During the first week of March I started working on an 8-bit retro makeover of my app Ultra Fortune Ball. For some reason I got in the mood to give a retro redesign to one of my previously released apps. Since I have a lot of work to do on other new apps I’ve been working on I wanted to do this redesign quickly so it had to be on an app that didn’t have a lot of art assets. The first app that popped into my head was Ultra Fortune Ball, which made perfect sense not only because of the small graphical size of the app but also because of the app itself and because it’s the first app I ever developed. A retro design really fit well into this app and it also gave me the opportunity to add some new nerdy & old school video game answers to the fortune ball.

The first thing I worked on for this retro redesign was the ball itself. After making a new fortune ball with a retro look I then worked on the other graphics and then incorporated the retro pixel block style text. After completing the look of the app I added several new answers for the ball to give. After that I thought I was done with the app but then when I tested it and the music started playing I realized that I totally forgot to give the audio some retro attention. So then I jumped into the audio. I used the same theme that I created for the original Ultra Fortune Ball but then I completely changed all of the sounds, loops, and keys to 8-bit and 16-bit effects to give the theme a retro video game sound. After editing and completing the new theme I then gave the sound effects the same treatment as the theme. The app turned out great so I decided to give it its own standalone release on the Amazon & Google Play app stores. However, the App was rejected from a reviewer in Apple which was the first time I’ve ever had an app rejected because of the app itself. They stated that the app had a lack of overall content which is ridiculous considering all the spam, copycat and junk apps on their app store. There’s also no other app like this on the app store. I’ve been in contact with Apple casually about the ridiculous rejection from one of their reviewers but as of now the app will remain an Android exclusive which is fine with me overall because I personally really like the app and it will still get thousands & thousands of downloads without it being on iOS. The main frustrating part about this release outcome is that before I was able to finish the iOS build to submit to Apple I ran into a very odd graphic glitch that only occurred on the iOS version. It took a lot of research, testing, and trail & error to finally find the cause and then to fix it, but then after all that work it ends up being rejected for a lame personal opinionated reason. Adding it to one of the many reasons why I’ll continue to focus more on Google Play. Not necessarily less focus on Apple, but definitely more towards Google Play.

After finishing 8-Bit Ultra Fortune Ball I went back to working on my new educational finance quiz app. I then decided that instead of going back and forth between working on that app and my new soundboard app that I would focus on one at a time. So after I finish the finance app I’ll then pick up where I left off on the soundboard app and continue to work on it exclusively. I decided to add another category to the finance app which is of course going to involve more development time and a push back on its release, but it’s going to be worth it. I gave myself a deadline to release the soundboard app by the beginning of July, and since I plan on finishing the finance app first that means that it will be released sometime before July. No specific release date or month right now though.

I told myself if I finish this post at a certain time I could play some Mass Effect Andromeda…..that time has passed, but I still want to play. I’ve been really enjoying Andromeda but because of that it also took away a good bit of my app development time in March and into April as well. It’s a great game with fun gameplay and a lot of nice detail even with its odd bugs here and there. I’m going to try to limit my time with it soon though so I can finish these two apps I’ve been working on, but I’ve got a new planet to explore right now. Until next time ∞