This blog has been going for well over 2 years now. Its purpose is to chronicle my game development efforts and hopefully to share some insights with you. 2009 and 2010 were both productive years. Now, with 2011 officially over, its time to take a look at what I achieved in 2011 and what I plan to achieve in 2012. keep reading…
6 months, 5,000 lines of code, 13 blog posts, 15,000 words and both the App and my blog series are finally finished. When I started this I planned on following a carefully designed and documented process to translate my App store idea into an actual product. Along the way my aim was to share all of the steps with you, along with the results.
This post intends to wrap-up the series. It also contains the final blog post, my Coffee Cellar postmortem. Whereas the postmortem covers the App itself, this post reviews the process and acts as a convenient hub to bring together all of the previous posts in the series (for future reference). keep reading…
Coffee Cellar has officially been in the App Store for 1 month now, you can check it out here. Now is the perfect time to examine what went right and what went wrong. This is the final post in my App development series. If you want to read about the process of creating Coffee Cellar you can do so here. keep reading…
After nearly 6 months of effort which has seen us produce a solid plan, create a design doc, produce wireframes and workflow, create initial artwork and a moodboard, develop the App, and complete a full beta testing process; Coffee Cellar is finally ready for submission to the App store!
But the story, and my guide, is not quite over. My App still won’t see the light of day for another 2-4 weeks. My next focus is on marketing. In my next post I’ll discuss what my marketing efforts entail. After that we really will be “done” (for now) and will get to see how successful the App is in the App store – this will culminate in a numbers post, a postmortem, and a project wrap-up.
For now though, lets bask in the satisfaction of completing a project. This post will focus on the final artwork. keep reading…
Its time for the fourth post in my App Development series. Last week I covered the wireframes, this week we move on to Artwork. keep reading…
This is the third post in my App Development series. Last week I covered the design document, this week I’m moving on to wireframes and workflow. keep reading…
Last week I discussed my plan for producing my Coffee App and gave a brief overview of the idea. This week, it’s time for the next step in my master plan – the design document. keep reading…
Stop me if this sounds like you
You’re at the start of a new project, it feels great. You have a blank slate upon which to build, what could be, a truly great product. You start by writing a document detailing the features, maybe you sketch out some of the screens, but pretty soon you get bored and dive straight into the code. What started out as a well thought out project becomes heaps of discarded and re-written code as you bash the product into shape. Maybe it turns out great. Maybe it doesn’t. But did you feel in control? keep reading…
Whilst I’m brainstorming ideas for my next game, I’ve decided to take a slight diversion into the world of application development. My reasons for doing this are two-fold. Firstly, I’d like to expand my knowledge of core iPhone development (i.e. the interface builder and core API’s). Secondly, I’d like to see how the iPhone application market differs from the game market.
I’m still finishing off the first Astro Noughts update so I haven’t been able to commit much time to it yet. However, I have made some in-roads into a basic idea and some very early interface mockups – and thats what I’ll share now. keep reading…
I’m conscious that I haven’t written anything on this blog for a few weeks. As Star Fusion HD edges closer to launch I’ll begin to post smaller tasters of some of the art and gameplay. In the meantime, I felt compelled to write a short post listing the blogs I read most frequently. These are the ones that stick. The ones that I look forward to each day. I hope you find them useful and I’d love to hear your recommendations in the comments.
NOTCOT (Heaps of unique and inspiration things)
Bloesem (The “Lets get personal” posts are excellent)
Swiss Miss (Design inspiration)
Its Nice That (The printed publications are really nice)
Where we design (A nice diversion. I like seeing other people’s creative space)
Creative Applications (Really unique Apps)
Gas Powered Games (Not really my sort of game but the video blogs are really interesting)
Gamasutra (These articles provide valuable insight into studio game development)
Applied game design (A personal game development blog)
The psychology of games (In depth articles on the psychology behind game related topics)
HasBlog (Great for Coffee lovers)
iDevBlogADay (The best aggregated blog for independent game developers)
A List Apart (Reasonably meaty web related articles)
(blog post image courtesy of mariareyesmcdavis)