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Tiny Tower – My tips and tricks

Monday, February 27th, 2012 at 3:03 am

Hey everyone. If you’ve found this post, it means you want to do better at Tiny Tower. Build your floors faster, make more money, etc.
Here are some strategies and tips that I’ve personally found useful. They may or may not work…but again, I think they do.

Mentalities

  • 1 BUX = 2000 coins.

    When you’re not spending BUX on elevators or costumes, you should be saving towards 50 BUX, which you can trade in to the bank for 100,000 coins. Because of this, 1 BUX is effectively 2000 coins.

  • 3 Residential Floors for every 5 Businesses is WRONG

    While you want your businesses to be maxed out (3 people), you do NOT want your Residential Floors to be packed to 5. Having it packed to 5 means one good thing and one less good thing.
    Good thing: if there’s a spot free, there’s a chance that bitizen will move in and earn you 2 bux if their dream job is of a business you have. Just give them the job, and evict them. Easy 4000 coins. The chance you’ll get this becomes greater as your # of businesses increases.
    Less Good thing: if they don’t move in, they tip you. In the iPhone, it’s 2x whatever floor they go to…OR 1 BUX.

  • The VIP Real Estate Bitizen is one of the best.

    Especially late game.

    In my scenario now, if I build a new residential floor every other floor. The odds that it’s 5 spots empty or 4 spots empty is likely. Doing the math,
    If I’m at 40 floors, 20 are businesses, there are 100 businesses so there’s a 1/5 chance I can earn 2 BUX for each bitizen.
    If I’m at 80 floors, 40 are businesses. There are 100 businesses so there’s a 2/5 chance I can earn 2 BUX for each bitizen.
    If I’m at 120 floors, 60 are businesses. There are 100 businesses so there’s a 3/5 chance I can earn 2 BUX for each bitizen.

  • The Pink VIP Big Spender is the worst.

    It increases your money…but not in any noticable way. FAIL.

  • Food Place don’t suck

    “That first item takes a minute to restock and 2 minutes to sell out. I have to watch that thing like a hawk!” was my first impression.
    But at this point I realize that stocking the other 2 items and having that first item run out of stock and restock it is good because: there’s a chance to earn 1 bux every time the place is fully stocked. That means there’s a chance of earning 2000 coins every few minutes. Not bad.

Tips and Tricks

  1. Figure out what your most expensive item (this will come in handy for my next point)

    What to do
    When an item is fully stocked, click on the business, then click the item, then click sell and look at the amount. Click NO and make sure you don’t sell it.
    Right now, my Animation Studio’s 3rd item sells for 90,000! :) Before that, both my Martial Arts 3rd item Black Belt and my Auto Dealer 3rd item Convertible sell for 63,000!

    Why you do it
    This comes in handy below (point 2)

  2. Green Big Spender VIPs always go to : ___(Floor from point 1)___

    What to do
    Figure out what your most expensive item is and keep it in stock for when a GREEN BIG SPENDER comes. Do NOT stock the other 2 items (you want the Big Spender to ONLY buy out your most expensive product, not the other 2 that your business has).

    Why you do it
    Green Big Spenders are a great way to earn a lot of coins without/spending as few BUX as possible. Remember, 1 BUX = 2000 coins to make it worth while so if your item is say, 54000 but it costs you more than 27 BUX to restock it in time, it’s not worth it. But anything less than 27 BUX will make it worth it. Ideally, you don’t have to spend any BUX but sometimes it doesn’t work out that way (and sometimes it does).

  3. Group your similar floors together AND dress the bitizens to match that color

    What to do
    Move your residential floors together. Below your businesses.
    Also, group your similar businesses together.
    All your Food together, all your Service, all your Recreation, all your Retail, all your Creative.

    Finally, ensure all the employees working in these businesses are color coordinated to your business. All the Food people where green, all the Creative people where Orange

    Why you do it
    It makes finding a Bitizen MUCH EASIER. (It’s an easy 2000 coins)
    Thought Process –
    1. Find a bitizen
    2. See what color he’s wearing
    3. Navigate to those stores (all bunched together), you can see 4 stores on 1 screen. See if the bitizen is there. If you’re lazy, just tap all 4 floors. If he’s not found, move to the next floors.
    4. If he’s still not found, scan the Residential floors. This is probably the biggest pain, when it reaches here.

  4. Costumes for your bitizens.

    What to do
    Buy Costumes for your bitizens and dress them according to the business they work in.
    For example, all my Comedy Club employees wear Cat Costumes, because they work at LOLCATS (what I renamed my comedy club).

    Why you do it
    It also makes finding a Bitizen much easier. (It’s an easy 2000 coins)
    Thought Process –
    1. Find a bitizen
    2. See what costume he’s wearing
    3. Navigate directly to that floor. He’s either at this business, or the residential floors.
    4. If he’s not found, scan the Residential floors. Again, this is the biggest pain, but because the bitizen is in costume, it’s a lot easier.

