Rolled out an update today: Version 0.7.5331-Beta
What's New
- New Feature: Verse of the Day (VOTD) will load on open (most of the time... still working some issues out).
VOTD will start showing up on its own, but if you aren't seeing it yet this might be why:
To active VOTD you must first play through a few verses. After you close the app completely, on the next app open it should show up. You will know it is the verse of the day because at the bottom instead of the option to select a Bible version you will see some text like "Verse of the day...". If it still doesn't appear, there might not be a puzzle for that day (or for that version for that day). Try another Bible version, make sure the app is allowed to use the Internet, or check back the next day.
The BibleGateway API for using their verse of the day has some issues (or at least I haven't figured out how to properly use it yet) so those haven't been included In this version. YouVersion's bible.com doesn't have a verse of the day API so I built my own YouVersion verse of the day API.
The puzzle generator backend that I built will need more work, but for now, most days a verse of the day should show up in the app.
- Removed transparency from letter cubes
Way back before the puzzle had options for pinch to zoom and swipe to rotate I had to cheat by making the letters transparent. That way without the puzzle being able to move you could still see each of the words.
Eventually I would like to do something in the middle of the two extremes. Maybe words on the far side of the puzzle can be solid and any words in front of the word you have selected could be transparent. Then it could keep automatically fixing which words are transparent as you rotate, but this isn't super easy to do so it might never happen.
Road Map
These are the things I hope to build into the app someday. These may or may not happen but they are what I am currently working on behind the scenes.
- Verse of the day puzzles:
Idea: A new puzzle for each day matching up to the YouVersion Bible App's verse of the day.
Progress: Added in as a feature in version 0.7.5331-Beta. The next step is to also add in the verse of the day for BibleGateway.com. The puzzles are automatically generated but the generator still needs some work, currently it won't build a puzzle everyday because it often fails during the build. Failures shouldn't show up in the app, instead the verse of the day will be skipped when that happens. - Play Packs:
Idea: Groups of verses ("Play Packs") instead of randomly selected verses.
Progress: Haven't started. - Custom Play Packs:
Idea: User generated puzzles saved into play packs.
Progress: Built a puzzle generator. Needs a user interface and is waiting on main menu with play packs to be completed first. - Mini games:
Idea: Playable mini-games (for example they could be similar to: pong, flappy-bird, minesweeper, etc.) the purpose being to break up game play and to acquire power-ups to be used on puzzles.
Progress: Haven't started. - Power-ups:
Idea: Gained from mini-games, storable and usable for things like narrowing the keyboard to only letters for the current word, solving all of one letter on the puzzle, etc.
Progress: Haven't started. Waiting on mini-games to be completed first. - Sounds:
Idea: Default to off but allow to be toggled on
Progress: Haven't started. - Better Graphics/Animation:
Idea: After core functionality is built in I hope to start working on the graphics, animation, and general "gamification" of the app.
Progress: Added in some playful animations but they caused lots of issues and had to remove them. Need to start over with these.