Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 10:12 AM
yo, just pulled down the build, it’s downloading now. from what i gather the next couple of days are going to be a hellride?

i think it might be useful to re-evaluate the audit as there are probably some more important things we could focus on than a lot of what’s in there. for instance, per the icon colors vibrating, i changed the secondary colors (bottom shading) to avoid that. also, i noticed that when i lost (maybe it was a quirk) that there didn’t seem to be an explosion or a core meltdown of some kind like i was expecting.

also, and maybe this is like the fifth time you’ve told me, but what about the options menu?

playing now, looking really great! love the button transition, the shadow change, everything!

i’d say priority from what i’ve seen (and most of these are probably “no duh greg”):

i saw you mentioned you added the juice effects but i’m having trouble picking them out
the freeze seems to be the old freeze effect
old icons replaced with new
options menu? (let me know what you want in it and i’ll mock it up)
switching those secondary block colors
replacing my orange arrows from the original glowey orange ones
an explodey/CHOMPCHOMPy transition when losing
word list spacing on game over/pause screen :)

let me know if there’s anything i can do to ease your workload on this stuff. i’m happy to do it and it seems like to hit our deadline it might be necessary.

Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 3:17 PM
ok, i gave it a go, but there’s not really any good ways to do rotation on the particles like i want. it’s still mostly there though. the shading is bunked though since i can’t remember how unity does alpha masking from .psds argh!

here’s dat screen too. are we just centering the iPhone retina sized stage and then expanding out from there? it seems like that’s how things are on the iPad, just want to double check. it might not exactly line up… let me know.

Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 9:57 PM
cool, i hear ya. you are the POTUS! btw, just played a huge co-op session with my gf and we killed it. badass. :) if you have stuff for me to sound off on or do, i am planning on getting up early tomorrow and doing whatever you’ve got. keep me posted.

Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 5:39 PM
I dig the caps how it is. cool :)

sry about missing the previous options bullet list. here’s the options how i see ‘er. also threw in a twitter button on the game over screen (showing score and such). the colors are a bit swapped too. the notification “are you sure” thing i figured could be just a simple overlay bg and the button. these are also in the ai on dbo.

Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 5:53 PM
cool, do you want an audit? i need to finalize all the icons as well but just wondering if an audit is useful at this point. happy to do it as the icons won’t take a ton of time anyhow just a couple hours (have to hand pixel them to get the best look).

Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 8:08 PM
ok, i’m goin’ in! i’m not gonna hold anything back, but i’ll bold and make text bigger for those that are most important.

INTRO
“Drag to Spell” and “Slam the block downwards” should be all caps (for all instances of that) and the same size as the type on the orange buttons.

MAIN MENU
The dots on the blocks between words seem to be less anti-aliased than the type. You could use bullets from the typeface itself (opt + 8 on mac).
The orange triangles are jaggy and don’t seem to be perfect 45degree angles, not anti-aliased/smooth looking.
The jiggle animation when a word makes the cubes jaggy, another AA problem.
The glow when you fully spell a word (in game as well), I dunno. It’s probably too late but see my mockup.

CORE MODE SELECTOR MENU
The orange arrow should be thicker, i cheated a bit and put like a 5px rounded outline on it in the .ai
The way the diagonal lines are rendered should be a bit different ideally. instead of a masked texture, they are sort of on a grid in the .ai and terminate on their own. pretty picky.
Even more picky, but if it’s more of a systemic thing that can be fixed across the board… the text rendering on the “MODE SELECTOR” letters seems a bit fuzzy compared to the smaller type in the same menu. I’m guessing this is just the deal we make with the Unity devil, but if possible, then yea.
That said, the small text “choose wisely” and the hint, are too crisp, while the text on teh orange buttons is goldilocks good. is it down and upsampling that core type size and that’s why there’s such a difference there with the font rendering?
The text on all the orange buttons should probably be nudged down by about 2 pixels.
The hint text line should probably be moved up a couple pixels.

OBJECTIVES MENU
The checkmark and X icons seem to be stretched wide by about 150%. see attached
The block behind the back arrow seems to be too far right by about 3 pixels, maybe 5.
Some descriptions of the objectives are not fully capitalized. Two line descriptions should the same size as the hint text to allow for the text to breathe more.

OBJECTIVES MENU AVOIDED
The banned banner is cool, but it’s jaggy as all get out on the edges.

