Invaders World Tour - Now On App Store

#1 Looks great, will try it out tonight :)

Great to hear about games being allowed through though (certainly had me worried as i have 3 in production before it all kicked off with Apple/Flash).

#2 I've added some screen shots.

#3 Bought. Very solid game. Love it when the aliens blow up the city when you lose.

Congratulations on your release.

#4 Purchased, the least i could do for all your help on the forums Scott :D...

#5 Thanks Johnny & Jason! I'm also pleased that Apple don't appear to be restricting "middleware" game engines like Torque from the App store as there are plenty more things I want to do with the Torque engine. The lite version is currently in review - this is just the USA - so hopefully should also be approved as well.

#6 congratulations :)

#7 Cheers Marc!

Lite version is available now - this is the full game but only the first country - the USA.

itunes.apple.com/us/app/invaders-world-tour-usa/id368160904?mt=8

#8 Just bought it. I've played a couple of levels and I like it, it's a fun game. It runs very smoothly on my iPod Touch (2nd gen), and the effects look great. I agree with Johnny, the game-over effects look really good.

Congratulations on the realease. Excellent job!

BTW, your explosions and effects look great. I've just purchased TimelineFX, and intend to use that from now on.

#9 Cheers Mark!

TimelineFX certainly made my job much easier - if you have any questions on that then feel free to email me.

#10 Looks fun! I'll check it out when I get home.

#11 Hey Scott, thanks, I appreciate that. So far I've had no problems, TimelineFX works as advertised and the documentation and tutorials are very well presented. I've already tried a lot of their effects on the iPhone, and the results run very nicely. It seems like the Torque 2D for iPhone runs animations very efficiently, as apposed to particle effects that do tend to cause slow framerates. So I am happy with the results so far.

I think the TimelineFX product is worth a lot more than they charge, and if it was me I'd charge extra for the effects add ons. It's an amazing product for the price. It would be nice if Torque 2D for iPhone had documentation as good as theirs ...

Torque 2D for iPhone produces very nice results, after spending a month understanding the undocumented problems and devising workarounds, but the time wasted is a pain. Now that I have a system that works I'm going to stick with it for this game, but after that I'm not sure. Hopefully version 1.4 will be better. If not I think I will try something else like Unity....

#12 Mark, agreed, I think the developer of TimelineFX could make a lot more money - he's very responsive to change requests as well, usually turning them around very quickly. I think we will see the biggest Torque improvements with the Torque2d product, but that might be some time away? Meanwhile I'm happy with what I've got, we tried Unity (when it was very rough and ready) and weren't too impressed, I understand it has changed a lot since then though.

Good luck with your game.

#13 Scott, it's interesting to hear that you've tried Unity and prefer Torque2D. To be honest, I do like the results that I'm getting with Torque2D. I'm very impressed with the original Windows versions (TGB etc), but I was initially disappointed with iPhone version as it took me quite a while to figure out the issues and come up with workarounds for certain things. In the beginning I almost gave up, but I decided to stick with it, and I'm making a lot more progress now. At least now, I seem to have a system that works.

It's probably a good thing that GG don't provide a demo version of Torque2D for the iPhone. If I'd had a demo version, I'd probably have played around with it for a couple of days and then thrown it in the garbage and moved on, lol.

#14 Just saw you being featured as a free app. I think within an hour or so you're already in the top 40 free game chart. Congratulations!

#15 Thanks Aun, currently 33 in the free game chart :)

#16 I was wondering if you would share how that does for you, like will being a free app translate into sales when you are no longer free.

#17 Henry, more than happy to share figures. In theory it should translate into sales but TBH I have a very, very low expectation that this will happen. I have been monitoring the other apps that participated in Free Game of the Day in the last two weekes and I see little evidence of increased sales.

#18 Okay, after the OpenFeint promotion and being free for four days we end up in the top 10 arcade/action in just about all main app stores. Got to number 9 in the USA and 30 overall for free games in the USA.

Total downloads of the free app were just shy of 84,000 and we saw 50 sales of our other apps. We haven't received any boost to sales as far as I can tell - but we still have to run with OpenFeint revenue share for another two weeks.

Stuff I learnt:

- be prepared for a slew of 1 star ratings and lots of negative reviews as people with slower devices or those who don't like it just dump it quickly
- people love free - the lite version of IWT - IWT USA also saw a massive increase in downloads - I'm guessing people thought it was a different game!
- make sure you test on everything - we didn't test on OS 2.2.1 and found that OpenFeint just doesn't work with OS 2.2.1 - this was a known bug but we didn't test and we failed to spot it and take action.

Was it worth it?

- it didn't cost anything
- we now have a lot of potential customers for upsell
- we did get some feedback for how we can improve it and that is something we are doing
- I quite enjoyed it :)

#19 Thanks Scott, as always very useful information.

Nice to see that your other apps got a small bump in sales too.. :)

Jason

#20 Jason, you should consider OF for a couple of reasons for your current app...

1. It is idea for challenges - OF support these.

2. Leaderboards are natural for this app

3. We can cross promote i.e. I add your app details to my OF cross promotion page and in theory you have a potential 80,000+ users who will see an ad for your app. It's free and very easy to setup.