Apple Featured My Game, Here's Why I Changed It

Re:Apple Featured My Game, Here's Why I Changed It by aptwebapps on Monday July 28, 2014 @12:30AM (#8095195)

This is interesting, especially the bit about getting featured right off the bat, because I'm just getting started with mobile game development and had for long time an idea for a pretty similar game. Similar in the sense that it was a hex-tiled spelling game where you need to string together words to get somewhere.

However, my partner and I are looking at a different game right now.

Also, I know there are worse reviewers than this, but man ...

"The vocab in this game needs a serious update, I have no idea which words to go for due to the fact that it does not have some retry basic words built in. Not toention the selection process needs a tad bit rethink. Overall it is a pretty great idea, it just needs to be fully realized. I would give it more stars but I'm a pass or fail kinda guy, and this did not pass... Not yet anyway :)"

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Re:Apple Featured My Game, Here's Why I Changed It by qzervaas on Monday July 28, 2014 @12:53AM (#8095237)

Yea, it can be confronting reading reviews.

There's over 250,000 words in our dictionary (that's not to say you can necessarily make all of them in the game).

Most people just query "Zen" not being in there though ;)

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Re:Apple Featured My Game, Here's Why I Changed It by aptwebapps on Monday July 28, 2014 @12:56AM (#8095242)

Are you using SOWPODS? I had thought to stick with TWL being somewhat of an old school Scrabble player. Also, little technical question if I may: what sort of data structure do you use for your dictionary?

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Re:Apple Featured My Game, Here's Why I Changed It by qzervaas on Monday July 28, 2014 @01:06AM (#8095270)

We're using CSW12.

It's stored in a single-table Sqlite database with some techniques to make word lookup really fast. I believe it could be faster still, but this is likely beyond my technical expertise.

Next problem is to scale the game to multiple languages without bloating the download size of the game too much. Haven't decided what's best yet for this: either compressing the dictionaries for distribution (and decompressing on first launch), or an in-game download (this seems like so much effort though and just adds more friction)

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Re:Apple Featured My Game, Here's Why I Changed It by aptwebapps on Monday July 28, 2014 @01:33AM (#8095351)

I wasn't aware of CSW but from the size I guess it's similar to SOWPODS.

An Sqlite db sounds like the sweet spot of performance and easy of use.

Couldn't you automate the in-game download? I.e.: If the user selects another language download it on the spot with a little popup telling the reason for the delay?

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Re:Apple Featured My Game, Here's Why I Changed It by qzervaas on Monday July 28, 2014 @01:37AM (#8095361)

All options are being considered. I like that idea in theory but it just adds to the complexity:

- More technical debt - More points of failure - Need to host the data somewhere (plus pay for it... the App Store is basically a free CDN)

Off the top of my head, it may be possible to do a Free IAP where Apple hosts the content, but I may be totally wrong on that.

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