Should we release this for free? Advice welcome!

Hi to all!

Sorry fo the repost, but it seems I can't delete my previous one, nor can I change it's title, which was a bit ambiguous...

So, I'm trying to get some feedback from more experienced devs on the idea of releasing a first version of our project for free, to "poll the mood and interest" before investing some more time into it.

Below's the original post, as well as a screeshot.

We've nearly completed our first iPad app! It is a musical instrument, and would probably not be of much interest to non musicians. We have tried some gamification of the app, which works quite well but would need a considerable amount of level design and composing before it becomes commercialy acceptable.

So, instead of taking the risk of investing a LOT of extra time to make it into a game, we're thinking about releasing the instrument as a free app, and if it does well, work on and release a gamified version with a few extra features on the instrument side, this time not free.

Any comments/ideas?

Cheers!

 

Yes! That's the answer. In the book, 'Great By Choice', Jim Collins describes this as 'Bullets. Then Cannonballs.' The idea is that all of the great companies he studied had this common theme. They would make small investments in lots of different ideas. Each idea is a bullet - it's cheap and fast and can be aimed directly. So, most of the bullets miss - they misfire, or bad aim, or maybe they had no target at all! But some of the bullets score a hit! Then, you can decide to load up your gunpowder and go for it!

Release your app for free. It's a bullet. Learn what does and does not work. Move forward.

Gigi.

 

Whilst I would agree with releasing for free for 'beta' testing and feedback, I think I'd be wary of doing this on the app store. In my opinion you only get one chance to make a good impression on the app store, both for this title and your company in future releases. Therefore releasing something unfinished ( i'll be honest and see it needs a lot of polishing, but hey that's why you want some feedback first to see if its worth doing), could hamper you in the future.

Perhaps instead release it as webplayer? Later remove it after you've got enough feedback/testing, ready to release the final version on app store, should you decide to.

Of course there is also something to be said for releasing it on app store anyway, as it will give you a 'dry run' through all the issues related to app store releases. Though again i'd be tempted to release it independently from yourself/company so as not to affect your 'standing'.

 

Thanks a lot for your comments!
@Noisecrime : I'm on the concept + coding side of things, and of course more critical towards how our app sounds and what it can do than how it looks! If, just by looking at the screenshot, you can tell it needs a lot more polish, I definitely need to talk about it with my graphics designer. Would you care to let me know what precisely looks bad here, it would help a lot...

And once again, the primary goal of the app is to be an instrument. It does something for composers / musicians that no app I know of does, and I was thinking of releasing it in my name, on the model of something like Mugician (which design wise is just nothing, but is a bloody good app nevertheless). Perhaps the look is too gamy and doesn't convey the musical usefulness of it? My designs when prototyping were much more bare, using vectrosity only (except for the keyboard). As I no visual artist, I asked a friend to hop in for the ride...

Again, many thanks for your insights!

 

Don't get me wrong I didn't say anything looked bad , just unpolished

In fact the concept looks a intriguing as it would appear those 'stars' have some meaning to its purpose and obviously look a bit like constellations, granted only one long stringy constellation, but still intriguing. To be honest I think that's what made me bother to making a reply, so I'd be interested to see how this develops and what it actually is.


However there appears to be a lot of dead space in the top middle of the screen, which looks odd.
The background looks fine, silhouettes work well and help the ambience of the night/starry scene.

Not sure what to make of the stone tablet type things showing the staves. On a personal level I don't like their shape, confused as to why they have stone/marble textures and they don't appear to be able to show much information at their current size. The notes on them don't really look very good and have little in common with the style. They just seem to be floating on top and as space is limited especially with the sharps it gets hard to read (IMHO), they just look out of place at the moment.

The keyboard again looks like its made from stone, which is a bit odd, its also rather small, many keyboard apps i've seen have the keyboard using around 1/4 the height. Have you tried using it on an iPad?

Overall i'd say that the foreground and background elements do not match in style or ambience, I really like the top half, the starry night as its very clean, simple and classy, the bottom half goes a bit odd with the stone textures and no clarity as to what the three stone tablets are or how they related to the keyboard. I'm not a professional keyboard player, but the mixture of blue and red dots on the keyboard seems a bit odd if they were for example left and right hand?

If you presented this to me I really wouldn't have the first idea what was going on, so I think the overall design needs to be cleaned up and made more obvious as to how to use it and the overall layout needs to use the screen estate better.

It difficult to say any more since I've not used it or really know what its purpose is, but i'd be tempted to make the foreground elements more classy, simple with minimal texture, a standard black and white ivory looking keyboard etc and carry that through to whatever the stone tablets are.