POWERUP MENU
The depressed powerups (unlocked but unused) should be the lighter black (top coat) as opposed to the darker black that it turns into now.
The shadows on all the equipped powerups except the left-most powerup need to connect to the left edge of the cube.
I think the color of the three powerups that you’ve equipped should be the blue/cyan color. keep the yellow for “EMPTY” like you have it now.
Arrow looks good, slight hay pixel on the right edge of where the stem of the arrow meets the line.
Seems to be a slight line of hay pixels on the left edge of the dark part of the orange button. doesn’t exist in the other menus (on average).
The thickness of the white outline varies when selecting different equipped powerups. The drill has a rounded top left corner while the freeze outline corners are all perfectly square. Also, all four sides of the outline are not the same thickness.

ZEN MODE MENU
Same light colored hay pixel problem with the orange button as in the powerup menu (i think it’s the powerup menu).

LEADERBOARDS
Same light colored hay pixel problem with the orange button as in the zen menu.
The rounded corners on the tabs are pretty squished and aliased.
The 45degree lines in the header are squished and should be consistent with the rest of the menu headers.

GAME
If the only thing in the bottom left is the score, it should be moved over to the right by about 5-10 pixels to make the spacing even.
The multiplier finish text is really pixelated and over-expanded.
The black outlines on the 2x and smaller things seems to be misaligned or not covering everything, they also don’t seem to be completely round.

PAUSE MENU
The orange button is a little under-wide. The bottom right corner should reach the right most grid dot’s center.
Under “score breakdown” the Sweetest Word should be more vertically spaced.
The hint line should be moved down 3-5 pixels to vertically center.
Tap for further explanation on the objectives doesn’t work, which is fine, they are pretty clear, so just take out that text or replace it with something more flavory perhaps.
The “RAGE QUIT” text should probably be moved down 2 pixels or so and the whole “RAGE QUIT X” object should be moved down around 5 pixels.
Use the magenta text color for long words instead of the cyan (hard to read).

GAME OVER MENU
The hint text line should be moved down about 5 pixels.
Twitter button looks good actually. let’s go with it if you want. just make it square, it seems like it’s a little thin and should fill out to the middle of that bottom left grid dot. 60px wide i believe.
Use the magenta text color for long words instead of the cyan (hard to read).
The “MAIN MENU” text should probably be moved down 2 pixels or so and the whole “MAIN MENU X” object should be moved down around 5 pixels.

—BUG REPORTS–
When I go to the objectives menu (core mode) then back to the powerup menu, the objectives menu is superimposed over the powerups menu, sammiched on top of the other. i’ll email a screenshot from my iPad.

I get hard crashes of the game quite often when quitting from a core game to the main menu.

Got a less typical crash on just going to play a euro game (after much switching between menus, going back to main menu, looking at it and so on, then playing).

ok! i think that’s pretty much what i’ve got now. it was about 2 hours of intense examination/scrutinization. know that i was as detailed as I could be, pulling no punches and given the deadline and the dozens of fish that are much larger that are in desperate need of frying, do whatcha gotta do.

Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 8:39 PM
Also, I just played in the iPhone (was using the iPad before) and it’s a heck of a lot less noticeable (just about everything) on the retina, things look great there. I think that perhaps some of the type rendering issues I brought up were due to maybe iPhone assets -> iPad? or something…

Though, that shouldn’t change the audit itself, I did play with the PIP (obv, on the iPhone) and it looks good. also, in general, the iPhone4 makes this thing sing. The performance on my iPad isn’t nearly as crisp, though I wasn’t really noticing it before, just playing it on the iPhone4 makes me realize the difference. Annnnyway… since the only difference really is the res and the PIP feature…

PIP Audit:
Change the purple block to the same orange we use for the arrows/buttons.
The right side of the window’s black stroke needs an extra row of pixels. it’s too thin.

okey doke.

just totally almost spelled delicatessen. serious. i’ve been playing where i try to engineer letters by making them fall and so on. pretty cool, just discovered that strategy, sure it’s old news to the old masters, but yea. :)

Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 9:09 PM
cool! I love me some AA. I think it’s passable on the iPhone but would definitely be a big help on the iPad. :) i will get you those icons as soon as i can. and i can take some screenshots (both iphone and ipad) and pack those together since i’m pretty sure that needs to be uploaded along with the app itself (at least that’s how it was with solipskier). i’ll try to give you a bunch so you have options.

Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 9:13 PM
i’m on it! :)

Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 11:31 PM
alright, whadya think of this setup? i can put these in a psd and you can edit the text as you see fit. probably just use the same screenshots taken from the iPhone and set them on a different res with that kind of background flavor. also, all the icon sizes (not sure of all the filenames being correct) are in the dbox in the Icons folder.

Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 11:45 PM
i think that’ll about do it. i’m sure something else will come up, it always does, just let me know! :)

Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 12:16 AM
alright! weeeee, all the screenshots are in .pngs (also the somewhat organized .psd is in there too so you can edit the text) in the dbox. here’s a sampling of the 5 iphone ones, attached. i’m gonna decompress for a bit, have been on defcon 5 for the night (as i’m sure you’re on like 7 atm, but if ya need me, @reply me on twitter and i’ll get chimed at).

later gator,

Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 8:23 PM
What da status?

Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 11:45 PM
I’m setting up a mindmeld with the clouds in hopes of reaching The One True iCloud for a parlay. He owes me.

Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 12:17 AM
Don’t read this until you’re fully submitted and all that, not something to think about until shit is in the mail.

So… promo stuff:

I just played about a 20 minute game to 70 million with Amy. Shit it was fun, we finally delegated tasks perfectly and ended up getting 1000+x multi twice. The letter nuke/nado helped a ton, of course, but I was thinking a video of us playing would possibly get people interested. It wouldn’t be a trailer, just a “let’s play” to sort of help people _get_ the game as far as co-op is concerned.

In the trailer, I think it would really really good to show off co-op. I think it’s a badass way to play and it has its quirks like having a rhythm with your partner and delegation but people might not consider it? It’s times like this where I wish I had a 5d mark II and could shoot nice HD video of people playing, instead of doing the whole “show the screen with the finger”.

I have some other ideas: You do a super-quick-talking 50s trailer cutting and showing the game off while playing it. Maybe it’s just straight screen-cap of the game itself and cutting it up into exciting bits.

Also, press. I’ve got a few contacts and could drop them a line with the fresh build if we can get them UDIDs, but I think we should have the site with the trailer ready at that time so we can give them something to chew out the gate.

My personal site, I’ve got a feature graphic set up to go. I was thinking of putting it up now, talking about the game and how it’s gonna drop on the 26th, stoking the fires a bit. I wanna get clearance about when that’d be cool with you.

Basically, I think the trailer is kind of the missing piece in the marketing push and I feel like we should try to get started as soon as possible. I can work with you on it or I could even completely cut it, but you know your game and how you want to sell it. I really need to get to ridiculous fishing work tomorrow but I think i can pull off a trailer with a solid day’s work at some point in the week. That all said, the public hasn’t even seen screenshots at this point, so maybe releasing a few of those along with twitter scores would be enough reason to post something and hopefully get people excited. I think people that play the game, that are of a slightly higher gamer IQ are really gonna dig this and be the evangelists. A twitter search for PJ doesn’t reap a lot but, it does seem like with more exposure we could get more responses like this (aside from our tweets): https://twitter.com/#!/search/puzzlejuice

So I’m sure you’ve been thinking about this for months and it’s all in your head, but really just wanted you to know I’m thinking about it too and will help however I can. Let me know, cap’n. :)

Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 8:44 PM
RE: 12 slots: one thing we could do (which is something we did with Hundreds since adam/eric ran out of their 100 slots) is put you as an admin on my aeiowu dev account and you could forget about the stress of wondering if adding a device is worth it or not. let me know if this is something you’re into. if not, the last dozen are completely up to you, they should definitely go to press, though a couple key devs that could get different parts of the community excited would be pretty important as well. for solipskier, we emailed and contacted dozens of journos but none got back to us until we released and saw the crazy amount of tweets about solipskier.

apple’s 100 limit is one of the dumbest things amongst a sea of questionable rules. by no means should we have to feel like we can’t test with more people. that feeling will only hurt us and the quality of our app.

if we can get that separate ad hoc with whatever UDIDs we want, we can go out and contact reviewers and so on.

RE: trailer. I’m probably going to take a stab at it.

RE: let’s play. Gonna do it thursday.

RE: post/feature-on-my-site. cool!

RE: everything else. get some rest, you deserve a few days in some decompression chamber in japan with high oxygen levels, sushi and a limitless supply of strawberry gushers. hopefully by the end of the week things are a little more normalized and we can reload and fire away.

