As awesome is it may sound, the news is true. ConstantSUM Games has just published the world's first Nuclear Bomb Effects Calculator. Yes, you heard me right. This is the first application, ever, for a mobile phone, which affords users the ability to drop nuclear weapons on any part of the globe and map out their corresponding radii of destruction. While the blasts correlate to historically significant bomb tests, the app could easily calculate devastation for any arbitrary yield. It isn't simply placing pretty colored rings on top of Google Maps. What does this mean for users of Nuke It? It means that the framework already exists for a good number of planned feature enhancements for the near future. Today, the calculated values of maximum overpressure are available and displayed graphically on the unlucky city of your choice. Coming soon will be the following; dynamic overpressure, maximum wind velocity, arrival times of blast waves, duration of blast waves, fireball and crater radii, thermal energy emissions and duration, and even fallout cloud and radioactive decay times. Could it get any better than that? I doubt it.

Have you ever had the morbid curiosity of wanting to know if you would survive a nuclear bomb attack if one were to be detonated some miles away from your house? Now you will know, with a high degree of certainty, what your chances for survival may be.

I've included a short video that covers the basic functionality of Nuke It! As always, any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Well, it's been about two weeks since we released the update for GameOn! We went from about 3000 users to over 5000 after the release of the update. I have to confess, this was a major undertaking as a completely new bookmaker was added to the application. We now support Bodog as well as BetUS sports feeds. The original model and XML parser had to be reworked, but the end result more than makes up for those hassles. You can check out the application running in the emulator here:



As always, if anyone has any feedback, feature requests, bug reports, comments, or enhancement ideas, please let me know.

Well, it’s been one week since I first published Game On to the Android Marketplace. The statistics so far; I've received over 2,000 downloads, 13 reviews, and an average of 4/5 stars. I've also received a ton of e-mail from my users which I'll talk more about that shortly. I know these numbers are quite small but as my first attempt to get anything on the Market, it's not too shabby, especially for a v.1 application.

To date, I’ve learned a few things on how the Market operates and that, while most of the feedback has been extremely positive and constructive, there was also a bunch of complete dip-shits who probably shouldn't be owning cell phones, or even worse, breeding.

But first, here are my thoughts on the Android Marketplace experience.

My download rate dropped off rapidly as soon as Game On had fallen below the first page of the recent application section. People seemed to be searching only for new apps instead of searching for something in particular. I had about 1,000 downloads in the first 24-36 hours of release. The second 1,000 took the rest of the week to complete.

In the beginning, it seems, people just downloaded Game On without even trying to read the app description. This resulted in some low reviews. Fortunately, there were some very astute users who defended the app and called my detractors what they really were; blithering idiots who clearly had not read the description or any directions at all.

Most of the bad reviews have stopped, because, quite simply, it really is a kick-ass application. But also, the only users using the app now are the ones searching for it.

The Google Marketplace itself leaves a lot to be desired. There is an expectation that you should be able to respond to comments and questions. As things stand now, you can’t, and all I can do it sacrifice chickens to the gods in the hopes that Google will fix this ASAP. The only true interactive feedback mechanism is the the "Email Developer" button. (more on the e-mail feedback in a bit)

Moreover, the 350 character description word limit is impossibly small. For me to construct a meaningful description of the application, include some release notes, inform users of updates, and respond to common issues or bugs in a measly 350 characters (provided it is even read by the teeming masses) makes no sense whatsoever. There also exists no version control and to order ranking based on revisions. This is a major defect that needs to be addressed.

Even worse, there is no browser based interface to the Marketplace outside of the developer back-end and that only allows for updates and rudimentary download statistics. Every comment made on Game On must be read from the G1 phone. Holy Jesus Christ! What a debacle. Google, please take note; fix this now!

Now, on to the e-mails....

User emails have been very helpful. Well, most of them. I respond only to the (even remotely) well constructed e-mails that I've received. This feedback has been very helpful for prioritizing feature requests and I feel like I can establish a relationship with my user community. Outside of these shining examples of humanity (the few, the proud, the brave), I do get a disproportionate number of bozos and nut cases writing about Game On. A good majority of these e-mails are written in broken English or hAx0r / l33t speak. Give me a fucking break! Grow up and learn how to write.

Here are some examples for your reading pleasure:

“What r batting (SIC) odds? Plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz explan (SIC)” - All betting odds are explained in the HELP section of the app, you dimwit.

“Force close - sux - you sux” - Please tell me what you are doing and maybe I can replicate the issue and fix it.

"Do I need money for bet?" - No duh!

"How ppl tel when bet r going" - I have no fucking clue.

Despite the endless supply of idiots, I have been graced with a good number of intelligent and really useful users out there, posting both good and bad reviews. Bad reviews and criticism don't bother me. It means someone took the time to explain their displeasure, and by extension, how I might make a better product at the end of the day.

Anyway, I would like to thank every nice and intelligent user of Game On for their feedback. I promise to make this application even better so stay tuned. There is still so much more that this application can become.

We just published our second Android application called "Game On" at 8:20pm EST, Saturday, May 9th, 2009. The first download occurred an unbelievable 3 seconds later. So far, less than 24 hours have elapsed and we've hit the 1000 download milestone. Unfortunately, the Android Marketplace is severely lacking when it comes to user feedback tracking and associating application revisions and bug fixes with ratings. Sigh. Hopefully this blog will serve as a user community forum for feedback, suggestions, and of course feature requests.

Here is a short video explaining how Game On works and what you can do with it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHbJpoqL8Pk



Enjoy!