Recently, I’ve needed to figure out a way how to play a movie on the iPhone in a non-fullscreen mode. So I have a video file and I need to play it on just a part of the screen, just as if it was any other view. I’ve searched the Internet but couldn’t find anything that would do all I needed. Most of the answers to this question simply stated it’s not possible with the current SDK. I’ve found a method using private APIs which is not an option because we need to have this approved on the AppStore. Another idea suggested rolling our own software decoder to play the video. That was also not an option because it would be too CPU-intensive, require too much work and be too hard on the battery.

I was about to give up when I found the answer in a place where I expected it the least – an official Apple example.

Well, what the example really does is it shows how to add custom controls on top of a movie. The way it’s done seems more like a workaround than the way it was designed to work, but it’s better than nothing

The idea is to create the movie player, then get a list of windows in the application and the “key” window is our movie player. Here is the code from the Apple example:

From here, you can easily add your own subviews to the moviePlayerWindow. However, that’s not exactly what I’ve promised.

Now resizing the window didn’t quite work as expected. Trying to set the bounds or frame only changes the center of the window, but doesn’t really affect the size of the movie.

There is one property though that works pretty well – the window’s transform. So here is the code:

You could also rotate the video the same way. Also, you can still add your custom controls to this window and it works great (note though that they will be transformed too). There is only one problem: it seems the movie player somehow messes up the status bar so it becomes completely white – I haven’t yet been able to fix that but hopefully you can work around it by placing your movie above it or simply hiding it.

I hope this has saved you some time and let me know if you have any comments/suggestions.

After.. uhm.. months of waiting for approval, iBailout!! is finally available in the AppStore! Make sure to check it out and let us know what you think – and if you like it (which we’re sure you will) please write a review.

iTunes link

iBailout!!

Check it out at MarroniGames.com. Here is a brief executive summary:

Press: Good

Coverage: MobileCrunch, Pocket Gamer, Girl Gamers UK, GirlGamer, BeefJack, Blue’s News, Gaming Nexus, Gamer Syndrome, DCEmu Blog, Pocket-lint, & Just Another iPhone Blog

Review: Nice

Sales: Not Good

Sold: Jack Squat (Whom Both Left Town); iLikeCereal!! Now Around 60-70 Copies Sold

Overall: Awesome Introduction to the World

Buy iLikeCereal!!: Yes

iBailout!!: 2010 IGF Mobile & Coming Very, Very Soon

Buy iLikeCereal!!: Yes

Imagine you have a design for an iPhone game and have decided to find a contract developer to create it for you. You want top quality and price is secondary. For this reason, you select a company which has developed dozens of applications and seems trustworthy; they’re expensive but you believe in your idea and decide to take the chance. You agree on the terms, sign the contract and development begins.

As you start receiving the builds, everything seems to be working out well; the quality is good and it’s moving in the direction you’ve envisioned. There’s only one small thing: the communication with the company and their responses seem to be oddly slow. You’ve asked them to change the color of a label from white to yellow and it took them 3 days to incorporate the change. Every question you ask seems to go through a committee before getting answered. Somewhere near the end of the project, you come up with a great idea you want implemented and even though it’s very simple, their price for the change is disproportionately high. Yet little by little, the project comes to a finish and you walk away happy with the game in your hands.

The above story is a true one and although it may not sound too strange, there’s quite a lot behind it. The original client had hired a US-based company (let’s call it Company A) with an extensive portfolio and years of experience to create the game. They have then hired an India-based outsourcing company (let’s call it Company B), also with years of experience and dozens of completed projects, to work on the game. Their price was considerably lower than what Company A had charged the client, so Company A was able to keep a decent profit off the project. The story doesn’t end here however, as Company B didn’t have enough developers and has hired us (Company C) to develop the project. Our price was lower than theirs, so they also managed to turn a bit of the profit off the project.

The original client is completely oblivious to all this and still believes that the game is being developed by Company A.

The reason for the slow communication with the client was the fact that all three companies were in different time zones and because e-mail forwarding from client to us and back wasn’t automatic and sometimes it would take a couple of days for someone at Company A or Company B to do it. That is also the reason some very simple changes took so long.

The prices for additional features by the client were unreasonably high because they would start with our request and then both Company B and Company A would add a certain sum to it to increase their profit.

You may wonder what is so dark about this; it’s simple trading where you buy something cheap and sell it at a higher price. Well, not quite. There are several problems here the way I see it:

• The original client believed the game was developed by Company A
• The quality of the service has been considerably lower than it would have been had the client been able to communicate with the developer directly
• The price has been unnecessarily high (I’m not talking 10-20% higher; it was about 5-6 times higher than what we charged for the actual development)

From the perspective of all three ‘development’ companies, there’s nothing to complain about; each turned a profit and moved on. Yet I’d bet you wouldn’t want to be the original client in this case.