:)

Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 1:16 AM
Ok great! invitation sent, just know that “darrel johnson”, actually eric from semisecret, is also doing a simliar thing and taking up like 20 slots or so, but that’s all through for now anyway. I’m just throwing the warning out because i have no idea how any of this magic works and don’t want that to screw with whatever foo you have to pull. let me know if there’s anything else or whatever arises with the dev account. :) also, as far as i know, eric didn’t use my account for any testflight stuff, so hopefully that also makes things easier (in case it’s not app specific or something…).

Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 4:01 PM
ok, i sent that over to him with an explanation, i’ll let you know ASAP with what’s going on.

Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 4:38 PM
[truncated the email]

ok, so i followed eric’s directions, and added a developerProfile file to the dropbox (aeiowuProfile)

the password is “juicethepuzzle”

i thiiiiink that’s going to work for us? i just always feel like this xCode shit is some kind of sorcery. mikengreg stuff is in there as well for some reason so make sure not to active the mikengreg profile stuff? i think?

Her life is in your hands dude,
Brandt

Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 5:21 PM
thanks dude! :) gonna go celebrate a bit riiiight now.

Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 4:14 AM
colaboratory, right?

Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 2:35 PM
haha :) glad that got a laugh, she’ll be

ok, cool! here’s a shot of the materials. these are in a folder in dbox, along with a zip by the same title.

you’ll notice the feature image has changed composition wise. with the revised proportions 820×300 the title was really getting lost and the whole thing felt very busy and cramped. this orientation is still fun and interesting but also has a clear visual hierarchy with the title anchoring the image.

take a quick peek at the .psds and let me know if the smart objects are showing up (layers above the Rasterized folder) as i’m just a bit neurotic and want to make sure they’ll have both vector/raster options for any resizing they may want to do.

Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 2:47 PM
also, trailer wise. the problem/sticking point is the footage… the simulator isn’t going to do it justice and screencapping while that hog is churning makes matters worse.

res should be 350×520 to fit perfectly into the site’s box: aeiowu.com/puzzlejuice

i don’t think i can swing getting footage of the game, i could probably swing cutting the trailer, given the right length song but i just want to be up front with you sooner rather than later… the IGF nomination was unexpected and i’ve had to do a bunch more work than i was intending to do this week for emergency websites/announcements and etc. etc. which has set back progress on RF.

Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 3:42 PM
cool! :)

no worries, this stuff happens and all that, i just don’t want to over promise and put us in a situation where we surface without a trailer.

a) I used to use this: http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/ but now i use this: http://screenyapp.com/ (because it’s cheaper and the UI is much less in your face/antiquated. though snapz pro records really really smooth almost lossless video and audio.
b) I’d say the trailer should be no longer than 1 minute, no less than 30 seconds. i know that seems really short but a 2 minute trailer is almost annoyingly long. i firmly believe a trailer should first make someone curious and hopefully hungry for more, as opposed to well informed. they’ll get well informed when they buy the game and tell their friends and so on. If jimmy puts together sort of a score for the trailer with a nice beginning, driving middle, and a cool, dramatic ending, between 30-60s then i can just use the track as a template for cutting it, and it’ll be a lot easier for me.

Sat, Jan 14, 2012 at 12:53 PM
yea, i mean, i would say go with [app store representative]. like, no matter what if it gives us a better chance of being featured. being featured, in my experience, is nearly everything in terms of sales. the rest will follow.

my two cents,

Sat, Jan 14, 2012 at 1:00 PM
haha, that’s pretty great. we need to add those terrible puns to the hundreds site as reviews. :)

again with the rescheduled release, i’m guessing they have something set up for the thursday we’re releasing and it’s less likely they can fit us in but more (and maybe much more?) likely that releasing this thursday will net us a feature. ok now that’s four cents, but yea, certainly talking about it with him is a good move, regardless, let me know ASAP when you have the footage so i can cut it and get this trailer out. also, i should probably contact press very very soon? i’m going to get that ball rolling today, hopefully we get some response.

Sun, Jan 15, 2012 at 1:20 PM
alright, i’m announcing it everywhere!

Sun, Jan 15, 2012 at 1:35 PM
badass. way easier and i think journos are more used to it. i’m hoping by tonight sometime, or early tomorrow, i can have this co-op video shot and cut and scored. then we’ll get the trailer out monday night/tuesday morning.

Sun, Jan 15, 2012 at 1:36 PM
yea, throw me some promo codes, just got a journo who wants one. a chunk of 5 would probably be a good idea so i don’t have to keep bugging you.

