Vigil RPG, my classic-style turn-based role-playing game for iPhone, has been updated to a new major version, 3.0!
For the first time in 10 years on the App Store: Vigil RPG is now free to download! Vigil RPG has always been a "premium" title, where paying once got you the full game, with no ads, premium currencies, stamina timers, or other such impediments. Vigil RPG still has none of that, but now you can download Vigil RPG from the App Store and play the first portion of the game for free! After that, the game offers a single, one-time in-app purchase, which permanently unlocks the full game for you across all of your devices.
(And of course -- as is only right!-- I added code such that everyone who bought Vigil RPG prior to this v3.0.0 update will continue to have access to the full game (including the other major updates in the new version) without needing to buy the IAP.)
The other major feature in the Vigil RPG 3.0 update is Honor Mode! Inspired by a certain awesome hit 2023 AAA RPG -- (okay, fine, I'll just come right out and say that it's obviously Baldur's Gate 3) -- players considering themselves Vigil RPG veterans (or just hungry for maximum challenge right out of the gate?) can now optionally take on this challenging new difficulty. It features enhanced boss enemies with new move sets, and like Hardcore mode in the Diablo series before it, PERMADEATH upon defeat!
Would you like the ability to make your iPhone to emit a "gong" sound? Further, would you, ideally, like that gong sound to be accompanied by a low-fidelity, semi-realistic animation of an actual swinging gong? If so, then do I have the app for you!
Introducing Gong Sound, available for free on Apple's App Store!
The gong swings back and forth -- in a physics-approximating, 7-frame animation! -- for a few seconds after being tapped!
iPad support!
Supports landscape (device held sideways) mode!
High score counter! (With classic-arcade-like non-persistence!)
No ads! No in-app purchases! No data harvesting! No review nags! No network connectivity used or required!
FREE!
Wait... so it's just a gong app?
Yep. 🙂 The Gong Sound app is just a "toy" project. I got the code written, and the art and sound assets adapted, for the initial 1.0 version in all of a couple of hours. (As compared to the dozens of hours that I spent on Desktop Journey, or the hundreds spent making Vigil RPG!)
At my company, teams strike a gong that we have in the office as (part of) a celebration of notable achievements. In these days of remote work, I figured: Why not give folks an easy way to "gong" from home which sounds better than banging pots and pans together, and isn't likely to play an ad instead of the desired sound effect when the "Play" button is pressed.
(And doesn't violate any of the items in that second-to-last bulleted list item above, in the fashion of most existing similar apps on the App Store.)
Gong Sound is a free download on iOS devices, so if you're reading this post on your iPhone: Share and Enjoy!
Square Enix recently released "Pixel Remaster" versions of the first three games in the Final Fantasy series. Over the past four or so days, I purchased, played through, and completed the iPhone version of Final Fantasy 1 Pixel Remaster.
As a veteran of multiple playthroughs of the original NES version of Final Fantasy 1, I thought I'd share my impressions of this update to this classic game, focusing mostly on compare/contrast of the new pixel remaster version with the original.
With the original Final Fantasy 1 having a high frequency of standard enemy encounters plus a very limited number of spell slots, my favorite party composition is Fighter, Black Belt (Monk), Thief, and Red Mage. That’s also the party that I used for my playthrough of the remaster.
All-caps character names for old times' sake!
Spoiler statement: This article avoids spoilers about game plot /
events, and for the most part, about specifics of particular dungeons
and enemies. There are some mentions of particular character abilities
and spells.
Quality-of-life improvements 💆
These are numerous! Some highlights that I noted during my playthrough:
Auto-battle. ⏩ The remaster has a button available on the combat screen which causes the party continuously repeat whatever actions they performed last round, and also increases the speed at which the battle plays out. Both a convenience (particularly on mobile, where performing precise button taps multiple times every round to select actions is more annoying) and a time-saver for when the party is moving through an area of easily-winnable battles.
Tap to move. 👆 The iPhone remaster takes nice advantage of the touch screen by providing an ability to tap a location on the screen to move there (as well as a traditional on-screen D-pad option). Movement speed when en-route to a tapped location is also significantly increased, which is a nice time-saver.
Save anywhere. 💾 One “quick save” slot is available which can be used in any location. Definitely a must-have feature in a mobile game like this — at least, for a game not featuring automatic continuous progress saving (like at least one other RPG native to the iOS platform I’m familiar with!).
Unlimited inventory space for weapons and armor. In the NES original, there was no shared inventory pool for weapons and armor. Instead, each of the four characters could hold four weapons and four pieces of armor — and once those 16 slots of each type were full, there was no picking up more until space was freed up. (This resulted in a sort of primitive encumbrance system!)
