Hiya, We are Simian Squared. You may not have heard much of us because up until now we were merely a couple of people just fixing up xbox games when various developers needed to outsource problem solving such as physics or the odd deadline issue. But we have moved into the iOS market with a passion to make our own games instead of co developing and fixing up existing games. When budget allows we will probably move onto xbox again. But our vision is to bring iOS, xbox and desktop gaming together. We know the iOS hardware inside out, and it is more than capable of keeping up with xbox, especially 4S and iPad2. We have an app out (which will be boring no doubt to gamers as it is a physics based music app with really stunning graphics tech: www.physynth.com) - it's probably the best looking iPad2 app ever made for utility and music. But enough rambling, our future is in games on iOS. To this end, I want you to add my twitter: @SquaredApe and my email (shouldn't be hard to find it from various sources) or just PM here. Why do I want you to be in touch? well as you can see from Physynth, we are more than capable of great tech, great art and so on. What we want to do is make the games you want to play but above all treat you as equals. All anyone really wants is to be heard, it is a simple polite common curtesy isn't it? I am personally a bit pissed off when I buy a game or whatever, that developers think they are the second coming and won't even chat back. What is with that? They are only hurting themselves and their dedicated audience of players. I'm changing that, you are free to bend my ear and even 'have a go' at me any time you like. Treat Simian Squared (and myself) as an equal. If we make something you don't like, come and and tell me. I'll listen, and that is a promise. Bend my ear on twitter, pm or email. Take care guys! -Rob
I think iOS devs are infinitely better at it than developers for just about any other game platform, in large part due to this website and the number of devs it attracts. If they're not on the forums then it's a little harder to contact them and the chances of a reply drop quite a bit from app to app, but I find most of my games through here anyway and we're pretty good at bending ears Physynth looks awesome. I should be getting my iPad next month so I'm stickin' that on my wishlist.
Thanks for the kind words about Physynth. It's great to know touch arcade are such a vocal bunch, I welcome that completely. Feedback is good for me and it's good for the players as well
I do not own any iPads but any 'music app' that does more than playing music captures my attention. What is this app about?
about 20 or so for other platforms, but you will have to examine the credits as I don't have any permission per title since it's just contract work. For iOS the only app we want to put our name to at the moment is Physynth, but this is why I am here, to create a feedback loop so we can make stuff you enjoy (most games will probably be freemium without ads). Thinking in app purchase for NON ESSENTIALS ie perks, things a fan might want... or in the worst case, a cheap purchase to unlock levels faster than normal. The reason we are thinking of freemium is because as indie developers, it takes a lot of dev time to create a demo version (you would be surprised) and also support other platforms like steam, android and so on. I'm not a big fan of advertising banners everywhere either. Physynth just does everything different, the entire UI is full 3D with vignette, bloom specular gloss mapping and realtime noise. When you tilt, each surface reacts to the light. And that's just the ui. There is also the complete nVidia Physx driven physics engine which in turn drives the sound as notes collide with user-made shapes with custom attributes like spawn note, destroy note (for creating little physics instrument loops). See a user messing about with it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r0uA6vHWhk But you can't see the special effects in the UI very well due to no tilt happening and blurry youtube nonsense. Probably some better vids out there. Anyway we want to take all our tech from that and make some really visually-exciting games that are either free or very cheap. For us to do that we need you. This isn't bullshit marketing or using you guys or anything, it's straight up. I'm a gamer as well, but I'm not so egocentric to think I can make great games without your feedback. Currently the goal is to earn enough just to break even (operating at a loss at the moment).
Well, I understand the logic behind freemium. It doesn't mean I like it though. You'll probably see a lot of hate towards the model on the forum, but, as you probably know, we are a small faction of the store. Personally, I still don't consider iOS a dedicated platform, but that's another discussion for another time. I'd rather pay a base price (within reason) for a good app. However, there are too many factors to say what a good price is, considering we're talking actual value of the app. My biggest gripe is what I consider possible overpaying for virtual media. Hell, I still buy DVDs of good movies and CDs of artists I really like. I buy collector's editions of games and will always prefer having a physical disc. I'd rather read an actual book instead of an ebook. /rant over ----------------- I would've bought Physnth if it was available for iPod/iPhone. Do you plan on making an iPhone version? I really would love to play with it. It would sit right next to Animoog. Followed you on twitter too.
