Lightwell - A simple tool for creating native iOS apps on Mac 💻 📲

Thanks for the hunt @alexisohanian and hi everyone! We’re super excited to launch on PH today and hear what you think! 🚀 We started building apps six years ago, and created an interactive 8-book app series called “The Adventures of Pan.” Each app took us 9 months to create from start to finish, and we came to a realization: that building apps should be easy (at least easier than it was)! Thus, Lightwell was born. It was developed in-house to help us streamline the process of app creation, and the same app that took us 9 months was rebuilt in Lightwell in 2 weeks. Over the last few months, we’ve worked closely with a bunch of creators to understand how to make Lightwell an even more useful and powerful tool for them. We’re happy to share Lightwell 3.0 with the PH community today, and can’t wait to see what you create! ✨ A couple of key features we’re proud of: Completely redesigned interface for easier creation Auto image conversion and scaling Master scene templates for faster creation Rapid previewing and prototyping with a companion iOS app Optimized asset management, for all iOS devices and screens Auto phoneme lip sync calculation Over the next few weeks, we’re going to share interviews and stories of creators who are creating their first app in Lightwell, and engaging with their audience in an entirely new way. Feel free to follow our Medium page for more updates: https://medium.com/lightwell-pro 💌 --- As a thank you for joining us on our PH launch today, please use a code “PH50” for 50% off the first year or first three months of Lightwell, for this week only! --- We’ll be here to answer questions all day 👋 Suzanne, Max, Mike, Ben, Miles

@alexisohanian @suzannexie I want to hold off purchase until you have sketch support (haven't used photoshop in years), but I don't want lose the 50% off. Do you have a public roadmap for Sketch integration (or other features)?

@ovidiutepes thanks Tepes! Would love to hear what you think when you try it. :)

@ovidiutepes Thank you! @benjamingage designed the site, and I coded it up. What do you think of the new software design?

@jmlynn7 that's definitely been my impression of the team since I've started working here 😃 anything in particular that you're looking forward to?

@jmlynn7 you know how to make a team 😊 ! We loved working with you too, those were fun times. Super excited to bring this internal tool to all creators! cc @alexiskold

Aww shucks @jmlynn7 😅 Thanks for the shout out! We've been taking all of our learnings from our own app creation process and a whole bunch of other artists and have been putting it into Lightwell 🤓 We'd love to know what you think of the new version!

@rickyyean Thanks Ricky!

@scott_valentine we have a Photoshop script that cuts all your layers for import into Lightwell, and are working on integration for Sketch and Illustrator next. They are on the roadmap for the near future! While we think Lightwell is the *best* platform for interactive story apps (anything content-driven, really), we're also working on adding more functionality outside of content. Let us know what you're looking for, happy to hear from other makers. Thanks for checking us out!

@suzannexie Hi Suzanne. I app-reciate your quick response! 🙄 I'm looking for video camera and video player function. Will keep an eye on your platform as you progress on your roadmap!

@scott_valentine Haha :) Cool, that's good to know. We're looking into that type of functionality for the future API. Thanks!

Hi @androidlove! Thanks for checking us out! It looks like Dropsource is made for teams and companies to build traditional menu based apps. Whereas we built Lightwell for independent artists and designers to be able to make content driven apps. This includes key frame animations, touch and gyroscope effects, and quick calculation of phonemes for matching mouth sprites to a piece of dialogue 😁

@mikekara9 Thanks!

@markussss Let us know what you think :)