The remaster features a modern-style, unlimited-size shared inventory pool (similar to later Final Fantasy games). This ends up being a gameplay advantage as well as a quality-of-life improvement. There isn't, for example, a decision between keeping a helmet with the best armor rating, and a helmet with a lower armor rating but with a special ability usable in battle. Now you can equip the former, while using the latter as an item in battle out of the shared inventory pool.
Dungeon maps. While in dungeons, a scrollable map of the current dungeon level is available — even portions that haven’t been explored yet. Handy for avoiding the dead end corridors that are a part of a number of the dungeons.
World map. 🗺 It’s readily available now — no “TCELES B HUSP” required! Additionally the maps shows counts of the treasures and key items available in each visited location, and the number of each of those obtained. Handy for going for 100% completion! Speaking of which:
Achievements. 🏆 The remaster has them! I’m not sure they’re
integrated with the iOS Game Center achievements system, though. (I
can’t speak to the Steam or other versions of the game.)
No more invisible, fixed enemy encounters. In the NES original, there were a number of spots/squares in dungeons -- often immediately in front of important treasure chests -- where a fixed enemy encounter would take place when entered. (Repeatedly, if you left the square and then returned!) This has been replaced with (1) those encounters being triggered via the relevant treasure chest being opened, or (2) the enemy being visible on the map, with the encounter initiating when the enemy is character is interacted with. (The "Hall of Giants" is implemented in the latter fashion.)
Automatic use of key items. 🗝 There were a few spots in the original game where you needed to open the menu and use a particular key item at a particular location in order to progress. That's smoothed out in the remaster, with the appropriate key item being used automatically when you arrive at the appropriate location. I can definitely see this feature saving a few new players a trip to a FAQ to figure out what they need to do next.
Fast potion buying. Buying 99 healing potions is quick and easy now! No need to visit a shop with healing potion of at the top of the list, and zone out for several minutes while mashing the A button (or using a controller with a turbo function!).
Balance and Gameplay changes ⚖
(📉 Difficulty nerf) Better potions! 🍾 The original Final Fantasy featured only three types of potions: HEAL (restoring 50 HP), PURE (removing poison), and SOFT (curing petrification). The remaster has those, and additionally makes available at stores Hi-Potions (restoring 150 HP), and more significantly, Phoenix Down (restoring a slain warrior to 1 HP).
The availability of Phoenix Down in particular is a game-changer, as it makes reviving slain warriors possible before the Life spell is available at white magic level 5, and also removes the limit on the number of revives that can be performed in a given dungeon delve being tied to the number of level 5 white magic slots available.
Ether potions (restores 1 spell slot of each level) are also available at shops, making it possible to restore spell slots while in dungeons -- something that was not possible at all in the original game.
There are also a few additional status-restoring items in the game, although I found that I didn’t really use those in my playthrough. (The enemies in the game’s first large dungeon are as poisonous as ever, though! I burned through some 20 or 30 antidote potions while in there.)
Finally, there are a just a few X-Potions (fully restores HP) and Elixirs (fully restores HP and MP). These came in handy for me at one particular spot in the late game, when the warriors have much more HP than a Hi-Potion is able to recover.
(📉 Difficulty nerf) Lower gold costs / more gold rewards. 💰 Costs at shops are lower in the remaster. I was always able to afford everything I wanted at shops, with no need to grind for gold at all, or otherwise save up. I even bought the expensive “steel armor” / “knight armor” that’s available for sale at a high price (about a third of the way through the game), which I don’t believe I ever did in the original game.
(📉 Difficulty nerf) Faster leveling / easier foes? Most enemies and encounters seemed less deadly in the remaster. For example, in the original, having the entire party get stun-locked for multiple rounds by groups of undead with paralysis attacks was a big concern in some mid-game dungeons. I never came close to having this happen in the remaster.
Further, in some spots in my playthrough of the remaster, my party felt over-leveled for the enemies I was facing. A particular undead mini-boss in the first half of the game went down especially easily (in the first combat round). Much of the second half of the game in general felt pretty easy difficulty-wise. The major dungeon after the “prove your courage” event in particular felt more like a victory lap than a challenge. (I do recall this to some extent being the case in the original game as well, however.)
(📈 Minor difficulty buff) Multiple large enemies. 👹 In the NES original game, fights were limited to a maximum of four large-size enemies (such as ogres) at a time, due to screen space constraints. In the remaster, although most fights stuck to the constraints of the NES original, I did have a handful of fights against 5 or 6 large enemies at one time, as pictured at the top of the article.
(📈 Difficulty buff) The final boss. 👿 Without getting into spoiler territory: With a well-prepared and properly-equipped party, the final boss in the NES original game could be fairly reliably defeated. In the remaster, although my party never had a wipe prior to the final boss, beating that last boss took me a good dozen or so attempts! (I do suspect that having a White Mage on the team might have made things significantly easier.) I was definitely glad for the ability to create a save immediately before the final boss fight in the remaster!