Hey GoofyJ, Thank you for your reply. Let me tell you a bit about iAP vs paid from a personal developer POV: Pros: with iAP, you don't have a barrier to entry, most of the appstore will download your app (if it is good) and give it a play. That can mean the difference between 20,000 people playing your game a day vs 50 or so playing your game. Cons: players (rightfully) get pissed off if they have to purchase stuff. Because by going freemium you pretty much target a lot of freeloaders too who want the entire experience to be free (I personally don't understand this). Personally, I prefer to buy my apps outright. I loathe being told I have to purchase yet another little iAP to complete the game or whatever, so I was thinking of iAP which is purely optional, and not required to complete the game. What do you think? Or is it better to just upgrade the free version (which is essentially a demo) to the full version with a single iAP? Your thoughts about the subject are welcome, but paid apps are dying - and pretty fast. I either jump on board or hold out and potentially sink. I still have to pay the rent either way. It's an insane thing to develop in the first place and breaks every rule in the book about apps/utilities, and currently isn't making enough to break even on dev costs for years. Was fun making it though... and it will not be available for phone sized units as I can't justify further development cost on making it fit into a tiny screen (it was designed to be a sort of virtual vintage instrument in your hand). As a developer I always want to take at least one risk with every game we do, I think those risks will ultimately cost me because I'm not making Angry Birds vs Tiny Zombie Rope Cutting Wings 3... but at least some players will appreciate it.
Wish you luck but I personally avoid freemium at all costs I'm not a huge fan of DLC either on apple devices, I'm probably not typical and do tend to buy the higher priced games on the store, I will say my judgement has probably been marred because the times I have bought DLC I've had issues about one in every three times. As an example just today I had an IAP not go through on my device at all but still manage to charge me twice. I also don't think freemium is making as much money as people tend to think (maybe on the US store it is) on the UK store at least there are only a few showing on the top grossing chart.
I get why freemium works. I'm just not a huge fan. I don't know what kind of game you're planning on making, but if it's not too hardcore, "pay to play more" would be a pretty decent idea. It would be something like what Niko did. Frederic is one of, if not, the best rhythm/music games I've ever played, but it's hard. I find the challenge somewhat easy to overlook because really appreciate the effort that was put into the game. However, other people will be less forgiving than me. What I'm getting at is,there's a free version, but the difficulty will possibly drive people away. In fact it seems to already have. The thing is that freemium games that say, "oh, you can still finis the game", generally mean something else. There will be exclusive IAP content, you'll have to do over the top grinding, multiplayer has consumable cheats, there'll be ads that make the experience less immersive, and we slacked off on quality because we know/hope there'll be that part of the market dumb enough to pay our bills for the next 50 years. I would say look at World of Midgard and Star Warfare's pricing for good/decent ideas. Just make sure you don't include some bogus IAP currency...PLEASE!
Yeah I'm from the UK as well, and I have reservations about it. But all the .biz and analytics sites are harping on about iAP being the second coming everywhere else in the world. Regarding an app charging you twice... that would be down to some seriously shitty coding not being cautious enough to protect against it. For example, the app should always query storekit to make sure that the user hasn't already bought it very recently first (if the purchases can happen multiple times). Apple's Api should force you to enter a password per purchase but you can never be too careful. If I go paid, there is little to no chance I'll get ranked on the appstore. Did you know that cut the rope, angry birds etc all fake their rankings? They do this via freemyapps and similar services. They are great apps, no doubt, but to crack top paid games you need to to invest serious money. I'm not going to sit around being bitter about how hard it is to break through, although I would like it if people didn't judge iAP too harshly from a developer POV.
Well, Animoog seems to be selling very well for iPhone/iPod. Do a $1 sale for about a week to a month, and then crank it up to its actual price. This is what Animoog did, they made it a dollar for early adopters an now it's $10. Plus, isn't there a larger audience for iPhone?!? On this forum, the iPhone sections see way more people than the iPad sections. If Physnth was universal then you'd definitely get all the people that both devices. Universality is something heavily requested on this forum!
