Most of the performance gains were achieved by eliminating redundant OpenGL ES state changes. An example of this is when binding textures. Instead of constantly switch textures (everything is stored in texture atlases) I store which texture is currently bound and don’t bind if I don’t need to. I also make sure that I put the textures in the atlases in the order in which they are drawn to further minimize texture switching.  This only works on OS 3.0+. On OS 2.2.1 I’m using a different strategy that was also a big win. I gained at least 8-12 fps by making the rendering thread based instead of being driven by an NSTimer.

Here is a screenshot comparison. The old version runs at half the speed (inconsistently) and doesn’t look nearly as good. Please note that this is all still in development.

Before:

After:

I’m extremely grateful to my wife who somehow found the time and energy for many nights after we put our son to bed to come up with a compelling holiday rendition of B.I.T.S Pinball.

I’ve also created a new website. I’m releasing this as both a paid $.99 version and a free version that has ads (not while playing the game ). Candiballs!!

Based on these statistics the only observation I can make is that getting Apple’s attention is only part of the equation. I can see traditional marketing making a larger impact on sales over time and the fly by night successes disappearing. Of course this may only apply to us and I’m sure there are stories out there that prove the opposite. I think sharing this info can only help others make more educated guesses on how to play the game

As a side note, the “only” marketing we did was announcing our game on the touchArcade forums (one of the best places to announce your game by far) and requesting reviews from as many iPhone gaming websites as possible. It’s been almost a month since release and not a single review site has reviewed our game (perhaps our game is just that bad?… I don’t thinks so). Those that responded to our review requests where only trying to sell us adverting or wanting us to pay $$$ for an “expedited” review, (except for the iPhoneSlutz: http://iphoneslutz.com/, those ladies are awesome!). It takes a lot to make me nauseous but email responses asking for money to review our game only make me reach for the Pepto.

iTunes link: B.I.T.S Pinball

B.I.T.S Pinball home page: http://www.ballinthesystem.com