Bugs fixed 🐞🔨
This is almost certainly not a complete list, but here are a couple of fixes that I noticed that the remaster made over the original in my play through:
The TMPR / Temper and SABR / Saber spells. Evidently in the original game, these spells were buggy, and had no effect on combat at all! I verified that they do indeed work now, and are effective melee buffs — along with the FAST / Haste spell, which is a very effective melee buff in both the original game and the remaster. (Pro tip: In the remaster, these spells can all be stacked onto the same character for a greater effect, too!)
Darkness status. 🕶 This is another one in the original game that didn’t seem to do anything at all. In the remaster, although I didn’t test exhaustively, it did appear to cause both warriors and enemies to deal fewer hits in melee. I actually did have my Red Mage use the black magic Darkness spell in a few combats against large groups of melee enemies.
New bugs 😱
Unfortunately, I did notice a couple of new bugs introduced by the remaster! (At least in the 1.0 launch version. Maybe these will get corrected in a post-launch update?)
Elemental protection buff spells miss! 🔥 The NulShock / NulBlaze / NulFrost spells (formerly ALIT / AFIR / AICE) (reducing damage of the applicable element by half for the entire party) worked great and were effective when I first obtained them in the remaster. In particular, a battle with a fire-themed major boss was made much easier in my playthrough by the NulBlaze spell.
Unfortunately, when I tried using these spells in the late game, about 90% of the time, they resulted in “miss!” on each of my own party members, instead of the buff being applied! I assume there’s some bug where the warriors’ evade chance is being applied to these spells, as they would be to incoming enemy status-affecting spells.
Monk “optimal” equipment. 👊 When pressing the “Optimal” button on the equip screen for my Monk (formerly “Black Belt”) character in the early parts of the game, the game equipped the monk with one of my nunchaku items — even past the point where the monk would work better fighting unarmed (dealing a bit less damage per hit, but more hits). It’s easy to see this issue tripping up new players, making the monk class less effective than it should be for them.
Miscellaneous improvements ⚔
Music. 🎶 The music is not just remastered versions of the original chiptune NES tracks, but actually re-recorded as orchestral tracks. They really are great-sounding. They are very true to the original versions. Some of the original tracks that were very tight loops in the NES original, such as the shopping music and menu music, have gotten new extended versions, which are also great.
Dungeon backgrounds. 🌵 Each location has a new and nice-looking battle backdrop.
Spell animations. 💥 Each spell in the remaster has a unique and beautiful animation!
Dialog text. 💬 All of the dialog text in the game has been retranslated and improved. (The protagonists are still completely silent, however.) I did notice and appreciate that the classic line very early on in the game, "I, Garland, will knock you all down!" was preserved as-is, though!
Enemy names. The enemies have been assigned names that are more true to (what I assume are) the Japanese originals, are better translations, or can fit now that name length constraints are relaxed somewhat. A few such changes off the top of my head:
IMP ➡ Goblin
MadPONY ➡ Crazy Horse
BONE ➡ Skeleton
CREEP ➡ Gigas Worm
SAHAG ➡ Sahagin
KYZOKU ➡ Buccaneer
In-game hints. 💡 At least in the early portions of the game, if you talk to the dancer NPC in the starting town, she'll give you a hint as to what you should be doing next, a feature which is new to the remaster. (Another NPC in the castle near the starting town will clue you in that the dancer will do this.)
Things kept the same! 🛡
Character classes. No new ones, and they work the same as before!
Magic. 🪄 The system of a fixed count of available spell slots per level remains in place (instead of a more modern MP pool system). This keeps the system of needing to use potions instead of white magic for most healing outside of battle, and needing to use offensive black magic sparingly in general -- especially in the early game -- the same as it was originally.
The available spells, what they do, and which character classes can learn which spells, are also unchanged.
Items. The equippable items and key items available in the game, where they can be found, what they do, and which character classes can use which items, are almost entirely the same.
(A single exception that I noticed: The "silver sword" / "mithril sword" is no longer available for sale in the elf town. Getting into why it was probably removed would touch on spoiler territory!)
World map, towns, and dungeon layouts. No changes that I spotted!
High random encounter rate. Random encounters occur quite often in both versions of this game! The above-mentioned auto-battle feature definitely makes this more palatable in this current day and age, particularly for a mobile game.
Deadly enemies! Some enemies that were particularly deadly in the original game remain so in the remaster! A particular type of enemy present in a mid-game ice-themed area with multiple abilities that can instant-kill individual warriors retains those abilities in the remaster. (The availability of Phoenix Down potions in the remaster does make the possibility of a warrior being taken down in that way a lot less scary!)
Overall recommendation: 👍
For anyone nostalgic for the NES original and looking for a solid premium RPG for their iPhone, I can easily recommend picking up this version of Final Fantasy!
