Android indie developer interview: Tomasz Kucza

Hi guys! Thanks for waiting so patiently for this post. Some exciting things are happening for me right now, which are eating up quite a lot of my time. Anyway, I'm proud to present to you yet another interview with an inspiring indie developer from my own country. After spending a couple of years in corporate jobs he managed to get full time with his mobile games. Quite interestingly, he does his graphics and sound by himself, and the effects definitely can't be called programmer art. Take a look by yourselves.

Bartek: Tell us something about yourself. Who are you? Where do you live? What do you do in life?

Tomasz: My name is Tomasz Kucza. I'm from Poland.

Bartek: When did your Android adventure start and how? Why did you decide to do it?

Tomasz: While I was working as a freelancer I started developing Android apps to broaden my programming knowledge and experience. And since it was more fun than doing boring corporate jobs and it brought similar money, I decided to go full ahead with Android development. And here I am.

Bartek: Do you work full time on your apps or do you have some other job as well?

Tomasz: I work full time on games right now.

Bartek:  How did you learn how to create apps? What resources were you using?

Tomsza: I have long experience in programming – master degree and a few years of different corporate jobs – which made learning Android development quite easy. I mostly use online sources to learn new stuff. When it comes to books I prefer novels.

Bartek: What libraries/frameworks do you use if any? Why did you choose them?

The Lost Heroes

Tomasz: I decided on using libGDX because it offered a lot of freedom. And in hindsight it was a good choice, especially with its new great support for iOS.

Bartek: Where do you take app/game ideas from? How do you know if they have a chance to be successful?

Tomasz: I mostly look back at games I liked as a kid and go from there trying to make something similar, but more modern and with a twist. But most of the time I make simple games because they seem to get more downloads than complex, large games.

Bartek: Where do you get resources from (graphics, sounds, music)?

Tomasz: One of my hobbies is composing music, so I make my own soundtracks. I gather sounds from different sources – sometimes I record them myself, sometimes hire someone to do them or find free sounds on the web. I plan on learning more about how to create sounds using software synthesisers so I can make my own retro sounds in the future.
With graphics I have only recently learned how to draw properly. You can judge how good or bad I am at it in The Lost Heroes – where all graphics are mine apart from the wizardess character, which was made by Olga Bikmullina, a great vector artist from Russia. But since I don't really like programming I try to draw everything myself – so I have an excuse not to code. For me the ideal graphics is the one from Rayman Origins and Legends – I would like to be able to make similar games one day. The most problem with my drawing is that it takes me a lot of time because I am too slow at it and I am often stuck at simple things that I just cannot draw. Thankfully, I have additional resources I use in that situations.

Bartek: What software do you use to create your music and graphics?

Tomasz: For making graphics I use free software - Inkscape (for vectorgraphics), MyPaint (for drawing) and GIMP (for additional work).
For music I bought over the years a large selection of music software (Cakewalk Sonar, Omnisphere, various orchestral libraries, synths and ethnic libraries), an electronic piano, and an electronic flute that
comprise my music studio.

Bartek: What other programming tools do you use?

Tomasz: I use Dropbox as a backup and some automated scripts instead of SVN or git. Nothing really sophisticated.

Bartek: How long does is take you to make a single app?

Tomasz: It depends. I've been working on my puzzle platformer The Lost Heroes for over a year now and there is still no end in sight. This project is turning out to be a little too large for me. On the other hand the new game I am working on – a brick breaker inspired by Arkanoid – shouldn't take longer than 6 weeks.

Bartek: How do you test your apps? What devices/tools do you use for it?

Tomasz: I have a lot of tablets and phones for the sole purpose of testing. And some friends who enjoy testing new games from time to time.

Bartek: How much are you making on your apps? You can give a general estimate, if you don’t want to reveal the details.

Tomasz: No details on that, sorry. Enough to make a living in my country.

Bartek: How do you monetize your apps? What ad networks do you use if any? Do you have any advice on it for others?

Tomasz: I mostly use banner ads in my apps and experiment with in application payments. I'd much prefer if my apps had no ads or no in application payments... but you have to make money from something and paid apps are not selling that well.

Bartek: Which ones of your apps were the biggest success and which ones were below expectations? Why?

Space Bubble Shooter

Tomasz: My biggest success so far is Space Bubble Shooter – it's a unique reimagining of the classic bubbles shooter genre where I used physics to make the game more interesting. So in Space Bubble Shooter bubbles are much more lively – always in movement, shaking and reacting to the ball that hits them.

Bartek: Do you use any marketing techniques or ASO to promote your apps?

Tomasz: I don't even know what ASO is. I am not very good at marketing.

Bartek: What are your favourite Android games/apps?

Tomasz: On a big screen – using OUYA – I love playing Nimble Quest. On a tablet – Bean's Quest is amazing and I always enjoy a good tower defence like Castle TD.

Bartek: What Android blogs/sites do you read regularly?

Tomasz: I mostly use RSS and Google+ to gather news so I don't really read anything regularly, just what I find in my news aggregators.

Bartek: What are your plans for the future? What do you want to create/achieve?

Tomasz: I have to make more games. The old ones are, well, old. My plan is to make a small, simple game and then a complex, large game and then a simple one and then again, a complex one. And try to do the best job I can in all of them.

Bartek: What advice would you give to other developers (something that you wish you had known before yourself)?

Tomasz: Have patience. And don't try to save a game you think that is extremely good but which people just don't enjoy to play – you will only lose your precious time on that. And don't change something that works well and people like.

Bartek: Where can people find you on the Internet?

Tomasz: My apps:
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Magory
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&field­brandtextbin=Magory&page=1&rh=n%3A2350149011%2Cp_4%3AMagory
iOS: search for Space Bubble Shooter in the AppStore
Me on Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+TomaszKucza/posts
Me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/MagoryAndroid
Me on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Magory/292152567469069

If you're wondering, what I've been doing recently, I can reveal some of the secret. I'm studying really hard for a job interview. To be more specific, I'm watching the Introduction to Algorithms video lectures prepared by MIT. I'm also reading books on algorithms and I'm practicing solving problems similar to those on Google Code Jam. I have to say that it's good programming practise and it's fun as well. You should definitely take a look at some online problem sets. They deserve a separate post, so I'll try to write more about them in the future.

