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As I’ve published Launchpad-Control 3 weeks ago, I never thought that so many people have the same problem as me. Till now Launchpad-Control has been downloaded over 60,000 times! An incredible number.

The number of visitors exploded and all this at a time when I certainly was not in the country. Shortly after the publication, I spent 14 days in Norway - without Internet and telephone.

When I came back I saw what I had missed:
It seems as if my site has never been visited before launchpad Control. Well, I’ll admit, it wasn’t really. :P (“Besuche” = visitors)

A big thanks to you for your comments, suggestions, help and donations!
Thank you for spreading the word over blogs and social networks!

A special thanks goes to @TheJTizzle for the new icon that he made for Launchpad Control. The old one was really terrible.

Greetings
Andreas

PS: I hope you like the new version!

A huge disadvantage of the Launchpad is that every app that is located in your /Applications folder is shown. That means you will see little helper programs like uninstallers or updaters. These apps can’t be hidden easily from Launchpad because there are no such preferences.

Therefore I developed:

Launchpad-Control

Launchpad-Control is a small tool which allows you to easily hide/unhide apps (and groups) from launchpad in Mac OS X Lion.

Update #1: This tool is now a system preference pane! No need to have an additional app on your mac. Once you open the file it “installs” itself into the system preferences where it can be found under “Launchpad”. Isn’t that great?

This app is my first Cocoa project. Great thing that developing native apps for iOS really teach you how to develop for Mac OS X, too.

Please feel free to distribute and talk about this app on blogs, twitter or websites. I would really appreciate that.

Features

• It’s a system preference pane (update #1)
• Displays a table with all apps that are in Launchpad
• Checkboxes for every app allow you to easily specify apps you want to hide or show
• Backups/Restores your original database file
• It’s completely free!

Download

Download Launchpad-Control now. It’s free!

Mac OS X Lion only (makes sense, huh?! ) – 211 KB

Screenshot

Donate

If you want to support me and my work donate some money.

This little button here will take you to Paypal where you can donate as much, or as little as you want.

Version 1.2:

• The last planet “Allasur” couldn’t be started. The game just crashed. Should be fixed now.
• A small version number has been added behind the title “Geolaria” ingame so you can see which version you have.

» To the download page «

Please update soon and tell all your friends about Geolaria! Please test the facebook button ingame – I hope it works!

* Fixed the bug where the Geoms stopped spawning.
* Fixed the tutorial now.
* Created a new .zip-File for Windows (there were some problems with it)

The question that came up in my mind was “How could I display this mode?”. What should the level selection screen be like to have a good mix of clarity, usability and style. Because I am not the first one who puts this question I searched the web for blogs like mine posting an article about designing a level selection screen.

I couldn’t find any.

So I grabbed the chance to be the first.

Typical review time at Apple is one week. Once I got the confirmation that the Mac App Store will take Geolaria in, I announce the release date. Until then, fingers crossed is a must! If you already do, you might also like to press this button:

It has previously been quite some time to send Apple my Geolaria package. At the last second, I also realized I’ve used a sound engine called irrKlang so far, which costs money in commercial products. I removed it and now use a free one.

The disadvantage is that the sound is somehow rendered falsified. For this reason, I then took out all the sound effects again. I found them annoying anyway. The music is still of course integrated (even if it takes longer now to start Geolaria because the sound engine must load the music now completly, before it can go on. The old engine streamed the sound.).

Desura’s staff will just test if the game works, I expect it to be successfully reviewed tomorrow or the day after. However, I would like to publish everything together, so I’ll release it on Desura when it’s through the Mac App Store.

Otherwise, I must say that the upload has worked extraordinarily well. Both Apple and Desura have good tools to prepare everything, with Desura it still was a lot easier.

Now I have to enable the PayPal payment. I recommend everyone to buy the package manually (not via a Mac App Store or Desura). The reason? If you buy on these platforms you support them with your money. At Apple it’s 30%, Desura also takes 30%. (If you go to Desura through this website another 15% goes to me, that is 85%.)

I have to pay PayPal only 1.9% + 0.35 €. So much less. It will cost me some hours to integrate PayPal here but I will do my best. Would be nice if you support me and purchase Geolaria through PayPal!

Ein Beispiel ist das unterschiedliche Verhalten bei der Kommunikation mit Facebook. Auf dem Mac funktioniert alles tadellos – auf Windows hingegen treten ab und zu nicht wirklich reproduzierbare Fehler auf. Mal klappt’s, mal nicht. Mal ist es ein kleiner Schönheitsfehler manchmal stürzt die ganze App ab. Und wenn man’s dann mal unter Windows gefixed hat, dann muss man auch noch hoffen, dass der Code unter Mac immernoch richtig funktioniert. Schlimm.

Aber so langsam neigt sich der funktionale ALPHA-Test dem Ende zu. Nun geht es mit den Testern in die BETA-Balancing-Phase. Die Level sollen nicht zu schwer und nicht zu leicht sein. Anfänger sollten einen leichten Einstieg haben und Hardcore-Zocker schnell auf ihre Kosten kommen. Klingt vielleicht einfach – ist es aber nicht.
Doch um dieses Problem möglichst einfach zu lösen, habe ich ja bereits meine Scriptengine umgeschrieben. Diese Scriptengine versucht das Spiel möglichst konstant schwerer zu machen und bedient sich dabei aus etlichen Gegnerformationen. Die Berechnung der Schwierigskeitsgrade verschiedener Formationen funktioniert ausgesprochen gut. Am besten zeige ich euch mal einen Graphen:

Diese linear ansteigende Kurve ist der maximale Schwierigkeitsgrad. Die Kurve unter dem Schwierigkeitsgrad ist die interessante. Man sieht hier wann es wie schwierig war. Die Kurve geht steil hoch, wenn viele Gegner gespawnt werden und fällt so, wie ich die Geoms getötet habe. Sieht also schon relativ gut aus.
Da die nächste Formation per Zufall ausgewählt wird, können auch solche starken Einbrüche entstehen. Doch sobald die zu spawnende Formation in den Schwierigkeitsgrad fällt, wird sie aktiviert und es geht steil bergauf (s. Sekunde 148).

Nun denn, genug geschrieben, ich muss weiter machen! Einen kleinen Kommentar von jemandem, der das hier liest fände ich aber super.

Achso und wie immer: Daumen drücken!