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Show HN: I built an iOS remake of that old windows game SkiFree
- petekistler 12y agoawesome visual design, and the physics of carving through the snow is super satisfying/addicting. great job man!
- theOnliest 12y agoJust a quick note: if I turn the audio off and then tap "Main Menu" in the settings screen, the audio turns back on. I like the game!
- dave_chenell 12y agoThanks I appreciate it! I will definitely fix that in the next update.
- himanshuy 12y agoCongratulations! What platform did you use to build it?
- dave_chenell 12y agoThanks! It was built in Unity3D
- micro_cam 12y agoWill you be releasing an android version?
- simplexion 12y agoCan someone explain something to me. When using a cross-platform engine, like Unity3d, why don't developers release it on more platforms? Is it difficult to do so? Is it a lot more work to release on other platforms?
- dave_chenell 12y agoYeah, Android version is coming soon, hopefully before the end of Jan. I did use Unity3D, and while it is very easy to port, releasing on two platforms can be time consuming for one person while I'm freelancing fulltime. Dealing with tracking bugs, IAP, GameCenter, Google Play, optimization, Screen sizes etc adds up. Also I lack an android device at the moment for reliable testing.
- macNchz 12y agoI built a cross platform app a while back. The major barrier to releasing it right away for every platform was QA testing it on the myriad devices and OS versions we wanted it to be stable on. The framework only went so far for working out issues on devices with so many combinations of screen sizes, resolutions, and ratios, not to mention memory, cpu, and graphics capabilities. Android users often harp about apps that are released first for iOS, but it's much easier to QA on a fairly limited number of devices, launch the app and start proving your idea/generating revenue on iOS first. At least in my experience, releasing a cross-platform app for both operating systems at the same time means either delaying iOS to QA Android properly, or releasing a half-baked Android version that gets 25 1-star reviews right out of the gate because of a weird edge case bug with some device you didn't test on.
- thoughtpalette 12y agoGorgeous UI and artwork!
- patrickambron 12y agoAbsolutely love the game! Well done!
- hsx 12y agoOh man, this takes me back!
- adnanh 12y agoNice! Needs abominable snow monster though... :-)
- patrickambron 12y agoYes, I would love to ski as a sasquatch
- wcfields 12y agoNot the snowman, but there is an In-App purchase for "The Bear"
- greggarious 12y agoIs he similar to the monster in Ski Free in function?
- dave_chenell 12y agoThe IAP for the bear, lets you ski as the bear https://twitter.com/davechenell/status/545580869696888833 https://twitter.com/davechenell/status/545580869696888833, Chasing monsters coming soon http://thewaterbear.com/obstacle-avoidance-a-i/ http://thewaterbear.com/obstacle-avoidance-a-i/
- seppo0010 12y agoAnd a keyboard https://xkcd.com/667/ https://xkcd.com/667/
- sosuke 12y agoI was blown away by that comic when I first saw it.
- anindyabd 12y agoWHOA. Did not know that. (edit: added sentence)
- binarydogs 12y ago
- levindixon 12y agoLooks great! Reminds me of http://www.mythicmtn.com/ http://www.mythicmtn.com/
- aaronm14 12y agoWho is "we?" At first I thought you did the whole thing by yourself and was going to say I'm always amazed by the people who can design and code, especially a game. Seems impossible. Great stuff regardless how many people worked on it though. That's insane you did literally no marketing and the App Store picked it up like that, especially these days, congrats!
- dave_chenell 12y agoThanks I appreciate it. I do design and code yet I work with my friend Eric on everything. I think working with someone is good for your product and sanity :) We also got extremely lucky that Apple featured the game.
- nether 12y agoThe default skis carve like crap, can I rent some demos?
- percept 12y agoNice game! (Yes, soothing and stressful.) BTW I got a "Welcome back (some name)" message on the first play.
- leviathan 12y agoYou do realize this is the Game Center message and not actually from the app?
- Chanie 12y agoThis looks gorgeous. On a related note you can get the original game too - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/skifree/id588839086?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/skifree/id588839086?mt=8 Not as pretty though :)
- Andrenid 12y agoI don't know how they can say they're the "official" one, or use the original assets, when the publisher of it has nothing to do with the original SkiFree author (nor is there any mention on the original SkiFree page about it having an iOS version). And then on top of all that, to charge money for it when the original is free: http://ski.ihoc.net/ http://ski.ihoc.net/
- Synergyse 12y agoNice game! Screenshots are missing for iPad in the App Store
- bonesquad 12y ago#powdertothepeople
- beering 12y agoThere's a constant background noise in your homepage video that doesn't seem to be related to what's happening in the game. Is that intentional?