If you're waiting for a change on my blog, I will be happy to surprise you soon with a completely new type of content. I decided to gather resources useful for mobile developers (e.g. free graphics/sounds sites, as networks, game engines, etc.) and publish them for all of you to use. It's going to take me some time to prepare, but I'm sure it will be worth it.

I'm aware that my posts have been somewhat irregular lately, so if you'd rather receive email/RSS notifications instead of checking the site every once in a while, sign up using the form on the right. I never send any spammy content. In fact, I don't even see the email addresses, because they are handled by the Blogger platform. Anyway, it's just a friendly suggestion :) See you next time!

Android company interview: Leviteo

Hi guys! Sorry for being absent for quite some time. I had to leave the civilized world and explore places without computers and Android phones. I have to say that I quite enjoyed it.

To make it up to you, I want to give you an interview which is different than usual. My today's guest will not be a single person, but a small development team with quite an unexpected hit app. They'll share information about the tools they use and their current projects. I hope you're curious about their approach, which is probably more professional than one-man hobby enterprises I mostly focused on before.

Bartek: Tell us something about you company. Who are you? Where do you live and work? What kinds of things do you do?

Leviteo: Hi there! We are Leviteo. A Polish-based Internet software house. We work and live in Bialystok- a small town situated in the north-east of Poland. We mainly develop mobile apps. It's not all, however, we also develop software (software designed for developers- such as tpacker- a first online tool to create texture maps, iOS and Android icons and animation sprite sheets), games, co-working with the Bialystok Technical University, we create tools designed to get various apps promoted (more info below), we are currently developing our game engine and do mobile apps, websites, marketing and various things for other companies.

Bartek: Who created the company and how did it all start?

Leviteo: The company emerged from two creative, yet very different minds. One of them, Artur Czemiel already had a company called Aexol which specialised in mobile app development. However, Artur lacked a partner with a business gut and that's why, when he met Jakub Ołtarzewski, a Business and Psychology graduate, he immediately asked whether Kuba would like to join him in business. Thus, Leviteo was born in March 2013. It is a relatively young but very progressive company.

Bartek: How did your programmers learn how to create Android apps? What resources were they using?

Crazy Ropes

Leviteo: Each and every member of our development team is a graduate of the IT department at Bialystok Technical University. Which basically makes them pros at everything they do. We have a software and a mobile team, both developing their unique projects.

Bartek: What libraries/frameworks do you use? Why did you choose them?

Leviteo: Corona SDK is our weapon of choice- this multi-platform tool is effectively speeding up our development processes and, what is more, people gathered around Corona are quite awesome! We use a tremendous amount of plugins which are very useful.

Bartek: Why did you choose Corona SDK? Did you try other frameworks/engines as well? What was your experience with them?

Leviteo: We use corona SDK mainly because:

• Gideros has a very weak API and not a lot of materials included.
• Phone Gap is too slow for our needs.
• Corona SDK is great because we can use Lua language.
• It has a great community behind it. For example there's an IRC.
• 3rd party tools are available.
• It has a very good documentation with examples which is very helpful.
• Graphics 2.0.

Bartek: Where do you take app/game ideas from? How do you know if they have a chance to be successful?

Leviteo: There are 13 people working in Leviteo. All of them are passionate about mobile world and technology, so it's not really difficult to come up with great ideas with such a creative crew. Sometimes we gather in the common room to have a brainstorm- we always vote before something is decided and while creating an app itself- all the company is involved and up to date with the process. And how do we know if they have a chance to be succesful? It's out know-how ;) But seriously- with great knowledge on mobile app marketing, some sense in mobile world and a great idea, there is quite a lot you can do for yourself. I'm not saying it's all easy. Even the best ideas require strategy and analysis. We are patient and we try to learn from our mistakes.

Bartek: Where do you get resources from (graphics, sounds, music)?

Leviteo: All our resources come from the creative team. We have a few people responsible for the graphics, music and general design of the company. They are a very imaginative bunch. They can create anything from the background of the mobile app to the icon of calculator and make it an art.

Bartek: Do you hire grapic designers full time or do you have them create something for you whenever there's need for it?

Leviteo: We have a graphics department including two genius people. One of them, our art director is a Bialystok Technical Univeristy graduate and the other comes from Colombia, where she worked in a very big digital agency. They are available all the time which makes all the work easier, whether it's just an upgrade of an icon or a design of a whole game.

Bartek: What other programming tools do you use?

Leviteo: We use various tools- Dropbox, git, Tool emulator with Xcode and Android Studio.

Bartek: How long does is take you to make a single app?

Leviteo: It depends, really. We have plenty of mobile apps that have taken various amounts of time to be created. There are those which were created in just a week, and there are those which are still developed and upgraded. More or less, it takes a month or two, or even three to publish a quite satisfying mobile app. Mind the fact that there are just a few people working on them in Leviteo. If we had 100 people just in Mobile Development Team, mobile apps would be produced on everyday basis. Otherwise, it's just the matter of discipline, deadlines, and care put into the projects that make us develop at all. We are not Woody Allen's of the mobile world, but we do quite alright for ourselves!

Bartek: How much are you making on your apps?

Leviteo: Well, all I can tell you is that our most successful mobile app has more than a million of downloads. Please, do the math yourself :)

Bartek: How do you test your apps and find bugs in them?

Leviteo: Software testing methods are traditionally divided into white- and black-box testing. These two approaches are used to describe the point of view that a test engineer takes when designing test cases.

Bartek: How do you monetize your apps? What ad networks do you use if any? Do you have any advice on it for others?

Leviteo: How do we monetize our apps… Generally our apps are free to download. We tend to implement various in-apps to buy which are not expensive at all :) We have tried various monetization techniques and discovered the best ones for ourselves.

Bartek: Which ones of your apps were the biggest success and which ones were below expectations? Why?

Weed Scale

Leviteo: Weed Scale was and is our biggest success. With over more than a million downloads it gave us a boost to do more and better apps. The app was very innovative when it was published so that was a big step for us. But honestly, we try to put our heart in every project. Otherwise it would just be a waste of time and money. How the app is going to be received- regardless of our efforts- it's all a mystery.

Bartek: Do you use any marketing techniques or ASO to promote your apps?