I finally opened up my wallet and replaced my aging iPhone 6S -- fare ye well, headphone jack -- with a new iPhone 12. It's my first purchase of a brand new iPhone since buying an iPhone 5S, all the way back in 2013. (I had bought the 6S secondhand, via a seller on Swappa.)
While I'm finding the 12 to be a nice upgrade, one big usability regression jumped out at me in the early going: The difficulty of activating Control Center. (That's the screen where you can adjust volume and brightness, enable/disable wi-fi and Bluetooth, and so forth.)
On the 6S, activating Control Center was easily done while holding the phone in one hand, via an easy swipe up from the bottom of the screen. On the 12 -- which has no Home button -- that gesture now navigates to the Home screen. Control Center is now activated via a swipe down from the top-right corner of the screen.
The 12's larger size makes that gesture difficult to perform one-handed. Compounding the problem, although I'm right-handed, I use my left hand when operating the phone one-handed -- so that top-right corner is unreachable without substantially shifting my grip on the phone (which increases the risk of fumbling it).
With its generally very good support for accessibility features, I figured Apple would provide a simple option somewhere in Settings to swap that top-right-corner gesture for the top-left-corner. Unfortunately -- at least as of iOS 14 -- there is no such option.
The solution
To the rescue comes a configurable accessibility gesture pointed out by @temptertemper: The "Double Back Tap". Under Settings → Accessibility → Touch → Back Tap, you can set a firm "tap tap" performed on the back of your phone to perform one of a number of options -- including bringing up Control Center!
That double-tap is easily done with an index finger, while still securely holding the phone in a one-handed grip. In the early going, I've found the double-back-tap to be a much easier-to-perform alternative to the stock swipe-down-from-top-right-corner gesture.
Triple-back-tap is also assignable from the same place in Settings. I've assigned that to bring up Notification Center, which is also by default activated by a swipe down from the (distant) top of the phone screen.
Thanks to @tempertemper for this great suggestion, which I expect to be a nice quality-of-life improvement in daily use of my new iPhone!
This is a "just for fun" post on the pros and cons of traditional wired earbuds vs Apple AirPods for everyday use.
Hat tip to my brother Jeremy for inspiring me to finally put this post together. He was recently seen on Instagram rocking some sweet wired earbuds, even though he's retired, and has sufficient discretionary funds to buy himself AirPods, if he so chose!
Wired Earbuds
Apple AirPods
Price tag 💸
✅ From around US $10-15 💰
US $159+ 💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰
Ease of switching between multiple devices (e.g. iPhone 📱 and MacBook 💻)
✅ Yes (on devices with a 3.5mm jack, like my iPhone 6S)
✅ Yes
Risk of inadvertently getting yanked or knocked out of ears 👂
Wires can get caught when doing chores
✅ Minimal
Works with newer iPhones
Dongle needed 🙄
✅ Yes 🍎💰
Looks like AirPods win in a landslide! Let's all throw away our inexpensive, never-needs-charging, high-fidelity earbuds, and buy AirPods! 😜
For clarity, I am indeed perfectly aware that the ship has (for the most part)
sailed on this debate. Apple, at least, doesn't seem likely to release a
new phone ever again with 3.5mm headphone jack technology, when they could sell
the folks buying that phone $160 AirPods instead. I stand by my entitlement to my
(unpopular) opinion on this topic regardless. 😁
I've just released a new, free app for iPhone: Desktop Journey!
Desktop Journey is a single-page
dashboard app for iPhone, with an attractive display of time, current and
next calendar appointments, reminders, weather, and micro-break
prompts. It gives your phone a purpose while it's in its charging cradle on
your desk while you work.
With the exception of an optional weather add-in, Desktop Journey is completely free and ad-free.
Why did I make Desktop Journey?
For a while now, when I'm at work at my desk, I've had my iPhone sitting in a charging cradle on the desk. I wanted to put the iPhone's screen to good use, so it wasn't just sitting there doing nothing.
This isn't adding value. We can do better!
I tried a few different alternatives to just a blank screen, such as a simple analog clock app, but I couldn't find any "dashboard" apps that took advantage of the phone's screen to display a variety of useful information.
So, as with Vigil RPG,
I decided to build it myself!
What does Desktop Journey do?
Here's an overview:
Read on for more details!
Current Time
The top portion of the screen is devoted to a simple analog clock.
Before creating Desktop Journey, I was using a simple iOS analog clock app
as a workaround, and I wanted to keep that core experience (while also
adding more to it).
A little "desktop calendar page" icon, styled to look like the native
iOS Calendar app icon, shows the current weekday, and day of the month.
"Now" and "Next"
These two panels, shown in the middle portion of the app, display calendar
events, reminders, and -- with an optional subscription -- weather and
temperature.
🗓Calendar events are taken from the device's calendar (after
permission has been granted to read the calendar). Thus, if you've already
set up your iPhone's calendar to sync with another source, such as a Google
or Microsoft Outlook account, events from that calendar will appear.
