Please do not post the same thing multiple times. The board software automatically flags certain posts as needing moderator attention. This happens the most often for new users. I'm pretty sure this is made clear at the time you attempt to post. Posting the same thing over and over again just makes that many more posts the moderators have to weed through later. This makes us sad. Don't make us sad. If your post/thread doesn't appear, just wait a while. Don't post it again. If it hasn't shown up by the next day, then you can try again. I normally go through posts in the mornings, and try to check a few times throughout the day, but I'm not here 24/7. There will typically be a significant delay before posts are approved. Just be patient.
Graphics assets are a whole 'nother ballgame. The reason Tiny Wings clones don't look as good is purely because of the skill of the graphics artist, not so much the tools that they use. You can look into the free program The Gimp, or pay for Photoshop and search around on some tutorials on how to use them. Or if you'd prefer vector art there's Inkscape for free and Illustrator commercially. But it will take a lot of practice before you are able to compete aesthetically with what professionals are capable of doing. I've been using those programs for years, and most of my game graphics still look like crap. I did the simulators for CatHide using both of those tools and I think they turned out great. But drawing characters and compelling backgrounds and such is a completely different skill set. I have most of my game graphics success creating and rendering 3d models using a variety of (mostly paid) software. But I started doing 3d over a decade ago with a focus on doing CGI work for video. I've never really dedicated myself to the art of 2d graphics, and it shows. There are websites, as I mentioned in another thread, like opengameart.org that have a variety of free graphics you can download. Just be sure to pay attention to the license, as it is different for each piece of art. It might not be legal to use for re-distribution. The other alternative is to look at the job boards here, or on Toucharcade and hire someone to do the graphics for you.
This news made my day. While I have no problem with cloning games, it is pretty clear from the document linked to below that Zynga did more than merely clone The Sims Social with their product, The Ville. All of the poses are the same, the character classes are the same (well, synonyms), the animations are the same, and even the RGB values for each of the skin tones are identical. Of course, we all knew this about Zynga, but it's nice to see that they've ripped off the wrong people for once. Although copyright infringement of a video game can be hard to prove, I think the evidence is hard to ignore. Even the proportions of the buildings are the same as TSS while differing from all of Zyngas other games. (Of course, because all of Zyngas other games are using the same proportions as the games they are copies of)
It came back up literally minutes after I finished creating a replacement forum for what I though was a dead site. I'm not going to complain about the wasted domain registration fee, the two tech support calls to GoDaddy, the lost sleep, or the day wasted though. I'm just glad to have the site back! But it isn't REALLY back until Rhade moves this to off-topic and admonishes us for posting in the wrong forum. ;-)