Leviteo: Yeah, we do use marketing techniques. Our Marketing has 4 people. All of us go beyond efforts to come up with the best ideas to promote our apps. ASO is very effective, that is true. It's very difficult to come up with the best phrases that would make our app visible to the potential gamer/user. What is more, one can post about their app on various mobile development forums, have their app reviewed, create some promo graphics and game plays. Of course social media is very ubiquitous in our promotion. It's all I can tell you. The rest is our secret which proven to be effective and brilliant.

Bartek: Do you publish for other platforms as well?

Leviteo: Yeah. We publish our apps on iOS market as well.

Bartek: What are your team's favourite Android games/apps?

Leviteo: We all love Candy Crush Saga. Seriously! It's a great app with a well- thought psychology which makes you hooked after just one level. It's our dream to create games as well as King or Rovio. What is more, our developers are also heavy game players. Being game-oriented makes work easier because you don't have to guess what players would like. Players are the best developers.

Bartek: What Android blogs/sites do your team read regularly?

Leviteo: Corona SDK forum, XDA-Developers and other various forums tackling on mobile apps development.

Bartek: What are your plans for the future? What do you want to create/achieve?

Leviteo: We are currently developing our game engine which would be (we do hope it!) very successful! ;) We are currently opening a platform designed for developers on which you can exchange mobile app reviews for being reviewed. It's all very exciting- you guys should totally check it out. (www.androidreviewnetwork.com) Our market research showed that there is no such thing where you can safely get your app boosted without any bigger effort. And yet, we came up with this tool and we are really hoping to do good with it. The fate of a mobile app is very cruel, especially of these which are not promoted with money. Hopefully, this tool will be an answer to many frustrated developers who would not stand a chance with their apps- even brilliant ones which are just a drop in the ocean of Google Play Market. The future looks very promising and busy!

Bartek: Why do you think people need another game engine? Could you describe what's different in it than in other existing solutions? When do you want to publish it?

Robot Chicken Street Run

Leviteo: We think that it's worth working on your own game engine. It's going to be something else, we promise you, we cannot discuss it yet, however. We are in the last stages of building the engine, so it's going to be published very soon. We sound mysterious, we know, but, that's all I can say for now!

Bartek: What advice would you give to other developers (something that you wish you had known before yourself)?

Leviteo: The advice I was given to tell you by our development team leader, is that you should choose your development tools wisely. You can loose a lot of time only because your tools are not designed to fit your needs in particular projects. So read, research, get to know as many tools as possible and then feel free to estimate which one of them would be best for you. Moreover, great ideas are not always everything. Mobile marketing is very important.

Bartek: Where can people find you on the Internet?

Leviteo: There is a lot of places you can find us. Please check these out:
website: http://www.leviteo.co
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leviteo.co
Twitter: @Leviteo2013

Just a quick update of what I'm doing now. I'm in the middle of the Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems course on Coursera. I have to say that I quite enjoy it and I learn a lot. Unfortunately, it's too late to sign up for it now, so if you hadn't done it before, you'll have to wait for the next session.

I'm also working on a small app, but I probably won't finish it soon, for some mysterious reasons I'd rather keep for myself now :) I can tell you that it uses Google APIs though...

I expect being quite busy this month, but it doesn't mean that I won't post other interviews and maybe even manage to squeeze some extra content - we'll see. Anyway, thank you for staying with me and I hope you enjoyed reading this post. See you soon.

Android indie developer interview: Steven Kaydn

Welcome to another Android indie developer interview. When you finish reading this one, you'll probably double your knowledge about game engines, learn quite a few graphics and sound resources sites and get to know an interesting Australian student who has created quite a few good games. Ironically, he never gave much thought to monetizing his work, so if you're looking for a get-rich-quickly story, you might be disappointed. Have a good read and take a look at the games after you've finished, because they're quite cool.



Bartek: Tell us something about yourself. Who are you? Where do you live? What do you do in life?

Steven: Well, I go by Steven, I live in Eastern Australia, and I'm currently studying IT.

Bartek: When did your Android adventure start and how? Why did you decide to do it?

Steven: My Android adventure started about one year ago. I came across App Game Kit, by The Game Creators. I had been a long time fan of Dark Basic, so I decided to give AGK a shot. After making a few games in it, I purchased the full version and published my first game, iSheep, on Google Play.

Bartek: How did you learn how to create apps?

Steven: I originally started coding back in the days of QBasic. My brother showed me how to open it up and taught me the basics of programming. From there, I learned most of what I know about programming from books (my brothers university textbooks as it happens) and simply figuring out things by myself.
When I came across App Game Kit, I decided to try programming again.

Bartek: What libraries/frameworks do you use?

Steven: App Game Kit :) I chose it because of my BASIC origins, and the fact that it's multiplatform.

Bartek: Have you tried other game engines as well?

Steven: I've tried quite a few different game engines. Game Maker: Studio, Construct 2, Unity3d, 001, Game Salad and Stencyl, just to name a few. GM: Studio, Construct 2, 001 and Game Salad are far too limited for my needs. I prefer to have absolute control over every aspect of my games. Stencyl is quite interesting, but still limited. Unity is great, but unfortunately, it isn't for me, mainly because it's for 3d games. I'm definitely not good at 3d :)

Bartek: How long did it take you to learn App Game Kit?

Steven: I picked it up almost straight away. I had previous experience with QBasic, so it was really just a matter of learning the different commands.

Bartek: Where do you take app/game ideas from? How do you know if they have a chance to be successful?

Steven: Most of my game ideas come from other games. Knowing if they're going to be successful? I don't :) I mainly code for a hobby, so if people like my games, good for them.

Bartek: Where do you get resources from?

Steven: A huge number of places. I make some of them myself, I get a lot of my music from incompetech.com. My sounds come from a few different places, SoundJay is one of the places that I've gone to a few times.

Bartek: Could you list some of the sites that you use?

Dodge Those Balls

Steven: Sure. Here's the big list:

Music:
http://incompetech.com/
http://www.nosoapradio.us/
http://www.ccmixter.org/

Graphics:
http://openclipart.org/
http://opengameart.org/
http://game-icons.net/
http://pixelsdaily.com/
http://www.lostgarden.com/search/label/free%20game%20graphics

SFX:
http://www.freesound.org/
http://www.pdsounds.org/
http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html (software)

Fonts:
http://openfontlibrary.org/
http://www.dafont.com/

Another good list:
http://content.gpwiki.org/index.php/Game_Content_Resources

Bartek: What other programming tools do you use?