  5. Stock the item depending on how you play

    What to do
    If you check Tiny Tower a lot, say…every 30 minutes, keep the first item stocked, and work your way towards the second and third. Especially right when you wake up in the morning, and the businesses are mostly closed. You want to get them back up and running ASAP.
    If you check Tiny Tower a lot, say…every few hours, stock the last item (unless it takes over 3 hours) and work your way towards the small items. If you’re not checking the game a lot, it’s better to get one of those big stocks, and just let it run while you’re idle.

    Why you do it
    It’s simple. You want to minimize your business downtime.

  6. Don’t waste Construction VIPs

    What to do
    I play so much/make so much money that I’m at the point I can build a floor whenever I want. That is to say, I don’t build floors until I’m out of coins/bux. I always keep a buffer of building a new floor only when my last floor is less than 3 hours away from being constructed. That way, I don’t ever waste a construction worker.

    Why you do it
    There’s no rush building floors. They’ll come if you play ‘properly’. And wasting a VIP Construction Worker is not good.

  7. Keep Residential Floors at the bottom

    What to do
    This only applies if you maintain empty spots in your the Residential Floors. But anyways, keep your Residential Floors together, below your Businesses.

    Why you do it
    If a bitizen goes to your residential floor, and there’s a space, you lose out on the tip because they move in. You’d rather have these floors below the businesses so you actually get tips on the upper floors. If you have 70 floors and they’re distributed evenly between businesses and residential, it’s much better to get a 140 coin tip (cuz they went to the top residential floor and it was the 70th) than a 70 coin tip (cuz they went to the top residential floor and it was the 35th).

  8. That’s it for now. I will update if I discover more.

Tiny Tower is the new World of Warcraft

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 at 11:53 pm

Since Friday night…I’ve been playing Tiny Towers on the iPhone….

…and I’m pretty addicted.

It’s not exactly like my World of Warcraft addiction. You can play Tiny Towers while you do other stuff….
Basically, during my (2) vacation days…I spent my time playing Tiny Towers and watching One Tree Hill….instead of working on warrenshea.com….or anything else. Oops.

I promise this is temporary.

Part of it is the friends who are playing with me, who started around the same time. Damn my competitive edge. Same thing happened with Farmville. Figure out how to beat people, surpass them despite their early advantage…and then move on to something else :)

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OH MAN. I have my Connect 4 Finals tomorrow. 32 person tournament. I hope to win. I hope to play an amazing match. You can’t have an amazing match with only 1 person, which is why I dislike playing the computer…especially when the computer sucks. I hope to play a few skilled people tomorrow for warm up tomorrow :) It won’t be easy but I hope I can win.

Not World of Warren

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 at 9:02 pm

My friend linked this page to me. It can be found here in it’s entirety:
http://www.scu.edu/ethics-center/ethicsblog/thebigq.cfm?c=10252&comm=1

Just found it interesting.

Also, as you may NOT have guessed, this is not referring to me. I wouldn’t have a level 60 orc in 2011. PFFT. I had Tauren or Blood Elves…and I had 10 80s. But yes, lots of it is eerily similar. It was difficult reading the comments, and I didn’t read all of them. I’m not THAT ^ person anymore…(and I know it’s not referring to me, but it’s close enough).

I did throw a lot of my social threads away. Fortunately, my uni schools friends played WoW too. And my high school friends (my closer friends) didn’t abandon me in my weakest days when I abandoned them…for a game. I wasn’t that social last year…but this year, with some of my new friends, I’m really growing socially. I’ve been more social in the last few months than I’ve ever been. Maybe why my blog posts are going down (actually, I do have an answer for that…I’ll write about that later).

Will write more later. Zelda time. Almost done.

…in two years…

Saturday, January 7th, 2012 at 7:15 pm

To recap…today is a special day for me. It’s the 2 year anniversary since I quit World of Warcraft. I know, it seems stupid in retrospect or hindsight that I would celebrate something like this. But World of Warcraft was an addiction of mine…and life’s been great since kicking the habit. I wrote another post last year on this day about the one year after I quit WoW. This is a followup post to that….tradition, if you will.

What did I ask myself at the end of …one year ago…

How much will change by Jan 7, 2012?
What will I accomplish?
How will my life have changed?
What will I have figured out?

