Smiley Barry's dashboard

Smiley Barry shared an idea in ngmoco on November 05, 2009 22:46:

Post currently playing game's name to Raptr, a social gaming network

I personally use a social network for games called Raptr (raptr.com) which tracks gameplay for PC and Xbox/Xbox 360 games and their achievements via their PC client and Microsoft's Xbox Live API. They have planned making an iPhone app and adding iPhone games to their catalog soon, and what I have to suggest is discussing a possibility of showing your Raptr friends what game you're playing, even on your iPhone.

Basically, when you launch a Plus+ game and connect to the network your device would change the "Currently Playing" status of your Raptr account associated to your Plus+ account to that same game's name, and maybe even sync achievements some time in the future. It's true they don't have an API yet, but given their recent interest in making an iPhone app to (manually) track gameplay, I'm sure they'll gladly agree to help to implement such a thing.

Raptr also publishes gameplay data (if the user wants it to) to other social networks, like Facebook, Twitter and Ping.fm, so you'll also gain extra functionality with that feature.

So, how does that sound to you? (Translation: Please?)

Smiley Barry shared an idea in ngmoco on November 05, 2009 22:37:

Instead of having each game with its own notifications - make a central Plus+ app!

A lot have already asked for a central Plus+ app which offers the currently-implemented Plus+ interface, along with a way to launch those games. What I suggest is (writing it and submitting it to Apple already and) having that same app tell you about game challenges, instead of each game doing so itself, since they're all managed by the same Plus+ servers. It would be easier for someone to disable notifications for all Plus+ games that way (instead of going to Settings > Notifications and disabling each game on its own one after the other, and later doing the same when you want to enable them) and you could see on the Plus+ app icon badge you have X challenges waiting instead of seeing different badges scattered around your games.

Smiley Barry started following the idea "Make more games free with in-app purchase." in ngmoco.

Smiley Barry replied on November 05, 2009 22:24 to the question "Why only local connections for iPhone games?" in ngmoco:

The reason for this limitation is because WordFu uses a specific method to find other WordFu players around you:

WordFu uses some sort of device detection service, like Apple's Bonjour, to say "Hey, I'm an iPhone running WordFu!". Then, another device looks around the local network to find devices that say so, to set up a multiplayer game. That's basically how the game finds your friend's iPhone.

But, games like Galcon and Uniwars that allow people on different networks to play use an entirely different method, more like what a home network router does. It pings the game server, and asks to register the device. The server then makes some arrangements and finally registers the device's IP, type (sometimes) and player name, if applicable. When another looks for people to play with, he gets the list of devices the server has.

You see, to implement something like your suggestion would require a server to handle everyone's requests. ngmoco simply took the easy and efficient road (which is understandable) and only implement the basic type of multiplayer at the time. However, now that WordFu has a Plus+ version, you can just install that one and ask your friends to do so, too. Every Plus+ game can use Plus+'s servers to use the second method described above, so you can now play with others this way.

Smiley Barry asked a question in ngmoco on September 28, 2009 23:59:

The Plus+ website says support for Mazefinger, Topple and Topple 2 is coming - where is it?

A while ago you said Plus+ support for Topple, Topple 2 and Mazefinger is coming soon. I believe almost two months have passed since then, yet support still isn't here, except for Topple 2 which oddly has the feature only available for Canadian iTunes users.

So, my question is: when exactly will you offer Plus+ integration for these games? And, if Topple 2 is ready for the network, why is the update only in the Canadian iTunes Store?

Smiley Barry replied on September 20, 2009 10:09 to the problem "Game ads push on title screen for paid version, sucks" in ngmoco:

The same occurs in Star Defense, Star Defense Prelude and sometimes Rolando. (the first one)

Please remove the ads. It's ok for free apps like Star Defense Prelude, (with perhaps a switch to hide them if the user has the full version of Star Defense?) but you shouldn't have them for paid games.

Smiley Barry started following the problem "Game ads push on title screen for paid version, sucks" in ngmoco.

Smiley Barry replied on September 20, 2009 10:07 to the praise "Pushing ads is a great thing, more please, not!" in ngmoco:

The same appears in Star Defense, Star Defense Prelude and sometimes Rolando. Ads are OK for free games (It's ok to keep them in Star Defense Prelude), but for paid apps? No.

Smiley Barry started following the praise "Pushing ads is a great thing, more please, not!" in ngmoco.

Smiley Barry reported a problem in ngmoco on August 31, 2009 03:35:

Frequent, easy-to-cause Plus+ crash on all Plus+ games

In any Plus+-enabled game, if you open Plus+ and switch to the Games tab, tapping the single "Loading..." item will crash the game in a few seconds. (Tested in Luxor and Star Defense)

Smiley Barry replied on August 31, 2009 03:27 to the problem "SD and R2 achievements lost" in ngmoco:

This is a problem, but it's not as serious as you think it is.

Basically, when the app launches it asks the Plus+ component for achievement data. Not having a WiFi connection, it responds "there are none". However, your achievements are all still saved on the server, and any new achievements you get while offline will be synced to Plus+ the next time you go online.

So basically, it's just a problem of showing your achievements. They're not really lost. :-)

Smiley Barry started following the idea "Plus + Suggestions" in ngmoco.

Smiley Barry started following the idea "Plus+ Ideas: App Launching, Dedicated App, Web App, Icon Update" in ngmoco.

Smiley Barry reported a problem in Plurk on August 26, 2009 22:17:

Plurks are submitted to Twitter several hours after originally being posted on Plurk

I've set my account to cross-post plurks to Twitter automatically, and lately, I've noticed plurks are only send several hours later to Twitter and not immediately as before. For example, I plurked this earlier today at 4:49pm GMT+3, and it was posted to Twitter only now, at 0:59am GMT+3. That's a little over 8 hours later. I also plurked this message earlier than that at 2:02pm, yet it was only posted around 12am. This time it's about 10 hours later.

Could it be the Plurk-to-Twitter mechanism is reaching its cap all the time, causing tweets to get delayed? Or could it be a Plurk server problem?

Please fix this quickly, and thanks for taking the time to look into it.

Smiley Barry started following the idea "Six ideas that would make Gmail better" in Google.

Smiley Barry replied on March 14, 2009 19:11 to the idea "Push Gmail on iPhone.... When?" in Google:

Surprisingly, Google have brought (exclusive) push email to the T-Mobile G1, their own model, yet they have not made a public (for all devices) version of the new push model. In other words, they gave this feature only to their own special phone. We need it too!

Smiley Barry replied on March 14, 2009 19:07 to the idea "Get rid of "on behalf of" when sending from external accounts." in Google:

Yes, we need this feature. At least to those of us who use aliases through Google Apps. (Ex: I use an address hosted on smileybarry.com so I wouldn't have to reveal my full name to anyone who contacts me (that I reply to).)

Smiley Barry started following the idea "Get rid of "on behalf of" when sending from external accounts." in Google.

Smiley Barry started following the idea "Labs for Google Calendar...nuff said..just do it" in Google Reader.

Smiley Barry started following the idea "Sync functionality in Google Chrome" in Google.