Steven: None really. For my App coding, it's done almost completely in AGK. I use things like GIMP to help with the graphics design, Audacity to modify sound files, VideoPad to make trailers etc. I also code in Visual Studio, FreeBASIC, and a few others (like HTML).

Bartek: How long does is take you to make a single app?

Steven: That depends, the quickest I made one in was 160 minutes, that includes designing it, coding it, making the graphics and compiling it for Android. The longest one took 2 months. That includes making levels for it though.

Bartek: How much are you making on your apps?

Steven: Not much at all, just a few dollars a month from the ads.

Bartek: How do you monetize your apps? What ad networks do you use if any? Do you have any advice on it for others?

Steven: So far, I've used IAP, ads and paid versions. None of them have worked out well for me though. Of course, I'm not really trying to make money off my apps, if I were, I could probably make quite a bit more.

Ryder

Bartek: Why are you not trying to make money on your apps? What's your goal with them?

Steven: I really just make them for fun. But I'm thinking about trying to monetize my next one.

Bartek: Which ones of your apps were the biggest success and which ones were below expectations? Why?

Steven: Dodge those Balls is my most popular app so far. But Neon Bunniez has come below my expectations, with most users uninstalling it. But Ryder FREE seems to have the most ability to go well, with 1000 installs in the first 2 and a half weeks.

Bartek: Do you use any marketing techniques or ASO to promote your apps?

Steven: I do try to put good keywords in my descriptions, although I don't go overboard with them.
Most of my initial app installs come from posting about my app on forums.

Bartek: What forums/review sites have worked for you in the past?

Steven: Not many :) Xda's okay.
Making Money with Android is quite good (they love for you to post about your games!). But apart from those 2 forums, most aren't interested at all about your games.
I've had almost no feedback from popular review sites. I have managed to get a few posts from smaller blogs and such though.
In fact, I've had exactly 2 responses from major review sites. And I didn't even contact one of them, they found my app first :)
Bartek: What Android devices do you own?

Steven: I have two Huawei Android phones. I also have Blue Stacks Android emulator, if that counts :)

Bartek: Do you have any favourite games?

Steven: A few of my favourite games would be Ninjump, Subway Surfers, World of Goo and Sniper Shooter.

Bartek: What are your plans for the future? What do you want to create/achieve?

Steven: I'm currently working on a multiplayer game, more for the sake of understanding how to make that sort of thing then to try and get it popular. My current plans though are to spend less of my spare time coding and get out and do stuff!

Bartek: What advice would you give to other developers (something that you wish you had known before yourself)?

Steven: Focus on all aspects of it. Not just the coding. The graphics are just as important as the coding side of the game. Make sure your games are well polished before you publish them and DO spend heaps of time promoting your app on forums, submitting to review sites etc.

Bartek: Where can people find you on the Internet?

Steven: You can find me on Playboard here: http://playboard.me/editors/52c1fffa4dc454681a51cff9
Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/audaciagames
Here's my website: http://audaciagames.com/
TapFame: https://tapfame.com/steven-kaydn/



Sorry for focusing on interviews only lately. I'm hoping to surprise you with some new posts soon, but as of now, there are still a couple q&a sessions in production. If you're curious about other developers' tools and experiences, visit the blog in about a week.

Android indie developer interview: William Jamieson

Welcome to another interview from the series. Today, I'm going to ask William Jamieson from Supreme apps about his Android experiences and tools that he uses. He has achieved quite a lot with his 5 apps, bearing in mind that he is still a student. His new creation Yik Yak is apparently quite popular and hopefully will get even more downloads in the near future. Enjoy your read.

Bartek: Tell us something about yourself. Who are you? Where do you live? What do you do in life?

William: A sophomore at the College of Charleston. I live in Charleston SC. I play tennis daily, go to class then code.

Bartek: When did your Android adventure start and how? Why did you decide to do it?

William: This past summer when I developed Front Flash to allow people to take selfies in the dark. I did it because I wanted to take snapchats in the dark and there was no app that allowed me to do it.

Bartek: How did you learn how to create apps?

William: I knew how to code from classes at school and I taught myself the android SDK from reading online documentations as well as stackoverflow.

Bartek: What libraries/frameworks do you use?

William: I use no frameworks or libraries I write everything on my own to learn as much as I can.

Bartek: Where do you take app/game ideas from? How do you know if they have a chance to be successful?

William: I come up with the ideas for my apps by identifying something that I want that doesn't exist. Then I make it figuring if I want it then someone else would want it as well. So far the strategy has worked and all 5 of my apps have been successful.

Bartek: Where do you get resources from (graphics, sounds, music)?

William: I outsource all of my graphic design.

Bartek: Where?

William: I outsource my graphic design through fiverr. I heard about them through an internet forum.

Bartek: What's your experience with fiverr designers?

William: I love fiverr and have had great results with it. I pay only $5 for an item and if I don't like the end result I just hire someone else and worse case scenario I only lose a few bucks here and there.

Bartek: What other programming tools do you use?

William: I use git, Dropbox, as well as Google Analytics.

Bartek: How do you use Google Analytics in your apps?

William: I use analytics to monitor the apps growth across geographic regions as well as to see what time of the day the app is most frequently used.

Bartek: How long does is take you to make a single app?

William: My first app took around 1 week because I was learning so much as I was developing it. The next three only took around 2 days each and then my most recent one Yik Yak took a week because it was very complex.

Bartek: How much are you making on your apps?

William: I don't want to answer this, but more than I ever thought I would.

Bartek: How do you monetize your apps? What ad networks do you use if any? Do you have any advice on it for others?

William: My main source of revenue is AdMob banner ads followed by Widdit. My most recent app incorporates in app purchases as its only form of monetization, I am interested in seeing how this works.

Bartek: Why did you choose Widdit?

William: I chose Widdit because the app I use it on is an extension to facebooks app so my app is never seen at all. It was the only way I would be able to monitize my app.

Bartek: Which ones of your apps were the biggest success and which ones were below expectations? Why?

William: Yik Yak and Facebook Photo Downloader where my biggest success. PhoneSpy was below expectations. Yik Yak was a sucess because it was a new type of social networking app that people really enjoy and Facebook Photo Downloader was a success because it was the first app that allowed you to save FB photos without leaving the app, until FB added the feature in their app. 

