The gang at Playhaven just gave us the go-ahead to point our "Tips" button to the Snowferno game pages on playhaven.com.

Ben wrote previously about why we chose Playhaven to power our Support/Community features. He also wrote over on the escapeFactory blog how to open a UIWebView in Unity3D, which was essential to integrating Playhaven's model with Snowferno.

We're really excited about this partnership and the community features that Playhaven enables.

Here are some screenshots of what you'll find when you tap "Tips" from the Snowferno main menu... Enjoy!

(P.S: sorry I don't have a Lightbox plugin on the site yet -- it's added to my to-do list...)

The v1.1 update to Snowferno is now Ready For Sale!! Of course, if you already have it, just check your iTuneses or App Store "Updates" button for your free fresh copy.

In this update you will find:

• Better performance for all devices
• Built with new Unity iPhone 1.5
• New Global Leaderboard integration in-game with webview
• New tips from the Community powered by (the already-launched-but-soon-to-be-styled-for-in-game-coolness) playhaven.com
• Fixed a few terrain bugs where you could get stuck

Happy rolling!

We just submitted v1.1 of Snowferno to the App Store for approval last night.

This update was built with the new Unity iPhone 1.5 and the latest iPhone SDK, bringing significant performance improvements across all devices. Gameplay is really smooth now on my iPhone 3G.

Also new in v1.1:

• New Leaderboard integration in-game with UIWebView
• New Tips community in-game -- powered by playhaven.com
• Fixed a few terrain bugs where you could get stuck (thanks, Belly Lint!)

And any Unity devs that want to know how Ben got UIWebView working in Unity, check out his blog post Playhaven, Unity, and Snowferno complete with downloadable sample AppController code.

We are pleased to announce the debut of Snowferno on the App Store, available immediately!

Late this afternoon, our server registered a new user playing v1.0.2. Only Apple had that version -- not even Ben! -- so I knew this was a good sign. About 90 minutes later, we got the email:

Your application is now Ready for Sale. If your contracts...

Woohoo! There it is. We submitted this build late evening of August 24. Approval this time took 9 days (7 business days), so the process appears to have recovered from whatever caused that mid-August slowdown. Two bugs, three builds, and nearly 6 weeks of waiting -- it's like a whole new game to us again!

We're already working on some updates, including building from the newly released Unity iPhone 1.5. We hope you enjoy!

I added a one-stop Media Kit page to the site yesterday.

In anticipation of our pending App Store approval (and on the heels of our first review from No DPad), we wanted to be nice to the people who we hope will write nice things about Snowferno. It would be just mean to make them gather up all the bits themselves.

So, I put copies of all the good stuff on one page -- screenshots, MP3 excerpts from the game soundtrack, YouTube gameplay trailer URLs and most-common embed codes, our app icon, and even just the basics like our names and App Store link.

Going even further, everything found on the page can be had as a one-click .zip archive download.

Every page on snowferno.com has a link to the Media Kit on the footer navbar in the bottom-right corner.

Snowferno RC2(.5) became version 1.0.0 tonight. The binary is built and submitted. Some late in-house testing found teensy things that needed fixing, and the rest of the night Ben trained me how to build Xcode projects. :)

We also (finally) assembled our screen shots, which were picked out of video Ben captured in ScreenFlow, and we wrote up the iTunes sidebar text.

Oh, and that one big final detail: price! Snowferno will sell for $1.99.

While we wait for Apple approval, we want to give a big thanks to all our beta testers. While we worked out the bugs, some versions allowed unfair "advantages" on some levels, so to even the playing field we're going to reset the leaderboard to bRC2 and after. That also means our developer scores are being reset as well, so here's your chance to get in some scores ahead of benbritten. :)

Your unlocked levels will stay unlocked, but if you want your scores to count on the leaderboard, make sure you've playing bRC2 or later!

Hello all you beta testers! Beta 4 (Release Candidate 1) is ready!

You should go and get it here: http://www.snowferno.com/current-beta/.

