Goo! A little perspective

by George on Jan.21, 2010, under Applications, Project Management

Now that the initial excitement of getting an App on the store is starting to fade, it seems like a good time to look back over Goo!‘s development history and figure out what worked and what didn’t.

The Good

Sales:

It may seem odd to put this under the ‘good’ category, as our sales figures are still in double digits (although we’re hoping for a roll over into three digits before long). However the purpose of Goo! was to be a test case, dipping our toes in the AppStore’s waters. As such, it’s a success. There’s a wonderful buzz from selling your own software that I had never experienced before. Despite developing software for over ten years now, it’s always been for someone else. The thought that other people, around the world have seen my software and wanted to buy it is thrilling. And the feeling you get when one of your friends greets you by waving their iPhone in your face with your App on it is pretty special – thanks Chris, you’re an awesome friend.

Cocos 2d:

After faffing about with raw OpenGL for a while, we eventually switched to using Cocos2d as a platform. Although both Sam and I are familiar with writing OpenGL engines, it just soaked up our time – something we have little enough of. Cocos2d worked a treat and the change over took only an afternoon’s effort.

Twitter:

Twitter has proved to be a real find for me. The iPhone developers I follow are a friendly, helpful bunch. I’ve learnt plenty from these guys, found lots of great articles on the Internet and when we released Goo!, lots of people re-tweeted the announcement or promptly bought it on the spot. Thanks guys, it means a lot!

Working together:

Sam and I have been working together on and off for over ten years now. Ideas pass back and forward freely, and there’s enough mutual respect that we can quickly throw away bad ideas, or modify them to become good ideas with no ego or resentment getting in the way.

Submission process:

We hit a lucky patch with the App Store – just before Christmas people started reporting quick turn around with App submission. Sure enough, Goo! went through the approval process smoothly in three days – a very pleasant surprise. In fact, after hearing horror stories from developers over the last year, it is nice to see that Apple is improving things (or were we just lucky?).

The Bad

Too long:

Yeah, this is the biggie. Nine months is a ridiculous length of time. No excuses here. Too often real life got in the way. It’s just a fact of the lives we live with full time jobs and families. Also…

Lack of a core concept:

In it’s day, Goo! has been a time tracker, the beginnings of a series of articles, a set of particle system toys and finally an implementation of the Game of Life. Perhaps now you understand why it took so long. Sam and I wanted a simple project to get started and we exercised some poor judgement along the way. A lack of a clear vision for Goo! hampered us a lot.

Lack of a forward delete key:

Seriously, this is the single biggest pain I have working on a laptop. And yes, I know about fn-delete, but it’s just not the same.

So, in summary it’s been an enjoyable process. Goo!, while simple, is an App that we’re happy to have on the store. The idea of selling our work on the App Store now feels much more achievable and we’e both brimming with new ideas, at least one of which is showing a lot of promise – and as far as I know is a completely new idea. Of course the challenge is in turning a good idea into a successful project – watch this space.

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:Goo!

5 Comments for this entry

Noel
January 22nd, 2010 on 4:51 am
Congrats on getting Goo! out. Just getting there is huge.

One thing I’m very curious about is Cocos2D. What would you say were the two two or three things that it bought you? I absolutely hate being constrained by a framework, so I’ve been holding off on Cocos2D until it’s very clear that it’s a huge win. So far I haven’t seen it (but I haven’t being able to stomach looking at it for more than a few minutes).

Congrats again!

–Noel

Reply
George
January 22nd, 2010 on 6:54 am
Hi Noel,

Really it has two benefits for us. The major one is that it just let us write our game code, without the overhead of testing and debugging vector libraries, texture loaders etc. When we’re lucky to get three hours a week on iPhone work, we just couldn’t justify spending that time writing non-app specific code.

Secondly, one nice aspect is that it’s easy to drop OpenGL code into the middle of Cocos2D with little trouble. We did this for drawing the grid in Goo!

In our case the fact that Cocos managed the window setup and main render loop was a convenience. I can certainly appreciate wanting more control over that side of things.

One day we will write our own engine for iPhone dev, and it will be awesome but for now it’s not where we need to put our efforts.

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Tom
January 23rd, 2010 on 6:49 am
Hi there,
first of all, congrats for getting published your little game (even if it reminds me more of a simulation than a game ).
I will split my feedback into two parts, the good and the bad.

Let’s begin with the GOOD things:
I was so happy to see, that someone finally had the time to bring some mathematical sim to the iPhone. I have to say, that I’m a research member at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and I’m responsible for learning agents and probabilistic robotics (especially for intelligent movement in 3d environments) and coding. And even if it’s just a kind of “game of life” simulation there is no life in it. And I ask myself why!

Unfortunately we now have to come to the BAD part:
Yes, it somehow looks like John Conway’s idea and yes, the code seems to be fine and works somehow but there is this damn “BUT”. Something is missing. Maybe it’s the insufficient amount of mathematical formulas (shapes are very repetitive after a while so that I actually -after a minute or two- could make predictions that are right) or just the fact that there are very hard transitions between the states (alpha fading increases/decreases too quick even on low speed). Maybe it’s the fact that the name of the game just was derived from the look of the textures but not from a dynamic, gooey behavior. I can’t figure out what exactly is disturbing in this concept but something is definately disturbing. Maybe you could code some real goo (and I know cocos2d is able to handle that ) so it becomes more a game than a simulation, so people don’t make that high demands after reading your description. Maybe you are considering to integrate some flocking/boids algorithms to make it more dynamically. Maybe I could send you some examples so you could see what I mean.

Conclusion:
As much I loved the idea when I read your description on itunes as much I’m disappointed now. So please keep up the good work, make it bigger and smoother an perhaps someday it will be really gooey for a user I’m looking forward to a few updates.

best regards
Tom

Reply
George
January 23rd, 2010 on 10:38 am
Hi Tom,

First of al, thanks for buying Goo!, and also for giving us feedback, we appreciate it a lot. I agree that Goo! isn’t yet everything it could be. As you’ll have read above, we struggled with getting this app built around work and family commitments. As such we had to cut a few features that would have made Goo! even better.

However, we have a list of new features we’d like to add in future updates, and I’ll add your suggestions to it. You’ve given me a lot to think about. Please feel free to send through any tips or suggestions – if you send them to goo@acornheroes.com they’ll automatically go into our tracking system.

I can’t put a time frame on when we can get an update out, we have another couple of projects underway, but I do want to get out some updates for Goo! as well. High on the list at the moment is a larger space to play in and better rendering. Another option we’re looking at is the ability to load and save patterns.

Thanks again for your comments – feedback (especially suggestions for improvements) is something we always look forward to.

George

Reply
Tom
January 23rd, 2010 on 2:07 pm
Hi George,
don’t get me wrong please, it’s a really nice piece of coding for sure! And even if the feel and look are beta version there is no doubt that the idea behind it is great. Therefore I would like to support you guys as much as I can and I will think about it in detail tomorrow. There are some small, let me say peanuts, which will take a big effect in user perception, like smoother transitions mentioned above. I think, if you guys will update it bit by bit people are able to see the heart that beats in this project. It’s definately worth it!

best wishes
Tom

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