What I’ve done in the last year

worldofwarren.com (previously warrenshea.com)

  • New Google+ Theme on worldofwarren.com
  • Got worldofwarren.com domain and moved content from warrenshea.com to worldofwarren.com
  • Heavily cleaned up code on worldofwarren.com
  • Fixed old themes on worldofwarren.com

I was able to separate my site into 2, a personal and professional site. Just what I wanted to do this year :) Not that it was hard…and this…

warrenshea.com

  • Almost done

….yeah, this is almost done. :D

Blogging
187 posts between Jan 7, 2010 and Jan 7, 2011. On average, roughly 15.58 posts/month. The number actually falls almost too perfectly inline with my hope of 150-200 posts this year (that I wrote I wanted in my …in one year… post). FYI – Last year’s stats were: 300 posts since my first one, on Jan 26, 2010. On average, roughly 25.25 posts/month.

Twitter
2831 tweets since Jan 18, 2010. 1345 since Jan 7, 2010. Just shy of what I did last year (1486). As expected.

Improved development skills
I definitely did NOT improve my ASP.NET C# skills and only improved my PHP by a little bit.
I had a good amount of improvement on HTML5, CSS3, and jQuery while building warrenshea.com
I’ve also learned quite a bit about Web Accessibility knowledge due to a large project at work.

Reading

  • Dragon Ball Z Vol 1 – 26 [Manga]
  • Bakuman Vol 1 – 2 [Manga]
  • Hikaru no Go – The Neverending Road – Chapter 1-79 [Fanfiction]
  • Azumanga Daioh [Manga]
  • Street Fighter: The Ultimate Edition Book 2 [Comic]
  • Street Fighter: The Ultimate Edition Book 1 [Comic]
  • Get Backers [Manga]
  • L, Change the World [Short Novel]

This is obviously not a complete list of all the things I’ve read as I’ve got so many comics and random mangas in the list too. This is just from my accomplishments post.

I haven’t read that much this year…and that’s okay. Steve Jobs book this year…and we’ll see what else.

Gaming

  • Super Mario Kart 7 [3DS]
  • Kirby: Return to Dreamland [Wii]
  • Kirby Mass Attack [DS]
  • New Super Mario Bros [DS]
  • Super Mario 3D Land [3DS]
  • Star Fox 64 [3DS]
  • Catherine [PS3]
  • Zelda: Ocarina of Time [3DS]
  • Zelda: Ocarina of Time [N64]
  • Super Mario Bros. [Wii]
  • Hard Corps: Uprising [PS3]

Last year was pretty quiet but this year was…not. More on that here

Art
Is it still okay to say this is a hobby of mine? I don’t think I did a single art piece this year.


What I hope to accomplish this year

worldofwarren.com
I’m going to get rid of the Blogger theme I have. I guess that one’s never really been mine anyways….not that the GMAIL or Google+ themes are really mine either though >_< I want to make a professional theme still...I guess that would be next on my design plate. warrenshea.com
I’m going to finish this..and soon!

[sideproject].com
I still plan on making this. It’s not my epic project. It’s a blog that won’t be updated too often. It’s based on a product line of toys I really like. Anyways, I’ll get this made this year, for sure! Right after warrenshea.com! I’m kinda waiting on my new camera for this because I want to take photos of my toys FOR this site.

Blogging
I’m getting a bit tired of blogging to be honest. I think blogging once every 4 or 5 days is a good amount…maybe a bit too little though? That would only be like, 7 posts a month! I really like having 10-15 posts a month…anyways, we’ll see.

Reading, Gaming, Art
I don’t care so much about reading or art. As for gaming, I would still like to continue gaming…but maybe game less than this last year.

Improving development skills
I’m not going to set any really high ambitions for this this year. I learn best and most when I have a practical project to work on….so I guess I’ll really try to focus learning through working on my current site and projects, worldofwarren.com, warrenshea.com, [sideproject].com, and [epicsite?].com.

I guess what I learn will all depend on the projects I do. I’m try to focus less on learning, and more on working on practical work…and let the learning come naturally and automatically.


How I’ve changed professionally this last year

To be honest: At this point, I think I’m at my lowest point of motivation ever. Part of it happens to be my work friends. It seems like the new friends I’ve made at work really affect my productivity. Not surprising. All I want to do nowadays is chat. It’s been really bad (professionally). Personally it’s been really fun and great lol.

Part of it is being on these super really long projects. They’ve been delayed and delayed. I’m afraid to take on new projects that will end up going and then falling at the same time as these big projects, and physically and mentally stressing me like they did earlier this year. I hated it. All work, no play. And then I got sick. I don’t wanna go through that again. To be honest, I’ve been avoiding projects for what seems like a long time. I guess it’s only been since Sept/Oct though.

How I hope to change professionally this year

I need to get out of my rut. Should I volunteer for more work projects? Maybe new job might help. But I dunno. I guess I’ve been in this job/role for about 4 years. Maybe it’s time for a change? I just need some motivation…


…in two years…

I’ve done a lot since I quit WoW, two years ago today. I like where this is all going. I like the websites I’ve done. I like the friends I’ve gotten in touch with again and the new friends I’ve made this year. I like that I’ve watched a lot of new shows, listened to different music, played lots of games. Basically, I’m really happy with all the things I’ve done since I quit WoW. I can’t imagine doing 1/2 of these things had I still been playing.

