Rebuild in the PlayBook top gamesRebuild’s doing way better than expected on the BlackBerry PlayBook. This week it’s featured and in their top paid games – up there with three versions of Angry Birds (or is it 4 now?). It’s gotten mentions on crackberry.com, blackberrycool.com, and playbookdaily.com.
All of this is so awesome, because the port took zero effort… and I’m rather fond of my new PlayBook.
Rebuild's PlayBook SalesBut even with all this extravaganza, my sales there are just barely matching the current iPad/iPhone sales (where Rebuild is #500 in games, #50 in strategy with a super-minor feature in iTunes – bet you can’t find it). So being a relative nobody on iOS == stardom on the PlayBook? Bummer for RiM, but I’m just so happy to be loved that I’d rather not dwell on that.
Up next: the terrifying Android marketplace. I’d been avoiding Android because of my instinctive fear of all those different devices. Despite all my laboring over the iOS version, Rebuild is still a little sluggish and crashy on the iPad 1 and iPhone 3GS. There are much less powerful Android phones out there and no easy way to target only the ones with enough RAM and CPU/GPU power to run Rebuild smoothly (although I’ve tried using compatible-screens). So it is with trepidation that I announce Rebuild on Google Play.
But apparently that’s not enough. I knew the hardware base was fractured, but I didn’t realize the app market itself was also fractured. There must be 100 different sites that sell Android apps, and each one wants me to upload my binary to them along with screenshots and promo art in different arbitrary dimensions. Many of the Android “review” sites either require you to sell through their store, or charge $200 for a review. Am I really seeing this right?
I’ve submitted to Amazon so I can get it on the Kindle Fire (although for $200 the PlayBook is a massively better hardware deal). But I’m not sure I have the stomach for all these other stores. Have I been naive to only buy apps through Google? Android users – where do you get your games?
I helped demo IGF nominees Faraway and the very musical Pugs Luv Beats.Last week was my first GDC as an indie developer, and hoh boy were those goodtimes!
I helped Colin present in a talk about failure (Incredipede was the happy ending), and co-demoed Steph Thirion’s game Faraway in the Independent Games Festival. During the awards ceremony they gave us all BlackBerry PlayBooks, so I now have little excuse not to port Rebuild to it.
I sat down to get it running today and spent far too long stepping through RiM’s convoluted developer security setup, which took me even longer than Apple’s similarly obtuse system. There are severaltutorials out there but some were out of date or assume you have Flash Builder (I use FlashDevelop). So as of March 2012, here’s what you do to get your SWF running as an app on your PlayBook:
Step 1: Request a CSJ code signing key from BlackBerry.com (takes a couple hours).
Step 6: From FlashDevelop, hit F5 to build your SWF and test it locally using ADL.
Step 7: Edit & execute the following to package and install the app:
@echo off
:: AIR application packaging
:: More information:
:: http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=CommandLineTools_5.html#1035959
:: http://www.hsharma.com/tutorials/10-easy-steps-to-package-and-sign-air-apps-for-playbook/
:: Path to Flex + AIR SDK
set PATH=%PATH%;C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Flex451AIR31\bin
:: Path to Blackberry
set PATH=%PATH%;C:\Program Files (x86)\Research in Motion\blackberry-tablet-sdk-2.0.0\bin
:: Path to Java
set PATH=%PATH%;C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin
:: package swf and assets into a bar then install to device and run the app
call blackberry-airpackager -package airplaybook.bar -installApp -launchApp application.xml bar-descriptor.xml airplaybook.swf blackberry-tablet-icon.png landscape-splash.png portrait-splash.png -devMode -device [YOUR_DEVICE_IP] -password [YOUR_PASSWORD]
pause
If all goes well, you should see Main.as (a red square on a black background) appear on your BlackBerry. Chances are good that some parts of the debug token installation aren’t necessary but it got the job done.
Rebuild actually ran the first time, and quite well which was an unexpected surprise. Now I need to adjust the fonts and aspect ratio, then go through what promises to be another certification nightmare to package it for sale in the BlackBerry App World. It’ll probably take two or three days total, so no great loss if it bombs.
Rebuild should be out for the PlayBook by the end of the month!
I just released the version 2.0 update to Rebuild iOS, which adds support for iPhone 3GS/4/4S and iPod Touch 3&4. To celebrate, Rebuild is also on sale for 99 cents through the end of this weekend!
I just got new business cards made up for GDC. This one is my favorite. :)
I hope this update also addresses some of the stability issues that Rebuild has been having on the iPad 1. Did you realize an iPhone 4 has twice as much memory as the iPad 1? So it was easier than I’d expected to accommodate iPhones, and obviously I should have done this earlier. I can’t get enough of how nice the cartoony map graphics look on that double-density display.
It was also a great year for us! Colin and I hopped around the world again with nothing but our laptops, meeting new friends and working on our respective games. I released Rebuild 1 in February from Costa Rica, Rebuild 2 in October from Japan, and Rebuild Mobile in November from the Philippines. The games have done well enough that we can afford to keep this travel thing up for another year.
Rebuild recently won the Best of 2011 award for Simulation/Strategy from JayIsGames, my favorite casual games review site. Between that, placing in the Kongregate top ten all year, and being called “unputdownable” by Touch Arcade, Rebuild has totally exceeded any expectations I had when I wrote the first version one weekend at my in-law’s house. Thanks to everyone who’s encouraged me to keep improving the series!
Soon I’ll be releasing Rebuild for iPhone/iPod touch, to complete my domination of the iOS market. Then it’s finally time to take a break from the brain nomming cretins (god love ’em) and work on Incredipede with Colin. Which BTW is going to look amazing!
After Tokyo we spent two months in the Philippines with our friends Ron and Arlie, and my god did we have a blast. We stayed in a seaside mansion where we had delicious Filipino food prepared for us nightly, and were visited by friends from across the indie–verse and beyond. We took a lot of pictures, and it seems most of them fit into the categories: sailing, snorkeling… and bugs.
Oh and some photos of me shooting an AK-47 and hiking up to a native Mangyan village with our friend Peter. The expats were super friendly and welcoming, centered around the local yacht club where we had dinner on Friday nights and took a few sailing lessons. The older brits and their young Filipino wives seemed a little colonial at times, but some like Peter were active in the community and helping to promote touristic alternatives to seedy Sabang and boring White Beach.
After the Philippines the two of us spent two weeks in Hong Kong. Unfortunately Colin came down with a mysterious illness and was out of commission for much of it. We stayed in Mong Kok on the Chinese side which has the highest population density in the world, as well as many wonderful markets and whole streets dedicated to aquariums, flowers, and songbirds. Our room was a cozy little breadbasket, bright and quiet and just big enough for a bed and the two of us to stand. We met some eccentric housemates and wrote an iPad game for Colin’s mum, which teaches Japanese Katakana using a crossword and photos from our time in Tokyo. We showed it around at an indie game meetup in Hong Kong and people were impressed, so we may release it on the app store eventually.
Christmas with family on Vancouver Island was great as always. It hasn’t snowed yet but there’s still time before we head down to San Francisco. We’ll be there until March or April but haven’t decided where to go after that. Europe? Eastern Canada? We’ll see…
