I never quite got into Twitter. The value proposition just wasn’t there for me and it always seemed like a passing thing. Google+ on the other hand has already given me infinite photo storage, I can put animated gifs in my stream (oh the opportunity for last-frame gif bombs!), and I can choose exactly what messages go out to which subscribers based on circles. So I’m on Google+, and that’s where I post a good chunk of my smaller hacks and tidbits of life. Want to know what I’ve been up to between posts? Curious to see my hacks in action? Want to get a sneak peek at my hacks before they’re available to the public? Then you’d better start following me on Google+ hadn’t you? Just head over to profiles.google.com/huntergdavis and add me to a circle today 🙂
I never quite got into Twitter. The value proposition just wasn’t there for me and it always seemed like a passing thing. Google+ on the other hand has already given me infinite photo storage, I can put animated gifs in my stream (oh the opportunity for last-frame gif bombs!), and I can choose exactly what messages go out to which subscribers based on circles. So I’m on Google+, and that’s where I post a good chunk of my smaller hacks and tidbits of life. Want to know what I’ve been up to between posts? Curious to see my hacks in action? Want to get a sneak peek at my hacks before they’re available to the public? Then you’d better start following me on Google+ hadn’t you? Just head over to profiles.google.com/huntergdavis and add me to a circle today! Need an invite to Google+? Just ask!
The Grind Expansion Pack 2 – Easy Mode is live! This will be automatically updated through the Android Market. It implements some of the most often requested player features since Expansion Pack 1 (auto-saving, a player context menu, more elements, more items, more screen space for the game). All user interface elements are now in context menus or within the interface. This means 10-20% more screen real estate on ALL DEVICES!! This update rolls up all game fixes and balances to date.
I had a YouTube comment a while back ask me for the source code to one of my games, simply so that he could figure out how to add AdMob ads to his own game. For some programmers out there, the real barrier of entry to market seems to be a lack of knowledge on how to add AdMob and Adsense to your application, and how to publish it on the Android Market. It can be a bit of a pain, but once you’ve got it down it’s a straightforward process. I’ve written a detailed tutorial for those who’d rather not have to figure all this out from scratch.
OK first of all, if any of you haven’t preordered a retrode2 cartridge adapter you missed out on the first batch! I’m pretty excited at the prospect of getting mine in. However, there’s other news to be excited about! Matthias has put up a call to arms, essentially tasking us with taking the retrode from cartridge adapter to full on console. They’re talking about shoving a micro arm board in there and running emulators on it. Sound familiar to anybody? So I highly encourage everyone who has been itching to get into a new console scene or hacking project to consider this one. I can personally help anyone who gets stuck, and we’ve got about 2500 comments worth of good info on arm porting still floating around all of my porting, zipit, and dockstar articles. Anyone who received an arm board from me in the past this would be a great time to pay back some karma. Still reading? Good! They are also running a bit of a contest over at retrode.org for this. The hacker chosen will get a couple of free retrodes and a gumstix dev board! Pretty sweet deal for an enterprising hacker out there!
I’ve updated some of my Android Apps with the most requested user features.
So after my decision to up my book prices to 9.99, sales dropped by more than 70 percent. While monetarily this made sense, (I am still making more $$ because of the increased royalty), emotionally it doesn’t sit well with me. That’s potentially hundreds of people that would have bought my books that now will never read them. As my sales numbers for the Smashwords sale were pretty decent, I’m going to split the difference and start selling the books at 4.99. Anyone who bought one at 9.99 will receive an automatic credit to their account through whatever store they purchased from. This shouldn’t cost me more than a few hundred bucks in returns, and I am hoping the lower price helps drive the sales back up nearer to the .99c levels. As usual students who can’t pay can get a free copy by emailing me.
The Grind’s first Expansion Pack is out! This first Expansion Pack is titled Magic and Post-Apocalypse Pack and it is live right now! This will be automatically updated through the Android Market. It implements some of the most often requested player features (saves based on player names, auto-grinding without touching), as well as adds hundreds of new spells, locations, enemies, items, and more! You can also now view your current spell and item lists from the menu button!
Today is the first day of August. After two straight months of adding an app a day (A double software Jedi challenge), I’m switching my focus. I got some good advice from folks over at HN in response to a reply I made to an Android post, and some great improvement suggestions from my existing users. After mulling it all over, and looking at my app sales numbers I’ve come to the conclusion that writing an app a day, while certainly possible, is not tenable. Though arguably my overall app quality has improved dramatically, my day-to-day and month-to-month app ad traffic and sales plateaued just after June, and has been slowly declining since. This is even after the rise in popularity of the games I released. As I subsist on my ad traffic and book sales, this trend is quite concerning. Bottom line: though I’ve got another 200 mock-ups and could write an app a day till the end of time it’s never going to make me as much money as my book sales or contract income. It’s not even in the same ballpark.
That’s right, to kick off the availability of my books on premium networks they’ve been added to the Smashwords Summer Sale. You can pick them up till August for 2.50$ apiece, 75% off the list cover price!!