An obvious thing to do here would be to look at a sample of existing musical apps on the store and critique there design style, comparing them to yours.

Hope that helps a little.

Just to be clear though I see no problem releasing it in its current state in order to get feedback on the game/application. Its perfectly justifiable and acceptable to use place-holder assets or not have a finished design, in fact it makes sense to do so. Just that I felt if you release on App store you can come in for a lot of unnecessary criticism anyway and showing 'unfinished' graphics is something people could easily latch onto, not realising they are meant to be testing the functionality.

 

@Noisecrime

Many thanks for such a detailed reply! It does indeed help a lot.

The way this app makes music is quite tricky to explain, I must post a video of it in action, but since it heavily relies on multitouch gestures, it's not that simple to make one!

The stars actualy represent the global pattern resulting from the phasing of the red pattern on the left stone(on beat notes) and the blue ones on the right (off-beat notes). There is some dead space in the middle on this screenshot, but that space is needed if the notes are in the lower register...

And the keyboard isn't played as a normal one. Rather, one places or drags the blue and red LED's on it. Keys are pressed in time automaticaly.

The stars are the direct mode of interaction.

It's lots of fun to play with, but yes, the basic concept is quite tricky! for exampe, 6 and 4 notes will give you a 24 star sequence, but 6 and 5 will give you a much more complex 60 star constellation. It's all in real time, sculpting the constellations, touching the stars, muting and sustaining, changing tempo, double time, breaks, saving patterns etc...

As for style, we're trying to get a quirky but hopefuly poetic "natural tech" feel to it. Hence the stone keyboard, and the stone scores/plates.
Functionality is a real issue, as space is limited on the iPad, and when you have 112 stars(the maximum allowed, phasing of 7 and 8), it's already very crowded up there!

Ahhh, tricky tricky, trying to convey something complex in a straightforward manner... And that's also a reason for wanting to release it for free: only musicians interested in the concept will be able to take full advantage of it. Our gamification efforts all tried to gradualy introduce the different elements, to teach in a fun way the player how to use the beast, but as I wrote above, it's a lot of extra work. A lot more than posting a tutorial on youtube...

Thanks again for all the feedback, the community i really one of Unity's great assets!

 

Curiouser and curiouser, can't wait to see the video and having just got an iPad if there is any way for me to test I'd be happy to give it a go and provide feedback.


Your choice of stone makes much more sense now, in which case I just think the shape and the texture needs refinement, but that's not essential for a beta test. I would perhaps think of other ways to present information, perhaps some form of floating areas that can expand or shrink depending upon the needed space, or perhaps as simple as have it that the star line is centered in the top half of the screen and dynamically moves/slides upwards when needed to make enough room lots of stars?

As you say it sounds like a tricky concept to explain in words, so maybe it is more 'natural' to simply use it.

Look forward to seeing your progress with it.

 

I'm going to start making some bullets!

 

Hi! Just wrote a semi-decent mouseController for my app, functional enough to make a short vid capture of it running on my computer. No multitouch, but at least one can see and (listen to) the animal in action! Had to record the audio from an external mike, so don't expect top quality... Here's the link to the mov file : uPhaseDemo

Let me know what you guys think!

 

Thanks for the video, looks interesting and fun, but i'm massively confused by the point of the interface as it seems to complicate the process.

Now I wouldn't count myself as a musician, but I have learnt to 'play' a few instruments in my time and enjoy messing around on the keyboard using DAW's (to make up for a lack of physical ability). So I have some musical knowledge, just enough to be dangerous and occasionally create something musical

So some questions.

1. Is this simply not an arpeggio builder? If not why is it different?
2. I still don't understand the difference between red and blue notes or why they are necessary?
3. Why use the keyboard to move notes, seems very counter-intuitive since you have to look at the staves to see what order position the note you are moving is in. To my mind it would be far easier to move the notes on the stave.

With those questions in mind, I can't help thinking there could be a much simpler more intuitive UI designed for this. I mean overall it looks like you could simply use the stars, perhaps with a faint stave behind them, but then I recognise that your choice of notes is coming from the two tablets and that would be hard to integrate.

I'm unconvinced with the current pattern bank, I think it requires improved design to 'link' the two tablet stones, since the music generated is a combination of them both, but again understand that you want them as separate entities so you can pick and mix later.