Bartek: Do you use any marketing techniques or ASO to promote your apps?

William: No, no techniques I just submit my apps to review sites and they typically get reviewed by a few and then the momentum from that just carries the app.

Bartek: What sites do you submit your apps to?

William: I have had sucess on AndroidTapp, Mashable and AddictiveTips.

Bartek: What are your favourite Android games/apps?

William: Fun Run is my favorite game.

Bartek: What Android devices do you own?

William: Galaxy S3 and Note 10.1.

Bartek: What Android blogs/sites do you read regularly?

William: None.

Bartek: What are your plans for the future? What do you want to create/achieve?

William: My current focus is expanding on Yik Yak as much as possible because it has gained 30k users in the last week and I think it has a lot of potential.

Bartek: What advice would you give to other developers (something that you wish you had known before yourself)?

William: Look for features in major apps that you would like to see added in the future then add the feature on your own.

Bartek: Where can people find you on the Internet?

William: yikyakapp.com, supremeappsllc.com

What is to come on the blog in the near future? More interviews, new tools' descriptions and probably an income report, as soon as my Blobby Volley stabilizes in downloads and I manage to remove "Beta" from its name. Come back if you want to know the details.

Android indie developer interview: Mateusz Cicheński

After the long Christmas break, it's time to come back to my interview series. Today's guest is a PhD student at my university and he has just released a brand new Android game written in... C#. He's going to tell us how he did it, what technologies he used and why he chose them. I have to say that I had never heard about most of those tools before talking to him. I'm pretty sure that they will be surprising to you as well. Without further ado, here's what our q&a session looked like.


Bartek: Tell us something about yourself. Who are you? Where do you live? What do you do in life?

Mateusz: Hi, my name is Mateusz Cicheński and I'm from Poland. I'm currently doing my PhD at Poznan University of Technology and so I'm living in this city. Designing games is one of my hobbies and as most designers I have tons of ideas and just not enough time to implement them all.

Bartek: When did your Android adventure start and how? Why did you decide to do it?

Mateusz: It's the second question and I already have to give you a long story. I started last year, bringing an implementation of my prototype game from WPF (C#/XAML) to the native Android API. I used Open GL ES for rendering, but I was unhappy with the result. I decided that I need a different approach and reach more platforms with a single code base - I picked libgdx for this purpose and quickly made a new implementation which was available for PCs, Linux and of course Android. This app was available for nearly 3 months and because I was doing different things I just decided to take it down, as I was unhappy with the download rates. Now I'm giving Android yet another chance using a different toolset - MonoGame and Xamarin.Android - but I still need more time to learn the platform.

Bartek: What was your first app? Could you describe it shortly?

Mateusz: I think that my first fully finished game was an implementation of NotChess (http://homepages.di.fc.ul.pt/~jpn/gv/notchess.htm) made as a project for one of the courses at the university. It's basically a board game with only rooks and knigts, however the rooks can only move by one field. Also, after moving a given piece it will change to the other one (the rook will turn into a knight and the knight will turn into a rook). Obviously your task is to eliminate the pieces of your opponent from the board. You can see what it looked like on this page: http://warsztat.gd/projects/notchessthegame

Bartek: Why didn't you just leave the app on Google Play and decided to take it down instead?

Mateusz: Here is my reasoning: the app I made for Windows Phone 8 was made totally from scratch and I didn't reuse the code from the Android port or the initial prototype written in C#/XAML. What does it mean? First, I included a lot more features in the Windows Phone 8 app - among others - Azure high scores, Skydrive integration, MS Live authentication, support for proximity devices (e.g. NFC tags, tap&share levels), and even the gameplay evolved. This meant that the Android version was missing all those functionalities even though it had the same name for the app. But that's not everything - the actual visuals were also updated and I really enjoyed the much cleaner style I was able to make using the Windows Phone SDK when compared to the Open GL version from Android. Have you ever seen a game made by the same developer on two different platforms that looked totally different? And lastly - the code for WP8 was written in C#, while the Android version was written in Java - if I wanted to support both versions simultaneously I would need to update both code bases every time, which is not ideal. That's why I decided to look for a different solution that will let me reuse most of the code in C# and that's how I came across MonoGame. Also, the game wasn't very popular on Android, not even reaching 100 downloads, so I thought that I should avoid confusing users, who might have both a WP8 device and an Android device (phone + tablet for instance) and download the game on both machines. Taking all of that into account I decided to go for the Windows Phone with this game and take the Android version down.

Bartek: How did you learn how to create apps? What resources were you using?

Mateusz: I have a pretty solid programming skills background from the lectures at the university and for the last year I've been developing apps for Windows Phone 8 using technologies I was familiar with (C#/XAML). Mainly as a reference I'm using documentation and channel9.msdn.com for those projects. If we talk about Android, I'm currently using the official developer guides and also documentation from Xamarin.Android, but nothing in particular.

Bartek: What libraries/frameworks do you use? Why did you choose them?

Infinite Snake

Mateusz: Currently I'm using MonoGame (open source implementation of XNA 4.x) and Xamarin.Android to run my games on Android. So far I've made one game using this combo (Infinite Snake) and even though I'm not 100% happy with the result, I'm quite satisfied with the simplicity it took me to make that game using these tools. There are still things I need to reconsider and pay more attention to, like the app lifecycle, which is totally different when compared to Windows Phone (and I believe iOS as well) and actually makes it a little bit harder to keep everything user friendly and smooth. I do hope that with more and more projects done I will just keep getting better.

Bartek: What are your thoughts on Xamarin.Android? Would you recommend it to other developers? What are its main advantages/disadvantages compared to libgdx?

Mateusz: Xamarin.Android is just used as a tool in the pipeline to generate an Android version of the project. The question should be about the comparison between libgdx and MonoGame - the latter one being just an implementation of XNA 4.x. This basically means that if you are familiar with XNA (or even have an existing project that you would like to port), then you don't have to learn it all over again. A prime example would be the game Bastion by Supergiant Games, which was ported to the other platforms using MonoGame as it was written originally in XNA. You still probably will find some differences, but mainly you shouldn't feel lost. I cannot tell you much about it as I just started using it, but it seems to be a pretty solid option to use. From my point of view it was more natural to use it - C# vs Java - but probably you can achieve the same results. Also, it is very easy to start with some 2D games in XNA/MonoGame, which wasn't the case when I used libgdx (so I went straight for Open GL there), but that's my subjective opinion.