Sun, Jan 15, 2012 at 2:19 PM
awesome, just used the first one. CCed you on the email. :)

Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 2:10 AM
heyo, should i put the website together on puzzlejuicegame.com? i’m not sure how appengine works, but that zip should just unpack as a wwebsite. we do need new screenshots, just replace them with the ones we submitted to the app store.

this “let’s play” session is 17 minutes long, but i did a timewarped version, gonna take half a day to render (not really an option) so i’m thinking about cutting one up really quick with some title cards in between to break up a bit of the monotony, hopefully we can show the 17m version but pass around the 2-3m cut session to give people a quick idea of co-op.

Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 4:16 AM
http://youtu.be/ezpFkdQUGEo

Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 11:09 AM
alright, so…. co-op play session-wise we’ve got:

sped-up version on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezpFkdQUGEo
full version on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze-ONzrmO2o&feature=youtu.be
and sped-up version on vimeo: http://vimeo.com/35128282
which i embedded on the test site: http://aeiowu.com/puzzlejuice/

looks like it’s all gonna work out with putting the trailer there, but i figure since bandwidth can sometimes be an issue with vimeo, if you want to upload the final trailer (hopefully done by tonight) to a pro account (probably should get one so we can have more bandwidth), then we’ll be good to go. I wish there was a better way to do this than use vimeo, as they tend to be pretty hateful towards game videos, which is why i was really non-descript with uploading this playthrough.

we’ll iron all that out later, but just let me know when i can tweet ’bout these vidyas.

Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 12:42 PM
no problem, i can change the footer to that. to me, the site looks good. i’m in chrome, might be a browser issue? just tried it in firefox as well, seems to be good… hmmm

Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 12:44 PM
i just uploaded the latest version (added good screenshots, a slight change to the style sheet and the vimeo embed). i’m working on the footer thing now…

Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 12:52 PM
ok, cool! :) so replace these files and put the .png in the images folder and we’re good to gooooooo

Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 12:57 PM
no, actually, use this index.php (missed a leading bracket in the title tag)

Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 1:25 PM
ok, wow. too many versions. i just uploaded puzzlejuice3.zip into dbox. that’s my last and final testament. the bgFooter.png was out of date or something. honestly, i don’t know what went where at this point, but that zip should have all the fixes. ok, on to the trailer! definitely let me know ASAP when jimmy has the tunes, it’s really important since that’ll be most of the work (timing it to the track).

Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 5:05 PM
i’ve got all the footage setup, any word from jimmy? i’ve got a like a three hour window left to work on it today…

Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 8:18 PM
i think rami is going to hook us up with someone at touch arcade, so we’ll probably need some more promo codes (i used all 5 already)

Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 1:14 AM
alright cool! glad to get it, i think i can have it cut by the time i go to sleep. :)

just listened, fuck yea. this is great. :) :) :)

oh yea, and unannounced, andy wrote this glowy glowing glow review up: http://www.andymoore.ca/2012/01/puzzlejuice-review/ will tweet about it tomorrow when more people are awake.

Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 2:37 PM
ok welp, i’ve got a pretty good first draft done. i had to export a .mov because h.264 is not cooperating music-timing wise. i think you can upload a .mov to vimeo, but i’m going to keep trying. since it’s 400MB, i’m uploading it to my webspace (i’m at a perpetual 95% on dbox, gmail too). I went ahead and put the .mp4 in the dbox, it might work out and quicktime player just hates .mp4 format, i don’t know. since it’s only 14MB, it’s worth a shot.

meanwhile, the lossless trailer will be at http://aeiowu.com/puzzlejuice/files/trailer.zip

again, watching that 14MB thing in quicktime won’t hammer home the timing, which a lot of the trailers coolness sort of rests on. but you can get the gist hopefully.

hey! the zip is only 160MB, that’s good. should up uploading in 5-10 minutes from the time this email is sent.

Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 3:05 PM
sweet! any changes at all, be super critical on the text and whatever else you want to add/take away. the closing card is simple, we could add more info like puzzlejuicegame.com and whatever. just let me know, now’s not the time to pull punches/ideas. :)

no, don’t upload it, i want to give it another pass on a full stomach. but the lossless version has the perfect timing. i’m actually uploading that version to my Mikengreg vimeo account just to get an idea of how it’ll look embedded. once that’s in, then i’ll know enough to produce a final version. That won’t be done for another 30 minutes (due to vimeo’s “wait in the digital, non-existent line…”)

Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 4:17 PM
sweet! done and done. plus i made some improvements to the text, colored it up a bit.

i put it up here: [REDACTED] i think it’s good to go. though… vimeo is sucking and is telling me “We are experiencing technical difficulties at the moment and have temporarily turned off uploading and converting while we explore the issues. We are very sorry for the inconvenience and will keep you updated.”

so i can’t fully confirm how it’ll look like on the site and so on just yet, but i’m pretty sure it’s gonna be good. :)

yay!

Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 5:19 PM
also, can i get 5 more promos? i have a couple journos on the line.

Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 5:37 PM
ok, it finally uploaded (the first draft) http://aeiowu.com/puzzlejuice/

the audio timing is not perfect like i want it to be. probably something with the compression. whatever, it’s better than what i had outputted earlier from AE and i’m probably the one of very few that would notice.

ps. also, forgot to ask, how did the meeting with [app store representative] go? i hear [app store representative]s are good people.

Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 9:08 PM
haha. rock! i’ll send these out with you CCed. i’ll try and tap into the [app store representative] Overmind and reach his subconscious that way.

the site is working for me, and i’m passing around to trusted cohorts around the aeiowu global alliance, it seems to work so far…

also, people are scaring me by saying “whoa, $2.99, pricey”. o_O oh well. but really, i wanted to say before you release that link change the button to “coming on 1/19″ or something so people don’t get confused when the link goes nowhere, then change on release day, obv.

and let me know when you get dat trailer up, b. :)

Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 9:33 PM
aw shit, sorry man. :( that’s never fun.

ah interesting. i’m down with your strategy, we just never talked about anything like that so i wasn’t sure of your reasoning. sounds sound to me!

Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 9:40 PM
gah, i’m getting the old google deadzone on puzzlejuicegame.com…

hmmm, do you have a way to edit your DNS Zone File? Lowering the TTL value should help take that 48hour window to something like 15 minutes, at least in my experience.

Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 9:41 PM
it sends me to a strange url, maybe you’re doing dev on it though, so just ignore this if so: https://sites.google.com/a/puzzlejuicegame.com/sites/system/app/pages/meta/domainWelcome

ok, i’m sure you have enough to worry about, i’ll get outta your hair

Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 2:48 AM
site works great for me now! perhaps the planets have aligned and everything actually WILL fall into place? :)

portfolio is cool too! i’m honored. press release is really good too, one of the less annoying i’ve read. good good good

Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 6:18 PM
sweet! check: http://www.joystiq.com/

boom!

my number is [REDACTED] so text me if you need me. in case there is stuff. i’ll be on call for launch or anything we need. minutes can matter a ton once this guy goes live, and etc.

two things: do you wanna put analytics up on the site? might be fun to track stuff? also, the real-time shit on google analytics is… addictive and amazing. like crack on launch day.

also, would you mind if i tracked the app with my AppViz? I’d need your user/pass for your apple developer account and i can tap in that way. i totally understand if you’re not comfortable, but if you are, i’d love to watch the numbers come in on my end as well. obviously i would never ever use it for anything else but viewing the stats in a 3rd party app. ps. AppViz is probably the best way to keep tabs on your numbers…

ok, i think that covers all concerns so far. happy launch eve. revel in the stressful excitement that is your potential financial security! ;)

Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 7:07 PM
yep yep, got it!, everything’s good.

HIGH FIVE!

Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 11:52 PM
i think the app is live now in the EST (10 minutes early), so you can switch out the buy links for this: http://itunes.apple.com/app/puzzlejuice/id457273926?mt=8

Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 12:06 PM
it’s relatively quiet press-wise and etc. and already #134 in Games on iPhone: http://appshopper.com/bestsellers/games/paid/?device=iphone!!!

GREGREGREGREGREGREG
featured!

congrats dude! mufuckin’ congratulations!

Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 4:33 PM
Ahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

pretty heavily featured in the games section as well #2 billing as well as the left-most mid-size banner a bit down the page.

now to switch from incessantly refreshing the app store to incessantly refreshing appshopper.com

Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 4:44 PM
definitely!

Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 5:02 PM
so not complaining, but noticed something weird.

before the feature went up. like RIGHT before. we were at something like #126 in all apps, #65 in all games.

then we get featured

now we’re nowhere to be seen on top 200 in all apps and we’re #145 in all games.

now i was thinking, and that seems completely bass ackwards but perhaps at the end of a feature cycle things really slow down, but the really prominently featured stuff, right when it hits, all gets shoveled to the top and we got overtaken somehow? so while we were actually creating a really good amount of buzz pre-feature, it was sort of big fish in a little pond. then we got dumped into a big lake with a bunch of other big fish. hmmm, maybe?

i just checked appshopper (where i’m getting all the above figures) against itunes and i’m getting shockingly different numbers. though, itunes can be slow on the update compared to appshopper. anyway, in itunes it’s: #117 in apps, #69 in games.

maybe appshopper is shitting us.

ok, well this has been another edition of Greg’s Neurotic Sales Figure Fantasy Island. tune in next time.

Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 5:12 PM
whoa, you just dropped er to 99! dayum!!!!

ok, so on the site button it says 2.99 and it also says “tomorrow” up there in the description above it. just noticed that tomorrow thing like 10 minutes ago.

:) :) :)

Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 5:15 PM
fuck yea, i just held the SHIFT key like it was my infant daughter. booya! (gotta update mine now too!)

to the moon,

Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 5:19 PM
right after that tweet, we’ve got like 60 concurrent people on puzzlejuicegame.com

god i love these realtime analytics

Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 5:22 PM
dude says he can’t download it because it’s being modified?

https://twitter.com/#!/wesleyStuckey/status/160124573302534144

Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 5:30 PM
i’m a burnin’ up in heeeeere! haha

seriously. i want to fly to LA, jump from the emergency hatch, skydive into your window and before i land at terminal velocity, give you the largest high five in recorded history.

Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 5:57 PM
i logged into my mikengreg account and tried it, but to no avail.

Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 6:54 PM
keep ya head up, nothing we can do at this point other than be vigilant when it’s back up. we are still rising in teh charts bit by bit, so it seems like _some_ people are able to buy it at least. :)

Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 7:04 PM
also, i’m sorry about jumping the gun. :/ i should have cleared it with you first.

Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 7:12 PM
=D

Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 12:15 AM
i just scored near 2 billion with amy, but mostly because the multiplier broke. it’s probably why this score is possible: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=2100865&postcount=49

i have some other bugs and stuff with more detailed reports, but i don’t want to inundate you with stuff until you’re ready. i’m happy to investigate further and give you cases to reproduce them as well, but yea, just seeing what your general thoughts/plans are for a patch (if at all).

Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 12:31 AM
shit yes we’re #35 dude! #35 overall on all iPhone apps. iPad? #23!!!

we are gaining like 10 spots every hour or so.

Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 2:05 AM
sweet! ok, yes. and that’s what i wanted to hear. don’t have a heart-attack please. do what you want for sure, but i’d recommend maybe just taking a few days off to do whatever. there’s nothing else to do other than maybe answer an email or two but that can wait anyway. you deserve it. i know the anxiety you speak of. i had chest pain last night and the sweats. a first for me. but yea, i think you should feel good about everything, the game is a fucking smash dude! we are #32 overall, i think that’s higher than solipskier ever climbed. so yea. i think if we put out an update in the next couple of weeks that would be pretty speedy, so don’t feel like it needs to happen in a few days or anything.

big ups!

Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 12:32 PM
hmmm, i’m really going to leave that up to you, but we can avoid the lock-out if we set schedule the price 24hrs prior, right? i’d say maybe a price raise after a week? when we aren’t featured anymore?

personally, i dunno, i’m fine with 99c for awhile, i think it gets pj into as many hands as possible that way, which will spread through word-of-mouth that much more and give us a longer plateau. at least in my addled mind.

Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 2:44 PM
my friend raigan emailed and was wondering about a steam release and at first i was like pffffbt. that makes no… but then i was like wait, it’s unity. and then i said “oh damn, WASD/SpaceSlam for tetris and mouse/click for block popping and word spelling. that could work really well actually!

anyway, just another thought in the bucket.

Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 2:50 PM
nice! i think i might be able to recall my CS skills from long ago and command my puzzlejuice cockpit with great mastery.

ahhh, right. hmmm. steam? :P that’s my vote! because well, people pay money. if we do a downloadable we open up steam, then mac/pc on your own site, a possible humble-bundle inclusion. mac app store?

Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 6:03 PM
top score right now is 6.7 trillion. either it’s a jailbreaker script kiddie or they tapped into the invisible multi bug and played for 18hours straight.

Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 6:18 PM
oh that’s sweet! :) sure, i mean why not, free advertising. do you wanna try giving them the .ai file and if they aren’t comfortable i can make something to a specified size, but if it’s just as simple as us sending them this and they maneuvering it, that’d be sweet.

Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 6:20 PM
ps. not sure if it came across but i’m almost positive (though you’d probably know better) that that 6trillion score is some jailbroken bs. but maybe someone played it for that long? i’m not sure how exponential that multi can get. especially when it’s over 9000

Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 6:29 PM
badass.

you want my bug list? you probably know of all the bugs, but i thought i’d share (also, you got my fwd sms message from BMcC yea?)

Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 6:39 PM
this is more of a list than a proper report. but i’m just outlining them and if you have trouble tracking anything down, seriously, don’t ever hesitate to put me on the case to try and reproduce any of them. i like the challenge and if it offloads some of the stress on you, then it’s worth it ten times over.

1. Overlapping letters on certain blocks, appears to happen more often when certain power ups are firing and more often with powerup blocks themselves.
2. Overlapping menus when quickly switching between them very very quickly (while one spells out, you spell another), highly reproducible.
3. Complete freeze during game; block shadows remained on the board at first, then entropy continued and more shadows stayed, whole blocks froze in position and eventually the game stopped producing blocks. music continued.
4. Complete freeze during game; red blinking continues
5. Music hitching/stuttering on startup of game mode, highly reproducible, happens every time i think.
6. Powerups getting thrown off due to word spelling, seems to be consistent when spelling a 5 letter word where the powerup is within the blast zone.
7. Sometimes after a multiplier expires, a new one won’t be visible, but still counts up (evidenced by when i lose, the 437x comes up at the end). hard to reproduce (and exploit! ;) )
8. Twitter request token seems to be expired for some people I’ve talked to. (EDIT: this seems to be an issue with the user, not the game, or perhaps even Twitter).
9. Report on freeze/crash: Rotating a falling piece at the very bottom so it went to the -1st row (over the HUD) did it. The other major one involved a floating piece and unlimited time before the next drop, only returning to normal when I made some random movements. It wasn’t the Freeze power up, either, but almost certainly related.
10. Slammable block in rotation “step” of tutorial (blocks out and can’t continue). The player was in teh tutorial and was asked to rotate the block, but slammed it by accident instead, causing a total lock out and they needed to hard quit the game via the task manager.

Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 7:35 PM
whoa! never saw this before o_O this must be how the trillions people are gettin’ it. :)

https://twitter.com/#!/ryanmalm/status/160882200563286016/photo/1

Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 8:02 PM
options? hmmm… maybe it could be an option when you hit the tweet button. like next to “tweet” there could be a button that is “sign out”

Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 2:40 PM
i consider this to be one of the higher honors a game can ever get: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=23919.msg678600#msg678600

seriously, :)

Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 5:31 PM
yea no problem! comin’ up. do you want it in a sprite sheet?

Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 6:08 PM
ok, it’s in the dbox (not first draft, though that’s an option if you want to try it).

Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 7:59 PM
ok, i’ve been playing for awhile, haven’t run into any bugs, have been stress testing menus and everything as well. seems to be running smoothly! is there anything specific you want me to test other than just play play play?

Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 9:05 PM
ok just played a couple games on euro on the phone, feels a bit more sensitive? the diagonal word stuff seemed like i had less chance to screw up by going over to the next letter, but also more insensitive in so far as i had to go a bit deeper into the title. also, the slamming felt slight more insensitive, but the moving left and right felt more sensitive (hence my initial reaction). maybe the moving should be more sensitive? the block slamming is tough because for veteran players you just want to flick it, while newbies probably do that and then get scared because they didn’t mean to. not sure if that helped.

in bug news, i did come up with something. i played a euro mode (bombs,drill,freeze) and lost normally (i think i left some powerups on teh board, not sure really) and then went straight out to a zen mode and started with a frozen-looking and drill block hanging at the top. also had a 18x multi hanging there to start with. seems like the euro mode leaked into the zen a bit? i will try and recreate again and see if i can come up with something more concrete.

Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 3:17 AM
Ok, so this makes for the 365th email twixt us. seems like a good place to stop. I’ve started compiling the emails into a blog post, just got about a dozen in there so far, but I’ve made an account on aeiowu.com that you can use to see the article. you have to login at that address first with this info:

[REDACTED]

let me know what you think of that format, i’m just going to chip at it and we can sit on the post until we’re ready to publish. no rush or anything on my end, but i figure it might gives us a little boost of exposure. maybe not. either way people are sure to be bored by what might be largest wall of text ever published on a blog anywhere. ;)

ok! welp. we’ll just stop here as far as what we show people so there’s a clear cut-off. maybe we’ll do a part 2 later…