I think the dark stone confuses the main interface currently. There is no reason for it to constantly be in view. I'd be tempted to not have it shown until the user clicks on a pre-saved pattern, at which point it 'transitions' onto the screen (fade, scroll whatever) and from their the user can drag and drop it onto which ever tablet they wish. I still think even this has too many steps though and wonder if there is a better method altogether.

Overall I'd say I like the idea, but I believe (only my opinion) that you at the first stage of design with this, I suspect this may indeed be your first and only design for the layout and elements needed. However in graphics it is normal to create multiple designs and usually very 'dangerous' to simply go with your first concept as you need to work through it and see what further ideas manifest themselves.

I'd like to add more, but I think without those questions above being addressed its difficult to give suggestions.

I strongly feel now though that you should not release this to the app store in its current state, at least not if you want to sell it. Instead gather a few trusted friends to test it either as an ipad app (can you make those?) or as a local webplayer build. Simply because I feel as interesting as it is, its not too a standard that you could currently release, that with more time to polish it will look far superior to what you have now.

Anyway this is just first impressions, i'll watch the video again and think about it some more.


Edit:
Going back to the quality of the graphics, you haven't mentioned that these are not final graphics.

My problem with the stone tablets then is that they simply haven't had enough work on them. They look very flat, especially with the stave and notes seemingly floating on top. I find the harshness of edge where it meats the background distracting to the eye. The stave lines have varying weights/anti-alaising too them. To my mind i'd like them to appear 'carved' into the stone, the same with the notes. A straightforward pillow emboss (lightly applied) would help.

With regard to the concept of using stone I think my issue with it is that each element is separate and floating, making it all feel unconnected. I think if you want to emphasis the feeling of some 'natural' aspect the whole lower half of the interface should be in stone as a single piece, with the various elements carved into it. I.e. a translation of a modern day device into blocks of stone. If that makes sense?

I'm reminded of the 'device' in the episode 'Window of Opportunity' from StarGate SG1, or even the carving of the stargate itself.





In tone I think something like this random image I found searching google images.

 

Since you asked, I would say this is the basic problem. Have your designer pick a style and go for it. Either 'natural' or 'tech'. A lot of problems I see in design is trying to mush everything together. If I want Thai food, i want real Thai food, not a sort of American/Thai fusion. That ends up with the worst of both worlds.

Personally, I think anything 'natural' on an iPad is a bit of a misnomer. The iPad is not natural at all, seeing a 'stone' on a flat piece of glass feels dishonest to me. It's a flat, electronic display screen, designs that understand that are more appealing to me.

Bryan

 

I tend to agree with your first point, but i'd disagree with your second I think it should be possible to have a stone like interface under glass that would look really nice. I mean in real life glass and stone can mix very well (e.g. glass table on stone support, or windows in a nice stone building ), but would agree that its not as straight forward as simply going with some flash looking overlay type UI.

I think the other issue here though is the disparate between top and bottom (foreground/background) as not only are they different in style, they differ in context, the background being a stylistic treatment of the world, whilst the foreground is using overlays. I wonder if the foreground elements were rendered from a 3D model that is 'placed' in the world if that would work better, but then you start to lose screen estate to the modelling away from the UI.


The trouble is further suggests (from me anyway) will start to really change the direction of the product in terms of features and functionality. For example my favourite part is definitely the stars, both in terms of the visuals they provide and the interface to interact with the notes. So much so that I wonder if in fact the rest is superfluous in many ways, or at least in harking back to standard musical notation and keyboard. Why couldn't you simply have a array of note values for the red/blue notes instead of the staves and keyboard? It would require far less room and might be easier to present. Perhaps to keep the 'natural' feel these are on pillars, or something like a stone circle?

But like I say this is starting to move way beyond what is already designed and since i'm not close enough to the project I wouldn't know if such changes meant that other features wouldn't be able to be implemented.

 

Want to make this a winning app? Change it from a programmer's tool to a toy that makes music. Guitar hero was a billion dollar industry for one reason - it made me FEEL like I was making music. It required skill, but as I improved, I felt like a real musician! 'WOW - this is what it must feel like to be Slash!' That feeling changed the gaming world.

Creating music is hard and time-consuming. But your app could make it easy for them! You've got the hard part solved - the music making. Now you just need to simplify the app completely. Drop all the weird manipulation/programmer type stuff. Then, add in features that make me FEEL like I'm composing music, in real time. Make it so that everything I do makes music sound beautiful. Make it so I always pick good notes. Make it a real-time performance. You don't even need record/playback as a primary feature - it's the creation act that makes this fun.

Could you give this to any 13 year old with just 2 words of instruction: Make Music? When you can, you have a top-10 app.

