I see from your website that you have much the same kind of experience, but I guess we just need to keep on carrying on.... one day who knows we may be able to make a living from what we love? Anyway, best of luck with your endevors :)
Yep, I made it free over Christmas to see if I could get some more downloads - not because I'm nice or kind, but then put it back to $1. Then the iMessage update went live yesterday - sorry about that.
Actually the setting it free thing did work in Japan and South Korea where I got a load of downloads for a day or so and it went all the way up to 47th in Photo and Video ranking in South Korea, but has since dropped down towards 1000th.
Anyway, this is how the app store works, basically things go un-noticed, so you make stuff free and it triggers a short burst of downloads from the "apps gone free today" websites. If you charge it tends to be far less, like 1 a week or something, but then when it hits a sustained zero, you set it free again and so the cycle goes on, drip feeding you the odd $1 if you are lucky.
I'm sure not all app developers have that experience, but I think statistically that is how it is for most of us - it's a bit of a lottery like art or music really. But like you artists, we developers carry on regardless because we enjoy doing it.
Anyway, have fun with the app - don't forget to tell all your friends ;)
Yes, I agree, we should try not to expect too much and just keep creating regardless... I suppose for many of us we can't stop creating anyway. I just had a look at a video of your game, it looks stunning - nice job!
It's a cool little sprite, I really like your art work. I'm sorry it's only for iOS so you can't try it out. The number of downloads is a bit disappointing, but you know it's another app for my portfolio and as long as some people like using it that's good enough for me. Cheers
Yep, you could be right, i've done it before with other apps but usually make it free for a week, then end up just having it free all the time. I think there are sites that are dedicated to finding apps that go free or get a price drop - they seem to trigger a lot of downloads for a day or two then it goes back to normal. But that has been with the going free thing I've tried it. Anyway, I've just done it for a week so it doesn't matter too much if it works or not.
The update should be ready soon, it just went from - waiting for review to in review, normally it goes through within a day after that, but then it depends if they reject it for some reason - they might object to using the words zx spectrum, commadore or nintendo or something?
Re: Voodoo economics - I'm not very good at promoting things, I've done twitter and google plus and facebook but you know with this sort of app it's not really something the general public would want.
Oh well if it gets downloaded or not, I still can add it to the bottom of my CV under personal projects.
I know you paid $2 for it, but I thought I might drop the price to $1 for a week just to drive some more downloads otherwise I fear it might sink down to the bottom of the app store. Sorry you got it at the wrong time - I'm just worried it isn't really getting noticed.
No thanks for your input, good to know what the pixel artists actually want so I can make it useful to you all. You are my target audience after all, well you and other pixel artists - hopefully!
I've added one Ness palette, it looks a bit like the BMF-3 one I think? I took out the duplicate blacks that are in it for some reason probably more to do with hardware than anything?
Looks like DawnBringer has really been getting into palettes in a big way.
I'll maybe add more over time? I've not made a proper list view selection though, they are just menu times saying:
ZX Spectrum
C64
Apple II
Nintendo Nes
I might run out of room and have to make a seperate view controller for them with a scroll bar etc.
Anyway now you can copy palettes between projects so if you add your own custom colours you can move them accross to new projects if you want.
Just thought I'd let you know, I've submitted a new version with your suggestions in mind as well as a few bug fixes - I think the not saving correctly sometimes might have been one of them - I think it was a race condition where the exporter was using selected projects but I was deselecting them on the UI directly after exporting but the export runs on a seperate thread so it could be that the selected projects are empty when it tries to export.
New features include:
A new colour picker more in line with the GIMP one. It seems a lot better, the only downside is that on older devices like my old iPad mini it isn't very fast because changing the hue requires the colour square to be redrawn which is slow as I do it pixel by pixel in the CPU. It would be posible to speed it up using openGL and a shader but that seems like a lot of work just for a colour picker - one day maybe?
I added the ability to start a new project with a retro palette from ZX Spectrum, C64, Nintendo NES, Apple II. Later 16 bit machines didn't seem to make sense because although they had limited colours per screen the palette was usually indexed from a large array of colours such as 32 colours from a palette of 4096 on the amiga for a 5 bit plane setup.
The ability to copy palettes from other projects, the way you do this is a bit unituative unless you know what to do. Basically you click the select button as if you are going to export but then hit the plus key - if you have one or more projects selected it will give you a menu option to import palette from the selected projects. Note this takes the palettes from the projects - it doesn't try to get them from the images as that would require going through every pixel for every layer of every frame.
I do however offer that option when importing from tile maps in case you have tiles created somewhere else or downloaded and you want to do edits with the same palette. After selecting the tiles it will ask if you want to derive the colours from the tiles. The only think I've found with this is that it can be a little slow and memory intensive if there are lots of images and lots of different colours - again not an issue on the new devices but on the old ones it makes things laggy - particularly with large palettes I think just because of having to load them and save them more than just extracting them from images.
I've also addes some slower frame rates for playback as you suggested, you can now do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 frames per second, then it jumps to 12, 24, 30, 40, 50, 60 fps. I agree the slow frame rates are quite good if you want to see how the animation looks in detail while tweeking even if your eventual playback speed is higher.
Thanks for your recomendations on this, a new version should show up in the next few days i guess.
Cheers, Dan
PS. attached are screen shots fo the new colour picker on iPhone/iPad
Sorry in answer to your question, exporting should put them into your photo album along with your other photos - you do need to allow it when asked though - if you said no the first time you would need to go into settings and allow it again - Normally you would go to the Pixel Art Pro under apps then it will take you to settings specific to that app - Note it only exports as a tile sheet or as an animated gif though. It doesn't import as a series of images.
