Then I started reading about all these iPhone success stories and like a lot of others was inspired to see what I myself could achieve. I had a fairly good idea of what a good iPhone app consisted of having bought one in September as well. So I’ve since been cracking away at the SDK to see what I can come up with. Many other developers like Steven Troughton-Smith http://steventroughtonsmith.com were willing to help out and also big credit to all the guys on the iPhone-SDK list on Google groups.

So I went ahead and purchased a standard iPhone developer licence to be able to test apps on my phone and submit to the App Store. After a week of purchasing it I still had no activation code. After numerous phone calls with people who didn’t know who to call I was transferred directly to UK developer support by a friendly Apple employee in Cork. The guy in the UK sorted me out with an activation code and I was up and running, almost.

The next thing I had to do was to submit my tax information so Apple don’t take an extra 30% off me as withholdings tax in the US. So after numerous searches on the internet I filled out the form and sent it off to Apple in Texas. I waited three weeks before I began to get impatient with how long this was taking to get my paid apps contract in effect. So I sent an email in which I clearly expressed my disappointment with the process and what not.

Today on Wednesday 29th of April, one day after sending the email low and behold my paid apps contract is in effect. Hmm.

So I am now ready to go on the App Store with my first app being submitted on Sunday while still waiting for a response to see if it’s gotten through the Apple app approval process.

This concludes my blog post for today(sorry for the lack of content). Will definitely try to get more written for the blog in the future although you’ll find out most of my happenings on Twitter my username is houlieoin.

Eoin Houlihan.

Developer: Tapulous

Price: FREE

Screenshots below.

Today saw the release of the new tap rhythm game from Tapulous: Tap Tap Revenge 2. The game is the fifth game developed by Tapulous to use the Tap Tap engine(the backbone of the game). The game features many new features as well as welcome improvements to the engine.

First Impressions:

The app weighs in at 9.3MB download. The icon this time has seen a few changes. In my opinion the icon doesn’t look as nice as the one from Dance but is an improvement on Revenge 1. When you start up the game you’re prompted to import your Tapulous profile if you have one of their other apps or create one if you don’t. The UI looks very snazzy and polished.

Song choice:

TTR2 comes loaded with 3 songs but from day one there were over 150 songs to choose from and download. The extendability of Tap Tap is one of the reasons it is a great game with new songs every “Tap Tap Thursday”. The choice is great with a mixture of pop, rock, alternative, dance and other genres. You may have to spend some time downloading the songs but they aren’t the highest quality available for storage reasons but still sound decent enough.

New features:

Tap Tap Revenge 2 now includes achievements like on Xbox360 and PS3 to show off your skill at the game. Example achievements include playing 1000 online matches or playing 25 songs with shakes on among others. Also new is the ranking system online which will  update according to your skill and progress. Also new is the ability to email highscores to friends. They open up the email, tap a link and the game opens with your score at the top of a progress bar. This is fun for challenging friends easily to beat your highscore.

Gameplay:

Tap Tap Revenge 2 uses the Tap Tap engine that was used in Dance. This means visual effects long hold notes and multitaps. Gameplay is fun and you’ll always be striving to achieve revenge and keep it. The achievements are definitely good to keep you playing more and playing everyday while online matches are good for competitive play.

Performance:

The game performs decently on my iPhone 3G although you can expect a faster experience on an iPod Touch 2G at the expense of loss of quality through the speakers. After downloading songs and trying to play one you’ll probably encounter a crash. Crashes are also experienced randomly after gameplay and starting a new song.

Improvements:

The best improvement that I’ve noticed so far is the tap recognition which was a huge problem for me which required me to reboot my iPhone which sometimes didn’t even fix this issue. The tap recognition I can tell you on TTR2 has definitely improved.

Overall I’d say that TTR2 is definitely worth a look at and is a great game to play by yourself, with friends, or online.

Score: 4.5/5

Here is a short list of sites I find useful:
http://icodeblog.com
http://cocoadevcentral.com
http://developer.apple.com/mac
http://developer.apple.com/iphone
http://cocoadev.com
http://www.mac-developer-network.com

This isn’t all but if you would like to see more please comment.

Eoin