Is it easy to make your money back on the App Store?

So, as some of you might know (if anyone is actually reading this), I'm a hobby developer with a degree in game development. My biggest problem, when working alone, is that I can't finish the stuff I make. I always make something, but before I can properly finish it for release I start something new and then the cycle continues. Though there's one exception, a little app I wrote, called Magic Tools, for iOS.

Magic Tools

Magic Tools is a very simple app, and the first app I released ever. The problem is that it's also the only app I ever released. On top of that, for some reason, I made it for iOS. Because of this I had to pay the developers fee of 100$ (€80), and this isn't much if you're a proper developer, but might be much if you're just making app for fun and are a poor student like me.

Now, this brings me to the actual point of this post. My attempt to make some money on the App Store completely failed, but it did become an interesting experiment. How easy is it to make your money back on the App Store?

Very Easy

The short answer is: very easy. The app I made was a very simple app, I made it in a few days (while watching series) and did everything myself. Then I put it on the AppStore for 99 cents. It never sold like crazy, only a few sales per day, slowly going up. Now, after about half a year, I already made back more than half of what I paid. This with only one app, and a very simple one at that. I will report back in half a year.

So getting the developers fee back shouldn't be too hard. You can probably even making a little cash if you make more than just one app.

Thanks for reading!

Note: If I forget to make a new post about this is half a year, and you really want to know how much I made, comment here and I will keep my promise.

Choosing an iOS Engine Update: Sparrow

Hi,

A while back I wrote about choosing a game engine for iOS. And now I want to add one to that list. The one I want to add is Sparrow:

Sparrow iOS

This is a great 2D game engine. It rivals Cocos2D, though might be even better. It's not as big as Cocos, both in features and community, but it's more concentrated. One of the problems I had with Cocos2D is that there simply is too much, which can make it annoying to use. Sparrow doesn't have that problem, it's much cleaner.

It does however miss some features, the biggest being a build-in physics engine. Though you can just use Box2D (which is what Cocos2D uses too) and make them play together yourself, which isn't too hard.

As a bonus I also want to note that Unity just got an update, now it's at version 4! The best thing is that it now has social API's, so you can easily promote your game by posting stuff to facebook or twitter. There are also a bunch of other cool new features, but that's not what this post is about.

So yea, have fun making games!

iOS Gyro Controller for Unity

Hi,

While playing around with Unity Remote, to control my game with my iPad, I noticed that the gyroscope doesn't work. This sucks, so I tried to find a solution. I found one from the guys of Quick Fingers, though it needed some tweaks, so I'm writing an updated version here. You can read the original tutorial here, mine will be shorter and more to the point.

Needed Soft/Hardware

• Unity3D and a mac
• An iOS device with Gyroscope (any new iPhone, iTouch or iPad)
• Control for iOS
• Osculator (trail, 20second wait every 10minutes)

Steps

• Install and start  Osculator and open the QuickFingers file
• On your iOS device open Control, in 'Interfaces' add a new one and enter this URL:  http://www.quickfingers.net/unitygyro/layout.js
• In Unity setup your Input Settings like this: 

• Now you can use this in Unity, here's how to convert it to a quaternion:

float gyroX = Input.GetAxisRaw("GyroX") * 360.0f;
float gyroY = Input.GetAxisRaw("GyroY") * 360.0f;
float gyroZ = Input.GetAxisRaw("GyroZ") * 360.0f;
Quaternion rotation = Quaternion.Euler(gyroX, gyroY, gyroZ);

Now you can use rotation as the rotation of your camera yo create a window into your game. Kind of, since no image is send to the iPad... Still, it's great for testing and a lot of fun!

Remotely download torrents from iPad

Hi,

Yesterday I wanted to download something to my desktop, though I was watching a movie on my iPad in bed and was too lazy to get up. So I searched for a way to use my iPad to tell my desktop to download a torrent. Of course the first thing I did was google it. The first thing I found was something to download directly onto your iPad, though this required me to create an account somewhere and some other sketchy stuff. The second thing I found used dropbox to sync torrent files to your desktop. Neither was really what I wanted, so I just figured out a way of my own. The great thing about my way is that you can even use magnet links, which isn't possible with the Dropbox method.

Here's what you need to do:

1. Install uTorrent on your desktop.
2. Enable Remote:

3. Go to https://remote.utorrent.com and log in using the name and password you set in uTorrents. Then pin this to your home screen. Pinning it is optional, though it's very useful.
4. Go to your favourite torrent website and copy the torrent or magnet link. Don't download the file, copy it's link.
5. Now open the remote uTorrent again and paste the link you just copied into the app at the bottom right:

Now everything is set up to start downloading stuff. This same method will probably also work for Android, though this is untested by me.

Now go download some awesome legal stuff and prove torrents aren't evil!

Choosing an iOS game engine

Hi,

I'm planning on making an iPad game, so I was looking around for an engine to use. I looked through a whole lot of engines, tried a bunch and selected three. If you are looking to do some development yourself, read this and you'll know what engine is perfect for you.
All engines in this post have the ability to compile for iOS, though they all can also publish to other platforms. I'm here to select one for an iPad game, but you might find the perfect one for an other platform too.

Cocos2D for iPhone

As the name suggest this one is for 2D games. It's really powerful and uses Objective-C as a programming language so it's the only truly native engine. Objective-C isn't easy though, so this engine is probably for people who already know some programming. It can make apps for both iPhone and iPad (and Mac too if you're interested in that.)

Cocos2D is for (experienced) programmers who want to make iPhone or iPad apps.

PhoneGap

This is another 2D engine. The big difference though, is that it doesn't make native apps. It uses HTML5 and Javascript to make the app. Thanks to this you'll be able to make iPhone and iPad apps, but also play your game in the browser, on android and pretty much anything else. Javascript is really easy so if you just want to make awesome games without having to learn a complex programming language, this is for you.

PhoneGap is for anyone who wants to make games, with or without programming knowledge. It's absolutely perfect for people with web development knowledge, since you'll be able to use the language you already know.

Unity 3D

Unity is awesome, it's definitely the best free 3D engine out there. You can program in c#, java and boo, all are easy so you can select the one you already know or just select the one that looks coolest. Unity is free to use for desktop and browser apps, though will cost you a bit when you want to publish to iOS. You can always make and try out your game on your pc and then later buy the iOS license. I have worked a lot in Unity and it's just really fun to make game in it.

Unity is for anyone who wants to make 3D games for any platform.

I hope this post saved you the time looking for an engine and that you now know which one you'll be using.

Update: Another great option might be Haxe. I wrote a new post about this and Dart, might also be a good option if you're making iOS games: http://anoddcupoftea.blogspot.be/2012/09/web-apps-without-javascript.html

Update: I added one to the list, Sparrow. http://anoddcupoftea.blogspot.be/2012/11/choosing-ios-engine-update-sparrow.html

Have fun making games!