Bartek: Where do you take app/game ideas from? How do you know if they have a chance to be successful?

Mateusz: I steal them. No. I don't! :P
Basically, the ideas come to my mind in different situations. It's like when you see a movie or listen to a song and you think "hey, that's cool, I could use it in my game". From time to time you just figure out something that might be cool without any particular "direct" motivation, but it's always based on what you've experienced yourself. However, it's not just making yet another Candy Crush Saga clone - you extend the idea, exploit its strengths or try to balance it out to be more enjoyable. Every now and then you innovate, think about things nobody has imagined - and then you become a millionaire selling your brilliant game or you just live your life unaware that your idea was worth all that money.
For me it's a hobby and whenever I think about something that I believe might be fun, I try to implement a prototype. To make a final game you just have to take the right prototypes and merge them together so they make sense. However, I can't tell you if those prototype ideas will be successful. I think that this will be verified by the players who picked your game - if there are not many, then either the idea was not that good or you should think about improving the way in which you present the game content and talk to the players - if they can't understand what they have to do, then they won't play the game. Which doesn't mean that you have to forget about your super crazy idea for a RPG dungeon puzzle rogue like a platform game controlled with just one tap - but it's much harder to make the player understand his actions in such mixed genres when compared to games that are good at one thing, e.g. puzzle or platforming, so you have to spend more time to think about your design. At least in theory. ;)

Bartek: Where do you get resources from?

Mateusz: I've been making soundless games so far, but if I put some sound effects or music, I will record them myself, because I have some basic skills playing the piano and the guitar. If I manage to think about bigger production, then probably there will be a person responsible for that part.
I also make graphic assets myself - they are not very complex and don't require much skill. Most of my games use squares or circles as the representation of the game state, so I guess almost anyone could provide me with some graphic assets with enough quality. This doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to improve, but for prototyping purposes I believe that I don't need anything looking great. (which I won't recommend to anyone - that's probably why my first Android game had almost no downloads - you have to appeal to potential player so he will actually download your game!)

Bartek: What other programming tools do you use?

Mateusz: I'm using Team Foundation Server, which is a versioning system from Microsoft. However, depending on the project I've been switching to git or SVN. For my graphics I'm using Adobe Illustrator (an overkill, I know) and for music I would be using Cubase which I got with my external sound interface. For programming I'm using Visual Studio 2013 and Resharper, plus obviously Xamarin.Android and it's Xamarin Studio.

Bartek: How long does is take you to make a single app?

Mateusz: It depends on how complex the game is and how much time I can spend on developing it each week. Infinite Snake, for instance, was started at the beginning of this year and after three days I had the first version on Google Play available to download. However, it's just a classic snake, so I didn't even spend time on designing the gameplay. My other projects take me from 4 to 8 weeks to accomplish, however I'm publishing them only if I'm satisfied enough with the result. :)

Bartek: How much are you making on your apps?

Mateusz: From Android - nothing. I still haven't got enough time to figure out how to configure some ad providers in the framework I'm using and I decided to use my time to make a useful app rather then "useless, but with ads" if you know what I mean. My Windows Phone projects are not bringing much revenue either - I do support it with ads, but because of the low volume of distribution I get around 4 PLN (~$1.25) per month from them. However I'm taking part in Nokia DVLUP campaign, because they offer some great rewards just for being with them and creating apps for Windows Phone.

Bartek: Can you say some more about the Nokia DVLUP campaing? What is it exactly?

Mateusz: Nokia DVLUP is a reward system which tries to help developers become more successful. How? They give you a lot of challenges that you can complete for which you get XP points and the same amount of PTS (just points ;) ). The XP is used to show how long you have been with the program and how many challenges you completed. However, the PTS is used to get rewards - from coupons to popular shops, through accessories for your mobile device, to such great rewards as XBox One or Lumia 1520. You don't have to pay anything to be a member of the program, and if you make apps for WP8 and they meet the requirements for the challenges - you can benefit from it. Obviously you cannot just publish million apps without any functionality, but on the other hand they post updates about different APIs and tutorials to help developers create better apps. You can also choose as a reward a consultation about your app to improve it and bring even more users, or you can use the points to promote your app with ad campaigns. In other words - a lot of great stuff! :)

Bartek: Where do you find hackathons/contests to take part in?

Mateusz: The InternAppHack was actually organized during my internship at MS and it was just a great opportunity to jump into mobile development for Windows Phone. However, the rules were a little bit different from what you can find in most hackatons, as you had about 1 month to create your app. They provided additional lectures on WP8, Azure and SkyDrive and so the whole event was really interesting. As you can see the longer period to submit a project to the competition let me create a better user experience and improve the game a lot, so I try to avoid time-restricted hackatons in which you have 1 or 2 days to create "something". Quality over speed and quantity. I prefer to spend time polishing the idea rather than fast-coding the game.

Bartek: How do you monetize your apps? What ad networks do you use if any? Do you have any advice on it for others?

Mateusz: I'm using Microsoft Advertising for Windows Phone and used to employ AdMob for Android. Haven't looked into the market much so I can't tell you if these are the best available ones.

Bartek: Which ones of your apps were the biggest success and which ones were below expectations? Why?

Mateusz: So far the biggest success was Squared for Windows Phone, which was awarded 3rd place in a hackaton amongst 48 other submissions. I'm still waiting for Android success and I'm currently working on some ideas that I hope will be interesting. For the apps that are below expectations I think it would be Squared again - it was the game I firstly made on Android, but didn't get much attention and I was unhappy with the visual part of it, so I decided to take it down. Implementing it for Windows Phone was just an opportunity which turned out so well that I decided to make some more projects for that platform. Now I'm trying to figure out a way of developing for both platforms at the same time - fingers crossed for the results - but it's pretty hard without marketing yourself.

Bartek: Do you use any marketing techniques or ASO to promote your apps?

Mateusz: Not really. I just send them to my friends (using Facebook, forums, e-mails etc.) and try to keep project updates on warsztat.gd. They are purely for fun and to learn new things - maybe someday it will be my way of living, but first I want to finish my PhD. :)

Bartek: What are your favourite Android games/apps?

