Zelda Dungeon Exclusive: Interview With Heart Tracking App Creator

Last week we reported about a great little app available for iOS that would help you track all of those heart pieces within The Legend of Zelda series that needed acquiring, and those that you had already hunted down. The app keeps all the heart pieces available within each game separated by title and once you have selected a specific title, it will tell you exactly where each piece is hidden and what requirements if any are needed to secure said piece. Once your prize is in hand you can check off that you have secured it and move on to the next piece. Its a great way for you to remember which pieces you have already found and those that still need finding, and best of all its free! So far the app has been out for about two weeks and has received high praise but you may be wondering a few things. What made the developer create this app? Will it be available for Android? What else can you look forward to in the future from this developer? Now we have those answers, we had a chance to chat with David, the creator of the “Pieces of Heart” app to ask him those questions and a few more!

Head on past the break to find out what he said.

We had a chance to interview David (aka @firestream) to find out a little more about where the idea to create the app came from and what other goodies he might be planning to cook up. Check out our exclusive interview below.

ZD: What was your first experience with The Legend of Zelda?

David: “I first played “The Legend of Zelda” on the NES as a kid. I
actually remember spending hours playing the game and eventually
beating it. I had all of the stuff the game came with hanging in my
room and made my own maps as well.”

ZD: What is your favorite Zelda title?

David: “I would say my favorite title is “The Legend of Zelda: Link’s
Awakening“. I played it first in black & white on a gameboy and then
again on the GBC. I love the story, the world, the gameplay and the
music so much.”

ZD: What inspired you to create an app for tracking heart pieces?

David: “I was recently playing through “A Link Between Worlds” again and
thought how nice it would be to have an app to track heart pieces. I
looked and was surprised that nothing like that already existed, so I
wrote my own! I figured other people would find it useful, so I
submitted it to Apple and they approved it.”

ZD: How long did it take to create the app?

David: “The app itself took about 5 hours to write and test. However, I
spent at least another 5 hours finding and loading all of the heart
piece info into the app.”

ZD: What did your process look like?

David: “Without getting too technical, I wrote the app using Xamarin with
the hopes of getting an Android version released soon. It has a local
SQLite DB that contains all of the info. I got it functional first
with a small portion of the info and then styled it and finally went
back and loaded the rest of the data in.”

ZD: How did you gain the knowledge to create apps?

David: “I learned on my own by writing a simple app to track a football
schedule and then continued to write apps for different things. I
have a lot I can learn still when it comes to app development.”

ZD: What has been the response to the Heart app so far?

 

David: “Extremely positive! Reviews have been 100% positive and roll in
nearly every day. The app has been available 2 weeks as of this and
has already been downloaded over 1000 times.”

ZD: Where would you like to go from here, will you be making another app inspired by The Legend of Zelda?

David: “I plan to launch the app on Android as soon as I can. I also plan
to add in more trackable info to the app that isn’t just Heart Pieces,
probably in a separate section. I would also like to get screenshots
integrated. It will be a lot of work :)”

If you haven’t checked out the app yet , you can do so here.