Shortly after we released Zengaku, we realized that the puzzle game could be a bit much for a lot of people when they first looked at it. We thought hat if we provided some good help information and some hints that would be enough to get them over the initial shock of looking at that blank puzzle screen. However we soon found that these things just weren't enough.
Our review from App Safari was the last straw. It was a very positive review. And we've been very appreciative of that. The one bit of criticism they had was that the puzzles were a bit too much for the reviewer. Who even stated that they were no number puzzler and never actually finished a game. This made us sad. ;-(
So we decided at that point that our new number one feature was going to be a smaller version of the original game that would allow new players a chance to sharpen their skills a bit before taking on the challenge of larger puzzles. Our puzzle generation specialist set about tweaking things to see what we could do. So we created a number of puzzle boards that used the numbers 1-6 rather than 1-9 like the larger version do.
I'm actually not a big number puzzle fan myself. My wife is the one who usually tests out our new puzzles for me since it just isn't really my thing. But the with the mini-puzzles that changed. They didn't take me as long to work through in general. But we've got a couple of permutations that are still crazy hard. But that's good too.
I just realized we never published this post and we should have. I'm righting that wrong now.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
To Redshirt or not to Redshirt?
So I've been thinking about our company name the last couple days. There has been an upsurge in violence in Thailand where some protestors called the Redshirts have been causing a bit of a ruckas. The reason for the blog post is just to clear up the lineage of our name. I doubt anyone that knows us personally or who'd read this blog (since they are probably a fully overlapping ven diagram) would suspect that we knew about the other usages of Redshirt before we were formed. Although some people have politely (playfully) pointed out the overlapping name recently.
The connotation for us is directly linked to our general nerdiness. As nerds who play too much WoW and get way too excited about the next Apple product or will argue for hours about the merits of Java vs C++ or how much the use of square brackets sucks in Objective C; we obviously associated the Redshirt in our name to a small television program that started back in the 60s and attempted to take us on journey "where no man has gone before."
With that in mind we've been a bit distressed as we found out that our name, which we thought was somewhat fun and playful, is actually associated with violence, protest, even a white paramilitary group from the southern US.
So lets recap a bit shall we? Please, please, please think of us and our name with the following video in mind:
But do not think that we have anything to do with the much more serious stuff going on in this video. This is NOT at all something we are trying to associate with. (Regardless of the validity or not of the protestors problems with their government of Thailand. We just simply don't know anything about the issues at hand and what to stay out of it.)
So remember we're fun. Not serious. Just like our game we made for the iPhone and iPod Touch: Zengaku is fun and nerdy. Not serious and deadly. Ok. I feel better now that I got that off my chest.
The connotation for us is directly linked to our general nerdiness. As nerds who play too much WoW and get way too excited about the next Apple product or will argue for hours about the merits of Java vs C++ or how much the use of square brackets sucks in Objective C; we obviously associated the Redshirt in our name to a small television program that started back in the 60s and attempted to take us on journey "where no man has gone before."
With that in mind we've been a bit distressed as we found out that our name, which we thought was somewhat fun and playful, is actually associated with violence, protest, even a white paramilitary group from the southern US.
So lets recap a bit shall we? Please, please, please think of us and our name with the following video in mind:
But do not think that we have anything to do with the much more serious stuff going on in this video. This is NOT at all something we are trying to associate with. (Regardless of the validity or not of the protestors problems with their government of Thailand. We just simply don't know anything about the issues at hand and what to stay out of it.)
So remember we're fun. Not serious. Just like our game we made for the iPhone and iPod Touch: Zengaku is fun and nerdy. Not serious and deadly. Ok. I feel better now that I got that off my chest.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Zengaku Lite - Marketing success?
Well... it has been a few days now that we've had Zengaku Lite out there. It already has many more downloads then Zengaku, and we've had a couple of days with multiple sales of the full version.
We initially started out with the $0.99 price because we figured we would target impulse buyers and we were more concerned with numbers rather than profit. As the sales began to trail off, it became apparent that we needed to figure out marketing... and maybe people really do want to try before they buy.