ChangeLog:

• Added final scene, for those of you who have finished the last level, you can go right there from the world map, the rest of you slackers have to finish before you can see the final scene. Final scene includes it's own custom music track and a groovy 'cutscene' kinda thing, as well as your final game time (all the best level completions added up) and your final game ranking.
• added all sound fx
• Changed the way the throttle works again, so it should not get stuck anymore (again)
• fixed the fire wheel, now you will always hit the platform when shot from the cannon
• added external linkage to the score board settings panel, now you can get to your user account page (which will eventually allow you to change your screen name)
• added external linkage to the score board settings panel, now you can get to your leaderboard page, which shows all your stats
• fixed some issues with the moving boxes, now they stay put better in level 12 when on the moving platform.
• yet more performance tweaks, the internal builds were quite smooth on 3g phones.
• changed the way the ball interacts with the walls to make it less jarring when you roll along a wall (it is still somewhat jarring, but now less so)
• scads of changes and updates to the website. the summary: leaderboards are all working and have lots of cool stats. still to come: account changes (ie change yer screen name)

Cheers! and as always let me know if you have any comments/problems/anything.

-ben

I put the finishing touches on the Leaderboard yesterday, and it is now live. Snowferno.com has been collecting game scores all during the beta period, so we already have a nice heap of data.

Congrats (so far...) to Baller77718 who leads the pack, and quite definitively -- although s/he has yet to conquer all 20 levels.

Some key features of the Leaderboard:

• Recently Played games gives a snapshot of the last few levels completed worldwide
• All-Time Top 5 by Level lists the best 5 scores for every level, mirroring what you see in-game on each "Level Complete" screen.
• Top 50 Completed Games sums up the best times by level for the brave snowballs that have conquered the Inferno.
• Click on any screen name to view that player's game stats and recently played levels. Stats include that player's best level times, total attempts, fallouts, meltouts, wins, their win %, and the score ranking per level.
• Personalized screen names are coming very soon, so you won't have to be your auto-assigned Inferno character forever.

Global Leaderboard participation is voluntary. "Post Scores" is enabled by default when you first launch Snowferno. To change your preference, be sure your device has Internet access, then tap Settings > Score Board from the main screen and toggle the setting there. NOTE: this does not delete your scores, it only changes whether your scores are displayed to the public. You can enable or disable "Post Scores" ad nauseam to suit your fancy. :)

Let us know what you think - comments are welcome: improvements, (errors?), suggestions for more Snowferno data mining goodness... I have been playing around with some graph-drawing libraries, but all the charts I've made so far are pretty ugly. But look for possible future improvements in that direction, too.

For the technically curious, the Leaderboard is powered by a custom WordPress plugin that hooks into the handy filters and actions provided by the WordPress core. Our own custom API gathers and stores the Leaderboard data in supplementary tables alongside the WordPress data.

I originally tried to find an off-the-shelf WordPress plugin for this functionality, but I found that the "community" aspect of WordPress is one area (admittedly, I think) that it is lacking. WP is a terrifically flexible foundation, and just having the blog and account management functions at our fingertips has been an immense time-saver. Now that we've built our first game website, maybe for future projects we'll look at a WordPress MU, Drupal, or very likely the highly-anticipated, 2.0 CodeIgniter rewrite of ExpressionEngine.

Hey Beta Testers --

Login now to download the latest build of Snowferno (b0.9.2) which is our first build released to our beta testers. We emailed you the login info -- let Ben know if you need it re-sent (or if you want to join the beta program).

We're looking for the following:

1. Any bugs, naturally.
2. How the level progression/ balance feels. (ie is it too hard or too easy?)
3. and really anything else you want to tell us about the game!

Please post your thoughts in the comments section below, or email support@benbritten.com.

We are hoping to have the beta last about 2 weeks. If there are big bugs to fix, then we will do additional releases during the 2 week time. Our plan is to do a "final" pre-submission release in 10 days -- around July 15.  After that we will submit the newest build as v1.0 to the App Store, and any remaining issues will be fixed in v1.0.1.

b0.9.2 Known Issues

• The number readout in the upper left is a Frames Per Second meter to gauge performance. This is for beta only.
• Settings > Control > "Post Score" toggle does not connect to the online API yet.
• Online account management stuff isn't ready yet. (Settings > Control > "My Leaderboard Settings" takes you to a placeholder page.)
• There are some text-overlay "story" elements and SFX still missing, but nothing that affects gameplay.
• If you make it all the way to the end, it will be obvious that something fancier will replace the final screen.