Just another indie developer

Tonight I started working on the first major Relix update. I plan to incorporate a lot of my lessons learned from the first version. The nature of the update will likely require a major refactoring of the entire game, not that I mind.

Right now the biggest planned changes will move away from a static xml level file to a sqlite db. Also, the game will come with a built in editor and allow level uploading and downloading of community built levels.

I have a lot of planning to do before I start (one of the lessons learned). First, I think I will create a feature roadmap and go from there.

I was just notified that Relix Lite is now available in the app store. The Lite version comes with the first 10 levels of the game. It tries to introduce all the concepts one would need to be successful later in the game.

The lite version can be found here: Relix Lite on iTunes

Naturally, when Apple’s email came letting me know Relix was available for sale I bought it. I deleted my latest release build from my phone and happily downloaded. I waited patiently for it to load and saw the title screen. Immediately I knew there was a problem. “Where is my sound!”

I ran my game again in the simulator and the sound was working fine. I jumped into the code to look for the problem.

There it was. I was checking the user preferences to see if the game music was enabled before I did the first time preference initialization. Great. Fortunately, the music and sound effects will start normally on the 2nd run but it will be silent the first time its run.

This silly oversight is the only thing changed in the 1.1 release.

Lesson learned: Delete the application from the simulator and test the initial NSUserDefault settings before I deploy to the app store next time!