With the release of Zengaku Lite - we raised the price (to $1.99) which I feel is still a steal for the quality of the game. So now users can try before they buy, and if they like it, I don't think the extra buck will be a factor.
Now if only we could find a way to get everyone with an iPhone to try Zengaku Lite. I mean... it's free! We're trying Facebook ads, and the review on AppSafari (4.5/5) has likely helped a bit too.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Zengaku 1.1 and Zengaku Lite!
Before Zengaku was even released, we were already working on the next version. Here's a quick overview of what changed.
Most of the changes in the 1.1 release are internal details. We fixed a whole bunch of memory leaks, and a few minor bugs. These won't be visible to most of you, but it gives us a cleaner code base to help us with some upcoming features.
A few user visible changes you may notice are:
Zengaku Lite has the same gameplay as the original, and is Free! You get fewer puzzles, but it gives you the chance to try the game before you decide that you really really need to buy it. And you will... just try it!
Get Zengaku Lite at http://www.redshirtlabs.com/zengaku/lite or Zengaku 1.1 at http://www.redshirtlabs.com/zengaku/.
Most of the changes in the 1.1 release are internal details. We fixed a whole bunch of memory leaks, and a few minor bugs. These won't be visible to most of you, but it gives us a cleaner code base to help us with some upcoming features.
A few user visible changes you may notice are:
- We now show statistics for your puzzles. From the puzzle book selection screen, you can see how many puzzles you completed, and how many are in progress.
- The "Contact Us" button now presents an email form, rather than taking you to the Mail app.
- There's now a link back to the Redshirt Labs website.
Zengaku Lite has the same gameplay as the original, and is Free! You get fewer puzzles, but it gives you the chance to try the game before you decide that you really really need to buy it. And you will... just try it!
Get Zengaku Lite at http://www.redshirtlabs.com/zengaku/lite or Zengaku 1.1 at http://www.redshirtlabs.com/zengaku/.
Monday, April 12, 2010
My First iPhone App is going to be HUGE!
I think that when most first time app developers set out, they tell themselves "I'm just doing this for fun, but if I hit it big, woohoo!" I know that as a team, the Redshirt Labs crew felt that way. We'd love to hit the jackpot... but we also just wanted to explore, grow, and experience.
Well, if you are a first time app developer just in it for fun, I have some advice/thoughts/opinions for you:
Target Market
Before you submit your app spend at least one week thinking about who your target market is, and how you are going to reach them. Because submitting to the app store and praying doesn't work. You can tell all your friends to buy it, and that will get you a few sales, but it will quickly die out. You can drop boat loads of cash into ads... and quickly watch that money disappear with very little to show for it.
Target market is also important when you are soliciting advice on your app. People who don't own a phone that has apps on it aren't your target market. People who do own one but don't spend money on apps aren't your target market. People who do spend money on apps but don't like the genre of app you are producing aren't your target market. So you can get feedback from all these people, and much of it will be good valuable feedback. But at the end of the day you need to remember that what is important is what you target market wants. Better to have 80% of people hate your app and 20% of people think it is the best thing ever than to have 50% of people think "yeah, it was ok."
Descriptive Name
I think Zengaku may have failed us here... it sounds Japanese and looks like Sudoku but more Zen... but I'm sure 99% of the people who see it in the app store think "meh." If they clicked on it, well our description is top notch and I'm sure they'll like what they see. If they like Sudoku. So 10% of 1%. I think a name that stands out and will get the customer to investigate further is what you need.
Review Sites
I'm still undecided on these... There are lots out there, and we contacted many of them (including giving them promo codes so they could get free copies of our app). As far as I know we have 0 reviews to show for it. Many sites didn't get back to us, and others let us know that they were swamped but a few dollars would get us a review. Frankly, that might be a better way to spend the money then on ads... at least people go to review sites looking for apps to buy/try.
--Edit: We got a review!! App Safari we thank you!
