The Dave Report! Progress!

Dave's on his way back from NY today but he took some time out of his vacation to dig into the issues that have been reported.

I guess it was optimistic to think we could continually add to Pocket God without having growing pains. We kept trying to cut down on graphic memory to avoid crashing, but it LOOKS like that our assumption about why it was causing crashes wasn't quite right. Dave updates us on Touch Arcade...

"Crashing, I think I found out what is happening. I didnt know this but there is a limit to the amount of processing you can do before the app officially starts, I have 10 seconds to start everything up and right now that time is being spent connecting to fient, connecting to heartbeat (our crash reporter) loading textures and sounds, and any other initialization. If you have homebrew, or a slow internet connection (wifi or bad reception) the startup time takes longer than 10 seconds and the app automatically shuts down because it thinks it has stalled.

In the meantime, if you have crashes, boot jailbreak in safe mode. turn off wifi. or make sure you have a good connection when you want to do wi fi. fient and heartbeat is trying to see if there is a good connection, if its completely off. it knows its off fast, if its good, it knows its good fast. but if the connection is going in and out. then it takes too long to figure out it is available or not."

>> The rest of his Touch Arcade post here <<

This is good news because now that Dave knows why, he can solve it! He goes on to say that he has to fix the problem before submitting Episode 16. Thanks to everyone for telling us your symptoms! We will hurry out the update ASAP.

New Update Out!

Hey guys! As people might have noticed, the latest update is out! There is a new island with new dangers....but its only the beginning. The outhouse is the latest item for the islander....but more will happen with the egg in Episode 16...which is my new favorite update.

So, a couple things....

- I have to go through and approve comments. I'm using my laptop finger pad and I slipped and I just accidentally rejected 20 comments :( really sorry! I shouldn't be performing such a delicate procedure at 7:30am..

- In those comments was some information about people having trouble with crashing! Anyone experiencing that, please comment again as we want to resolve that immediately if its something more than needing to restart the phone, or involving jailbroken phones!

And yes, that means Dave will submit the latest update ASAP....except we might wait a little bit to hear about technical issues, just in case it is a code issue we don't want to go out in the next release! -A

Status update, links and new catchphrase

So, we are still waiting for Apple to talk to us about the hold up and they are taking their time. So much for our big trilogy! What a drag! If you can follow: Apple is holding on to Episode 15: A New Home. We have Episode 16 locked and loaded but can't submit it until Apple approves Ep 15 (or rejects it). Episode 17 is in progress, but this week Dave C is in New York for a few days.

Hopefully we can get back on track, but we honestly don't know what's going on. We have a SLIGHT concern we might be caught in the wake of the Baby-shaker controversy. I hope NOT.

In the mean-time, here is a cool review from app modo:
>> Click here for Review <<

Also, you gotta love the internet. First Daniel (Moonclog13) writes us a theme song.

Then, we came across this video by Amanda and Aliyah. In the process of these 2 girls trying to film their reaction to the infamous "2-girls-1-cup" video (if you haven't heard of it, you don't want to know), they randomly came up with our new catchphrase: "You KNOW you like Pocket God!" You gotta stick with the video (till about 1:56) but when they get to it, its pretty compelling. Please adopt the new catchphrase and use it often.


Anyway, thanks for your patience! We will keep you posted when we know what's going on!

Daniel (MoonClog13) makes a request

Thanks Daniel....I think. Anyway, you might want to cut down on the helium :)

Now What ????

Here we go again! Apple sent us the following letter:

Dear Dave,

Your application Pocket God is requiring unexpected additional time for review. We apologize for the delay, and will update you with further status as soon as we are able.
Thank you for your patience.

Regards,

iPhone Developer Program

This is the time of week we receive "when is the next update coming out?" notes, so hopefully this will answer the question. We don't know and now you know as much as we do! We hope you will sit tight. We just wrapped up my new favorite update "The Tyrannosaurus Strikes Back" but we can't submit it until the next one goes through. And yes, we are aware this will affect sales badly and probably cause further sinkage on the app list!

Mood: Bummed

-A

New Home - Sneak Peak

While we are waiting for "A New Home" to be approved, I thought I'd post a sneak shot...however I've cropped it. Why? Well, we want SOME surprises!

iPhonespaz.com interviews Dave & Allan

We were pretty sure we were nerds, knew that we're geeks but only up until now suspected we were spazzes as well. Now its confirmed:

>> Click here to read interview <<

P.S. Looks like I've triggered a flood of requests to be on a beta tester list. But we don't have the resources to maintain an ongoing list with this amount of interest. Bottom line is, Dave is maxed out and it probably will be a while before people drop off and we need more. Until then, we need to stay focused on developing new PG features! Thanks again! -Allan

Amazing Youtube Interactive by Rupert (Rup22)

Check out this interactive youtube piece by Ruprt Moreton (Rup22) on Youtube. I didn't even know you could do this, but he did a really amazing job and clearly spent a LOT of time on it. It gives you a great history of the pocket god updates. ah, the memories! Be sure to go comment, favorite and subscribe.


