Monster Cache 1.1 for Android

Today I released a new version of Monster Cache for Android.  It's version 1.1.  The main difference is that it has the high-res "2x" graphics that we made for the iPhone retina display.  There is some CSS and JavaScript code that you can use to detect the high-res display, and we learned along the way that my phone, the Samsung Galaxy S3, uses the same high-res graphics as the retina displays.  It really looks better.  And now the current iPhone and Android releases have virtually the same features.

One small thing I changed yesterday that is now in the Android version but not iPhone is the login page.  We were finding that when people first install the app and launch it, then the first thing on the page is the login form, and then they just type in their email address and password in the login form, thinking that its a registration form.  Without totally rearranging the pages to show the registration form on launch, I just moved the "New to Monster Cache?" and the "Register Here" button below it to the top of the page.  Then just below that is "Already have an account?" and then the login form.  So hopefully that will be less confusing for first time players.

I thought about submitting a new iPhone version just for that fix.  But since iPhone has to be approved, I'm afraid of a couple things.  One is that I wouldn't want to have the approval go through just before the comic show (in two weeks), find out there is a problem with the version, and then not be able to fix it before the show.  Or even worse would be if the second time they reviewed it, the reviewer noticed something they didn't like and pulled the app just before the show.  So I'll wait to do that release until a couple weeks from now.

Also added a feature to the server side this weekend to allow referral codes for different marketing campaigns.  Hoping that will help me determine which marketing things help most.  Only got one new user this week, so we're definitely ready for some more marketing.

Promotion ideas

As I mentioned, we had 21 players when iOS launched two weeks ago (we decided not to hide anyone on leader board based on activity, yet).  Kent and I sent out some emails and Matt has been telling people, and now we're up to 36.  Still not growing as fast as I'd hoped, so now we're talking about some other promotional ideas.  So far,

• I ordered 1500 color business cards from Vistaprint to hand out to people at Planet Comicon, or anytime.  They always have great deals on business cards.  We uploaded our own design, full color, front and back.  1500 was around $50 with shipping using one of their coupons.  Here it is:

• Matt has this week of for Spring Break, so he wants to put up some fliers at some game stores and other places.  So I made a basic black and white flier that I think looks okay.
• We looked into printing 8x10 card stocks pictures of monsters to sell at Planet Comicon.  They were about 50 cents each online, but it seems scary to order online without seeing finished product. And that was for a batch of 100 of same picture. Kathleen found we could get 5x7s at Kinkos for about the same price, but in smaller batches of 25 per picture, and we can see before we order.  So we'll do that and get 100 to try to sell for $5 each at show
• Also going to get a banner to hang on table at show for around $50.
• Kathleen still hasn't sent her email out to people, so that will definitely help too.
• Eventually, I will run a Google AdSense ad too.

It will be very interesting to see how each of these things does and what the # users / dollar spent will be for each one.

In App Purchase product sequencing

One last minute change I had to make right before submitting Monster Cache for review was that the In-App Purchasing products on iPhone were displaying in what seemed like a random sequence.  For iOS, you send a request to the App Store for your available products, then it returns you a list of your products.  I iterated through the list in the order it was sent, and the order was not the sequence I wanted.

What was really happening is they were sorting based on their hidden product ID.  Well, I put numbers in those representing numbers of coins, like coins50, coins100, coins500, coins1000, etc.  As many people know from sorting music tracks with numbers, they don't sort numerically, they sort alphabetically, so 100 comes before 50 because it starts with 1 which is less than 5.

Once I figured that out, I considered trying to sort the array that they returned before I iterated through it, but it wasn't just the product ID's, it was an array of objects.  That seemed like too much hassle, so I just deleted and recreated half of my in app purchasing products to give the product ID's leading 0's, like coins0050. (You can't change a product ID once it has been set, which is why I had to delete and recreate).

Launched on iPhone and iPad

Today is the day we launched on iPhone and iPad!  I just added the App Store button to our web site.

