So I'd been developing for the phone for about 8 months, and if you'd read my previous posts you'd know I'd had varying success.  I decided I really needed to get a good proper game in the store, one that I could be proud of.  I had loads of ideas for games but I really didn't think I was skilled enough to pull it off.  Then in mid June I got an email from a Chinese company offering to develop iPhone games at a low cost.

My idea was to make a Bungee Stickmen physics style game, one that showed a range of parameters and based on those parameters you decide the length of rope, which determines whether he lives or dies.  Seemed pretty straightforward in concept but as I said I really didn't have all the skills.

By this time iPhone app sales were already beginning to slump, it was getting harder and harder to break through the noise.  So I knew I didn't want to spend too much. After all it could hit the store and only make $100. But I realised I needed their help, so I could do a few other apps while they worked on it.  So after much haggling and negotiations I managed to strike a pretty good deal, only $1,500 but I had to do all the graphics myself.  The trouble was I was required to "flexible in delivery time".

My app must have been a job that was handballed around the company, I spoke to several people via email, following it up every few weeks.  I finally got my first prototype on September 22.  I was pretty disappointed, it wasn't a game at all, just a guy clumsily jumping off a bridge on a straight vertical rope.  The speed was too fast and too linear, no real physics to speak of.  Turns out they'd never seen a bungee before and they couldn't use the link I'd sent them to a youtube video of it because it was blocked by the Chinese Government.  They of course never bothered telling me this.

I ended up chatting on skype to someone for several hours until I felt he had a reasonable understanding of what was required.

Now this guy seemed pretty good and from then on it seems he spent a lot of time on it.  I think the budget for the project was probably a big blowout.  So when I finally got a basic app on the 1st of December that;

1.  Showed the parameters

2.  Took input for a rope length

3. Had a bungee guy jumping of a bridge

I was happy to pay the money and get the code to finish the project.

So looking at the code I found they had used cocos2d a very handy API for developing 2D games.  I read through the code and worked out how everything fit together.  It was structured nicely with separate scenes and layers for each step of the process.  But there was still a lot of work to do.

I decided to:

1.  Implement a BitmapFontAtlas instead of a basic font to add a bit more style.

2.  Fix the blood animation which was initially a sprite that expanded.  It wasn't too hard to work with particles and get something a bit more realistic.

3.  I needed to come up a scoring system.

4.  Develop some more backgrounds and more levels.

5.  Add some extra animation, such as birds etc.  (I also added a fun little feature where Santa appears only on very rare occassions.  I was hoping to base a marketing strategy around giving prizes to people who identify the correct, stage, level and jump.  But I wasn't sure on the legality of that, could be the subject of a future blog post.)

6.  Add the ability to save the status.

7.  Keep a worldwide scoring mechanism.

8.  Give it some progressive gameplay to keep people addicted.

The last one is probably the hardest to accomplish.  It's hard to get the right balance so that it's easy enough to play but not too easy, and hard enough to keep people interested.  I think I managed to do it though, by progressively adding more parameters to deal with, as the game progresses to each new stage.  I also added an increase in the score required to advance.

So anyway to cut a long story short I did all of these things and quite a few others.  I was really keen to get the app into the iTunes Store before Christmas.  Just in case there was a spike of sales over the holidays.  The last few days I've been working until 5 or 6am then sleeping for 4 hours and back onto it.  Luckily the app review team were kind enough to approve it and it's just gone live in the app store today.  I'm pretty proud of the end result but only time will tell if it becomes another addictive little iPhone game.

So what did I learn about my experience with the Chinese developers.  Well I think if you want to get something done right and on time you probably need to spend more money than I did.  But with the iPhone store the way it is, it's a bit of a risk spending too much.

Could I have done it myself?  Probably, but it would have been a sharp learning curve and it may have taken me 4 months myself when I had to start from scratch.  It would not have left me time to do the other things I've done.  The best part of the app is the realistic rope.  I falls very naturally and is the biggest part of the code.  It would have been quite a hassle to code up myself.  But cocos2d is a great starting point anyway and it was really great to be able to implement all these new features that the game needed.

So here's a youtube video of the final result of all those months of work by the Chinese and all those late nights from myself.  Feel free to contact me with any feedback on the game.

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