Thanks Rupert!

Gettin Krappy with Pocket God

Krapps.com, the site that says that all apps aren't created equal, just posted a fun article about us. Thanks Krapps!

>> Read Article Here! <<

Say My Name is out!

The wait is over! Thanks for your patience. We hope you like the new naming and stats system! By the way, there has been several comments that we haven't delivered on the update-a-week...In fact, I saw someone say we release something every 3 weeks---which is fine, keep expectations low! And granted there have been delays, and due to a rejection we lumped 11 and 12 together, but we technically have NOT slipped on our development schedule, except by maybe a few days. Pocket God was released Jan 9...about 14 weeks ago. So counting 1.0, 14 episodes have gone through and Episode 15 "A New Home" has already been submitted. That said, we can't keep it up forever. But for the time being, we're trying!

The Dave Report: Release 1.14 (Episode 15 - A New Home)

As usual, Dave comes out of the coder cave but has nothing to say, so he writes about the latest release with very little information.

"Like I said last week, this update was mainly a cleanup update where we did a lot of bug fixing and optimization but we ended up having more time than normal because of our late update schedule so we were able to add a bunch of stuff in addition to that...."

"...As some people have guessed, the main goal of the update was to introduce a new island. The new island has its own background loop, it has a T-Rex Egg, and it has a structure of some type (testers, please do not post screen shots at this time). It’s a brand new location so it doesn’t have the volcano in the background like the other island, we will be adding a different background hazard in the future after the trilogy, not sure when though. There is also a second secret about the location, a future unlockable (after the trilogy)."

>> CLICK HERE FOR THE TOUCH ARCADE THREAD <<

We have Ep 15 'A New Home' wrapped up and ready to go, but we have to wait for 'Ep 14: Say My Name' to be approved before we submit, so everyone please be patient!

Pocket God in the New York Post!!!!!

"Great for killing time on a subway platform or while waiting on line at Starbucks."

Slow News Day

Dave and I are buried in getting together the next update "A New Home" part 1 of the upcoming trilogy of updates so I don't have much to report yet. "Say My Name" is still in review and we'll announce when it has been approved by Apple. In the mean time, I'd like to call out this video by IphoneStuffReviewer on Youtube. I was impressed with what he did here because I can't operate a camera and the game at the same time to save my life. Sure its a little blurry and shaky at times, but he gets in nice and close while playing Pocket God. Plus I really like his agenda is to help PG go back to number one! Be sure to go comment and agree with him! Thanks IphoneStuffReviewer!



Poll: When you get the ability to name the 6 islanders (dont' worry, when they die, you just resurrect them with the plus sign)...what will you name them? Answer in the comments.

Wait...What? Pocket God number 12 on the All Time Paid Apps list!

Apple is running a new promotion a it closes in on a billion downloads and on the front it has the list of all time top free and paid apps....and it turns out we're on it! We're quite shocked since PG has only been out since Jan 9.

Looks like you have a chance to win a macbook pro, or ipod touch and other stuff....so get downloading! And if you don't have it yet, download us of course!

Your Chance to Win

Wallpaper Contest Winner!

Wow! We received close to 300 entries for the wallpaper contest. And all of them were awesome...and we will periodically pull fun ones out and feature them on our blog. But it IS a contest so someone has to win first place. Plus we picked 2nd to 5th place winners for t-shirts. Here it goes:

FIRST PLACE (Winner of Pocket God Islander Toy)
Victor Villanueva


SECOND PLACE (T-shirt winner)
Curtis Smith


THIRD PLACE (T-shirt winner)
Edwin Heida


FOURTH PLACE (T-shirt winner)
Bilal Karim


FIFTH PLACE (T-shirt winner)
Jessica Lovell


HONORABLE MENTIONS
The following entries were finalists so we would like to give props!

Mariska Offerman	Matt Terwilliger
Jonathan Blake	Toni Bui

Thanks to everyone for sending us such great wallpapers! We will keep our flickr link in the margin! I know there are some name corrections.....so if you need a correction, find your pic on flickr and add a comment asking for the name correction!

Finally! Ants, Fish and Feint!

Hey guys! The latest update FINALLY came out. Thanks for being patient. The big problem with the anticipation, is the worry whether or not it will actually end up deserving it! You'll notice, that to keep the island from being too crowded- that fish, meteor and ants are a three way toggle. Turn on ants and you get a lens and anthill on the island to interact with. Turn on the fish, there is a fishing pole, but it turns off the anthill (or meteor). Another biggee is Feint. This is just our first step into using the system.

For everyone who doesn't know, Feint is a community system that you can access from the Pocket God menu as long as you have a WiFi connection. Read about it here.

