Why would pirates steal a free app?

The refresh of Bakers Game Solitaire was released Monday evening.  By the very next day, Chinese hackers tore into the code, hacked it, and posted it on their site.  No - I'm not linking to it.  It's easy enough to find, if you want to pay the hackers $1 for my app.

The pirates' web site is, at least, amusing:

• "You may only download this app for evaluation purposes" - because you certainly wouldn't want to evaluate the free and legal version
• They prominently display my name - free ads for me
• They provide a convenient link to my app on the Chinese iTunes App Store - more free ads!
• And, apparently, it's not only English where they have spelling problems - h4x0rs sux!

My app download numbers are up, too.  Part of this may simply be the refresh and some chatter, but I think I also have to credit the pirates.  I don't read and write Mandarin, so their conversion of my English into Chinese is most welcome.  The pirates are building a buzz around my app that I would ordinarily have to pay decent coin for.  Hey, this app is worth stealing!  Even though it's free with zero distribution costs - it's still worth stealing!  The hackers are even paying for disk and bandwidth!  Whoo-hoo!

Now I'll freely admit I placed no anti-hacking / anti-piracy code in my app.  So cracking Bakers Game is a task easily done by the greenest of code monkeys.  But consider this - the time they wasted on my app is time they didn't spend cracking any other app.  Without any anti-hacking code, there's nothing there for the hackers to learn from.  It was nothing but a giant time suck.

At the end of the day I have more downloads, an amusing blog post, and I've delayed the pirates' hacking of other apps and content.  God I love winning!

Keep coding!

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

It was 11:00 PM on 8 April that the refreshed Bakers Game went to Apple for review.

It is still awaiting that review.

Fortunately I've managed to keep busy.  I've identified a couple of ideas for new projects and selected one. I've pulled down the data necessary for it.  I've got some code written, and the code has spawned newer ideas.  One mega-project has now suddenly morphed into two mega-projects.

And still I find myself refreshing the "Waiting for Review" page.

It's not like this is my first rodeo.  I had one app take two weeks from submission to publication.  I've witnessed apps from other developers taking months.  One week is nothing.  It's a feeble drop in the bucket, especially when you see hundreds of apps going live every day on the App Store.  You just know your ticket number probably resembles this year's deficit figure.

BRB ... nope, still "Waiting for Review".

I've a ton of work to be done on my advertising campaign for Bakers Game.  I've got copy to write, I've got reviews to solicit, I've got to select my targets, and I've got to finalize my budget.  If Apple suddenly approved my app today I would be woefully unprepared.  It's not a bad thing they've taken this long; I've been very bad about getting my stuff together!

There just aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done.

But there sure would be more if I wasn't "Waiting For Review".

Monkeying about with Amazon EC2

There are a lot of new boards required for the Bakers Game refresh. And I do mean A LOT. We're jumping from about 5,500 easy boards to 12,000. And we're more than tripling the number of standard boards - and it's the standard boards which take FOREVER to compute.

So I needed processor power - gobs of it.

And thus Amazon steps in. Amazon rents out processors by the hour, and for cheap! For 17 cents an hour I can run two solvers on Amazon's hardware, so although their hardware isn't as fast as mine, they have much more of it. And solving winnable boards is practically Parallel Programming 101 ...

I've been running the solvers now on Amazon's hardware for about 72 hours. And in that time I've managed to generate more than enough easy boards and am nearly complete with the standard boards. And for just a little over $22 - which includes my experimentations, too.

With any luck I'll be able to wrap everything up and post for Apple's review team this weekend! Follow me on Twitter (@lgehrig1) and you'll see exactly when.

Keep coding!

The Bakers Game Refresh

It is time to update you with a few of the changes you're going to see in the refresh of Bakers Game:

1. Game state will be saved

If you exit the game the current state will be saved. I hadn't quite figured out the NSKeyedArchive bit on the first go, but it turns out that it's really quite simple. You'll be able to keep playing your game even if interrupted by a phone call. By far, this was the #1 most requested change.

2. Vastly improved UI

It was impossible to tell which card you'd hit in version 1.0. This wasn't a major flaw, but all the other card games highlighted or "glowed" the card that had been hit (or the stack that had been hit). I went a different route; having no initial success on the "glowy" graphic front, I threw in some placeholder animation that simply expanded and contracted the card's graphics. And this looked WAY cooler than any glowy-based graphic, especially when an entire stack is selected! You'll be pleasantly surprised at the end result.

I've also animated the card transitions so you can watch them flow from the tableau to foundation, etc. It's much better than the current "freeze-tag" interface.

3. Now a Universal app - play on the iPad in native resolution

I wasn't thrilled with the way the game looked in the iPhone emulation mode so I've rebuilt the app to support both the iPad and iPhone. It will even support orientation changes for the iPad.

4. More guaranteed winnable boards!

The game will still be free, but there will be 2,500 standard boards available, and 8,000 easy boards - all of which can be won.

5. Did I mention more boards?

For a mere tier 1 price (that's 99 cents for North America) you can expand the number of winnable boards to 5,000 standard and 12,000 easy. Plus, with your purchase, comes ...

6. Cheat mode - never lose again!

Only available with the boards package purchase - draw a big "C" on the screen with your finger and a card will be moved from the tableau to the foundation. Unlike most other Solitaire games, I don't track the cheats. It's a computer game - if it's not fun then people won't play. If you back yourself into a corner it's entirely your choice of retracing your steps or moving a wall, right? It's Solitaire! Who's going to care?

7. That other cheat thing - yeah, that's disabled

The move counts will not stray into negative territory. Sorry. THAT was a bug.

The new application should be heading to the Apple reviewers sometime next week; the code is done but I'm still constructing the winnable boards. I will be using the Amazon EC2 services cloud computing resources to blow through the rest of the searches - for less than $20/hr I can purchase resources equal to my home computer running for a day. I'll definitely be blogging my adventures there!

Keep coding!