Finding trustworthy and reliable developers is difficult and unfortunately, it sometimes takes a few failed projects, wasted money and time. There’s probably no magical formula and it’s always possible to make a mistake; I just wanted to make you aware of cases like this because in the long run, nobody truly benefits that way.

iLikeCereal!! HOBBLES ONTO iPHONE APP STORE

Fun Entertainment App Sells Not-so-Epic 26 Copies

Suburban-Detroit by way of Zagreb, Mich. – December 8^th, 2009 –Marroni Electronic Entertainment (MEE) and NightIrion today announced the less-than-epic sales figures for the first three days of just released iPhone and iTouch entertainment app, iLikeCereal!!

“We sold 26 copies,” said Nick Marroni, Owner, Designer & Producer, MEE. “We weren’t necessarily expecting instant great success, but damn,” he continued, before going on to explain that at least half of that meager 26 sales must have been family and friends (whom also account for iLikeCereal!!’s current five star rating, of course).

iLikeCereal!!, a milk and cereal physics sim, unashamedly born out of fellow iPhone app Koi Pond’s success, but yet still lovingly crafted and uniqueified and innovateded by its creators (it’s got sweet music, too), just didn’t quite take the App Store charts by storm.

With full French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese (don’t forget Croatian) localizations, Marroni and Galic found it especially awesome that not a single Spaniard or Nihonjin deigned to partake in the breakfast cereal shenanigans.

“We know that cereal’s not the biggest thing outside North America, but it’s almost like people haven’t even heard of breakfast in some parts of the world,” said Marroni, in between bites of some delicious and sugary sweet Choco Bombs.

“We copied everything from Koi Pond, but it just wasn’t enough… ,” lamented Ivan Galic, Owner & Programmer, NightIrion.

Beginning life as a work-for-hire project in the heydays of early 2009, and eventually being amicably dumped by the original publisher and turning into a work-for-nothing project just a few short days ago, iLikeCereal!! has a long and storied history.

“Anyway we spent four months, on-and-off, on what was supposed to be a four week project and packed it with a lot of cool features and polish–except for the UI; that really ain’t pretty, but hey, that stuff costs money, man, and artists don’t work for free,” said Galic.

Nine months after initially beginning work on iLikeCereal!!, the time was finally come to unleash it on the App Store and the dynamic duo at last got down to business and submitted the app to Apple for approval.

“It was approved quick enough,” said Galic. “Though, it wasn’t until a day after we’d got approval to go on sale and realized that, since we didn’t launch at the exact nanosecond that we received approval from Apple, we’d be buried a day down the new releases list (out of sight of most any customers), that we started to get an inkling of the App Store’s real majesty.”

Yes, it was then, the duo agree, that releasing iLikeCereal!! became a truly magical experience.

“Just as I was laying down to slumber for the night and not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse, I hear that familiar ‘Bwip!’ from Skype, telling me I’ve just been unfortunate enough to receive a message at such late an hour,” related Marroni.

He then discovered it was Galic messaging him to explain that iLikeCereal!! was now no longer buried down the new releases list (at least not on the PC side of the App Store), but was instead the very first listing, with a release date of December 31^st, 2009, no less!

“It appeared our intrepid little app learned itself the secrets of time travel and had a bit of fun to our benefit,” continued Marroni.

From here, it was a whirlwind few days of constantly shifting release dates (something the pair attribute to iLikeCereal!!’s merging timelines and uncanny powers of temporal manipulation and perhaps even a dash of al-Qaeda—just so as not to rule anything out), with, for about an entire day, probably, iLikeCereal!! being the first listing in the entertainment category’s new releases section on both the App Store’s PC and iPhone fronts.

It was during this heady 24 hours or so at the top of the new releases list that the pair begin to let their heads fill with ridiculous fantasies of actually being able to make a living at independent development.

“I thought I might even buy me a PSP,” said Marroni. “Maybe even one of them newfangled Go’s—who needs an UMD drive when you’ve got high rent App Store real estate!”

“I was going to to pay the rent and get something to eat,” said Galic. “I’m actually pretty hungry, right now.”

It wasn’t until another day or so went by and the pair failed to find iLikeCereal!! listed in the Top 100 Entertainment Apps section that they knew they were in trouble and decided to actually check their sales figures.

“And that’s when it hit,” Marroni began.

“26,” Galic finished.

After calculating that the royalties they earned would be enough for only the cheapest and most vile of malt liquors and Marroni’s girlfriend saying that he’d have to sell at least 30 copies before she’d let him touch her again, the devastation fully sank in.

