Hello everyone! After 1 month and 15 days of learning objective-C, Sparrow, and iOS, I submitted my game, Pandemic, to the Apple store last night. My coworker made all the graphics and I programmed it. Keep your eyes out for Pandemic by sotsu, inc. It is free, but ad-supported.
This would not have been possible without the kind support of this forum! Thanks everyone!
Congratulations! That's great news! Tell us more about it. 
Got any sneak peak pics/videos? 
*surprised "Pandemic" wasn't taken*
Ahhh, sorry I don't have the pictures, they are at the office...and I am taking a week vacation and going to Taiwan so I won't be back until after the result of the application (by then you will be able to see the pics and download the game even haha).
Pandemic is an original old-school arcade style game thought up by my director, where the object is to get the high score (or, in one mode, the longest time). The reason it's called Pandemic is because the object is to battle against viruses trying to infect your system. You must destroy all the viruses by touching them before either a) time runs out, or b) they completely infect the system. However, some are very small (only 1 pixel, but you will be surprised how well you can spot them if they move xD) and some are very fast, and they don't move in straight lines either. If you don't kill the larger ones fast enough, they will explode and multiply into smaller ones. I wanted to put as many onto the screen as possible, but in the end I had to cap it at ~65 baddies at once or else performance started to suffer (each bad guy has between 1 and 9 pieces that constantly move around). This game was developed for the Japanese market, and localized to English by yours truly.
I'm so completely nervous about any bugs that I missed, although I've been play testing for the past few days and it hasn't crashed or hiccuped a single time (especially since I tracked down the obnoxious memory leak caused by the repeating NSTimers and my general failure to understand that dealloc doesn't get called on an object unless outside objects release their retains...). I also worry about it being too easy or too hard, but I guess I'll have to wait and see. I did 100% of the programming (outside of the actual Sparrow engine and the extensions that I used, of course) so if you happen to find any problems, I'll know where to look for them.
Congratulations on your release!! The descriptions sounds awesome, I'm looking forward to playing the game for real! =)
And, hehe, I know what you mean, being nervous. It's the same with me on each release ... but playing it for a long time, as you did, is the best you can do to work against that. (And, if possible, testing on older hardware.)
Well, I only own a 3GS, so actually I ONLY tested it on the oldest hardware that it is supported on (it uses 2048x2048 textures so normal 3G is a no-go). I didn't think about this but...am I supposed to indicate somewhere that this download is for 3GS and above? Or should I write it in the description?
Hm, I don't know if there's a way to limit it via the App Store; if there's nothing else, you should at least put the info very prominently in the description. Nothing hurts more than a one-star review "does not work!!!".
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pandemic/id458587395?ls=1&mt=8
It's been released, but Apple wouldn't let me use the same name on my English localization!! I don't know why, so now the title is the stupid looking "pandemic_e"
Wonderful, I love it! The art and sound style is awesome -- you succeeded in creating a very Japanese look & feel!! =)
BTW, don't forge to add it to the list of Sparrow games!
Ah, and one thing I noticed: maybe you should create an English description of the game in the App Store -- all those Japanese letters might scare a few people away!
My director and I both found a bug (logic bug, not an error-causing bug) so version 1.1 is coming. Along the way he decided that he wanted to change a lot of art stuff AGAIN ><.
Haha, well I work at a Japanese company in Japan with all Japanese people ^^;. That's the reason it's so Japanese looking :D.
Along the way I will change the name from pandemic_e to pandemic. or something really close. I don't know why they won't let me use it for both versions...maybe someone is hogging the English market name (there are no games called "Pandemic" in the English apple store).
Oh, I certainly will add it!
Very odd! You're right, the link above shows an English description, but when in the App Store description on my iPhone, I had only Japanese letters. I'm using the Austrian App Store.
Yes, that's fine!
Ouch! Very odd 
BTW, thanks for adding it to the wiki! That was fast! =)
If anyone has any experience with this...I am all ears. It's completely ridiculous how complicated this process is. When I search the Japanese store it comes out in English, and everywhere else except America it comes out in Japanese...are you retarded Apple? Did I miss the part where I picked Japanese as the default language for the world? -____-
You must log in to post.
