Hey guys, it’s been a while since an update. Got lots of stuff to talk about, so let me break it down into categories.

Why is was the website so slow?

So Stick Nodes is a pretty popular app. Apparently, it’s more popular than my hosting plan could handle. Around the beginning of December this website began to slow to a crawl due to the number of visitors per day, it was using up too much CPU power.

I’m glad to say that as of right now, I’ve upgraded the hosting plan and things seem to be great. I will be monitoring the performance of the site. Right now things are blazing fast, but that’s because many of you are still not able to access the new site (it’s no problem, your browsers will eventually be updated in the coming hours). If things slow down again, I’ll be forced to make a bigger hosting plan upgrade, but that’s for me to worry about.

Where are all of the new stickfigures?

I haven’t uploaded new stickfigures in over a month, and I’m sorry about that. I have all of the stickfigures you guys have been submitting, all 383 of them, I just haven’t manually gone through them and approved, screenshotted, and uploaded them yet.

I was waiting for the website to be fixed, as uploading stickfigures where each page-load took 10+ seconds would have gotten old really, really fast. My plan is to upload 20 new stickfigures every day until I’ve gone through the entire backlog and caught up. I will start uploading new stickfigures tomorrow.

What happened to the giveaway?

This is my bad.

I was following through with the giveaway, and actually contacted three of the winners (two of which I still need to get in touch with), but then things got hectic for me.

To keep a long story short, the craziness of the holidays coupled with personal family issues prevented me from keeping up with the giveaway, so please forgive me for the lies. I will make it up to you and hold some type of similar giveaway in the near future.

Where is the iOS “sounds” update?

I have to be honest, I haven’t worked on it for a few weeks. This is again due to the same reasons that prevented me from following through with the Christmas giveaway.

I will get back to work on this update this week, and am already very far into getting it working. I will have new updates within a week on an ETA for release.

What now?

Okay, that’s all for now. I’m sorry for the absence these past weeks, but a lot of crazy stuff just came out of nowhere all at once and I was in no position to keep up with the demand of managing the Stick Nodes community.

Things should be returning to normal now, though.

Edit (January 1st) – Sorry about the absence guys, some family stuff came up and with the holidays as well it was very hectic. I’m sorry that I haven’t been keeping up with winners of this giveaway, and I’m also sorry about the slowness of the site, I’ve been distracted the past few weeks and haven’t been able to keep up with things. I will make a post addressing this very soon. All is good though.

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So this is going to be a thing. Who wants a free $10 gift card for Google Play, the App Store, or Amazon?

Well for the next twelve days (today included), you could be the lucky recipient! Just keep reading on how to enter!

What can you win?

If you’re a US resident, you have the choice of a $10 gift card for Google Play, the App Store, or Amazon. If you’re a non-US resident, you’ll receive a $10 gift card for Amazon. This is because it’s very hard to buy gift cards for Google Play/the App Store for others who don’t live in the same country as you. Amazon makes it easier, but only if you live in certain regions.

How do you enter?

There are multiple ways to enter:

• Single permanent entry #1 (can only be done once, but it counts as an entry every day until the end of the giveaway):
  Visit and like the Stick Nodes Facebook page. Find the post for the giveaway and like it, too. Also, comment on that post with either a link to one of your past Stick Nodes animations (or a new one). If you can’t post a link to your animation, then just leave a comment with what your favorite feature of Stick Nodes is!
• Single permanent entry #2 (can only be done once, but it counts as an entry every day until the end of the giveaway):
  Visit and +1 the Stick Nodes Google Plus page. Find the post for the giveaway and like it, too. Also, comment on that post with either a link to one of your past Stick Nodes animations (or a new one). If you can’t post a link to your animation, then just leave a comment with what your favorite feature of Stick Nodes is!
• Single permanent entry #3 (can only be done once, but it counts as an entry every day until the end of the giveaway):
  Follow me on Twitter and retweet the giveaway tweet.
• Daily entry (can be done once per 24-hour period)
  Post your Stick Nodes animation on Youtube! Be sure to include the words “Stick Nodes” in the title and/or description or I will not able to find it! (Make sure it’s typed just like that – not as one word like “StickNodes”.) Post one animation per day for an additional entry! (If you post more than one video, only one will be counted.)

What are the rules?