Let’s see what this next year brings :)
BRING. IT.

Gamer VS Developer

Friday, January 6th, 2012 at 1:05 am

As my “two years” since the day I quit WoW (World of Warcraft) comes up, I’m reminded of what I wanted to do this last year. And I honestly fall pretty short of what I wanted to do (more on that in Sat’s post).

I wanted to focus this year on development. But I didn’t. I didn’t learn most of the stuff I wanted to learn. And I think that I learned that I’m fundamentally more of a gamer than a developer. But maybe that’s only true when I’m not motivated to develop :P

In recent years, I played a lot of WoW. Then, I took a break from games and did worldofwarren.com (previously known as warrenshea.com). And then I went back to games this year.

Look at the 2 lists below, they speak for themselves (thank you bi-weekly Accomplishments posts for making this so easy to compile).

In this last year, these are the games I’ve played and beat completely (in order of most recently beat to least recently beat)

  • Super Mario Kart 7 [3DS]
  • Kirby: Return to Dreamland [Wii]
  • Kirby Mass Attack [DS]
  • New Super Mario Bros [DS]
  • Super Mario 3D Land [3DS]
  • Star Fox 64 [3DS]
  • Catherine [PS3]
  • Zelda: Ocarina of Time [3DS]
  • Zelda: Ocarina of Time [N64]
  • Super Mario Bros. [Wii]
  • Hard Corps: Uprising [PS3]

This doesn’t include the games I played but didn’t beat (cuz there’s no ending) – Marvel VS Capcom 3, Initial D: Extreme Stage, Gran Turismo 5, League of Legends (LoL), DOTA, DC Universe Online, Counter Strike: Source, Plants VS Zombies, and even occasional (but non-addicting) WoW….plus all the iPhone games: Cut the Rope, Cut the Rope: Experiments, Drop 7.

In this last year, this is what I’ve done development wise (from a personal perspective….I still did/learned a lot from work)

  • New Google+ Theme on worldofwarren.com
  • Got worldofwarren.com and moved content from warrenshea.com to worldofwarren.com
  • warrenshea.com (but not complete…80% done)
  • Heavily cleaned up code on worldofwarren.com
  • Fixed old themes on worldofwarren.com
  • Read CSS Mastery book

Honestly, while I did a lot of dev, I think I spent most of my time playing games (well, actually most of my time would go to watching and re-watching shows, sitcoms, anime but I do other stuff when I watch stuff…like eat/dev). I think the year after WoW was working hard on development to balance/catch-up the time I’d lost gaming due to WoW. And then this year was to catch up in the years I’ve missed in gaming :P I didn’t mean for this to happen…it just…did.

I don’t know what next year will be like: Dev or Games? I think professionally, it’d be better to focus on dev….but I can only do that if I’m motivated. Lately…I just haven’t been (this looks so bad to any potential employers coming to my site looking for a self-motivated individual). It’s hard because I’m not one to finish projects….starting warrenshea.com, finishing most but not completely finishing it. And then I don’t want to start a new project because I should really finish warrenshea.com. And then I don’t wanna finish warrenshea.com cuz it’s the boring stuff, clean up…nothing challenging. So then what do I do? Game. I guess it’s all about procrastinating….and gaming is my most fun, efficient use of time-wasting. I imagine I’ve spent a little more time gaming than blogging…but maybe not, it’s hard to say….I blog a lot but I don’t game a lot…just in concentrated spurts.

I guess my next most efficient time wasters would be reading: comics, manga, fanfiction, a novel here or there…followed by art/design.

Still, Web Development is not a time waster. It’s my professional field…and while many people don’t do professional stuff outside of work, I try to be an exception. Because I certainly do love development, and I think keeping a current skill is incredibly important for future opportunities. My skill with a blade must be sharp, like the blade itself. It can’t be dull, or it’ll take more hits to take out a Stalfos. OMG too much Zelda. But seriously…out of the other 14 developers in my department, only 2 develop frequently. And they’re both senior and incredibly skilled. Less than 5 do occasional development and the rest don’t do any outside of work. And that’s okay if they’re okay with that.

But I’m the least skilled of the 3 most skilled in our department….and the least hard-working of them. And yes, while I’m in the top 4/5 in terms of skill…I’m the bottom of the top. I don’t like that at all. I’m not saying I want to be the best if it sacrifices my life…but both of the people above me seem to have a pretty normal social life. More normal than me…

Anyways….I’ve really been reflecting on my “two years” post and this is something related, on my mind, but not what I want to focus on….which is why it’s a separate post.

Good night for now, talk to you soon :D