App Store acceptance :-)

[Clover]

I am pleased to announce that my Lazarus app "Jigsaws Galore for Mac" has been accepted into the Apple App Store.

This is a port of a Windows game that was written over many years using four different versions of Delphi, with around 30,000 lines of code.

Many thanks to the Lazarus developers and those that provided such generous help on this forum and wrote such excellent guides for creating a cross platform app. and for OSX in particular. Never having even owned a Mac before, it was a steep learning curve and I literally could not have done it without them.

Dave

[felipemdc]

Great =)

[Vincent Snijders]

Congratulations.

[JimBeam]

Congratulations from me, too!

[fabienwang]

and from me too.
How long was your project conversion?

[Clover]

Thanks guys!

It was about a year (!) but I added lots of new features and also took the opportunity of completely re-writing the user interface and basically wrote my own gui to replace the boring looking forms and make it look more like a game. If it had been a business app and a straight port it would have been very quick and straightforward indeed, I'm sure.

You can see screenshots at http://www.jigsawsgalore.com/screenshots-mac.htm and screenshot 4 and the last screeshot on that page (Organizing your jigsaws...) is where a lot of the work went. The gui elements are all constructed there. Also there was a huge dependency on Windows which all had to be stripped out and re-written. If you click on "Show Windows Version" you can see the before and after.

If you are interested there's a free demo at http://www.jigsawsgalore.com/download.htm but make sure you click on "Show Mac version" on the screenshots page before going there or you'll see the Windows demo.

[Phil]

Looks terrific.

I think it would make a great iPad app.

Sounds like Apple has fast turnaround on resubmitting a rejected app - that's good to hear.

Thanks.

-Phil

[Clover]

Thank you, it was submitted on March 14 but didn't get reviewed until March 24 and took a further 4 days before rejection. The re-submit went to "In review" virtually instantly which I thought was a nice thing to do and three hours later was passed. I was dreading a drip-drip rejection and resubmission process but it didn't work like that.

The game appeared in the store this morning and had sold 6 last time I checked. No ratings yet, though.

[Clover]

Phil said:

I think it would make a great iPad app.

Could you port it for me? I need a vacation. There's free beer involved...

[Phil]

Thank you, it was submitted on March 14 but didn't get reviewed until March 24 and took a further 4 days before rejection. The re-submit went to "In review" virtually instantly which I thought was a nice thing to do and three hours later was passed. I was dreading a drip-drip rejection and resubmission process but it didn't work like that.

Sounds like some of this is probably automated, although for the shrinking window thing it seems as though that might have required an actual tester to find. This is a valuable service and helps justify the 30% of sales that Apple takes. If only we had users who could test like that.

The other thing obviously that helps the developer is knowing that the app will be scrutinized mercilessly. That really helps focus the developer on the interface guidelines.

I see that Apple's developer conference in June sold out this week in less than a day (>5,000 people at over $1,500 a pop). I understand that last year it took 8 days to sell out and 2 years ago it took 4 weeks to sell out. I interpret that to mean that both of Apple's platforms are really hot right now and where everyone wants to be.

Thanks.

-Phil

[Phil]

Phil said:

I think it would make a great iPad app.

Could you port it for me? I need a vacation. There's free beer involved...

Yes, take a break and savor your success.

Thanks.

-Phil

[Clover]

I'm sure a lot of it is automated. The problem with the minimum size was definitely a human as they included a comment and a screenshot showing that text was cut off. I had 15 testers testing this for about 6 weeks and none of them spotted it. Thorough, systematic testers are very hard to find!

Your so right about the fear of merciless scrutiny! I spent some time trying to eradicate any Windows look. I couldn't get rid of it all but got rid of enough I guess! I do think there's a fair bit of leeway on the guidelines because I'm contravening it on certain elements.

I ported to Mac because my customers were deserting the Windows platform in droves due to endless problems caused by malware in general. My demographic for the jigsaw game tends to be people of a more mature age and perhaps they are more vulnerable than others. The Mac is not immune of course but it just feels safer for them and it's a choice they have made.

[Bad Sector]

A bit offtopic, but aren't you the developer of an old series of Adventure Games and a Wolf3D-like clone (Nitemare "something" i think)? Interesting to see you're using Lazarus :-)

How about submitting your older games to GOG.com? Thanks to BBSs they're fairly known and i'm sure there will be people who would like to buy them. GOG has mentioned at the past that many of the games they have listed are from developers directly contacting them.

[Clover]

Yes, that's me. I was waiting for ScummVM support for the old adventure games to be completed before contacting GOG. I think it has been finished now so thanks for reminding me !

The older games were written in C so this is extremely off topic