Ads
Set a budget. Think about your wording. Then think some more. If you can find people in your target market, solicit their advice. You are going to be paying by the impression or by the click. Either way... it isn't enough that they click the link, you need to close the sale afterwards. Part of that depends on your description and write up sure... but a lot of it depends on who clicks on your ad. You want customers, i.e. people in your target market, to click your ad as much as possible. You want to make sure other people, who will never buy your app, do not (I guess if you are paying by impression this doesn't matter so much).
Crazy week in Apple news
I've been quite enraptured in the discussions this weekend after Apple dropped a rather large bomb on Adobe's head with a change to the developer agreement that has proven to be slightly controversial. The one thing I'm not quite clear on so far is understanding exactly how they'd enforce that particular rule. But nonetheless if you do need a recap Gruber has a good post or two on the subject. And there are some passionate arguments on both sides.
Are they going to review our source code now? If not I'm not sure what an application binary would look like if it were produced with other languages other than the approved set, but ultimately compiled using the Apple tool suite. I have yet to see anyone discuss how this might be accomplished. The only thing that comes to mind is that they'd have to review our code as well. I can't see that going over very well. Maybe they have some tools that they don't want to tell us about that can sort this out. Maybe they have installed some software into every mac sold to monitor what language you use when developing your application. I dunno I really haven't got a good idea at this point.
I guess this discussion is mostly interesting to me since the our current application doesn't make use of any of these other frameworks. But we were certainly looking at those as an option at some point. Likely for other applications. Although for now we actually want to be developing in the native environment for any platforms we end up supporting so that we can build up better platform knowledge. I big part of what interested me and I think a few the other guys about doing this was the opportunity to learn these new embedded development platforms and build something fun. I'm sure that learning how to build apps with Titanium or Unity 3D, or even Flash that could run on a number of devices would be good too, but just not yet. So I'm going to be sitting back and watching where the chips fall on this one. And for now I'll keep my actual opinion on the matter to myself.
But if anyone has an inkling just how they plan to enforce 3.3.1 please let us know.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Evolution of the Zengaku Interface
Developing the Zengaku UI has been an interesting experience. It has gone through several revisions, for both technical and artistic reasons. Below are some screen shots outlining the evolution of our interface.
Zengaku was my first iPhone app, and my first using Objective-C and the UIKit. It was a big learning curve. The first thing I worked on was trying to draw the actual Zengaku puzzle screen. Below is the result.
The basics are there. We have an appropriately sized grid, filled with a bunch of numbers. Of course, its horribly ugly... so the next step was to make it a bit prettier.
At first, I was using a single UIView for the grid, and drawing everything in its callback. After reading the API documentation a bit, I thought it might be a good idea to make each of the grid squares its own Core Animation layer.
I then added some numbers, and changed the colour scheme a bit. Notice that the numbers decrease in size when there are more of them in a single grid square. Also notice that the puzzle isn't actually a valid puzzle yet -- I was just randomly generating a bunch of grid squares just to test the rendering code.
Andrew and Tim worked on getting the puzzle loading working, and I was able to modify the UI to render it. Tim and I added some number buttons along the bottom of the window, and then Andrew added some actual game play logic, and below is the result. You are looking at the very first Zengaku game ever played!
You may notice that the right most column, and the bottom row do not have any consecutive bubbles. This was a bug I discovered while trying to solve this puzzle. If you look closely, you'll also see that the borders of the cells are visible inside the bubble itself. Another bug.
We then tried working on the colour scheme a bit. As you can tell, we are not artists...
Up to this stage, each grid square was its own Core Animation layer. This seemed to work fine for us, until we got our iPhone developer account. When Zengaku was running on the actual hardware, we found that the rendering was horribly slow. As in half a frame per second slow. Definitely unplayable (especially when zooming and panning).
We tracked the problem down to our overuse of Core Animation layers. I re-wrote the rendering code to once again use a single UIView, and below is the result. The performance was dramatically better.