“In some countries, I believe we’d be legally obligated to commit seppuku right now and/or sent to debtor’s prison–we don’t even owe any debts!!!!1111,” explained Marroni.

“I’d really just like to be able to upgrade to a 3GS,” concurred Galic.

“We really have a lot of cool ideas for updates to iLikeCereal!! too,” said Marroni. “Think RPG. Think iLikeCereal!! RPG

As bad as it is, the pair are, as ever, in it to win it and are sure that a simple featuring by Apple in that holy of holies, the App Store’s Featured section, is all that’s needed to cure what ails the pretty fun and mostly good value, iLikeCereal!!

“I have it on good authority from a veteran producer that the code word to get Apple to feature us is ‘tough’ and ‘essential’,” said Marroni.

“Yes, we believe this code word will be sufficient for us to get featured,” agreed Galic, before slitting the throat of a freshly procured chicken and chanting ‘necronomicon’ something or other, in an otherworldly tongue.

“It’s cool, though, because we’ve got our magnum opus and first game, iBailout!!(a new-school, action arcade bonanza where players assume the role of the Federal Reserve—really, truly), being published by the fine folks at Hands-On Mobile (who had absolutely nothing to do with this press release—honest) coming to the iPhone any day now,” said Marroni.

“Yeah, I think it’s only going on week seven or eight since we submitted it to Apple for review, too,” said Galic. “Oh, wait. Today’s the 8^th, so make that nine.”

So, in the meantime, while the iLikeCereal!! promotional train continues to blaze ever onward and Apple inevitably decides to feature it (and you fine folks reading this magnificent press release get yourselves a copy), thereby giving it a helping hand to the great success that it’s so surely destined to see, Marroni and Galic reflect on their launch experience and what they’ve learned.

“We blame pirates,” the pair said, in eerie unison. “Dirty, filthy pirates.”

iLikeCereal!! is available now on the iTunes App Store, exclusively for iPhone and iTouch.

Get it here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ilikecereal/id341455168?mt=8

Watch the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WbVEC3Hy9E

And then see the really awesome iBailout!! trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqhB77AZHGQ

About Marroni Electronic Entertainment (MEE)

Nestled in the comfy bosom of suburban-Detroit, MEE is dedicated to developing original IP and games that are as entertaining as they are meaningful (except for iLikeCereal!!, which is completely meaningless, albeit strangely fun, hypnotic, and addictive) and which, hopefully, you’ll agree are really cool and a whole lot of fun. iLikeCereal!! is MEE’s first release on the iPhone (or anywhere, for that matter) and they’re really and truly very excited about the upcoming and most awesome iBailout!!, also for the iPhone. Please stop by and say hello: http://marronigames.com

About NightIrion

Located on the line between Pozega and Zagreb, Croatia, with a slight tendency toward moving to the coastline, our goal is creating great entertainment and having fun doing it; though we admittedly sometimes overdo the second part. Right now we’re focused on iPhone game development with a close eye on the PSP, DS and the Wii. Visit us at: http://www.nightirion.com

Media Contacts

Marroni Electronic Entertainment

hello@marronigames.com

NightIrion

igalic@nightirion.com

I was kidding. Really. Well, maybe you can, but I don’t have the recipe – and if I did, I’d probably be too busy applying it. I do, however, have some information to share, even if it’s not a recipe for getting rich; it may just help you make the next step towards riches.

The promise of gold

If you’re following the IT industry even a little bit, it’s likely you’ve read some of the success stories of iPhone developers striking it rich with simple games and applications, practically overnight. It’s true, these people really did make it (though not all as “overnight” as it may seem at the first glance). What followed were, unsurprisingly, hordes of others aiming to achieve the same thing. Wouldn’t it be great – you come up with an idea, invest some time (in case you’re a developer) or money (to hire someone else) and in a few weeks you have a golden goose in your hands? I know I’d like it. This way of thinking is what drove tens of thousands of games and applications to the App Store in the past year or so.

As a freelance developer, I’ve seen this happen many times. You can often read in iPhone development forums posts that go somewhere along the lines: “I have a great idea for an iPhone game! It’s definitely going to be a hit! I have the design completely worked out; all I need is a developer to make it happen and we can share the revenue!”. I honestly do appreciate the enthusiasm, though I can’t help but imagine that being written by a 12-year-old. More serious gold miners are looking for professional iPhone developers and are willing to pay. The basic idea is the same, however: invest a little and make a fortune, real quick.