Gigi

 

Your up against apps that look like this (below) and eye candy next to graceful UI design will make or break the users experience.


http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nota-for-ipad/id365724129?mt=8

If you want inspiration have a look at what these guys do... http://www.theskinsfactory.com/company.php

e.g.



Which is where I'm hoping to get to with my UI skills eventually!

 

Dang! Those guys are good!
Gigi.

 

If I could, I'd rename this thread "Should we release this? Free advice welcome." Great to see so much detailed feedback!

1. At it's root, it is an arpeggio builder, yes. But more like 3 intertwined arpeggiatorsI didn't show it in the vid, but the pattern on the middle, dark, stone can be added in the mix, doubling the overall speed and complexity). On top of that, the app calculates the resulting phases, and displays that as a playable instrument in the stars. With a DAW, you could loop two offset patterns of different lengths, of course, but you wouldn't immediately see the resulting shape of the overall sequence, and wouldn't be able to play with that sequence as you can with uPhase.

2.Redn the beat, blueff beat. Without color coding, it would be very difficult to see which star comes from which pattern!

3. In my first design, you would move the notes directly on the staves, but this is much slower and less precise (on the iPad). The keyboard also allows you to see how the blue and red patterns intertwine, and gives a bettern sense of the averall harmony (musicaly speaking).

Tried that too, but then sharpened notes would be at the same height as natural ones. Also, one needs two staves to represent the whole register (4 octaves), and spacing the staves completely breaks the true pitch to height relationships.

Agreed, if I drop the functionality mentioned above of adding the middle pattern to the mix. And about the process having too many steps, you can drag and drop a saved pattern directly to a tablet, except you wouldn't see what the pattern is beforehand. Since a pattern can have up to 8 notes, it would be impossible to show 15 saved patterns on screen at once!

Maybe the problem lies with my basic stance to not have multiple windows. I wanted to have everything accessible at once...

About your advice not to release in its current state: Indeed, we'll work some more on it! It is my very first app, and as passionate as I am about developing, I'm very new to it (I work as a composer...). Thanks a bunch again for all the useful insights!

On the graphical side of things, I've forwarded your comments to the graphics designer (I'll have to google pillow emboss to make sure it's not something you stuff your pillow with, lol). He works on this during his free time, so progress might be a bit slow!

Cheers,

Gregzo

 

Thanks for the advice! As Noisecrime, I too disagree with the second part of your comment. Why couldn't the iPad's screen be a window into something totaly alien to it's technological nature? As for integrity, I agree : I think we should enhance the "natural" feeling. Maybe some foliage on the stones, I don't know... Will be discussed with the graphics guy!

 

Absolutely!

As stated in my very first post, we do have a "gamified" version : no keyboard, no stone tablets, just the stars which you tap in rythm. Story mode, infinite mode, 2 player challenge mode. It works well, but would need a few months of work to become a full game (especialy the story mode). Level design is very complex, as I need to write interactive music that can branch out and react to the player's performance. I've scripted two levels already, but that took a full week, argh!

The instrument is much too complex to be used by non-musicians, and is not at all targeted at 12 year olds, and this is why we wouldn't charge for it (target market is quite small!).

I hope I'm expressing things clearly!

Instrument = complex, no market, nearly finished, free
Game = simple, can be used by a five year old, started, not free

Cheers!

Gregzo

 

Thanks for the link! Indeed, amazing looking UIs.

I don't agree at all with your first example, though. The keyboard looks completely disproportionate, the keys are super-thin, and I find it rather bland. A matter of taste, of course!

As much as I agree that our app needs more polish, we do not wish to copy what's out there. We're going for a whimsical, quirky UI that should suggest you're sitting in a forest, star gazing and playing with stones, not in a studio fiddling with a mixing table. Hopefuly we'll make it work!

Cheers!

 

Ask and you shall receive

Sorry I didn't mean that in a dismissive tone, more of a means to classify it. I think your reply is probably a good starting point for the 'pitching' of the product in its app description, even if it is a little on the technical side.

Ahh, so simple, so obvious, though I'd be tempted maybe to have some text on the tablets stating that.

Hmm, well obviously you've tested this, but I don't see why it should be a problem, touch is pretty precise on iPad from what i've experienced, though sliding may not be. Still don't get the keyboard though since the notes are in the order of keys not the order of their respective tablet patterns, maybe i'm missing something?

Why not, couldn't you simply add sharp or flats next to them, or find some other graphical means to differentiate them from normal notes, so that you can keep them all level? I mean the stars are already quite abstracted, so perhaps changing brightness or the type of star could work for sharps and flats? e.g. normal note is a normal point star, whilst a sharp note has a star with a 'flare' on it?

