september 19, 2008 01:24am

May I introduce: SuperBall 2

Henceforth, the block blasting, ball bouncing Spiffyware game shall be known as... SuperBall 2!

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september 17, 2008 09:02pm

SuperPong 2 to be removed at request of Atari

Some very unfortunate news, I have been asked to remove SuperPong 2 from the App Store at the request of Atari Interactive due to infringements against the pong and breakout copyrights.

I think it is insane that SuperPong 2 could be forced out of the market due to resemblances to games made some 20 years ago, and I honestly don't know if they have a case. But, they do own these trademarks/copyrights and I am a student and don't presently have the time or resources to fight this, so it will be taken down by Friday.

This is particularly disheartening as the Lite version just got approved and went live, giving even more people an opportunity to try out this unique block breaking game. But it as well will be taken down.

I believe that the greatest tragedy is that I had many great and extraordinary ideas for the game, and have had only a brief chance to implement a couple of them. I am finally very happy with what SuperPong has become, but given a couple more months it could have been extraordinary.

Noah Witherspoon, developer of Tris, went through a similar situation. Likewise, I do intend to seek legal consul and find a way to repost SuperPong, but for the time being, people have until Friday, Sep 19th to download the lite version or the full version.

Thank you.

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september 06, 2008 07:20am

SuperPong 2

I'm am very excited to announce by far the largest update to SuperPong, SuperPong version 2.0. I have quite literally torn down and reprogrammed the entire game from the ground up, using modern programming techniques such as the Model-View-Controller design philosophy and following Apple's strictest User Interface Guidelines.

2.0 blows the previous version out of the water. It has a two player mode, a puzzle mode, and a whopping 350 levels. It would take several pages to go through all the changes to SuperPong, so I will simply say that it is an amazing game that will keep you entertained for a very long time, so please check it out.

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august 10, 2008 04:28pm

Super high SuperPong scores

It turns out that some of the extreme highest scores that people are getting in SuperPong are in fact too large to send between the device and the score server, and some scores are even too large to represent on the device itself (resulting in overflow to a negative number). Usually this is after about 1.4 billion.

Sorry to anyone who has encountered this, it will be fixed in the next version, but in the mean time, you can send me a screenshot of your high scores list (press the home button and the sleep button to save a screen shot to your photo gallery) and I will manually add it to the high scores list, thanks, and sorry for the issue.

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august 06, 2008 04:01am

New Game: Tilt Fighter

I am very proud and excited to announce Tilt Fighter, now available on the App Store! This is actually a game I've been wanting to develop for quite some time now, and I think it is a blast to play. It utilizes the accelerometer and multi-touch in a unique way, and appears to be among the first Space Invader / Galaga available on the store (technically, the only one as far as I can tell in the Shoot 'em up game genre).

To play Tilt Fighter, you simply tilt your device left or right to move your ship along the bottom of the screen, and your main guns, the plasma cannons, fire automatically. This leaves your fingers free to unleash an arsenal of weapons using multi-touch. Use repeated taps to fire the laser cannon, which can go in any direction, and a pinch or stretch (like you're zooming in on a photo) to unleash a anti-matter bomb, which goes to bullet-time and obliviates everything in your path.

For anyone who liked the classic arcade style space shooters and want to see a modern iPhone / iTouch rendition, I'm confident they'll really enjoy Tilt Fighter, so give it a try.

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august 01, 2008 11:56pm

SuperPong 1.2 is up and live on the App Store

As many have already found out, SuperPong update 1.2 is live and up on the App Store. This update adds 12 new levels, for a total of 42 levels. And more excitingly, adds five fun new bonus blocks, including Destructo Ball and SuperNova. There are also bug fixes, there was a bug I must apologize for to some who experienced it, where it was not possible to submit high scores online, which has been fixed. The paddle and block bounces are also more forgiving (no more ball going through the corners, which I could understand being more than a bit annoying). This has also made the game a bit more feasible on Madness. Still insane, but a little less insane, and it would in fact appear that as of this writing someone has already beaten it on Madness, congrats to CD6405 :-)

Thanks to all who have already commented and to those who have posted honest iTunes reviews (good or bad), they are greatly appreciated. If you have any thoughts, post them in the comments, write a review on iTunes, or shoot me an email, I'd be more than happy to send back a quick reply.

Also, I have actually been working on a completely new and different game, which I will be submitting to the App Store shortly. I'm going to refrain from giving details until it's up, but it is very very cool and an insane amount of fun, so please check back for details later this week.

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july 17, 2008 01:33am

SuperPong Update 1.1

Just wanted to let everyone know that I have submitted an update to version 1.1 of SuperPong to Apple and am hoping it will get accepted soon. It will add nearly everything I have heard mentioned, including new levels, difficulties, sound, a very fun accelerometer based tilt mode and a lot more, so please keep an eye for it, it adds an incredible amount of fun to SuperPong, and it's just one update among many that I will be releasing in the future. And if you have any suggestions or ideas for the next release, shoot me and email, I'll see what I can do and let you know.

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july 11, 2008 01:59am

App Store is live, SuperPong and new app Alphagram are up!

I'm very excited to announce that SuperPong and a new App called Alphagram are now live on the App Store! It's been many long months waiting for this day and I couldn't be happier with how everything is turning out. Both are very fun games that I think they turned out very well, so please take a look at them them in the iPhone section and give them a try!

And best yet, I promise that I'll be adding more content and features to both games soon, it's my first priority after finishing Gemlogic (which is turning out to be a very very cool App, can't wait to release it) so keep an eye out for those.

As for me, with the App store now up and live, I'm heading to my local AT&T to wait in line and grab a 3G iPhone, I hope everyone is enjoying the great apps out there!

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july 04, 2008 12:54am

Apps to be released on the App Store

I'm very excited to announce that SuperPong will be available on the App Store this July 11th! It has been redesigned from the bottom up and has more new features than I can list here, but I have aimed to incorporate every suggestion I have received and it has turned out to be a very fun game, so please keep an eye for it this July 11th. I hope to be able to post screenshots and more info soon.

I am still working a completely new Gemlogic and hope to have that ready for not long after the App Store debuts, and will of course keep everyone posted.

Lastly, in preparation for these apps being released I will likely be making some changes to the server which will require taking it down. This means the Gemlogic server may down intermittently over the next week, sorry for the inconvenience!

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june 04, 2008 02:20am

What's Coming Up

As a person might guess from reading my last post, the summer has been quite busy and I have not been able to get to everything I have wanted to. I've been very busy working to put together solid updated versions of SuperPong, Gemlogic and perhaps another that will be ready for release for the iPhone SDK and new (possibly 3G?) 2.0 firmware. I had started work to convert these to the previous API, but there are massive differences between the code that people first used to create iPhone apps and what's developed on the SDK.

This Monday, June 9th, we'll all have a better idea where development on the iPhone is going (I'll be at WWDC and am eagerly awaiting the keynote). No sense in continuing the conversion if 1.1.4 disappears in a few days, so I'll post again once the dust has settled from that. And if by chance submissions open, key an eye out for SuperPong (my current focus) to be released with tons and tons of new features!

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