Notice that the grid edges no longer peek through the bubbles. Also notice that there's an ugly white border around the screen. I did this because the number of cells (13) did not evenly divide into the resolution of the screen. So to avoid having some grid squares being at fractional pixel locations, I just padded the borders to make the pixels integers again.
The image below shows some more progress on the graphics front.
We finally decided to get a real artist to help us. We recruited the help of Cheyney Sadler, and the result was fantastic! Its amazing what a big diffence it has made. Thanks Cheyney!
Finally, I'll leave you with this montage of some of our other screens. I hope you'll agree that the final version turned out much better than these prototypes!
Zengaku was my first iPhone app, and my first using Objective-C and the UIKit. It was a big learning curve. The first thing I worked on was trying to draw the actual Zengaku puzzle screen. Below is the result.
The basics are there. We have an appropriately sized grid, filled with a bunch of numbers. Of course, its horribly ugly... so the next step was to make it a bit prettier.
At first, I was using a single UIView for the grid, and drawing everything in its callback. After reading the API documentation a bit, I thought it might be a good idea to make each of the grid squares its own Core Animation layer.
I then added some numbers, and changed the colour scheme a bit. Notice that the numbers decrease in size when there are more of them in a single grid square. Also notice that the puzzle isn't actually a valid puzzle yet -- I was just randomly generating a bunch of grid squares just to test the rendering code.
Andrew and Tim worked on getting the puzzle loading working, and I was able to modify the UI to render it. Tim and I added some number buttons along the bottom of the window, and then Andrew added some actual game play logic, and below is the result. You are looking at the very first Zengaku game ever played!
You may notice that the right most column, and the bottom row do not have any consecutive bubbles. This was a bug I discovered while trying to solve this puzzle. If you look closely, you'll also see that the borders of the cells are visible inside the bubble itself. Another bug.
We then tried working on the colour scheme a bit. As you can tell, we are not artists...
Up to this stage, each grid square was its own Core Animation layer. This seemed to work fine for us, until we got our iPhone developer account. When Zengaku was running on the actual hardware, we found that the rendering was horribly slow. As in half a frame per second slow. Definitely unplayable (especially when zooming and panning).
We tracked the problem down to our overuse of Core Animation layers. I re-wrote the rendering code to once again use a single UIView, and below is the result. The performance was dramatically better.
Notice that the grid edges no longer peek through the bubbles. Also notice that there's an ugly white border around the screen. I did this because the number of cells (13) did not evenly divide into the resolution of the screen. So to avoid having some grid squares being at fractional pixel locations, I just padded the borders to make the pixels integers again.
The image below shows some more progress on the graphics front.
We finally decided to get a real artist to help us. We recruited the help of Cheyney Sadler, and the result was fantastic! Its amazing what a big diffence it has made. Thanks Cheyney!
Finally, I'll leave you with this montage of some of our other screens. I hope you'll agree that the final version turned out much better than these prototypes!
Monday, February 8, 2010
A Brief History of Zengaku...
I think that the real origin for Zengaku is probably when I went to a cottage in 2000. One of the necessities on a good lazy cottage vacation is a puzzle book. The puzzle book on this particular vacation had about a hundred different types of puzzle, and I enjoyed about four of them.
My favourite type by far was the "Sum Total" puzzles. There were about 4 of them in the entire book. Much later I would find out that they were in fact Kakuro puzzles. 2000 is Ancient. Sudoku madness had not struck yet. And Kakuro was completely unheard of (even though I was playing them of course).
I don't know where I found the patience for it (I can easily get distrac) but somewhere in 2000 and 2001 I found the patience to put together my first Kakuro puzzle generator. I don't remember if the first puzzles were even playable - I was a pretty green programmer, still in school at the time. But it kept my mind working, it was programming that wasn't just fulfilling some silly useless course work, and it probably saved me from destroying my wrist playing Quake 2.
By 2003 I was pretty sure that my puzzles were the coolest thing ever and if I just put them on the web then riches and happiness would be mine. So I did what any conscientious computer engineer would do. I found free hosting, I did no marketing, and I made sure the webpage was pretty ugly. I don't think I even got a domain at the time. Obviously the overnight sensation failed to kick in. Still - SumTotalPuzzles.com was born.
