

Tetra for iOS - my new Letterpress-inspired board game app - jazzychad
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tetra-board-game/id648252454?ls=1&mt=8

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blackdogswe
I'd say it's more that inspired by...

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jazzychad
s'ok - I showed Loren before it launched, and he was cool with it :)

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camflan
for the sake of your own brand, I'd iterate that design so it doesn't look
like a carbon copy. Either people will assume you ripped him off, or that it's
another of his games, not yours.

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chasing
I agree. Especially since you've copied another existing game (Quarto). Which
is fine, I guess, but at the moment you've copied someone else's game and
copied someone else's style... Your unique idea is bringing these two elements
together, which is good, but in the future I might suggest copying Loren on a
deeper level: Create both your own interesting presentation style _and_ a
clever new game mechanic to go along with it.

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spne
How is this game different from Quarto [1]?

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarto_(board_game)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarto_\(board_game\))

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jazzychad
It's not :) It is an app version of the same game. You're the first person who
has made that connection in months of beta testing and showing people the app.
I'm sure other people will recognize it as well, but I don't think it's as
recognizable as was, say, Words With Friends was an app version of Scrabble.

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spne
Quarto is a great game, and I think it's well suited for an app like this
where you can take your time thinking about your turn. However, it would be
nice to give the game designer some credit.

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jazzychad
That's true. I'll add some credit to the app and website on the next rev.

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pbiggar
Cool game, nicely done!

It wasn't that clear to me that I could play more than one game at a time
though, might want to make it clearer. It's been a while since I played
letterpress, but I recall I had dozens of games going at once there.

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chubot
Wish it didn't require iOS 6. I don't upgrade my iPad after previous updates
made it slow.

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umsm
Usually, apple tries to improve firmware speed after they add features. I
found that staying updated is the best policy.

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nnnnni
Unless you're trying to run iOS 7 on the iPhone 4 or iOS 6 (or was it 5?) on
the 3G.

There are definitely times where it DOES NOT END WELL even though the device
technically supports the upgrade.

A better policy is to wait for reports and then upgrade after a few weeks if
they're positive.

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coolnow
It was the iOS 4 update that practically killed my 3G. Everything became too
slow to bear. If it wasn't for the great work of the jailbreakers, i wouldn't
have been able to get back to iOS 3.

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simonista
Does this app share any code with Letterpress or did you re-create the UI
elements/interactions?

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jazzychad
No code was shared. I wrote my own UIKit layer to accomplish the UI (whereas
Loren used a 100% OpenGL implementation for Letterpress).

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CodeWithCoffee
I think that is probably a sensible way of doing it - it did seem a bit
extreme that Letterpress is pure OpenGL. How much do you rely on
QuartzCore/Core Animation rather than regular UIKit animation?

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nicholassmith
I think in an interview Loren said he wrote it in OpenGL for his own fun.
Haven't we all done that? It's extreme, but it's very good at providing a lot
of rich control, but with iOS7 a lot of fancy tricks he did will be pretty
simple so I'd imagine that it was a one off.

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CodeWithCoffee
I must admit I have done that, however I never really extended it very far. I
think I was just trying to animate really complex bar charts really quickly.

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joeblau
Game looks awesome. I'm glad to see that you got everything put together and
out there :).

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mdznr
A little too "inspired"

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nonchalance
What do you get with the $1.99 upgrade ?

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jazzychad
You can play more concurrent games and change themes (color schemes) in the
app. The free version lets you have 2 concurrent games and use the basic
theme.

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sarreph
I wonder where that idea came from...

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samelawrence
Nice work, chad!

