Yes, next Monday at this time I’ll be in California for the 360|iDev conference. I’m getting really excited for both the conference and for a chance to go back to California. My presentation is coming along nicely. I wrapped up my first draft of the presentation on Friday and timed out a rehearsal, which came in at 60 minutes. Ideally I want to talk for 50 minutes and leave 30 minutes for questions, so I need to cut about 10 slides out of the presentation to make it work. That’s what I’ll be working on this morning.

I also wanted to say thank you to everyone who offered their support after Friday’s less-than-enthusiastic post. I really didn’t intend for the post to come off so down, but I guess that the mood one writes in does comes across on one’s words somehow. I’m feeling much better about things this morning. Sales haven’t picked up, but I think the weekend helped to put things in perspective. I never expected this part of the process to be easy or that Dapple would become an instant success (I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t hoped that it would happen, though). I realise that it will take a lot of work to make Dapple sell, and I know that if Dapple is to be a financial success it will most likely be of the “slow burn” kind. I’m still optimistic that I can make a living at this, but I think I may not be able to move on to the next project as quickly as I’d hoped. I think Dapple will require a little more love before I can concentrate on the next game.

With that in mind I’ve started planning out Dapple Lite. Yesterday I did a bit of work (yes, on the weekend, I know, I’m breaking my own rules again) and did up a “Dapple Lite” icon for the game. I also branched my source code into a new directory so that I can start mucking about and removing stuff from the game. I’ve been reading up on what little information is out there on creating “lite” versions of apps and it seems like there are two rules that Apple wants you to follow:

• The lite version must be fully functional on its own – this means, you can’t show a greyed out “Hard Mode” button if the user can’t play Hard Mode in the lite version. Or you can’t show a greyed out “2 Player Mode” button if the user can’t play 2 Player Mode (which they won’t, in Dapple Lite).
• You can’t “up-sell” the full version too frequently. This seems more subjective, but I take it to mean that the up-sell shouldn’t interfere with their enjoyment of the app…I’d imagine that popping up a pop-up every 2 minutes that tells the user to buy the game would get you rejected quick. I’m just planning to have a button on the Main Menu that will take the user to my web site so that they can buy it from there.

Right now I’m planning to allow the user to play Classic Mode and Timed Mode, but only up to Level 10 in Dapple Lite. This should give a pretty good idea of what the game is about, but it should leave them wanting more. 10 levels is enough to see all the elements of the game, but most players can easily get past level 10 after a few games. I’m not planning to include 2 Player Mode, just because I’m not sure of any good way of limiting the game play in a reasonable way that won’t get my app rejected. I’ll have to give it some more thought.

Finally, Gavin Bowman, over at Antair Games, on Friday posted a bunch of links to blogs he reads (including mine) and he reminded me that my Game Dev Blogs Links section on the left side-bar was in need of some serious love. These are all gentlemen I’ve been enjoying chatting with over Twitter and whose blogs I really enjoy reading. So, if you look to the left, you’ll see a bunch of new links, which I’m about to post right here also:

• Antair Games – Antair Games makes Sneezies for iPhone: an adorable, highly polished bubble popping game featuring the cutest little fuzzy creatures you’ve ever seen. Gavin Bowman posts about once a week to their blog. It’s a great read if you’re into iPhone games development.
• Games from Within – Noel Llopis, founder of Snappy Touch, creator of Tea Time and the recently announced Flower Garden, writes fantastic blog posts about his experiences developing for the iPhone. He often posts extremely useful technical information that I’ve often made use of throughout my game’s development. Noel also writes for Game Developer Magazine, so you can read more of his stuff there.
• Jason Citron – Jason is one of the co-founders of Aurora Feint, the company that made the very nice Aurora Feint II series of games on the iPhone. He just started blogging, but his first post is great, so let’s hope he keeps it up.
• Mike Krasprzak – I linked to Mike’s blog on Friday. Mike’s a Canadian iPhone developer and makes really nice, highly polished, innovative games. I mentioned on Friday that Mike created Smiles, an IGF Mobile Best Game Award finalist.
• Veiled Games – Veiled Games made the iPhone game Up There, which was very well received. They’ve been extremely generous with posting sales data for other iPhone developers to see. They also started AppTees.com, a store where you can buy T-shirts with some iPhone game-related imagery on them.

I’m not sure if it’s because iPhone development is still relatively new, or if nice people end up developing for iPhone, but I’ve been blown away by how great other iPhone developers have been. There’s so much sharing of information going on and everyone’s willing to help each other out. It’s really nice to see. I love that there’s a community of developers that really want to help the rest of the community. I’m really happy to be a part of that.

Owen