The "Now" panel shows the meeting or appointment that is happening
currently, if there is one. The "Next" panel shows just the upcoming
appointment (not all of the day's remaining appointments) -- plus the
single next appointment after that, if there is one immediately
following -- which makes for a nice at-a-glance answer to the question
"What do I have coming up next?".
Tapping on an event opens up the view of the current day's events in the
native iOS Calendar app.
🎗Reminders likewise are sourced from the native iOS (again,
only after you've granted permission).
The "Now" panel shows a reminder that was due earlier today that you haven't
completed yet, if there is one. The "Next" panel shows today's next upcoming
reminder that has a date and time set, if any.
Tapping a reminder opens it in the iOS Reminders app, so you can
mark it as complete, or edit it.
Temperature and weather for the current locale,
and today's upcoming high or low temperature, are optionally shown,
with the purchase of a subscription. (These cost me money
to subscribe to an API that provides worldwide weather information,
and while I'm happy to provide Desktop Journey for free, and with
no ads, I'd like to not lose money on it!) ☀
Celsius and Fahrenheit are both supported. Which is displayed can be
toggled on the Settings page.
The Hero's Journey
A hero character -- who may look familiar if you've played Vigil RPG!
-- walks along at the bottom of the screen, on a long journey.
The biome changes each day, providing some visual variety. In other words, if you run the app again
tomorrow, the hero will be somewhere else! There are several biomes, including
taiga (pictured up above), desert (pictured here), grassland, caves, forest, dungeon, and more.
The sky also changes, based on the real time of day: Night (as shown here), sunrise, daytime, and dusk.
Encounters - Tasks and Exercises
Several times per day -- at semi-random intervals; typically a little bit less frequently than once per hour --
an enemy encounter will take place!
Each encounter prompts you with an action
that you can perform yourself, "in real life," to defeat the enemy.
Each of these
are quick-to-perform actions that are good opportunities
to take a very brief break from whatever task you're working on
as the app is running. In this pictured example, you'd
stand up from your chair and stretch; then, you'd tap the ✅ button.
There's no time pressure; encounters will last
indefinitely (as long as the app is running), so you can delay if
needed,
and complete them at a convenient time. Alternatively, you
can always just hit the Skip button to bypass the
encounter instead.
There are two types of encounters: Tasks and exercises.
Tasks are like this one: A simple action that you can perform from your desk as a micro-break. Other tasks
include "tidy your workspace" and "message a loved one".
Exercises can help you get moving a bit during your work day. An example is "Do 5 push-ups!".
Exercise quantities can be adjusted with + and - buttons that appear during the
encounter; so you could tell the app you did less or more than 5 push-ups, for example.
The encounters feature can be turned on or off in the
Settings ⚙️ menu. Individual tasks and exercises can also be enabled or
disabled,
if (for example) your circumstances don't permit
standing up, or if you don't feel like being prompted to do push-ups. 🙂
When you complete an encounter, you'll get a stats display of how many of that task or exercise you've completed -- both today, and all-time.
Settings
Settings can be accessed by tapping the Settings ⚙️ icon at the
top of the app's page. In addition to customizing exercises, you can
disable
screen lock while the app is in the foreground; toggle
temperature units between Fahrenheit and Celsius; and view the in-app
"About" and
"Credits" pages.
Give it a try!
As mentioned above, Desktop Journey has no ads, and is a free download, so give it a try, and let me know if you like it! Download Desktop Journey on the App Store.
One Deck Dungeon is a "Roguelike, dice-placement, single-player" board game. It's created and published by Asmadi games, and has a great digital adaptation for mobile devices and computers by Handelabra Games. It's my current favorite "player vs environment" board game app on my iPhone.
The iPhone adaptation of One Deck Dungeon is particularly good! It plays in portrait mode, and does a great job of displaying the game, and allowing you to play it, that feels very natural on mobile. (This stands in contrast to many other mobile board game apps, which tend to have a single interface used for both the PC and mobile versions, with minimal adaptations to make the game more usable/playable on mobile devices.)
The mobile version of One Deck Dungeon unfortunately lacks one feature that its physical counterpart has: Tracking of which of the game's playable heroes have successfully completed which of the game's available dungeons. This feature of the physical game adds a lot of replayability, as you can work towards having a particular hero fully clear the game.
To address this, I've created a digital score sheet for One Deck Dungeon! Based on Google Sheets, it tracks which dungeons you've completed with which heroes, on which "challenge tier" (difficulty level), and displays your overall progress clearing the entire game with each hero. Here's my current progress, as shown on the score sheet:
Now, before starting a new game of One Deck Dungeon on my phone, I'll open up this scoresheet on my phone's Google Sheets app, and choose a hero and dungeon that I haven't cleared yet (or want to improve my best completed difficulty tier on -- those are the values in the 1-4 range being filled in on the sheet). Then, I'll open up the actual One Deck Dungeon app, and start a new game with the selected hero and dungeon! If victorious, I'll come back to the sheet and fill in the appropriate cell.
