We at Appstruck like reviewing iPhone apps. In fact, we love it. Getting down to the nitty gritty, laying it bare, showcasing the best and most interesting for our readers, so they don’t have to plow through deep space just to find a decent app. Really, researching applications is tedious, but great.

But, let’s not forget the genius behind the apps. After all, they don’t simply appear out of thin air. Someone had the insight, the talent, and the capacity to create these iPhone apps so that we may use them to their full power.

Karim Maassen from the Fabrik spoke with me this week about developing Lunarcy. Read on for exclusive info and playing tips for the Fabrik’s Lunarcy.

What is the development background within the FABRIK?

Basically, there are five divisions within the FABRIK: 1. Design & Concept, 2. Programming, 3. Audio, 4. Deployment, 5. Service & Support. Of course, a lot of work overlaps itself, but  in general, I’m responsible for Design & Concepting and Service, Support & PR. Marco is responsible for Programming. A collegue of ours is responsible for the awesome in-game music, – he really is doing a great job – with Marco putting the audio together for actual development. The deployment of our products has to be carefully planned and structurized, so we tend to do that together.

We are a small studio created by Karim Maasen (29) (that’s me) and my colleague Marco Tillemans (29). We’re settled in The Netherlands, Europe. I studied Marketing, New Media and Communication. Marco studied Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. We’ve known each other since high school, and soon enough we discovered our creative goals were the same. We’ve always loved gaming. We’ve grown up with the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Super NES, the SEGA Master System & Megadrive and what not. It’s this gameplay what’s now considered as ‘hardcore’ or ‘retro’, what we think has a great market share potential. It’s mind-boggling how good some of the games were those days. Yes, the graphics are dated, but the gameplay still beats some of todays’ software.

Our combined input made the FABRIK possible. After quitting our day jobs last year, we put all effort in creating what we love most: these challenging, lasting games like the old days, but applied to current technical possibilities.

Now, the FABRIK’s team is the two of us, working full-time, and several part-time creatives supporting us with music productions, concepts and specialized products. (think 3D models, artistic renderings, etc.)

At what moment did Lunarcy become an idea, and when did it move past the idea stage into an app?

After setting up the studio we brainstormed for days, looking for gameplay unique enough to distinguish ourselves from others with our first product. Classic games like Lunar Lander certainly inspired us. A gravity physics based game looked like an element which we could use to create a unique game. Our goal was to make something that is easy to understand, but difficult to master. We definitely refer to retro games, both in gameplay and style. We wanted to create something worthwhile playing: a real challenge with a huge replay value. We believe games by the FABRIK will always have that need for practice, eventually turning an apparent impossible effort into a satisfying accomplishment.  After we determined what we’d like to achieve with our first game we began designing. We never stopped working on what turned out to be Lunarcy.

How long did it take you to bring Lunarcy to a point where you thought that it was complete and were there any pitfalls along the way?

Developing Lunarcy was only one part of the story when we decided to start our company. Especially in the beginning, most of our time went into setting up our studio. Effectively, Lunarcy took about four months, from the first idea to App Store approval. We put a lot of effort into maintaining a steady 40 frames per second. We believe that a steady and high frame rate is essential to the experience. Even with the dynamic, full screen background (an infinitely moving grid) and real-time gravity motion physics flying everywhere, we pulled it off.
What definitely took some time tackling was making sure all iPhone & iPod touch devices would run Lunarcy smoothly. We ran into a backwards compatibility issue testing for iPhone OS 3.0. It forced us to choose for 3.0 only in order to make sure the game would be deployable within a reasonable time. One of the next updates makes Lunarcy compatible with iPhone OS 2.2.1 again.

How many attempts did it take to get the physics correct?

A lot. The physics engine is something we’re very proud of. It’s actually a pretty realistic simulation of actual physics movement laws. Before I studied marketing and communication, I studied physics -  something that definitely helps a lot with developing games. In Lunarcy, pretty much everything is affected by gravity. Every 40th of a second, the engine calculates exactly how an object’s speed changes and where it is positioned now. The accuracy of the physics engine is well noticed when a spaceship is docked with another spaceship. The center of mass changes and the way the new formed constellation moves around a planet or rotates around itself is different from what it was before the docking precedure.

What was the most challenging part of creating this app? What have you learned through this?

