Lifespan is our latest app. It is the only app that we have released so far that is only available for Windows 8.1. Although Windows 8.0 apps still account for nearly 70% of our download for our other apps, we decided to narrow our market for Lifespan so that we could better serve the customer. From now on, we plan only to develop for Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone (for apps consistently performing well on Windows 8). Unless major bugs are found, we will also halt updates for Windows 8.
Save the World has been our fastest growing app that we have ever had. Due to this, we have had to make some adjustments to out scheduled releases in order to properly support Save the World. We are also proud to say that our next app will be launching towards the end of summer. Add us to you RSS feed to stay updated
In Save the World, we made the decision to go ad free. In this decision, we decided that we did not want the clutter that ads tend to bring. However, with the ridding of ads, we had to make another decision, that being, how to actually make revenue to compensate for the amount of time we put into this program (several hours of coding and many more debugging). The answer: in app purchases. Currently, we have one in app purchase, which allows the user to switch between difficulty levels. In all actuality, the code to add this feature took less than an hour, most of which was spent enabling the purchase. This may seem unfair, but we like to think of this as a way for die hard users to show their support. Rather than make the entire app paid for, the in-app route seemed best so that those who could not afford the $.99 could also have the experience of Saving the World.
Would you have preferred to have ads instead of in-app purchases? If so, comment below With the recent announcements from Microsoft regarding the Windows 8.1 Phone update and the Windows 8.1 Update 1, we have created a publication plan. Please note that these are only predicted dates for release and that unexpected predicaments may cause delay.
After much consideration, our programmers have voted to port our Windows 8 Store Apps over to Windows Phone. As of right now, we will only support Windows Phone 8 unless we hear a desire for Windows Phone 7 support (comment if you want that).
About our upgrade: Currently, we have transferred our Completely Random Passwords app over to windows phone. Due to the length of the name, we decided to list it as RandomPasswords, although we may change the list name in the future. This process went smoothly other than a few hiccups. Having passwords up to 128 characters worked fine for Windows 8 apps with larger screens, but was impractical on the Windows Phone. Thus, we cut it down to 64 characters. So far, we have found this app to be working fine, although it tends to make passwords one character too long. This will be fixed in our next series of updates after we look up the proper shortening code. Nevertheless, our programmers have deemed this app fit for release and we look forward to hearing feedback. If you want one of our other apps moved to the Windows Phone, comment below! Before, when programming our apps, we locked our resolution in at 16:9 aspect ratio. While this made a app look fantastic when presented in full screen on a 27" monitor or a 10" monitor, but multitasking was difficult on smaller screens. Now, we are converting all of our apps over to a more multitasking friendly format using the scaling tools of XAML. The first of these user friendly updates came to Thinking of a Number earlier today. It is a major UI overall and we invite you to look at it and provide feedback on how we can further improve before we roll out updates for the rest of our applications. (Currently a UI update for Completely Random Passwords is waiting for release. We will keep you updated). Comment below
.. . It is the weekend, is it not? Therefore, all of our programmers are hard at work. The only trouble is that we are waiting for Microsoft to certify our apps. Currently, five of our six published apps are in the process of having updates published. Our general philosophy is that we should wait for our previous apps to be published before working on new updates. However, let it be known that our updates will be rolling out soon. Chemistry Reference is getting a Thermodynamics solving feature (this update got pushed ahead of testing a bit so we are crossing our fingers that bugs will be seldom). Risk Odds is finally getting a update to Windows 8.1 and is now designed to prevent crashing. Thinking of a number got a small update with a new help feature in the sidebar. Random Walk is getting this same help feature. Finally, we updated Completely Random Passwords because our Windows 8.0 Edition was still experience crashes.
In the future, we will try to get all apps submitted by Thursday night to ensure the updates are out for the weekend. In the meantime, check our any of these apps that you have not yet and give us your feedback in the comments below. |
AuthorAll posts are written by our founder, Edward Brunton. Archives
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