Mateusz: I don't use Android on a day to day basis. I used to have HTC Desire with Android 2.2 (which was pretty unlucky, because full Open GL ES support started from Android 2.3 and I really didn't want to write low level things during my development), but now I have Lumia 920. This honestly doesn't change much, because I'm using my phone for what it was designed for - calls and messaging. If I play some games they are just random things found in the app stores, but I just don't have enough time to enjoy myself playing on a mobile device - I prefer playing games on PC if I can choose.

Bartek: What Android devices do you own?

Mateusz: Currently none. I used to have HTC Desire and for development I'm borrowing my moms' Sony Xperia J. And of course I have the emulator! ;)

Bartek: What Android blogs/sites do you read regularly?

Mateusz: None, but I don't read much about other platforms either, so I guess I'm not favouring any of them.

Bartek: What are your plans for the future? What do you want to create/achieve?

Mateusz: First I want to finish my PhD. After that we will see what future holds. This classic job interview question I will always fail to answer: "What will you be doing in 5 years?". ;)

Bartek: What advice would you give to other developers (something that you wish you had known before yourself)?

Mateusz: Never ever assume that documentation is right and emulator is perfect - test everything yourself on the real device, as it is surprising how they are different from emulators. And in general, it's always better to test things in real life, because then you know for sure and you can avoid unnecessary complications. Which is not that easy with so many Android devices... And actually one of the bugs I found in Infinite Snake was not occuring to me - I had to debug it remotely with my friend over phone describing what happens on his screen... terrible! But the more you know the better you can prepare for next time.

Bartek: Where can people find you on the Internet?

Mateusz: I mostly use these channels:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mateusz.cichenski
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/hrkm1
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/hrkm
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Mateusz+Ciche%C5%84ski
Windows Phone Store: http://www.windowsphone.com/pl-PL/store/publishers?publisherId=Mateusz%2BCiche%25c5%2584ski



I hope you liked the interview and some fresh views on Android and Windows Phone programming. Perhaps it will encourage you to look into other platforms as well (if you aren't already publishing for them). I'm thinking about porting my Blobby Volley to work on other devices as well. It's getting more and more downloads every day, so maybe Apple and Microsoft fans should be given a chance to play it as well. For now, there are still a lot of bugs to fix, but almost 2,000 new users every day make me believe that my work is actually worth it. More stats will be published in one of the next posts. Stay tuned and come back for another piece of content in about a week.

Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems on Coursera

I just wanted to let you know that there's another Android course on Coursera called
Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems. It's targeted at more advanced students than the one I wrote about previously: Creative, Serious and Playful Science of Android Apps. It requires the knowledge of Java and optionally also some background in mobile development. The course is totally free, starts on January 21st and lasts for 8 weeks. It will cover subjects such as: the Android development environment, application fundamentals and lifecycle, permissions, fragments, intents, user interface, notifications, broadcast receivers, AsyncTasks, networking, graphics & animation, multitouch, gestures, multimedia, sensors, maps, data management and content providers. As you can see, there's quite a lot of material, so make sure you have 3-6 hours a week to spare. You can also follow the course at your own pace and skip the tests and assignments, but this way you'll not get a certificate at the end. Anyway, I encourage you to give it a try. Coursera courses are of very high quality and I expect this one to be great as well. Watch the video below for more details or just go to the official site, read more and sign up!

As to my Blobby Volley game, it has 5,114/13,382 current/total installs and it gets downloaded by more than 1,600 users every day. It's definitely my biggest success so far and I can't wait to learn what's going to happen with it in the near future. It has made me a little over $30 so far, but this amount is increasing fast and I'm sure it's going to grow even more. I've just published new bugfixes, and I implemented Ad Network Mediation to work with Airpush, Leadbolt and AdMob interstitials. I wanted to include AdBuddiz as well, but their API turned out to be somewhat difficult to integrate with the mediation API. I've already spoken to to one of their staff and they assured me that they would fix this in the new version. As there are no official mediation adapters for any of the networks I used, I had to write my own. There's almost no information about it on the Internet, so I'll try to describe it in detail in one of the next posts.

What else can you expect to appear on the blog in the near future? I'm planning to publish some more interviews, financial reports from Blobby Volley and my other apps, including CPMs from various ad networks and a new series of articles describing or comparing various development tools. Stay tuned and may the year 2014 be awesome for you!

Blobby Volley for Android: Postmortem

It's been two weeks since I released my first full fledged Android game: Blobby Volley. Now it's time to reflect on the creation process and learn from it. I'm very satisfied with the results, but my next game can always be better. Perhaps you can learn something from it as well.

It took me 129 work hours during 8 weeks to implement the game. On average, I worked for 16.125h/week. That's not too bad, bearing in mind the initial assumption that I would commit between 10 and 20 hours a week. I could have probably been more efficient, because I didn't have a full time job at this time, but this amount proved good enough to keep me motivated without making me tired. Also, those 129h don't include reading AndEngine for Game Development Cookbook (I'm still only half way through it) or thinking about design problems (e.g. what the menu should look like, how to implement the AI, etc.).
With my next project, I'd like to stick to some schedule, istead of fitting the work hours whenever I have a free moment. Waking up and starting earlier might help as well. I really enjoy working in the morning and it's usually my most productive time, but getting up after a long evening with friends or a tiring football match is not always easy. I'll have to work on it.

What you're probably the most interested in is how good the game is doing on Google Play and AdMob (note that the data is from two days ago because of the statistics delay on those sites). It has 1266/3044 current/total istalls, which is definitely my best result when it comes to the daily growth. It increased by 178 compared to the previous day.  I already made $10.22 on ads: $4.90 and $5.32 on banners and interstitials respectively. The CPMs are $0.50 and $0.56, which is not too high, but I noticed that they're rising as well, so perhaps the Google's algorithm needs some time to adjust. I want to try AdBuddiz in the near future, because I like their ad style and they promise high CPMs. I'll report on that later.