- dave_chenell 12y agoYeah, its the sound from the game, a sort of white noise to add atmosphere? Real music and sound effects will be coming in an update :)
- tmuir 12y agoDoes anyone know the process Apple uses to decide to feature an app? Is there a process completely separate from initial approval that goes through every new app, or does it just come down to piquing the interest of someone in the approval process? I'm not trying to take anything away from this game, or its developers, but this sort of success in the first week from a developer with only one other app in the app store seems akin to hitting the lottery.
- maqr 12y agoI've heard from a few people that they've been selected for featuring during the approval process. I haven't been able to verify that, but it sounded plausible. The only method that I'm aware of that Apple gives for promotion is to contact them at appstorepromotion@apple.com. I've never gotten a reply from them, not sure if anyone else has, but that's the official address. Another method that seems effective is networking with important people at Apple. I know of at least two instances of apps being featured based off of knowing the right people at Apple, but I'm not sure the best way to find those people or to get their attention.
- dpcan 12y agoMe too (sort-of). On Android. 2 years ago. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.selticeapps.snowboard https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.selticeapp... My stats: I only have a little over 21K downloads, and the non-ad version has only made a few bucks. Ad revenue equates to a couple movie tickets every so often I guess. Wrote it in Monkey-X for cross-platform functionality, but only ever put it on Android for some reason. I've done no marketing. Never been featured. My dad likes it. I'm 35. I get sadder with every period I type. EDIT: I wouldn't normally post self-promotion type stuff on HN, but I think it applies here because I did write a similar game, coded it by hand, put in the time, made my own silly graphics, but my stats represent the other 99% of us game devs that rarely get featured and remain off the radar. Some call our apps pollution in the app store, but those of us who legitimately write them are proud of them none-the-less, even if they make no money, though we'd honestly like them to.
- ronyeh 12y agoHi! Thanks for sharing. I agree it's important to talk about the 99% of indies who never get to the top of the app stores. I downloaded your app. The best feedback I can give is that it's too difficult to get through the gates with tilt controls. It doesn't give me the peaceful sense of skiing down the slopes (that the iOS game above claims to provide). There is a huge element of luck to it, but the top indie games all have a great sense of graphics design and UX design that make them a joy to play. Users are verrry picky, and may skip downloading your app even if the icon doesn't meet their bar of quality. My dream is to be able to design something as nice as Monument Valley.
- dpcan 12y agoThanks for the feedback, it's always appreciated. My high score is 72, the trick is to re-center after each gate ;) Over the last year, I stopped releasing games. I used to just keep putting them out, thinking they were polished enough, because of all this talk about "just launch" and game jams like #1gam seem to encourage the "just make games" mentality. However, while all that is great fun, I've changed my view. I'm now prototyping a lot, and will only work more on a game I fall in love with. At the moment, that's a point and click adventure game and enjine. I actually like this Snowboarding game, and am proud of it because I think it's fun, but I'm with you.... It's time to shoot for the moon, set the bar really high and make a game that's truly special.
- dougdonohoe 12y agoReminds me of Intellivision Skiing
- joeblau 12y agoFor 200k downloads, I would think there would be a few more ratings on the app. My app Orb has about 2000 downloads and about the same number of ratings. I do like the game graphics quite a bit and I love the simplicity. [1] - https://joeblau.com/orb/ https://joeblau.com/orb/
- lawl 12y agoSadly no iOS here. Did you include the monster? Because it sais endless. I hope that's just to trick people.
- no_future 12y agoCongrats on the success. Did you code the game from scratch with Xcode's tools, or did you use something like Unity? Also, you said you started working on the game in March 2014, so it took around 9 months to develop? What aspect of the game would you say the largest part of that time was spent on?
- jbrooksuk 12y agoWhen you jump, it still shows the skid marks. Other than that, this is awesome!
- Smackouze 12y agoI really like the game and the graphics, but what kind of license of Unity3D is it ?
- basicallydan 12y agoSuper nice, dude! I made a port (rather than a remake, like yours, with fancy new graphics ;) for the web which works on mobile: https://basicallydan.github.io/skifree.js https://basicallydan.github.io/skifree.js. It has the monster and snowboarders. Yours is much prettier though :D Nice work and well done on the success!
- 8557056 12y agoIngemar's Skiing Game was one of the best versions...
- henningo 12y agoWell done! Just one thing I noticed, the speed is mph and the distance unit is meters. Would be nice to change speed to km/h.