• Only one entry per method (besides the daily Youtube one) per person. The Facebook, Google+, and Twitter entries can only be done once, but they carry over for the duration of the giveaway. Nothing is stopping you from cheating the system, but you’ll be disqualified if I notice it (don’t use multiple accounts or anything, I will check against usernames and IP addresses).
• I will contact you through the website in which your entry came from (for example, I will send you a Youtube private message if the winning entry came from Youtube), so be sure to check your inboxes. If I don’t receive a reply within 72 hours after I contact you, I will choose a new winner.
• You cannot win more than once, so if you win, don’t bother entering anymore.
• Winners from the USA have a choice of a $10 iTunes card, a $10 Google Play card, or a $10 Amazon card. Winners outside of the USA will receive a $10 Amazon card, if your country is eligible for such (Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.cn, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de, Amazon.in, Amazon.it, Amazon.jp, Amazon.uk, or Amazon.es) – otherwise I’m afraid you cannot receive a prize.
• Winners will receive a digital gift card code (nothing physical in the mail).
• Sean cannot win.

How are winners chosen?

Winners are chosen at random. At the end of each day I will gather all entries into a spreadsheet and use a random number generator to choose the winner.

How long does this go on for?

Get your entries in now so they count for the duration of the giveaway, but you can post a Youtube animation entry each day from December 17th to December 28th EST. Winners will be chosen the next day. Entries are accepted from 12:00am to 11:59pm EST.

Okay, that’s all.

GET YOUR ENTRIES IN NOW.

PS – The iOS “sounds” update is still in the works, things have been slow with the holidays approaching. Will update with more news soon.

Winners so far…

I will update this list with the winners, don’t you want to see your name here? It’s as simple as liking, retweeting, or uploading  a video!

• Winner for December 17th: Bernard Mwangi (Google+)
• Winner for December 18th: Nahziar Johnson (Youtube)
• Winner for December 19th: DTdog dogster (Google+)
• Winner for December 20th: ???
• Winner for December 21st: ???
• Winner for December 22nd: ???
• Winner for December 23rd: ???
• Winner for December 24th: ???
• Winner for December 25th: ???
• Winner for December 26th: ???
• Winner for December 27th: ???
• Winner for December 28th: ???

So I skipped the October update post – my bad. I figured you guys couldn’t take another “the update will be out soon” post. But there’s good news now, the update is released – for Android, iOS coming soon!

See this video before reading on:

Sounds for Pro users!

Yep, it’s finally here. The hands-down most-requested feature has finally arrived – sound effects.

I’ve been working on this update since mid-July – MID-JULY. Let that sink in a little. It’s been nearly four-months in the making and boy, was it a headache to get this working.

I know some of you are already at your keyboard ready to tear me a new one calling me greedy and asking for sounds in the Free version, but hear me out.

This was the biggest update to Stick Nodes since its release over a year ago. Like I said, it took me four months to develop – in fact there were quite a few times I was ready to give up due to it seeming impossible. Asking for $2 as a solo developer for all of this work isn’t greedy, right? That’s less than half the price of a typical morning coffee. Plus, from a technical standpoint, only Pro users can export MP4 videos – it wouldn’t make sense for Free users to use sounds since they can’t export them (GIFs obviously don’t have audio).

I hope you guys understand that. And don’t get me wrong, I completely understand that some of the younger users are just simply unable to buy any app, whether it be due to your parents or lack of money – trust me, I was in your shoes at one point. To you I can only recommend asking your parents really, really, really nicely and hoping for the best 🙂

This update also comes with 40 sounds to get you started. You can of course use your own MP3 files as sounds, but with the app comes numerous DBZ sound effects, punches, weapons, swishes, and many other miscellaneous sounds for use in any animation!

Please feel free to let me know of any other specific sounds you’d like to see included with Stick Nodes!

Changelog

Besides sounds, there are also a few other changes, here they are:

• (Pro only) SOUNDS have been added! You can now add sounds to your animations and exported MP4 files!
• Exporting GIFs/MP4s no longer locks up your device.
• Users can now permanently delete projects/stickfigures from their device.
• Import/open list is now always alphabetized.
• Fix for crashes when saving large projects/stickfigures.
• Fix for bug where sometimes saving a stickfigure didn’t save it correctly.
• Tons of other tweaks and fixes!

And that’s about it for now. Tomorrow I begin work on attempting to port this over to iOS. I can’t give a release date yet, this port can either go smoothly or be very, very difficult – we’ll see.