

Show HN: Balls – Game I’ve made while I was learning Swift - ivanpashenko
http://gameofballs.co/

======
jobvandervoort
Looks great. The name got me thinking about App discovery however.

I search for 'Balls' and got many hits, most irrelevant and uninteresting.

Then I searched for the exact title of your app and got about 13k hits. None
of the first 100 which was your app. I downloaded it through iTunes
eventually.

That makes me wonder: how do you promote (iOS) app discovery? There are plenty
of analytics startups for this, but is anyone trying to improve this process?

edit: Searched around for curated app websites / stores. There are some, but
lack in depth and quality. I'm starting my own.

~~~
keesj
Interesting to see so many people having problems finding the app. What's
wrong with clicking the 'App Store' button and downloading it from iTunes? You
can configure your iPhone to then automatically download it.

Serious question. I'm sure you all have some good reasons to not use iTunes
and wanting to download it from your phone. Curious to hear what those reasons
are.

~~~
cpwright
Why would I want iTunes on my computer? I installed it only after losing and
finding my phone to restore the phone; and it is annoying. It always pops up
music whenever I plug my phone into charge. It also did some nonsense Outlook
integration.

I never buy media through iTunes, I always use Amazon; so iTunes provides
little, if any value on an ongoing basis.

~~~
keesj
Ah yes, if you don't use iTunes for anything else it wouldn't make sense
installing it just for this.

------
ivanpashenko
I wrote a story about the process: [https://medium.com/@ivanpashenko/how-one-
designer-was-learni...](https://medium.com/@ivanpashenko/how-one-designer-was-
learning-swift-cc2d99658895)

~~~
tylermac1
This is totally unrelated but we have such similar handwriting that I could
convince myself I wrote your sketches at the beginning.

Love the game! Great job.

~~~
ivanpashenko
Haha, nice! :) Thanks!

------
shubhamjain
Stuff like this blows my mind - such simplicity and yet great elegance and
feel. Although, as a programmer you are always surrounded by stuff which you
feel is amazing and far beyond your capability but you still have an
impression that you can still do the same, given you put an equivalent amount
of work and passion.

However, designing something like this, seems like an innate ability of very
creative people. I find myself far away, imagining something alike and putting
it together.

------
dimillian
Technical question here, since it's not open source.

Do you use only UIKit components (like UIView with UIKitDynamics) or are you
using SpriteKit/Coco2D?

I'm impressed with the quality of your app/game, I'll be even more impressed
if you don't use any game related libraries.

~~~
ivanpashenko
I used SpriteKit.

------
muxxa
Well executed, original, emergent and possibly highly addictive!

I imagine you'd get the rotational equivalent of Tetris Syndrome after playing
this for too long!

The gravity mechanism is cool and the number of colors appears to be about
right.

Tweaks:

\- I reached a point where the circle was almost full and then I got a lucky
cascade whereby most of the circle was cleared. Unfortunately this must have
levelled-me-up as the difficulty (speed and frequency of ball entry) suddenly
increased and it was game over pretty soon. Maybe you could implement a limit
on the maximum rate of increase of difficulty, so that it eventually reaches
the same level of hardness, but at a slower rate.

\- I had no inkling of what the 'special' balls did, I imagine they cause
something of a cascade. Could you implement a 'slow-mo' effect when they
explode, whereby the action is paused and it can become clear what the hell is
going on. This would also give welcome breathing room as the action can be
quite unrelenting.

\- add a cascading popping, bubble wrap effect (sound + appearance) to the
balls for some additional addictiveness

~~~
ivanpashenko
Nice feedback, thanks a lot!

Special balls are bombs. When you burst set of balls with a bomb it explode
all balls of the same color on a stage. Slow-mo indeed could help with the
explanation. I'll think about it.

------
chrisBob
Balls has an interesting game play that I haven't seen before. The physics
work very well.

My only issue is that there is no option to remove the sound and haptic
feedback. I know a lot of people think the sound is an important part of a
game, but I probably won't play again until there is an option to turn that
off.

~~~
ivanpashenko
I will add turn off button in the next update. Thanks!

