Hello again… it has been quite a while since my last update. I have been working pretty tirelessly on the client since I last updated. I have a ton of new features, and the game itself is coming along very well. Most of the sound effects are already included. The tile engine is currently being reworked to help with the different screen sizes on devices, although by release it will probably have a minimum of a 600Mhz processor requirement, as well as a resolution of at least 800×480. I will still try and make it available for older devices like the G1, and MyTouch (as well as the Behold), but for now it looks like most legacy devices will start having “hiccups” once you get more than about 15 players per screen, who are all wearing different equipment types as well as chatting. I’m going to include several screenshots from the debug maps i’m using since the Nexus One I used to record the video has trouble focusing on the droid’s screen in the video. I’m going to skip over the changelog for the game for the time being, however I’m going to release a roadmap, as well as a milestone chart to show the progress i’ve been making, so I’m not attempting to remember all of the little additions along the way. Finally, the serverside AI routines and most of the data management it will utilize is mostly complete. All I have left to do is get the Socket stuff up and running, and then do some debugging to make sure it’s handling everything correctly. Finally, my plan for this game is to have a release sometime before the end of the year (work/school/life permitting). The initial release will be made on the Android Market(tm) and it will be free as a BETA release. I’m going to allow for somewhere in the neighborhood of 1500 sign-ups (depending on demand it may be more, but given the blog traffic, I’m going to assume it’ll be MUCH less). Everyone who participates in the Beta version, will be given a free life-time subscription to the game. Once the game gets out of beta (sometime around April next year most likely), the game will remain free in the market however players with free accounts will be limited to a 1-week character. Basically for 1 week your character will be active and playable, and at the end of that 1 week period will reset back to a brand new character. I haven’t made a decision on pricing yet, but those who pay a (small) monthly/yearly fee will get to keep their characters through the duration of their payment. I’m doing this for 2 reasons… #1, I’m an indie developer and I could really use the $. #2, I’m going to have to up my connection type through my ISP to host a proper server, and it won’t be free (or cheap). Without further adue, here are the 3 in-game images and the video accompanying them.
Screens:
Video:
Filed under: Endieko