I think i was just tempted to try an interface where there stars and background make up the majority of the interface, giving plenty of vertical space and emphasising its lovely ethereal nature.

No don't do that, if you can phase more than two patterns that's cool! Is there a limit to how many you could phase? If not, then again that suggests maybe finding a new way to display this information, one that permits N number of patterns.

Though I take you point about being able to drag patterns directly, it was more a case that I think you might be too locked into your 'first' working design and maybe there are alternatives that could work better.

Two edge sword, everything accessible is good, but can become cluttered and confusing and overwhelming for first time users. However hiding stuff away can just make it appear too complex, depending on the number/depth of windows you have.

Well its just my opinion, I hate seeing stuff that with a few more weeks work could look and function so much better.

How closely are you working with them? Personally unless the designer truly understands the functioning, the aims and objectives of the product they can't necessarily create an appropriate interface. Its not enough to simply state the style, such as stone tablets, you need to work together to plan the whole thing.

I mean i'm convinced if you dropped the staves and keyboard from your thinking you could come up with a far more unique and interesting interface, one that could still easily be based on some form of stone device. As it is the staves are simply giving you the note frequency not timing information as they normally would, so it seems a bit odd to keep using them.

e.g.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1vxeBzDay0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZceJDiW0HA0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNj6flPJfZY

Just to be clear i'm not talking about using the modern tech graphic style that these use, but to interpret you interface design in a similar somewhat abstracted nature. Ditch the staves and the keyboard

No, no, no. Its not too complex at all, maybe to understand the principles involved and the programming, but even what you have now could easily be 'played' with by a 5 year old and i'm sure would produce something good to listen too. It may not be pleasant to listen to but the 5 year old would probably pick up on that and through simple trial and error discover which notes didn't fit the 'key' or scale the rest did.

Don't under-estimate the potential here and always look to making the interface simple so anyone can play with it.

Also don't confuse games with play, games are a sub-set of play, but play is what its all about, learning through play, experiencing through play, composing through play, perhaps with no specific result in mind.

 

As useful as ever, I'm truly indebted.

My first job needs me these days, starting this very morning. Hopefuly I can get back to my darling project next week with a fresh eye!

Over and out,

G

 

Let me clarify what I mean by dishonest. The @Arowx examples above are more "honest" in many ways, particularly the excope example. The textures and bevels suggest the functionality, I just know what a button or toggle is by it's texture and design. What's more, the textures reference electronics, so on an iPad it just feels appropriate.

Also there is the haptic quality of touch. My finger is always touching glass, so materials that satisfy what my finger is feeling is going to feel more honest to me. Touching a realistic stone that feels like glass gives me a queasy, uncanny valley feeling and I think leads to an unpleasant interface experience. I think a highly polished stone helps, but those ridges really set up an expectation of roughness, that is going to give me that odd disconnected feeling.

That being said, I feel like a piece of light emitting glass is about the most beautiful surface ever. If a stone had a brain I think it would rather be an iPad screen anyway, so why not use the screen for what it's good at?

 

Though I don't want to stray too off-topic here, those are very interesting points you make. I'd certainly agree that light emitting glass is a very beautiful surface and one I've wanted ever since seeing Dillinger's desk in Tron as a kid.

However to take you point literally (and possibly further than common-sense) would seriously curtail the potential for interesting or rather different visuals to emerge, which is the point where i'd have to disagree. Sure there are almost infinite designs in that style you could make, but its always going to be in that style. I think its only a matter of time before one becomes saturated with that and it risks becoming stale.

Afterall its never been an issue until now, though I can certainly appreciate your assertion of the conflict that might occur due to using a touch device. Perhaps we'll just have to wait for resistance glass to become the norm, so it can recreate those sensations of moving your fingers over a rough surface

Its a tricky one, as there is little doubt in my mind if I were to design an interface for a sound toy that it would probably end up being exactly like you say. However that's where I like gregzo's direction as it is trying to do something different. As such it would certainly stand out from the crowd, its visual flavour filling ones mind with a whole new experience. I honestly believe if done right no-one would really notice the discrepancy between the smooth glass and the rough textures.

 

If your app ever makes it to the Android platform, consider adding some "Haptic" feeling to it so users can literally feel your app. A developer that made the guitar app Solo, used our SDK so you can feel when you strum the guitar. It's fantastic. If interested, we have an Android plugin for Unity. Read this thread.