I understand about universal apps - all our games will be, but Physynth is pretty much a niche case, to make it work on a phone would take around 3 months due to the entire UI being tailored specifically to that format. Sometimes a man has got to realise his mistake and let something go. In the meantime we will be doing free instrument updates for it etc and so on - just to make the existing few fans happy (there are some people who love it and some who hate it). But we won't get the 50k or so back that we invested in it
As long as the things I said in my earlier post are balanced then I have no problem with it...I guess. Things like freemyapps are trash because people don't buy the games that they demo. Or, at least, this is what I've read from other articles. Things like freemyapps just come and go. Plus, I'm not surprised since shilling is heavy in the iOS world. Yeah, that sucks! Physnth looks so awesome. I remember when I first downloaded Animoog, I became addicted to it. I just can't justify buying an iPad because I know I would only use it for games, but there's only a few I deem better on iPad. Apple's move to a 4" screen has me super excited because the screen will no longer be too small.My Samsung Fascinate's 4" screen is noticeably bigger than the iPod. As of right now, I think the iPod 3.5" is too small, the iPad is too big, and the perfect size is 4.7" on a 4.3" body. /rambled
Apple are moving to a 4 inch screen?! god I hope so. I find gaming a bit too small on the device to be pleasurable and use the iPad2 (which is a complete beast if you're wondering and I turn on all the trimmings fx wise for it).
Yeah, it's obviously speculation because we all know how Apple works, but it's one of the most accepted rumors I've seen. It's definitely something people have been complaining about, especially with the rise of the bigger screen Android devices--all the way up to 5". Yeah, I bet the iPad 2 is a performance power house and the iPad 3 will be a monster if gets a hearty update. My thing is that it's too big for mobile gaming, especially if you're a traditional thumber. The new 4.7" screens on Android are plenty big for comfortable mobile gaming. The only reason I would ever buy an iPad is to play TBS/RTS games, but honestly, I don't mind them on the 3.5" screen. Plus, I can't justify the iPad price tag to play a couple of $1-5 games. I wonder how the Android devices compare to the iPad 2's power?!? Ima look this up today because back when I was doing research there were no comparisons.
Well I doubt the iPad3 will be any faster graphics wise. Graphics rendering speed falls into two separate components: throughput (draw calls, verts, tris) fill rate (how many times you can fill the screen) Now if they move to a quad core for iPad3, that will mean almost no change to draw calls or skinned mesh calculations because typically (unity for example) the engine will already have offloaded it to the second core. The only speed gains would be an abnormal amount of physics or particle calculations (fluid etc) And if it is retina like rumours say, then you can probably expect performance to remain the same as iPad2 (relatively speaking) due to 4x the amount of screen to fill! One of the reasons android has a bigger screen in most cases is (and this is a surprising finding) power. Longer screens give you more space to hold more battery cells. I know this sounds counter intuitive but a larger display doesn't necessarily draw much more power at all, but it does give you an excuse to have more storage space in the casing. Daring fireball had some links about this. It's going to get progressively harder for droid phones to be even 4 inches. I saw some dude on the tube the other day weilding a PSP. It looked like he was playing with a child's plastic toy or some sort of brick. I don't see that being the future of mobile gaming.
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but what would be the purpose of getting an iPad 3? Will the retina display really make it look that much better? Well, the iPod 5g will be a welcomed addition with a bigger screen and more power. Hopefully, we see an increase in RAM or iPod users will suffer the same crash problems we have now. Yeah, that is interesting! I didn't even think about the batteries but that makes sense. I don't think Google is too worried about screen size because it's been proven that a 4.7" screen on a 4.3" (give or take) body works. I'm pretty sure this will be the trend for high end Android phones for the next couple of years based on upcoming phone rumors. But yeah, Android is moving at a ridiculous rate. Personally, I've been keeping an eye on Windows because they're working hard to merge Xbox and Windows 8 phones.
IMO, it would make a HUGE difference in text quality. Right now I find reading books to be impossible on the iPad 2 due to the jaggy text rendering. Retina-resolution display would eliminate the jaggies and give it laser printer quality fonts. I don't think it'll make that much difference for graphics, other than making the files larger. Agreed, it was rather silly of Apple to leave the current gen of iPod Touch owners with less memory. The device should've gotten more RAM last time around, along with the color addition.