Apple announced last week that the new iPhone 7 won’t have a “standard” 3.5mm stereo headphone jack; it’ll only have a Lightning port. To offset this, the iPhone 7 is shipping with a dongle that allows 3.5mm headphones to be plugged into the lightning port, as well as with a pair of earbuds that have a Lightning connection instead of a 3.5mm.
Although I’ve only ever owned Apple iOS smart devices up to this point – and I’ve even developed and published my own successful iOS-exclusive RPG game on the App Store – the lack of a standard 3.5mm jack on the iPhone 7 is unfortunately a deal-breaker for me personally. Here are my reasons why some of the arguments that I’ve heard for why the iPhone 7 having no standard audio jack is no big deal don’t resonate well with me.
Apple is giving you a dongle! Just use that!
I have several different pairs of earbuds that I use with my phone, so just keeping the dongle permanently attached to one pair isn't an option.
I could buy a dongle for every pair of earbuds I own, but in addition to being somewhat expensive and annoying, it would be a hassle to remove (and keep track of) the dongles when I want to use the earbuds with a non-iPhone device.
Keeping a dongle always attached to my phone isn't going to happen. I don't want it always dangling, and when I remove to charge the phone it might get lost.
Finally, I already did the thing where I need to use a dongle to plug in headphones via a device’s power port: With the Gameboy Advance SP, back in 2003. I found the experience to be pretty annoying back then.
Apple is giving you Lightning-connector earbuds! Just use those!
I often plug my earbuds into devices besides my phone, so replacing all of my earbuds with lightning-connector versions isn't an option. Here’s a partial list:
My PC
My iPod Nano (which I still use for listening to live sports broadcasts on local FM radio)
My Nintendo DS
The built-in jack in airplane seats (for watching live sports or recent movies)
The built-in jack in the treadmill-with-TV at my gym
Further, I’m not interested in owning two distinct sets of earbuds, one set that works with 3.5mm connections, and one set that works with the iPhone. (I own multiple pairs of fairly inexpensive earbuds, because over time I’ve learned that I tend to misplace them frequently.)
I’d much rather be in a position where any pair of earbuds I own will work with any audio jack that I own, or might encounter.
The iPhone works with Bluetooth earbuds! Wireless is better anyway!
I don't like wireless / Bluetooth earphones much, as I have found that for me, the hassle of needing to keep them charged outweighs the benefit of not having a wire.
I’ve found that having to manually re-pair them often (when I use the same set of earphones with multiple devices) can be annoying as well.
But the 3.5mm standard is antiquated! Stop living in the past!
Sure, it absolutely makes sense to replace old technologies when superior replacements become available.
In this case, though, I’d argue that for most practical purposes Lightning (for audio connections) is an inferior alternative to 3.5mm audio. Lightning offers no discernable improvement in sound quality, and forces the use of workarounds like the dongle, in contrast to the “it just works” of the 3.5mm stereo standard.
So, I will not be buying an iPhone 7. My tentative plan is to replace my current iPhone 5S with an iPhone 6S – which works with all standard earbuds, no dongle needed! – at some point in the next year or two. Hopefully that’ll last me until at least 2019, at which point I’ll decide what to do next – including maybe making the painful jump away from my accumulated iOS software library to Android, Windows Phone, or whatever other future alternative might be available.
Sometime in mid-2013, I had a hankering to play a particular kind of RPG on my iPhone. I wanted a game with these features:
Turn-based combat.
Portrait orientation, and thus playable with one hand. (e.g. while eating with the other hand.)
A single protagonist/hero. One thing I don't like about party-based RPGs is that typically, a couple of your party members need be KO’ed before you feel like the team is actually in any real danger. This doesn't tend to happen against non-boss enemies in most games, and thus those games often end up feeling uninteresting for long stretches.
Interesting decision-making in combat -- even vs. non-boss enemies -- something beyond the typical RPG trope of "do basic attacks / target enemy elemental weaknesses / heal self when injured / repeat."
No hard-to-use on-screen virtual D-pad for character movement. Give me a way to move my character that’s designed especially for a touchscreen, not one based on a traditional physical controller’s tactile D-pad!
A combat system built around LOW numbers and visible enemy HP / stats, so I can calculate that if, for example, that enemy has 9 HP left, then I can perfectly finish it off by doing my 4 and 5 HP attacks respectively over the next 2 rounds.
FAST combat. No waiting on long combat animations; no wading through multiple menus to kick off a combat round. This is my phone; let me whip it out when I’ve got 30 seconds, and actually accomplish something quickly.
No save points. Why not just always keep my game saved automatically? (Even mid-combat!)
Game designed with a goal of fun, not of corporate revenue generation! Absolutely no IAPs or premium currencies or ads or stamina timers.
