Since launching the game in September 2011.
27,049 Users have played started the game 107,276 times.
They’ve played 501,609 games. Purchased 3,103 continues, and 4,719 upgrades.
Players have spent real money 468 times to buy in the game currency.
The average length of time someone plays the game for is 5.8 minutes.
34% of players are in the USA.
24% of players are in China.
The first game I did for iPhone was released back in 2011. Seems like eons ago. The game hasn’t been updated, or promoted since that initial release and yet there are still an average of 100 people playing it every day.
I’m working with Colum on a strategy to launch a bunch of new games over the next several months starting with an update to the code for UFO Invader.
The new update will include many of the things I’ve learned in the last 15 months from selling my apps on the store. It should be able to improve monetization, make the game more fun, and I’ll be adding a bunch of new upgrades to the game so that players have new things to collect and buy with the in game currency.
Much of the weekend was spent just getting the app to compile again. Now that it’s running again on my iPad there’s a lot of graphics work to do to get the app working with all the retina devices that have come out since it was originally released.
I’m excited to see how this game update does and then to move on to creating a bunch of new games in the coming months to hopefully re-launch the Halotis brand.
So looks like I have a small bone spur on my heel. not a big deal, but glad I know now what to do about it.
For the next month I’ll be doing a lot of stretches and icing it. Hopefully that will get things back to normal and I can start running more often.
When exploring ways to build a good chat server there are an overwhelming number of options.
The old way of doing things with polling the server for new messages was simply not an option but the alternatives are a little scary. Using a SQL database seemed a bit overkill for just posting messages.
In the python world the asychronous server options which would support either raw sockets or websockets include Tornado, Twisted, and gevent. The other option was to try out Node.js.
Chat servers seem to be the de-facto example app for these types of server frameworks. Yet unfortunately there are very few full featured examples to be found.
I initially wrote a chat server that worked with raw sockets using Twisted. However, testing the raw socket solution proved annoying, and creating a web based admin for the chat server would require yet another service to convert the raw socket into a websocket or develop a native client app for communicating to the server.
So I took a step back and started again with Node.js. Node.js with socket.io proved to be quite a bit simpler to code than the raw sockets on Twisted option. Using websockets will add a requirement on my iOS client for a library, but it makes things much easier to test through a html client.
For the persistence backend there are also many different options. I have an existing MySQL server that I could have used, but I was interested in trying something a bit leaner. Both Redis and MongoDB stood out. At the moment I’m still evaluating which backend to use.
So it’s not quite finished enough to share the code. I’ll put it up on github when it’s finished.
It’s long overdue but I finally accepted that I can’t fix my bum ankle problem without seeing someone about it. It’s an old injury from doing a half-marathon on not enough training. I went to see a foot specialist in late December and got a referral to get an x-ray done on my foot. It’s the first time I’ve seen a doctor for anything in over a decade and the first time I’ve had to go to a hospital (for the x-ray) since I was a kid.
The followup is next week and I’m curious to find out what might be going on under the skin. Hopefully something can be done.
I have a feeling that 2013 is going to be a great year. A real turning point.
My achievement goals for the year is to create a top notch Farmville type game for iOS and to do a kitchen renovation. This year there is a real potential for my businesses to take off and give me the chance/money to upgrade the kitchen.
My fitness goal for the year is to get in a routine for lifting weights and make some steady progress on improving my max lifts. Perhaps a gym membership is in order. Since hitting 30 I definitely am starting to notice that things take longer to heal and I want to be one of those energetic 40 year olds who does downhill mountain biking, skydives and can still take big air on skis. A focus this year on building general strength should be a good base for the future.
My educational goal for the year is to learn how to delegate and manage teams. Something I’ve never been good at and is required for me to take my businesses to the next level. I’m not entirely sure how to learn this other than by hiring some people and just jumping into it.
I can’t put my finger on it but for 2013 so many things are on the cusp of a tipping point that it’s hard to imagine this not being a great year.
I’m trying to think of some ideas for what to do with a Raspberry Pi.
There’s just so many things that people have done with these little $35 computers that it is overwhelming to think of what to do with one.
Here’s a list of ideas I’ve scoured from the web:
So many good ideas it’s hard to choose.
It was a nice relaxing week off for christmas this year. Having friends around to host parties made everything more festive.
The week was bitterly cold with a streak of -30 degree temperatures for the week. It made the deepfried Christmas turkey a bit harder to cook. Thankfully the cold snap is over for now and we’re back into temperatures closer to 0 for the next week.
Went to see some friends in Edmonton yesterday and saw what was probably the most tech laden house I’ve been in. They had file servers with 96TB of disks, at least 6 TVs in the house each with a media computer on it. The workout area had a 100″ projection screen. Interesting setup that gave me some ideas for how to get things working in my house.
With the recent addition of a new advertising platform for my apps the last few days have tipped the business passed a small milestone of having a $50 day. Even though it’s just a seasonal spike from all the advertising prices raising due to the holidays it’s still nice.
Across all my apps there are now roughly 250,000+ sessions per month (# of times the app gets started)
We made some design changes to the living room over the last while. Painted the walls and put up curtains.
Before:
After:
