Last month I mentioned that we were still converting screens to use final iPad-sized artwork. That process is complete, and the game has gone out to a number of beta testers, to make sure everything is good on a variety of devices and versions of iOS. (We’re making a universal release, so the same game still needs to run properly on iPhone and iPod touch.) We’re testing here too, and have been squashing a number of bugs.
It hasn’t been in testing long enough to have confidence in the code quality, but things look pretty good so far.
As a developer, most of my testing consists of looking at specific parts of the program (either something I just changed, or to investigate a problem someone else has reported). But I finally got a chance to play a complete short game from beginning to end. This did reveal some issues that needed to be fixed. But it also felt like the game is finally on its native platform. You hold the iPad much like a book, and this meant that King of Dragon Pass really felt like an interactive story (and less like a computer game).
The iPad layout was actually constrained by not having artwork at any higher resolution than you see here. But the results are that text never covers artwork, and you almost never have to scroll. The text is super crisp (on a new iPad) and the iPad screen is bright and gorgeous, so the art looks great. It’s all a really good experience. And as you can see, we don’t need to hide the extra information (the list of clans was behind a button even on the Mac/Windows version), and the manual is available from within a scene.
So if you don’t have an iOS device and want to play King of Dragon Pass, get an iPad.
Nice. This is exactly what I was hoping for with an iPad version - that the small original artwork would turn out to be a boon rather than a detriment. Glad it's working out.
ReplyDeleteIf I were creating a game from scratch for iPad, I would probably be tempted to have art at a larger size (maybe even full screen).
ReplyDeleteExcellent news! Big thanks to David, the other staff involved and all the testers
ReplyDeleteLooking great.
ReplyDeleteHi! Now that you're in beta, is there any ballpark release date?
ReplyDeleteLooks awesome! I have been playing on my iPad with the screen enlarged, and the game seems to be crashing often. Would it be better to play it at the smaller size? (third generation iPad)
ReplyDeleteI don’t think so, especially with a retina display (the text looks great at 2x). I have heard from a number of people who use it on the new iPad at 2x.
ReplyDeleteNormally the best way to report bugs is at http://a-sharp.com/kodp/bug.html but that doesn’t handle crash logs.
I will see if I can get logs from Apple, or you can email us at customer-support (eventually I should update that web page too).
Believe it or not, I think I just fixed your crash, DKD. (Over 2/3 of the crash logs accumulated by Apple were the same thing.)
ReplyDeleteWhich kind of ties into the other question: it depends on the type of bugs found, and whether or not I need to go back to an artist.
Awesome, thanks for that! I will check it out tonight, and see how it goes. I agree, it does look great on the retina display. If the crash logs were common, I'm sure it was the same thing. I'll pop off an email if I continue to have problems. Thanks for commenting so fast!
ReplyDeleteWhen can we expect the iPad version to be released? Can't wait!
ReplyDeleteLooks like September.
ReplyDelete