FAM Score – Evaluating Ideas for Game Projects

November 28, 2011 By 7 Comments

We have a hundred ideas for games but we’re only two full time people here at Focused Apps. So how do we choose what to work on next? What ideas do we spend time prototyping, and which projects do we push forward to market? We developed our own ‘points out of ten’ scoring system called [...]

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Filed Under: App Store & Sales

360iDev iOS Dev Conference Denver 2011

July 26, 2011 By 2 Comments

360iDev 2011, the friendly iOS developer conference is coming in September to Denver CO. I’ll be there with the entire Focused Apps team (so that’s me and Rob ;-), and we’re presenting on ‘How to be an iOS Consultant’. I attended the first 360iDev in March 2009, it was a fantastic place to learn what was going [...]

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Filed Under: iPhone Other

Name the Hit Tennis Players

April 7, 2011 By 1 Comment

iOS gamers, you can contribute to the iPhone game Hit Tennis. We’re adding new players and we want fans to name them. Anyone can go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hit-Tennis-2-for-iOS/212023335489769 and comment on the new player pictures with name suggestions (you have to ‘Like’ the Facebook page first). Feel free to suggest your own name if you want millions [...]

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Filed Under: My Apps

Designing and Marketing Hit Games

January 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

How do you make a hit game? Here’s an essay by Tony Downey that comes as close to a recipe for success as I’ve ever seen: Indie Games: Designing to Succeed. READ IT. Following his advice is going to be very hard work, but making your game without following most of this advice will be [...]

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Filed Under: App Store & Sales

HJCache: iPhone cache library for asynchronous image loading and caching.

January 11, 2011 By 130 Comments

A free library for iOS for making apps that download images or other data from URLs. Includes caching, easy memory management, etc.

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Filed Under: iOS Programming

Santa’s Lil’ Zombies – Our first Unity 3D iPhone game

December 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Santa’s Lil’ Zombies is our first free iPhone game build with Unity 3D, it’s out now in time for Christmas! We’re releasing it in 3 versions: Free to play on the web Santa’s Lil Zombies Free, with 3 levels and iAds. Santa’s Lil Zombies, 99c with 8 epic zombies blasting levels. This casual iPhone game is [...]

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Filed Under: iPhone Other

iPhone Development Books 1: Learning iOS Programming

December 4, 2010 By 6 Comments

I own 91 books covering iPhone app programming, design, marketing, and business, and I’ve browsed plenty more. From all those books I’ve picked out the ones I consider to be the very best. My recommendations are split into four parts: Learning iOS Programming (below) Design for iPhone and Mobile Apps Building iPhone Games & Unity [...]

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Filed Under: Books, iOS Programming Tagged With:

iPhone Development Books 2: App Design

December 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I have a handful of books on user interface & app design, and one shining star is ‘Tapworthy, Designing Great iPhone Apps‘ by Josh Clark. Josh takes the reader through a journey to understand what makes great iPhone apps. Josh examines how real people use their iPhone and their apps, what thrills them, how people [...]

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Filed Under: Books, iPhone Other Tagged With: ,

iPhone Development Books 3: Games & Unity 3D

December 4, 2010 By 2 Comments

As game players we all think we can design games, but to make a great game you really need to step outside your own enjoyment of playing games, think about what makes games fun and more, how games generate an emotional experience for they player. ‘A Theory of Fun‘ by Ralf Koster is an easy [...]

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Filed Under: Books, iPhone Other

iPhone Development Books 4: Marketing & Business

December 4, 2010 By 2 Comments

If you’re making iPhone apps to try to make money, then marketing is key or only your friends will ever download your app. When most people hear the word ‘marketing’ they think of telling people about a product after its been built, but I see marketing as much more than that, and in fact I [...]

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Filed Under: App Store & Sales, Books
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