Monthly Archives: July 2013

Greek Letters and Alphabet

Greek Letters and Alphabet

After an intense week of the development, waiting for the availability of Apple certificates, and initial rejection due to unchecked IAPs, Greek Letters and Alphabet are finally available on the App Store.

Let me copy the description of the game (game? or an educational app?) here:

From Alpha to Omega. We guarantee that you’ll learn all Greek letters after finishing all 8 training and entertaining game modes. Essential for those:
– Learning Greek and reading Homer in original;
– Joining a Greek fraternity or sorority (ever wondered what those ΦΛΥ stand for?);
– Studying science classes (math, physics, chemistry – there are Greek symbols in every formula!);
– Traveling to Greece or Cyprus (to understand signs and names);
– Wanting to learn more about other cultures and impress buddies by knowing letter ω.

The application features:
– All 24 Greek letters: uppercase and lowercase;
– 8 game modes to learn Greek letters quickly and happily;
– Tutorial with all letters arranged in an alphabetical order;
– Eye-catching design in traditions of the red-figure pottery of Ancient Greece.

Can you distinguish Chi and Xi? Test yourself right now!

Enjoy the game! Learn Greek letters with my app!
I’ll write more about the development, uploading, and first downloads later in this blog.

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From Amino Acids to Greek Letters (and even further…)

Search for the best chemistry-related words brought an interesting discovery. There are still a lot of words with a high user traffic and relatively few apps associated with them. I noticed it accidentally for several Greek letters and an idea of a quiz about Greek alphabet came into my mind.
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More Fruits – Amino Acid Structures – Sales Increase

I’m busy with both real-life tasks and with reading about creation of apps. Today I’ll be very brief.
– I got an inspiration to draw more fruits and vegetables. Essentially I want to draw every thing that comes to my mind. Though some objects (cabbage!) are difficult to draw realistically, while others are a pice of cake (bell pepper!).
– I drew the structure of 23 amino acids (20 classical + selenocysteine + pyrrolysine + β-alanine). I refused to use Elementals and switched to a different editor. But it’s merely a beginning. I need much more chemical graphics, not saying about the implementation of the functional app.
– Thus, I found that it’s too early to read books and Wiki for “amino acid tips” that I want to introduce after every correct answer. I can write dozens of them, but it’s hard to choose which level of the user I’m targeting. Should I teach them that proteins consist of amino acid residues? Or must it be a trivial stuff for those who want to learn AA structures with the help of my app?
What Color is This Monster? was a paid app for 5 days. There is a significant increase in downloads today when it’s free again. 18 first days of July will be definitely more profitable than 18 days the game was on the App Store in June.

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Color Fruits – Chemistry Apps – First iOS App

First, I wrote a post every day. Then every other day. This time I’ve skipped two days without posts. It’s sad. Perhaps, I’m very busy with doing apps? I wish it was true. Here is a brief list of my recent accomplishments.

1) I scanned and colored all fruits and vegetables that I drew for fruColor game. I’m not sure that realistically looking fruits are the best choice for simple games but I’m satisfied with the result. Some of my fruits look very much alike the real things.
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Cocos or not Cocos – Drawing fruits

I continue thinking about the pros and cons of making the Amino Acids app using standard UI elements and Cocos. What Color is This Monster? is essentially a similar quiz, and it was written in Cocos. I had to draw all buttons and bars but I had more freedom. But that was a game, now I’d like to make a scientific application, and the design can be different. For example, I can allow the portrait-landscape rotation. Making a scrollable table of 20 amino acids would be also much easier than in Cocos. So the first goal is to play with standard elements in Xcode and prepare main screens to see how they look. Is there enough space for all buttons I plan to add? Can I add both an image and a label to one button? Only after I set on the basic design and the standard UI vs. Cocos dilemma, I’ll begin drawing all pictures and structures.
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Dotmatics Elemental – iFunBox – Doodle vs. Minimalist

Yesterday I took a break from blogging here because I was busy with real-life tasks and didn’t have much to say about app development. Since almost nobody reads these posts, I feel free to use blogging as an exercise in writing. Seriously, it’s the most significant piece in English I’ve written since the defense of my Ph.D. dissertation.
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Amino Acids – 1000 Apps – M-G – Widgets

Thinking about quizzes and recycling What Color is This Monster?, I came up with an idea of tests about the biologically important class of chemicals, amino acids. I always was reluctant and skeptical about chemistry apps. They cannot be blockbuster hits. There are maybe thousands rather than millions of users who can potential download these apps. Moreover, I wanted to show that I can do something outside my field of expertise. The fact that I was trained as a chemist doesn’t automatically mean that all I’m working on has to deal with chemistry.
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Forgotten Games Started – Blog Housekeeping – Choosing Keywords

BeVampired became a first installation for the Forgotten Games project. I played this game about a year and a half ago and found it quite addictive. So it was naturally to write first about the game I know well. The plan behind the project was to start the day with downloading a game nobody heard or wrote about, play it for an hour or so, and then write a review summing up my thoughts and impressions. It would be a great way to study gameplay and design ideas by others. Alas, I have to push myself harder to stick to this plan. Maybe, one game a week will be a promising beginning. I can’t promise anything. At least, I didn’t want to have an empty page with such a loud title. “Number of reviewed games is 1.”
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[Forgotten Games] BeVampired: The Diaries of a Vampire Slayer

App Store (Free)
© Lunagames International B.V.

The first “forgotten game” to be reviewed is this old (released in Sept. 2011) match-3 game that I actually liked, played for several hours until 38th level, and got an inspiration for several my projects. The name is a pre-Halloween parody of the Bejeweled hit, of course. Lunagames also published its clone BeZombied. We all like games about vampires, zombies, and birds, don’t we?
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First Followers – Game Center – Something Russian – Useful Links – Monsters Gardeners

I got started reading several WordPress “getting started” manuals. What I like about WP is the community. I just started blogging and three persons are already following my blog without any promotion from my side. I welcome The Gaming Grad, Opinionated Man, and Tanner Hawryluk. I decided that it would be polite to follow them back, though I’m not sure I’ll have time to read all their posts. I still have to figure out the difference between following and subscription. I’m fine with checking the WP Reader daily, and getting e-mails about every new post would be unnecessary.
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