Sand castles crumble

This all sounds great, but it doesn’t work and the results are usually very disappointing. The game is released and while everyone is eagerly waiting to see it surge to the number one spot on the charts, it gets buried under thousands of others and hardly ever returns the investment, even if it’s only the cost of the developer program. These people are then shaking their heads in disbelief and resignation, wondering how is it possible that their great idea didn’t make it. Eventually, most of them blame the AppStore, declare it broken and walk away. Louder ones stay a little while to complain, to no avail.

The problems

The main problem, I think, is not in the AppStore. Yet before I elaborate on that, I want to make a few things clear. I don’t think the AppStore is flawless by any means; it has its own share of problems, but they are well known and everyone is talking about them so there’s no point going into that here. I also don’t consider every developer or everyone who hires iPhone developers a wannabe millionaire. In fact, I’ve had some great experiences with people who really knew what they were doing and others who simply wanted to see their game or application idea live on the AppStore, which is perfectly fine.

An overwhelming number of entries on the Store, however, are just that. Poorly designed and often poorly executed attempts at creating a cheap hit.

So where are the real problems?

For one, not every application in the App Store can be a hit, even if they were all equally great. It’s very obvious, but many people seem to overlook that fact, not asking themselves whether their idea truly is so much better than the thousands of others.

Yet even if you have the greatest idea, in most cases it’s not enough in itself. An idea you can scribble in two sentences has a very long way to becoming a hit. There lies another problem. People often approach freelance developers with just such a short concept and then expect the developer to turn it into the next hit. This can work if you’re approaching a company with a formidable portfolio of hit applications and has all sorts of people in the team – from designers and producers to programmers and testers; which costs a lot of money, of course. On the other hand, if you’re approaching a relatively inexperienced developer with “one application already in review for the App Store” and working for $15/h, you can’t expect to get the same thing as from the aforementioned company (even though the size or even fame of the company is not always a guarantee of quality; more on that in another article). Similarly, many people seem to assume that game design just happens along the way. They start with a short idea and expect that it’s somehow going to be transformed into a gem.

In other words, the problem is that the quality of released products is very poor, which is a result of people trying to play the roles they know nothing about. If you have learned all you know about games just by playing them, don’t think you’re a game designer. Find people with adequate knowledge and experience for all the roles you need for your project or you’re risking you’ll get those components where you’re improvising horribly wrong.

Now let’s assume you’ve survived the development process and, one way or another, have created a really good game or application. It is widely assumed that it’s enough to simply send the application to Apple and wait for it to reach the top on its own. I’d love it if it worked that way, but it couldn’t be farther from the truth. The iPhone applications market is unique in many ways, but it’s still a market. While standard marketing methods may not always give the results you’d expect, it doesn’t mean that nothing works or that you can simply give up on that part. I’ve seen games in which considerable amounts of money have been invested, but after release there was simply no word about them. No reviews, no announcements on forums, no YouTube videos; absolutely nothing. It may happen that some people will accidentally pick up the application, spread the word and you’ll get a hit.  Though you may just as well play lottery instead.

In case you’re not willing to rely on pure luck for your success, roll up your sleeves and make sure the world knows about your application or game. You’ll still need plenty of luck along with that.

In conclusion

The AppStore is not the Aladdin’s lamp; don’t expect it to do everything for you. Yet in spite of all of its problems that can take you down really quickly, it can truly be a great start if you’re small or a valuable extension to an already running business. There still are ways to break in and ways to earn a decent income, as many publishers and developers  are proving each day. It’s not easy and you may fail just like in any other business, but it’s possible. Only you have to do something very special: “Think different”, as the famous Apple slogan goes.

[UPDATE: The giveaway has now ended.] In cooperation with Marroni Electronic Entertainment, the guys we’ve developed iLikeCereal!! and iBailout!! with, we’re organizing a small promo code giveaway for iLikeCereal!!. You can participate either through Twitter or by joining our newsletter.

Detailed rules are here.

While we’re waiting for iBailout!! to be approved, we’ve released an application we’ve developed a few months ago together with Marroni Electronic Entertainment.

iLikeCereal!!

It’s breakfast time!

iTunes link

 

The trailer for iBailout!! has been released on YouTube. We think it’s really nice, check it out!

While we’re waiting for iBailout!! to get approved, Kid-D has been released. It’s a game we have worked on for Pixel Factory Design, so congratulations to them for getting it released! Here is what they say about the game:

“In the first episode of Kid D, we join our hero while infiltrating the facade of The Syndicate, an evil corporation known for their arms dealing and medical experiments. Kid needs your help to navigate him through the 25 different levels, kill lots of bad guys, buy new weapons and then kill more bad guys in this side scrollin’ adventure of good versus evil.”

Make sure to check it out!

iTunes link