In 2004, one of the Coop students employed where I was working was a math student who shared my love of puzzles. He let me know about the World Puzzle Championships, and sent me a link to their 2004 Championship warm up package. As I worked my way through it, low and behold, there was my puzzle! But wait - there was something special about this puzzle. It was a Kakuro with a Sudoku twist. Rows and Columns have each number once and only once? Consecutive numbers are indicated? The depth that these simple modifications added to the puzzle were like candy to me.
The first thing I did when I got home was I started modifying my puzzle generator to follow the same rules. It took a lot of tinkering - but eventually I had it producing nice looking puzzles - it even had a usable user interface!
Eventually I got the website looking better, and I posted a free version of the game up there, with a Paypal option to purchase a version that will literally generate 1 million different puzzles. I even made some sales. Probably about 15, maybe 20. But still, it sure felt good!
It was probably around 2006, maybe 2007 that Sum Total Puzzles became Zengaku. The origin of that is simply friends at work giving me feedback that "Sum Total Puzzles" is a terrible name. You should find something Japanese sounding. Yeah - Sudoku was in its prime around then. So I used several online translators and searches to try to figure out an appropriate Japanese sounding name for my puzzles. Zengaku is literally "The Total Sum" in Japanese. At least I hope it is... it would be pretty terrible to find out it meant something offensive at this point!
Well - a quick Google found this: EUdict translation. So not only does it mean "total, full amount, sum" but it can also mean forehead. Ha - I guess if you get a hard one that could be considered a face-palm. :-)
With the name change came more effort being put into the website. I had been generating puzzles and literally posting screen shots of them so that there was a daily puzzle on my website. I spent some time (not enough to do it well) to figure out style sheets and all that jazz to put together an interactive puzzle. And then life just kind of happened. Every once in a while I'd realize that I needed to generate more puzzles for the site (often after it went blank for a day or two or five). Sales ground to a halt and I was probably one of the least responsive webmasters of all time.
Fast forward to 2009 and I find myself working at a company with lots of smart people, who are great programmers and the iPhone invasion is in full swing. One person at my company hit it big with an app. Like quit-your-job big. I'm pretty sure that when news about that broke out, everyone who owned a Mac immediately went home and downloaded the SDK. And everyone who didn't own a Mac seriously thought about buying one.
Well, a few months went past, and no one else hit it big with an app. I don't know how many have tried. The reality was that you didn't just need to be a good programmer, you needed a good idea. And the ability to stick with something all the way to completion. It can be so easy to start programming something and then get distracted. The first couple of days are literally like you are eating manna from heaven, but it can quickly become a grind. Or at least boring enough that TV, or computer games seem like a better time investment.
So we're at work one day talking about writing apps, and how you needed motivation and commitment and a good idea. Or at least something easy to create for the first one. Well - I don't own a Mac, but I did have my puzzle website. So there we are talking about it and suddenly we are committing to each other that we are going to get this done. Together we'll have enough social pressure to actually follow through to the end. I knew that that was what I needed. Someone to kick me in the pants. Or at least make me feel guilty enough that I would stop playing games, or reading books, or watching TV and just program something to completion. Not 50% complete, or 90% complete just don't touch the big red button it'll crash, but 100% complete - rock solid.
It was probably Kevin's willpower that got us creating a partnership agreement, and getting a business number - I think the rest of us were just kind of in a daze. Regardless - we committed to each other to get it done, and I think the result is fantastic.
My favourite type by far was the "Sum Total" puzzles. There were about 4 of them in the entire book. Much later I would find out that they were in fact Kakuro puzzles. 2000 is Ancient. Sudoku madness had not struck yet. And Kakuro was completely unheard of (even though I was playing them of course).