Funny story on the launch date...I thought it was going to launch yesterday.  Since Android launched on February 1st, I was hoping iOS would launch on March 1st.  iTunes connect gives you an option to set the release date, so I had set it to March 1st long ago. Well.... I forgot that when a March 1st release did not seem likely, I changed the release date to March 15th.  I didn't submit it for review until February 21st and I  didn't think it would get approved so fast.  I heard that it could take a couple weeks, and that's if they didn't ask you to fix anything.  I was especially worried that PhoneGap might be doing strange things that they wouldn't link and would ask me to fix. What actually happened is it took 6 days before they started reviewing it on the 27th, and then it was approved that same day!  All in-app purchasing items also approved!  So on March 1st when I realized that it didn't get released, I went and changed release date to March 2nd.

I made a change to the app weeks back so that the leader board only shows people who have logged on in the last 30 days. The board lost a couple inactive users this week, so its down to 19. That's our starting point for iOS launch.  We'll send out some emails, Facebook, etc. soon.  I'm optimistic that we'll get at least as many players in next few weeks as we got for Android.  My hope is that we'll have 40 on the board before Comicon.

Talked at Geo U in Kansas City

Thanks to my friend and Monster Cache beta tester Steve for inviting me to talk about Monster Cache at his Geocaching University.  I wasn't sure how interested traditional geocachers would be in the app.  There were about 30 people there, and I think 4 or 5 of them installed the app in the next few days, and that's with only Android available.  So I thought that was a pretty good response.

Before the meeting, we had about 15 people on Legend board.  So after a few days we had close to 20, and now we have 21 total.  Still with Android only.  Hoping for a big jump once we launch on iPhone and go to Planet Comicon.

Submission to Apple app store

Finally got the app submitted to the Apple app store.  I'd hope to do it last weekend, but we weren't quite sure that the sounds were working on iPhone.  I was going to get my neighbors as a couple more iPhone testers, but couldn't coordinate our schedules.  Then it seemed like sound was working, so I went ahead and submitted it.  We really didn't have as much iPhone beta testing as we would have liked, but we did get it tested on a few different devices and OS's.  Comparing findings with testers, it seemed that the XCode iOS simulator was a good representation of the devices.  I was able to duplicate problems and I was able to switch devices to try different resolutions.  So I feel good about the submission.

We are now "Waiting for Review", which means we are in the review queue.  They had some stats in iTunes Connect that said that 90% of apps were reviewed in last 5 business days.  Not quite sure if that means the queue is 5 days long, or the whole process takes 5 business days.  I'm just hoping I'll hear something within 2 weeks.  Won't quite hit my hopeful March 1st launch, but close enough.  If I need to fix anything, I should still have time to fix it before.....

Planet Comicon!  Matt found us an event to be our first promotional event.  Looks great!  Cost for a table in Artist Alley is $150 for two days.  They hope to have 10,000 people, and it seems like comic enthusiasts might like our art and games in general, so hopefully its well worth it.  We may even try to sell some artwork to try to make up the money.

Android Launch!

Today we launched MonsterCache on Android.  Very exciting to see it show up in the Play store.  I made a screencast of myself launching it:

Only two new accounts so far, but I guess that's not a big surprise.  Not sure how likely it is that people install it when they've never heard of it, so the two new accounts are friends.  We'll do more of our own promotion once the iPhone version launches. But for now, just excited to have it out there.

Here are a few more details in an email I sent the team:

NOW it's official
We are officially in the Play store!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lanitek.monstercache

Download stats are updated once a day, so we may not have any stats on that until tomorrow.  But we can watch the Legend board for new players too. I'll also be adding the Android button back to the web site home page now that I have the URL.

Also, I noticed that currently a search for MonsterCache brings the app right up but Monster Cache (two words) doesn't.  So I changed the name of the app to Monster Cache, two words.  Looks like changes don't take effect for a couple hours.  But that should help us if someone searches for it as two words, or for all searches with "Monster".  And I put it as one word in the app description so hopefully that will force it to come up for searches when used as one word.  We may have to talk more about one word vs two  later.

But we're up!  And prior to launch, video has 107 views, will be interesting to see how that changes too.