As to the tools and resources that I used, I'd like to mention every single one with a short description:

AndEngine - an Android engine for 2D OpenGL games. It works really fast and is easy to learn (I didn't know it when I started making the game and I managed to learn it in the process). The bad thing is that it lacks an official documentation. However good the code examples might be, they will never replace a detailed description of how the code should be structured. There aren't even decent JavaDocs. I was forced to read online tutorials, but sometimes they weren't enough or were simply outdated. Finally, I got the AndEngine for Game Development Cookbook, but I kept wondering why they didn't publish it for free as the official specification. As a result of bad instructions, you get errors such as NullPointerExceptions when unpausing the game, which could easily be prevented if you had known the solution beforehand. Don't get me wrong, AndEngine is still a great tool to use. Just bear in mind that it has drawbacks as well.
I might try libgdx with my new project, just to be able to compare the two of them and perhaps release for iOS as well. As for now, I don't have any Apple devices and I'm not ready to pay $100 to be able to publish on Apple Store.

AndEnginePhysicsBox2DExtension - an AndEngine extension letting you simulate a physical world with colliding bodies and joints. It's very useful when you want to have some physical behavior in your game and you don't want to code it yourself. Just apply velocities and forces and everything will work magically... unless you want to create something less standard, like my blob/ball collisions which always make the ball bounce with constant velocity. However, by committing some more time to it, you can do it as well.
It was weird for me that Box2D uses the body's center as its position while AndEngine requires coordinates of the top left corner of a sprite. I'm not sure if I was doing something wrong or if it was supposed to work this way, but it was confusing at times.

AndEngineTexturePackerExtension - an AndEngine extension letting you easily load textures created with TexturePacker described below.

AndEngineDebugDrawExtension - an AndEngine extension letting you draw physical bodies to make sure that they are in the right place. It's a must for anyone using Box2D. Otherwise you never know where your bodies really are and debugging physics becomes a nightmare. Too bad that this extension doesn't support changing the value of the meters to pixel ratio. If you want to use it, you have to keep it at 32 and adjust other parameters (like gravity) to obtain a desirable result.

TexturePacker - a great tool letting you pack your sprites together so that they can be loaded faster. It can also reduce the images' size and significantly simplify the resource loading process by generating the necessary code for you. Its only drawback is the price, which is $40, but I'd still say that it's totally worth it. If you'd rather not pay for it, you can still use the free version. It's somewhat limited, but it has most of the basic functionality and it'll save you plenty of time. If you're a blogger, you can get the license for free (that's what I did). Go to my previous post for instructions.

PhysicsEditor - a tool created by the same company as TexturePacker. It helps you assign physical bodies to sprites, when you use the Box2D extension. I lost so much time trying to do those things by hand that I can't even say how helpful it turned out to be. Unfortunately it still has lots of bugs. I reported 7 of them, but I never got any answer. They make your work somewhat less pleasant, but they are relatively minor and constructing physics bodies in the code is definitely not an option. PhysicsEditor costs $20 and there is no free version (only a 7-day trial). You can buy it together with TexturePacker for $50, getting $10 off the total price. Again, you can get it for free, provided that you have a software related blog. See the video below for a nice example.

Rafał Dorsz - he made almost all the graphics for me (except the icon and the logo). He did a great job and was always on time. He worked for free, because he owed me a favor (I wrote a Python program for him some time ago), so next time I guess I'll have to pay him or find some other way to get the graphic resources. I'll be happy to go with the first option, but I want to be sure that I can at least make the same money on the game.

Photoshop - I used it to make the icon, the logo, and prepare other graphic resources before Rafał made me the final versions. It's a great tool, although a bit costly. Use GIMP instead if you want to save money. I installed Export to Android Photoshop Script to make scaling images for various densities easier.

Crittercism - a mobile apps error monitoring tool. It sends information about all uncaught exceptions that happen in your game. At first I thought that it wouldn't be very useful, because Google Play offers a similar service without any changes to your code, but I'm happy I changed my mind (thank you Marcin). I was able to track several bugs this way, while my Google Play console only noticed one of them. Not to mention that it helped me a lot during the testing process. It only requires one line of code to add. You should try it as well if you haven't done it yet. I will definitely add it to all my apps in the near future.

There are other similar tools that you might want to see: Bugsense and ACRA are the most popular. I chose Crittercism, because I was the most familiar with it, although I had a chance to work with others for a short period of time as well. I might write a longer post about it soon.

What went well

As I said, I'm quite happy with the game. I managed to keep up with my schedule and I finished the basic functionality before Christmas, which I believe earned me a lot of installs. AndEngine wasn't that hard to learn, even without any documentation and it turned out rather pleasant to work with. The biggest achievement though were my graphic resources, which I never expected to turn out so well. At first I wanted to do everything by myself, but this way the whole game would look much, much worse. Thanks to Rafał it became the prettiest Blobby Volley clone on Google Play. Next time I decide to create a game, I'll definitely use his services again or hire another designer. I think that a good design can get you a lot of users, while a bad one will make them reject your game, even if  it's fun to play.

What could have been done better

Some people wrote to me that it was unwise to publish the game and then forget about it for three weeks. I wasn't going to abandon it totally, but I knew that I would have hardly any time to work on it. In fact, even a worse thing happened. I forgot to upload the keystore before I left for my Christmas break. I found out about it when I was ready to publish my first bug fixes. I couldn't sign the apk file with the same certificate, because I didn't have it, so Google Play didn't let me upload it. All the changes will have to wait until I come back hope in nine days...

Still, I don't regret publishing the game so early. Plenty of people downloaded and liked it. I explicitly wrote in the title that it's a beta version, so occasional crashes shouldn't be a problem. The only bad reviews that I got were due to difficulties in controlling the blob. Some of my friends didn't even notice that they can change the controller type in the menu. Perhaps it should be more clear.

I'm aware that the game doesn't offer too many options, but I'm planning new extensions when I regain access to my computer. People say that the other version is still better. I'd say it's just different. My AI is quite good, my GUI is prettier, I don't have functionality that doesn't work (like achievements in the other game). I'm planning to slowly add new features and I hope to surprise my users in a positive way soon.

Conclusions

I really like making games and I'll definitely try to create another one if my Blobby Volley exceeds the level of $100 a month in earnings. Otherwise, I'm afraid I'll have to focus on things that bring me more than $1 for an hour of my work. Judging by the growth rate though, I have a big chance to succeed and break the threshold amount. I have no idea what my next project will be. I want to focus on fixing the bugs first and making sure I can leave it be without supervision. After that I'll start hunting for another oportunity. Wish me luck and go play my game, if you haven't seen it yet!