The next update "Say My Name" is wrapped up as well. Ever want to get back at your little sister, a mean teacher or your annoying friend? In the next update you can! Dave explains it on Touch Arcade:

THE DAVE REPORT

Also, here's some sneak shots:


P.S. Contest winners announced tomorrow. I think there are a few straggling wallpapers I have to upload before we make our decision!

Periodic Reminder - Pocket God is compatible with iPod Touch

Still getting the complaints that Pocket God is not compatible with iPod Touches, which is not the case. Pocket God should be work with iPod Touches as long as you have the 2.2 (or 2.21) firmware update. If you are an old Firmware you should get a dialogue box asking you to update when you open iTunes. If you believe you have the updated firmware and it still isn't working, comment here.

Wallpaper Contest Closed!

We have received a staggering amount of entries! We will be reviewing them the next couple days and will announce the winner Friday morning! There are likely many duplicates and I will try to remove them from the gallery. Also, there is about ten entries that weren't in a format that could be posted easily. I will take a look at them and try to get them up. There are probably a few stragglers on Facebook too. If its there, I will get it.

If you don't see yours on facebook or the gallery....do me a favor. this email is different but its easier for me to get at:

pocketgodcontest@gmail.com subject line: missing entry for (your name)....

then attach the image. make sure your name is in the FILE NAME as well. Sorry guys, if you dont' follow the instructions , I may not get it in.

The Dave Report: Releases 1.11 and 1.12 Combo-update

Dave talks about the lack of an update this week, a great April Fools' joke that never was, and more in the new TouchArcade thread:

"So, we ran into some bad luck this week and our latest update got rejected, we don't have a definitive answer as to why but they said it was due to us using a copyrighted image and we are guessing that its because of a option icon that looks like an iPhone. We changed it to look like a generic screen as well as changed a iphone that we had in the help pages since update 4 that looks like an iphone as well. Not sure why they chose this week to be picky but hopefully this update goes through. I also just want to let everyone know that we are not slowing down in our updating, even though a update didn't come out this week, the new update we resubmitted contains both the fishing and the ants update (including feint). And we are working on 1.13 now, "Say My Name!".

Other than this, I am really bummed about not getting our update out. we had an april fools joke planned where users would see the following screen at the start of the game.




Once they click on it, they would get a message "April Fools" and then the real episode would start. We stayed up so late to get this in, it really stinks that they decided to pick this week to be stricter about the review process."

Pocket God: From the Suggestion Box

Hey guys. This our new promo. Be sure to embed and blog it!

Short update, and Some more reviews!

We've confirmed the cause for the rejection. It was the iPhone icon in the menu. Ugh. We've submitted our latest (combined 1.11 and 1.12) and hope it won't take long for approval. in the mean time we have some more fun reviews:

>> iGadgetJunkie <<

REJECTED!

Guys! For the first time, a Pocket God update has been rejected. We were shocked and the reason Apple sent us was extremely vague! They sent us a screenshot with the menu open and said we violated "Apple Branding"...meaning we used an image that is owned by Apple. The only thing we can think of is that the gravity icon (a very simplified iPhone tilted) is the issue. I mean, surely a volcano icon isn't owned by Apple? Or the question mark?

What can we say? We are really sorry, as we know how much people look forward to the updates. So we changed the gravity icon and are submitting a new update tonight. This one will be a two-for-one. Something's Fishy and March of the Fire Ants. And just to let you know that we are NOT slowing down, we are in progress for the update after that, titled "What's my name?". AND we have a surprise that we are uploading to our YouTube in the next day or two.

Again, our apologies! We just didn't see this coming!

TouchArcade feature on Pocket God

Today, Toucharcade has posted a feature about Pocket God. With a massive community of fans on the forums located at TouchArcade, them doing a feature was very much appreciated.

The article mentions, "Pocket God's appeal revolves around subjecting your islanders to sharks, natural disasters, vampire bats, and even target practice."

"At only $0.99, fun interaction, and nearly weekly updates, Pocket God is hard to pass up."

April Fools Day is also Dave's birthday! What a shocker :) Take a couple seconds from programming today, dude. You deserve it!

Oh, and props to Seth Story for suggesting the cake graphic!

Contest Update

Wow....Okay, I think there are some duplicates but we received over 200 entries to the wallpaper contest! Very cool! Well, to us anyway. The artists may feel differently because the competition is stiff! We received such a swarm of emails, some with duplicates, we did our best, but the gallery may continue doubles (or triples even)...and we may have left out a few. Be sure to check if you are in there. There's a couple that are .psd or .ai files, that I will see if I can export to jpeg in a bit. Also, Flickr only displays 200 photos if you don't have a pro account. I went to get one, and there was a temporary server error. Will try again later.

A few people also did the Apple Store invasion as well which is awesome! Great job, everyone!

From Steven Kane:


From J. Hunt:




Not in the apple store but nice photos from J. Syrop and Michael Thallinger...

Cool fan video review

Thanks 5Jusername!