------
bliti
Very nice twist on the Bust a Move[0] gameplay. It reminds me of something
that the creator of flappy bird said about how he looks to develop games that
can be played with one hand while waiting. The name, though, is not very good.
Given that "Balls" is a generic word that is hard to search for and it can
also be interpreted as inappropriate.

[0][http://www.neo-geo.com/reviews/neo-reviews/bust-a-
move/bust-...](http://www.neo-geo.com/reviews/neo-reviews/bust-a-move/bust-a-
move1.html)

------
0942v8653
Also see [https://medium.com/@ivanpashenko/how-one-designer-was-
learni...](https://medium.com/@ivanpashenko/how-one-designer-was-learning-
swift-cc2d99658895)

How hard was it to learn Swift without much programming experience? I've had
more than a little trouble figuring it out, mainly due to the cryptic error
codes, but also because I just want to write Objective-C or use NSString or
type @{} when I should be using String and [:] and all that.

------
intruder
Very nice, congratulations on releasing it.

Is it open source?

~~~
ts95
Please say yes OP

~~~
kalms
Seconded! Would love a chance to peak behind the curtains on this one.

------
axx
Wow, great game! I can image this being a hit on the app store. Sometimes the
rotation feels a little awkward, but with a bit more polish this could be a
huge hit.

I also think, that it's getting too hard too fast. You should tweak the
"difficulty curve" a little bit :)

BUT, it's _really_ hard to find. I had to search for your company to have a
chance. (German App Store) Renaming it could be a wise decision.

~~~
ivanpashenko
Thanks!

When the rotation feels awkward?

I see the issue with a search in the App Store, but I have no clue why this is
happening. It shows the name in search suggestions, but when I'm clicking on
it, there is no my app in the results. Any idea why?

~~~
newtquestgames
Also check for blacklisted keywords : [http://blog.worddata.com/app-store-
optimization/discover-app...](http://blog.worddata.com/app-store-
optimization/discover-app-blacklisted-keywords/).

Worddata has lots of great articles about ASO. There are tools out there that
show you if your chosen keywords are highly competitive and should be replaced
with less popular keywords so you have a chance at showing in search results.

------
jhadi
Would you recommend any course/site/tutorials/resources etc. for learning
Swift?

P.S. Nice game!

~~~
Zaheer
[http://www.LearnSwift.tips](http://www.LearnSwift.tips)

Disclosure: My site

------
pimlottc
Looks neat but please don't forget about colorblind people. Adding additional
distinguishing features like textures, patterns, borders, etc will make the
colors easier to distiguish for all users.

tinyurl.com/colorassign

------
dimman
I'm seeing half the phone at the top of the page in Firefox 33.0.1 :/

~~~
ivanpashenko
Fixed! Thanks!

------
goshx
That's very nice! I am in the process of learning it as well. When the balls
"disappear", do you simply set them as alpha = 0 or actually remove them from
the view?

------
derptacos
Really interested in the resources used to learn Swift?

~~~
melling
I've collected a bunch of Swift resources on my site that might be useful if
you're trying to learn.

[http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html](http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html)

I think this is probably the best place to start.

[http://www.raywenderlich.com](http://www.raywenderlich.com)

~~~
pmcpinto
Thanks a lot for this sources

------
billyhoffman
Nice visual demonstration on the website. I'm going to guess gameofballs.com
was already registered, and that it is not an iOS game...

------
niix
Pretty fun, any chance of open sourcing it? Might be a good way for early
Swift devs to get a foray into game development.

------
afoot
Very nice - had the same issues finding the app but it's the second result
under 'Filedrop Ltd'.

------
jnardiello
You should definitely price it at 0,99

~~~
ivanpashenko
I think I will do it at some point :)

~~~
leviathan
If you want to, you should do it yesterday. Download rates are not the same as
when you release, and you need to capitalise on that.

------
ergl
Any specific reason why it's iOS 8+ only? I wanted to try the performance on
older devices

~~~
AlexeyBrin
Because of Swift I suppose.

~~~
ergl
You can deploy Swift apps to iOS7 and Mavericks [1]

[1]:
[http://stackoverflow.com/q/24001778](http://stackoverflow.com/q/24001778)

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Pinn2
Are there any ads? It is unusual for a game to be on the App Store without
monetization.

------
artursapek
Really great presentation.

