for some reason!

I’m really hoping to see StickWars push back into the #1 paid spot in the AppStore. I’ve been running more exchange ads, and sales are still going strong, so I believe there is still a chance to top the charts before the inevitable decline off the top 10. It’s been the top game for over a month now in many countries, including the US. I still have hope…

For the first time (that I know of) Apple has paid some individual attention to StickWars! It is currently on the first page of ‘Staff Favorites’ on the App Store landing page. That means when you land on the App Store homepage, StickWars is in three separate locations . Yay visibility!

As far as StickWars itself is progressing, the next update is about ready, I was able to optimize the code so I could change the graphics back from those new ‘fuzzy’ graphics that annoy some people, and I undid some of the factors which caused a little more lag for some people in version 1.3. I added in a new enemy which is a lot of fun, and fix various bugs and minor gameplay issues.

It’s hard to believe, but StickWars is really coming together and is starting to have all the features I had envisioned for it months ago. Now I just have to get on adding in the one enemy everyone keeps asking about–the giant stickman featured on the icon for the game .

Screenshot of the triple-feature:

Although you might not see it in the US store yet, 1.3 is rolling out across iTunes. You can checkout the changelog and get ready to battle the new dragons using your awesome new wizard fireball spell.

On another note, StickWars and StickWars Lite are both sitting at the #2 spot, and I’m hoping they can jump up to #1. Filling both #1 spots would be amazing! In addition, StickWars (paid and lite version combined) currently has 1 million unique players. Thanks to all the fans and players!

You can read more information about the update on the forums. After a long and painful night, it’s time to get some sleep and wait for Apple to approve it.

Refer to my forums for the latest updates. You can also get a sneak peek of the features that will be added in 1.3. Long story short, I just graduated college and have been busy with all the moving around. However, I’ll finish up 1.3 over the weekend and send it to Apple by Monday. Hopefully they’ll approve it by Friday, in time for the weekend.

It fixes all the bugs people have found, and makes the game less laggy in general, as well as adding tons of new fun features. I can’t wait until people get to try it out .

The funny part is I didn’t think Apple would approve both the Apps this quickly, so my changelog currently says “Updated version number”. I also don’t have new screenshots ready yet. I guess I’m going to have to put off working on version 1.3 tonight .

I’ve decided to try a slightly higher price of $1.99 for the paid version, as the game is actually more polished now and the price should reflect that. Still, I’ll keep an eye on sales and make adjustments if needed. Another reason doing this is I’m tired of getting 1 star reviews from people who have no idea what the game is before they buy it. If you don’t like throwing stick figures in the air to go splat on the ground, then you shouldn’t buy StickWars. I hate that so many people bought it and left terrible reviews when they realized that the game didn’t appeal to them at all.

Hopefully now that the Lite version is out there, and the price is slightly higher making people think more about their purchase, the people who buy StickWars are those who actually will enjoy it and leave good reviews.

After 12 days in the top spot, StickWars has dropped to #2 in the overall paid app rankings. However, the 1.2 update was sent to Apple last Wednesday and should be live this week, and I’m expecting a great user response. Hopefully it will get bumped back up to #1!

In any case, it is still the #1 game, and I’m still working around the clock on bug fixes and enhancements. I just completed a massive graphics overhaul that ended up with the graphics look exactly the same (with maybe a few compression artifacts), but the game now runs around 20% faster. I went from using 160 separate png files for all the animations to 8 atlas sheets in the compressed pvr format. Now I can work on adding some cool fire particle-effects, since I can spare the processor usage needed.

I just finished my finals at college and am graduating in a few days, so StickWars is now getting all of the attention it deserves. There are some really cool new features coming, some ideas that are new to the genre but I think will really make it fun. I’ll give a hint: if you like the idea behind ‘Bowman’, you’ll love the new wizard spell .

Also, after realizing that like 80% of the google searches for StickWars that land on my website contain the terms “cheat codes” I’m going to satisfy those people who don’t have the patience to put in the time to get to level 30 before trying out all the cool powerups. This will be a surprise, with hints posted on my forums.

All these new improvements will be included in version 1.3.

Thanks to everyone for being so patient! After working very hard for the past couple weeks, the 1.2 update is completely ready. The changelog is enormous, as I put in a lot of time adding every feature asked for that was feasible in the time frame. We also added in tons of new graphics, which really add a lot of polish and fun to the game. In addition, we now have background music tracks composed just for StickWars! I hope everyone enjoys them.

Don’t worry though, I added more options, such as the ability to disable background music, so you can listen to your own music on your iPod. For a complete list of the changes, check out the post on my forums.

The 1.2 and 1.1 Lite are actually the same game, but Apple won’t let me skip the version 1.1 for whatever reason. I’m hoping the Lite version finally gets through so people have the chance to try my game to see if it fits them before they buy. I’d like to get more than a 3.5 star rating, but I blame Apple’s rejection of the Lite version for a lot of this.

I’ll be putting up some new screenshots on the StickWars page shortly.