We got a message from Apple today letting us know that In App Purchases are now available for free iPhone apps. That means it’s no longer necessary to create a “lite” version of a game — a developer can create an app, make it available for free, and then let people buy an upgrade to the full app, all from within the game.
We’re still nervous about the lure of nickel-and-dimery with in-app purchases, but if used properly the potential is huge to offer compelling add-ons for players and help drowning developers stay afloat.
Mobile Crunch posted an excerpt of the message, if you’re interested in Apple’s exact words.
Unity Technologies announced earlier this summer an effort to boost the top-notch resources available to Unity users and, of course, showcase the capabilities of the Unity game engine.
The first project to be completed and made available is Detonator, created by Ben Throop. It’s a set of assets and tools to help developers very quickly create incredible explosion effects. The result, I have to say, is incredible. Great particle effects here and enough flexibility to quickly make explosions that express your own unique personality. It’s even fully documented.
Check out this video for a little demonstration:
For even more info and a sample scene to play around in, read the announcement post on the Unity Technologies blog.
Unity Technologies surprised everyone today by skipping version 1.1 of Unity iPhone and going right to 1.5. I don’t know why they did it that way, but 1.5 is big enough that I don’t think I really care.
Unity iPhone 1.5 boasts huge performance improvements, better documentation, and, perhaps most important, provides “full support for native Objective C and C++ code,” which “opens full access to the iPhone 3.x APIs and custom plugins.” This is a big deal because, as powerful as Unity iPhone 1.0.3 was, it had some serious limitations when it came to interacting with some iPhone features.
There’s a lot to digest about the new release, but the performance improvements alone should be a welcome enhancement. We may even be able to address one of the biggest complaints about Cornhole Pro: that real cornhole rules require the two teams to alternate throws and for all bags to be present on the playing field at once. All our attempts to implement those rules led to a ridiculously slow frame rate, but Unity iPhone 1.5 may have just the performance enhancements we need.
Cornhole Pro 1.5.1 is now available on the App Store. This release fixes a bug that required people to have iPhone OS 3.0 on their devices before they could play. Since Cornhole Pro doesn’t use any of the new features of OS 3.0, it would be kind of silly to require it. Now you can once again play Cornhole Pro on an iPhone or iPod touch with iPhone OS 2.2.1 or later. Enjoy!
After what seems like an eternity since releasing Cornhole Pro, version 1.5 is now available on the App Store! Cornhole Pro 1.5 includes all the great cornhole action you know and love, plus:
The ability to play against the computer in one-player mode. That’s right, now you don’t have to play a two-player game by yourself.
An improved interface for starting a new game.
One less bug – fixed a problem where a bag that got knocked into the hole by another bag was not counted correctly. Now you should get the right number of points for knocking a bag in the hole.
We hope you enjoy this little update, and as always, thanks for playing Cornhole Pro! If you haven’t played it yet, check it out.
