Hello

We recently released a new app named 0-100, https://itunes.apple.com/uk/app/0-100/id1081346564?ls=1&mt=8 , which is our first app with multiplayer functionality. The idea is simple, two players pick a number between zero and one hundred and then whoever is closest to the target range wins. This is our first step into multiplayer within apps so you'll likely see more in the future but this the first time we've had devices communicated between one another.

J

After a couple of years of making more apps and learning a lot more about app development I teamed up with my brother in law Martyn, to give AppsbyMe a wider scope. With Martyn's website mastery his skills fitted very well next to my own in mobile development and we have been working on projects ever since, me starting to learn more about PHP and Martyn learning Java. 

Currently we both have jobs but that hasn't stopped us from working in our spare time for AppsbyMe. We both have individual projects we work on and combined projects we work on together, I'd like to talk more about these in the future but for the moment my lips are sealed, maybe next time.

James

Let's talk about my first app that I released onto the Apple App Store, Crafting Recipes, I spoke about it briefly last time but I'll go into some more detail as to how I made my first app.

I was a big Minecraft fan at the time playing it with my friends on our little server I set up, nothing massive just a few of us building randomness (underwater glass tunnels, creeper proof obsidian shelter, etc). This was before creative mode was introduced so we had to remember how to craft things ourselves or have guides up in a browser tab that we had to switch to. This was when I decided to develop an app to make it easier for us to find what we wanted to craft.

I spent around six weeks getting all the assets together, images of the item being crafted and my typed description of each item. As I was new to app development I ended up creating the app pretty much solely within the storyboard file, this is the visual demonstration of what your app screens will look like. The app contained very little code as I just didn't have the experience to create it as you normally would within the code. 

As I practised more though I updated the app and transitioned to the normal way of running a tableview based app with the code creating the tableview and the detail view controller. I added a search function, related items, favourites and more, with more features and updates coming soon. With Minecraft update 1.9 on it's way we have an app update planned to include the new items and some cosmetic changes as well. This update will be for both the iOS version and the newly released Android version with more features coming to the Android version soon. 

For my first post I think I'll start with a bit of history of how I got started with app development. 

It all started when I used to work in a computer repair shop and I wanted to learn more about OS X as I had little experience with it. I didn't want to spend a large amount of money on a mac to only use it to get used to the operating system so I found a work around online. This involved running OS X within an emulator and while it wasn't perfect it did allow me to get used to the OS X's features such as the mac app store which is how I discovered Xcode. If you've never heard of Xcode it is the free IDE for iOS and OS X application, the tool used to create apps and programs. 

I started playing around with it, following a guide online and I built my first app, the classic hello world app that most first time developers make. This got my hooked on app development and I started work on what would be my first app that I would release, Crafting Recipes. It took me around six weeks to capture all the images I needed, type up all the text and mash it all together into an app. I released the app and I was over the moon the next day when I saw I had five downloads, five! In one day!

Over 3 years and 450,000 downloads later here we are, just released an Android version of Crafting Recipes (better late then never) and we have updates planned for a few others of our 'classic' apps as well as a some new projects planned. 

I'll speak more on these later but I think this is a good start to this whole blogging endeavour.

James