That would have to be trying to translate the physics into math. The physics engine is quite complex and in order to maintain our targeted frame rate, we had to write very efficiently. Every redundant calculation has to be aborted as soon as the engine determines it’s a waste of CPU power. On top of that, another difficulty was keeping calculations free from slight errors. One of our first iterations of the physics engine used calculations that were rounded too much. This turned out to be a problem. Sure, rounding every calculation helps with relieving the CPU, but it created small calculative errors which resulted in orbits changing slightly over time. Of course, I can’t tell you exactly how the engine works right now, but this physics engine is very precise. Orbits are steady as a rock and everything moves and behaves as it would in real life.

One essential part of the gameplay mechanics of Lunarcy is using orbital movements to your advantage. Getting into orbit costs fuel, but staying in orbit is free. You could circle around a planet for ever. This behaviour is key to a high score, or even simply completing a level for that matter. Adjusting a stable orbit by slightly thrusting the rockets, results in a different orbit, bringing you closer to the target with only little fuel burned.

What have you found to be the benefit of the iPhone platform?

The App Store. It’s fairly easy to distribute your application without investing too much. Apple really made it possible to penetrate the gaming market for small companies like ours. Sure, there are improvable aspects of the current system, but without the App Store, we would have been forced to have walked a more difficult path.

And we just love the iPhone and iPod touch. With it’s bright, high-resolution touch screen, we the developer are only limited by our creativity.

Was this the first iPhone app you created? Have you thought about creating more?

To tell you a little secret, Lunary isn’t our first game for the iPhone. We created two earlier games, which by some thorough search on the internet are findable. Don’t expect anything spectacular though, they were merely a test run to make sure we knew what we’re doing.

Regarding future games, yes, definitely. It depends on the success of Lunarcy whether we’ll be able to speed up things a bit, but we have at least two games planned to be released. I can’t go into details too much, but I can tell you both games have some relation with a classic game from the 16-bit console gaming era. And they will be challenging, haha!

Have you found a successful way to spread the word about your app and increase its use?

Yes and no. To be honest, we’ve experienced some trouble reaching out to our target audience. The App Store is currently flooded with good apps. Lunarcy is more than well received by those who played the game. With currently a 4 star rating of all versions and a 4 star rating of version 1.0.2, we could say that the game indeed delivers what we claim it should.

Nevertheless, Lunarcy hasn’t hit the top of the chart yet. On the bright side, it appears that eventually, when something is good enough, it’ll get noticed by the community. One proven channel of reaching out to the public is through the use of social media. Twitter has been of great use. We believe that direct feedback helps contributing to an even greater gaming experience. Twitter provides in that matter a lot.

What struck us most is the enthusiasm of some of the people from the gaming community. What we’ve noticed, again, is that Lunarcy is very well received. Some of the fans of our game provide us with an ongoing burst of feedback. We love it. Some of the feedback turned out to be very creative ideas for a future iteration of Lunarcy. Thus far, this has led to a few updates of Lunarcy 1.0.2 and will be a substantial part of version 1.1.

I noticed you’ve released a few updated versions of Lunarcy, what do we have to look forward to in the future?

So yes, we’re still supporting and updating Lunarcy to enhance the experience and build upon the already unique features and qualities of the game. We’re currently working on Lunarcy 1.1 which will see an online Leaderboard. Lunarcy is a game of growing, learning, repeating and turning that seemingly unfeasible level into a perfect score. Showing off your highscore to the rest of the world definitely contributes to that heavily fought for feeling of accomplishment.

Another huge update for 1.1 will be a beginner class. In this game mode, everything is slowed down a bit so Lunarcy won’t be so insanely hard, uhm, challenging. Oh, and a nice little surprise happens in 1.1 when all levels have been completed with a perfect score.

Next to that, some slight cosmetic improvements will accompany version 1.1.

There’s at least one more huge update awaiting for Lunarcy after that, but we’re looking into the possibility to incorporate it in 1.1.

Last Question. Which wins: iPhone or car? iPhone or alligator? Car or alligator?

Haha, I’d say, iPhone beats car. I could always walk, and with an iPhone in my hand I won’t get bored. Alligator beats iPhone. No doubt about that. Ever thrown an iPhone into the Everglades? Rest my case. Alligator beats car. Carwash. Nuff said.