Thanks SpiritBolt glad you like it :)
I see from your website that you have much the same kind of experience, but I guess we just need to keep on carrying on.... one day who knows we may be able to make a living from what we love? Anyway, best of luck with your endevors :)
Yep, I made it free over Christmas to see if I could get some more downloads - not because I'm nice or kind, but then put it back to $1. Then the iMessage update went live yesterday - sorry about that.
Actually the setting it free thing did work in Japan and South Korea where I got a load of downloads for a day or so and it went all the way up to 47th in Photo and Video ranking in South Korea, but has since dropped down towards 1000th.
Anyway, this is how the app store works, basically things go un-noticed, so you make stuff free and it triggers a short burst of downloads from the "apps gone free today" websites. If you charge it tends to be far less, like 1 a week or something, but then when it hits a sustained zero, you set it free again and so the cycle goes on, drip feeding you the odd $1 if you are lucky.
I'm sure not all app developers have that experience, but I think statistically that is how it is for most of us - it's a bit of a lottery like art or music really. But like you artists, we developers carry on regardless because we enjoy doing it.
Anyway, have fun with the app - don't forget to tell all your friends ;)
Yes, I agree, we should try not to expect too much and just keep creating regardless... I suppose for many of us we can't stop creating anyway. I just had a look at a video of your game, it looks stunning - nice job!
It's a cool little sprite, I really like your art work. I'm sorry it's only for iOS so you can't try it out. The number of downloads is a bit disappointing, but you know it's another app for my portfolio and as long as some people like using it that's good enough for me. Cheers
Yep, you could be right, i've done it before with other apps but usually make it free for a week, then end up just having it free all the time. I think there are sites that are dedicated to finding apps that go free or get a price drop - they seem to trigger a lot of downloads for a day or two then it goes back to normal. But that has been with the going free thing I've tried it. Anyway, I've just done it for a week so it doesn't matter too much if it works or not.
The update should be ready soon, it just went from - waiting for review to in review, normally it goes through within a day after that, but then it depends if they reject it for some reason - they might object to using the words zx spectrum, commadore or nintendo or something?
Re: Voodoo economics - I'm not very good at promoting things, I've done twitter and google plus and facebook but you know with this sort of app it's not really something the general public would want.
Oh well if it gets downloaded or not, I still can add it to the bottom of my CV under personal projects.
I know you paid $2 for it, but I thought I might drop the price to $1 for a week just to drive some more downloads otherwise I fear it might sink down to the bottom of the app store. Sorry you got it at the wrong time - I'm just worried it isn't really getting noticed.
No thanks for your input, good to know what the pixel artists actually want so I can make it useful to you all. You are my target audience after all, well you and other pixel artists - hopefully!
I've added one Ness palette, it looks a bit like the BMF-3 one I think? I took out the duplicate blacks that are in it for some reason probably more to do with hardware than anything?
Looks like DawnBringer has really been getting into palettes in a big way.
I'll maybe add more over time? I've not made a proper list view selection though, they are just menu times saying:
ZX Spectrum
C64
Apple II
Nintendo Nes
I might run out of room and have to make a seperate view controller for them with a scroll bar etc.
Anyway now you can copy palettes between projects so if you add your own custom colours you can move them accross to new projects if you want.
Hopefully it's a bit better than it was anyway.
Cheers, Dan
Hi Capbros,
Just thought I'd let you know, I've submitted a new version with your suggestions in mind as well as a few bug fixes - I think the not saving correctly sometimes might have been one of them - I think it was a race condition where the exporter was using selected projects but I was deselecting them on the UI directly after exporting but the export runs on a seperate thread so it could be that the selected projects are empty when it tries to export.
New features include:
A new colour picker more in line with the GIMP one. It seems a lot better, the only downside is that on older devices like my old iPad mini it isn't very fast because changing the hue requires the colour square to be redrawn which is slow as I do it pixel by pixel in the CPU. It would be posible to speed it up using openGL and a shader but that seems like a lot of work just for a colour picker - one day maybe?
I added the ability to start a new project with a retro palette from ZX Spectrum, C64, Nintendo NES, Apple II. Later 16 bit machines didn't seem to make sense because although they had limited colours per screen the palette was usually indexed from a large array of colours such as 32 colours from a palette of 4096 on the amiga for a 5 bit plane setup.
The ability to copy palettes from other projects, the way you do this is a bit unituative unless you know what to do. Basically you click the select button as if you are going to export but then hit the plus key - if you have one or more projects selected it will give you a menu option to import palette from the selected projects. Note this takes the palettes from the projects - it doesn't try to get them from the images as that would require going through every pixel for every layer of every frame.
I do however offer that option when importing from tile maps in case you have tiles created somewhere else or downloaded and you want to do edits with the same palette. After selecting the tiles it will ask if you want to derive the colours from the tiles. The only think I've found with this is that it can be a little slow and memory intensive if there are lots of images and lots of different colours - again not an issue on the new devices but on the old ones it makes things laggy - particularly with large palettes I think just because of having to load them and save them more than just extracting them from images.
I've also addes some slower frame rates for playback as you suggested, you can now do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 frames per second, then it jumps to 12, 24, 30, 40, 50, 60 fps. I agree the slow frame rates are quite good if you want to see how the animation looks in detail while tweeking even if your eventual playback speed is higher.
Thanks for your recomendations on this, a new version should show up in the next few days i guess.
Cheers, Dan
PS. attached are screen shots fo the new colour picker on iPhone/iPad
Sorry in answer to your question, exporting should put them into your photo album along with your other photos - you do need to allow it when asked though - if you said no the first time you would need to go into settings and allow it again - Normally you would go to the Pixel Art Pro under apps then it will take you to settings specific to that app - Note it only exports as a tile sheet or as an animated gif though. It doesn't import as a series of images.
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