I couldn't find that game on the App Store.
So... I decided to write it myself!
After spending most of my evenings between 10:00pm and midnight (after my day job, spending time with my family, getting the kids into bed, and daily chores) for about 18 months designing and writing the game – learning the Objective-C programming language and the whole MacOS / iOS development ecosystem along the way – Vigil RPG was released in November 2014!
Here’s Vigil RPG’s combat screen, which illustrates the realization a lot of the points noted above that I wanted to achieve with the game. You can check out more screen shots and info about the game at the Vigil RPG website!
Lifetime App Store Sales Stats
I don't really have any reason to keep them private, and I thought it might be insightful for other #indiedev folks and industry observers, so without further ado, here are the lifetime sales statistics to date for Vigil RPG (iOS)! According to my developer account at iTunes Connect:
Released November 2014 at a price of US $2.99
354 paid copies sold, almost entirely at $2.99, with a few at $1.99 in a "birthday sale" in November 2015
Total gross sales: US $1004
About 70% of the lifetime sales of Vigil RPG came in the first 30 days after release.
Vigil RPG got about ten 5-out-of-5-star community reviews on the App Store (and no 0-through-4-star reviews) immediately after release; it’s gotten zero community reviews since then. (Vigil RPG has no “review nag” prompts, which was an intentional design decision.)
The second big spike in sales was after the 4-out-of-5-star TouchArcade review (which I was thrilled with, and found to be extremely on-point and fair – much respect to the reviewer, Shaun Musgrave). TouchArcade was the only major site to do a review.
The little spike in November 2015 was the beginning of the $1.99 sale. Sales dropped off again rapidly even though I left the price at $1.99 for a while.
Outside of the initial release and $1.99 sale periods, Vigil RPG sold at a rate of roughly 1 copy per week.
Net proceeds after Apple's cut: US $707
3 x $US 99 of Apple annual developer licenses to develop the game and keep it live on the App Store = $297. Net proceeds after Apple dev license fees: $410
Other misc. operating costs -- State of Michigan incorporation fees for Aggro Magnet Games LLC, web hosting for http://aggromagnetgames.com -- of around $100 to date. Bottom line proceeds to date: About $310
122 free copies redeemed (promo codes sent to review sites; a few free giveaways to try and drum up visibility and community interest)
I didn’t bother trying to keep any stats on piracy rates, but at least one site out there (fairly readily findable via Google search) has the binary of the game posted for free download.
Given a very very rough estimate of about 600 hours spent creating the game, $310 in net profit works out to a wage of about $0.50/hour. Not exactly enough to quit the ol’ day job! (Fortunately, I already have a day job which I love!)
I am, however, honestly totally fine with that performance. I made an intentional decision up front for my goal for the Vigil RPG project to be to "make the game I wanted to play" – with no design compromises being made for the sake of monetization. So no IAPs, no ads, no other typical "freemium" features (or “anti-features,” as the case may be) such as premium currencies or stamina timers.
$0.99 Sale
Consistent with my initial goal for Vigil RPG of prioritizing fun over profits, as of today, for the first time ever, the App Store price for Vigil RPG is reduced to $0.99! I’m hopeful that this will allow more people to enjoy the game – assuming there’s a segment of folks out there who are interested in iPhone RPGs, and are unwilling or unable to buy the game at the $2.99 price point, but will go ahead and pick it up for $0.99.
The main reason I didn't just cut the price all the way down to $0.00 (free) was that admittedly there's somewhat more cachet in being able to say "The game I made is for sale on the App Store!" than "I made a game and I'm giving it away on the App Store since no one was really buying it!"
It would also be nice if Vigil RPG’s proceeds would at least cover the annual $99 that Apple requires to keep it listed on the App Store. To that end, I might bump the price back to the original $2.99 at some point if sales at the $0.99 price point don’t generate much increased volume relative to the 1 sale/week or so of the $2.99 price.
“Buy It Now!”
Hopefully this detailed peek into one game’s iOS App Store performance was helpful, or at least mildly interesting!
If you’d like read more about the gameplay of Vigil RPG, you can do so on the Vigil RPG website. Or, you can check out the full 5-to-10-hour adventure firsthand via Vigil RPG on the App Store if you’ve got an iOS device, and can scrape together enough loose change to join the exclusive club of premium iOS game owners!
You can also hit me up with any questions you’ve got on Twitter at @AggroMagnetGame, or below in the comments!
Between early 2011 and November 2013, I carried an Apple iPod Touch (first a 4th gen., and later a 5th gen.) as my primary “pocket device,” along with an old pre-paid “dumbphone” flip phone for making the occasional phone call. As I’ve blogged previously, my reason for doing this was cost: The iPod Touch had no monthly fee, and the pre-paid phone cost only $7.50/month for about an hour’s worth of talk time, versus about $80/month (about $1,000/year!) for a smartphone with a data plan, accounting for taxes and fees.