I don't know where I found the patience for it (I can easily get distrac) but somewhere in 2000 and 2001 I found the patience to put together my first Kakuro puzzle generator. I don't remember if the first puzzles were even playable - I was a pretty green programmer, still in school at the time. But it kept my mind working, it was programming that wasn't just fulfilling some silly useless course work, and it probably saved me from destroying my wrist playing Quake 2.
By 2003 I was pretty sure that my puzzles were the coolest thing ever and if I just put them on the web then riches and happiness would be mine. So I did what any conscientious computer engineer would do. I found free hosting, I did no marketing, and I made sure the webpage was pretty ugly. I don't think I even got a domain at the time. Obviously the overnight sensation failed to kick in. Still - SumTotalPuzzles.com was born.
In 2004, one of the Coop students employed where I was working was a math student who shared my love of puzzles. He let me know about the World Puzzle Championships, and sent me a link to their 2004 Championship warm up package. As I worked my way through it, low and behold, there was my puzzle! But wait - there was something special about this puzzle. It was a Kakuro with a Sudoku twist. Rows and Columns have each number once and only once? Consecutive numbers are indicated? The depth that these simple modifications added to the puzzle were like candy to me.
The first thing I did when I got home was I started modifying my puzzle generator to follow the same rules. It took a lot of tinkering - but eventually I had it producing nice looking puzzles - it even had a usable user interface!
Eventually I got the website looking better, and I posted a free version of the game up there, with a Paypal option to purchase a version that will literally generate 1 million different puzzles. I even made some sales. Probably about 15, maybe 20. But still, it sure felt good!
It was probably around 2006, maybe 2007 that Sum Total Puzzles became Zengaku. The origin of that is simply friends at work giving me feedback that "Sum Total Puzzles" is a terrible name. You should find something Japanese sounding. Yeah - Sudoku was in its prime around then. So I used several online translators and searches to try to figure out an appropriate Japanese sounding name for my puzzles. Zengaku is literally "The Total Sum" in Japanese. At least I hope it is... it would be pretty terrible to find out it meant something offensive at this point!
Well - a quick Google found this: EUdict translation. So not only does it mean "total, full amount, sum" but it can also mean forehead. Ha - I guess if you get a hard one that could be considered a face-palm. :-)
With the name change came more effort being put into the website. I had been generating puzzles and literally posting screen shots of them so that there was a daily puzzle on my website. I spent some time (not enough to do it well) to figure out style sheets and all that jazz to put together an interactive puzzle. And then life just kind of happened. Every once in a while I'd realize that I needed to generate more puzzles for the site (often after it went blank for a day or two or five). Sales ground to a halt and I was probably one of the least responsive webmasters of all time.
Fast forward to 2009 and I find myself working at a company with lots of smart people, who are great programmers and the iPhone invasion is in full swing. One person at my company hit it big with an app. Like quit-your-job big. I'm pretty sure that when news about that broke out, everyone who owned a Mac immediately went home and downloaded the SDK. And everyone who didn't own a Mac seriously thought about buying one.
Well, a few months went past, and no one else hit it big with an app. I don't know how many have tried. The reality was that you didn't just need to be a good programmer, you needed a good idea. And the ability to stick with something all the way to completion. It can be so easy to start programming something and then get distracted. The first couple of days are literally like you are eating manna from heaven, but it can quickly become a grind. Or at least boring enough that TV, or computer games seem like a better time investment.
So we're at work one day talking about writing apps, and how you needed motivation and commitment and a good idea. Or at least something easy to create for the first one. Well - I don't own a Mac, but I did have my puzzle website. So there we are talking about it and suddenly we are committing to each other that we are going to get this done. Together we'll have enough social pressure to actually follow through to the end. I knew that that was what I needed. Someone to kick me in the pants. Or at least make me feel guilty enough that I would stop playing games, or reading books, or watching TV and just program something to completion. Not 50% complete, or 90% complete just don't touch the big red button it'll crash, but 100% complete - rock solid.
It was probably Kevin's willpower that got us creating a partnership agreement, and getting a business number - I think the rest of us were just kind of in a daze. Regardless - we committed to each other to get it done, and I think the result is fantastic.
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