For me, the math basically boiled down to trading loss of GPS capability and the ability to access the Internet from non-WiFi locations for keeping an additional $900/year or so in my pocket. I was more than willing to accept that deal!
However, my job just recently adopted a new policy of providing partial reimbursement to developers with on-call responsibilities for their smartphones, which changed the math quite a bit! Based on that, I sold my iPod Touch 5th gen on eBay (recovering around $210 of the original $300 purchase price, after shipping and fees – not bad!), and purchased a new iPhone 5S with service from Verizon.
Here are my thoughts on the advantages – and disadvantages – of swapping out my iPod Touch and dumbphone for a new iPhone, after the first month or so of having made the swap.
Pros
Internet Anywhere
I was a bit startled the first time I was driving down the road and heard the phone “ding” with a new incoming notification – the iPod Touch only ever did that when I was “stationary” (typically at home or at work)!
The ability to look things up while on-the-go has already helped me out once: While en route to an appointment at a new doctor’s office, I didn’t remember the specific cross-streets of the office location, but I was able to pull out the phone (after pulling the car off the road) and get those looked up with no problem.
Texting
I could sort of do texting previously, using a combination of approaches: iMessage on the iPod Touch to connect with other Apple device owners; various email-to-SMS gateways and/or Google Voice to initiate text message conversations with others and receive replies; and (in a pinch) the 10-digit keyboard on the old prepaid dumbphone. It was difficult, however, to make it easy for others to contact me via text message, and also to contact non-Apple folks while out and about.
Now I’ve joined the ranks of people for whom texting is easy! I just give out my phone number, and anyone can text me, and I can receive the message and reply easily wherever I am (except while driving, of course!).
GPS
I’ve had a GPS on my wish list for a long time; now I’ve been able to cross that off! My wife has carried a smartphone for a few years now, so whenever we went on a trip together, she had mapping covered.
The few times a year I would go on a long trip alone, though, I would be obliged to do things as we did it back in the olden days: To print a hard copy of directions off the Internet ahead of time. (It’s certainly odd that we’ve reached a point where the phrases “back in the olden days” and “the Internet” can legitimately be used together in the same thought!)
Unlimited Calling
I previously avoided using my prepaid mobile phone for phone calls lasting more than a couple of minutes, since with my prepaid plan I only got a very small allotment of minutes per month; I’d use my home or office phone instead. Now, though, I no longer have to worry about using up minutes, so I have the freedom to use the mobile phone for longer calls.
Pants Pockets
For years, I’ve walked around everywhere on a daily basis with my pants pockets pretty full of stuff: At first a Moleskine notebook, and later the iPod Touch, in my left pocket; phone and keys and mini-pen in my right pocket. Now, with the single iPhone serving as both note-taking device and phone in my left pocket, I no longer need to stuff the dumbphone into my right pocket along with my keys. Luxurious!
Vibration Alerting
The iPod Touch 5th gen. didn’t have a vibration feature, so now I can be alerted to new incoming messages even when my phone is on silent mode and in my pocket.
Firewall Circumvention Device (!)
My office has a long-standing policy of no use of streaming music sites permitted on the company network. I’ve been somewhat envious for a while now of smartphone owners sitting near me who were able to use their phone’s data capability to listen to streaming music over the Internet, while I was limited to only my collection of mp3s on my local PC. Now, I too am able to enjoy the variety of listening to Pandora while at my desk! However, that does bring us to…
Cons
Bandwidth Cap
I decided to go with Verizon as the carrier for my new iPhone for several reasons: (1) They allowed me to transfer my accumulated Alltel/Verizon prepaid account balance of $100+ as a credit on the new smartphone bill; (2) I get a corporate discount on Verizon services; (3) My wife is already on Verizon, I didn’t really want to have her switch, and it was cheaper to have us both on the same carrier.
However, Verizon does impose a bandwidth cap on data usage. For the first time, I am having to consider questions such as just how much data does it use to stream Pandora for 8 hours?
Form Factor
The iPod Touch 5th gen. is very thin – even thinner than the iPhone. More than once, I had the slim iPod out and had someone notice the minimal width of the device and ask “What kind of phone is that?!” (I’d been tempted to answer that it was a prototype next-generation iPhone – mostly due to the irony that the device in question was actually less capable than a current-gen iPhone!)
In practice, though, I’m finding that the additional bulkiness of the iPhone isn’t something I really notice, as compared to the iPod Touch.
Monthly Fee
The biggest con, obviously is that the substantial monthly cost of the iPhone (even when subsidized) doesn’t exactly compare favorably with the $0/month cost of the iPod Touch. After I’ve had the chance to use the iPhone for a longer period, I may do a follow-up on this post to comment on whether the advantages of the iPhone relative to the old iPod + dumbphone solution seem to have been worth the price.
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