04 October 2013

Scene Contest Winners

While the Scene Contest has been over for a while, I’ve been remiss in noting the results of the voting.

We became aware that the game had some serious issues when running under VoiceOver under iOS 7. Everything used to work fine, so this took some investigation. I think the most likely explanation is that Apple fixed some VoiceOver bugs, and King of Dragon Pass had been dependent on the earlier incorrect behavior.

It appears that we’ve fixed the issues, and recently submitted version 2.2.2 to Apple for approval. So, the belated announcement:

Cooking Contest
Congratulations to Lysander Xen, who created “Let’s Pretend!” This was the clear favorite, with 51% of the votes cast at Pocket Tactics. It features interesting art and kids getting into trouble.

Runners up were Chris Gardiner’s “The Porridge Fiend,” “Tag-Along” by John Doe, and Tasos Lazarides’s “While You Were Away.”

Now that we’re no longer focused on compatibility issues, we will start obtaining art, fully detailing, coding, and testing Lysander’s winning scene.

We are likely to add other scenes as well, because so many were good.

Thanks to Pocket Tactics for hosting the contest, and to everyone who voted. And most importantly, to everyone who created a scene.

8 comments:

  1. Congrats to the winner, it will be really intresting to se the end results.

    But as we mac averse people will not reap the benefits of this and your other additional labour, i am intrested in knowing how the sales goes on GOG as a way to gauge a the posibility of a future KS campaing. You have at it now stads, 555 rave user ratings. Would you mind giving us a ballpark number?

    You mentioned previously that you needed around 500k for that. Is there really no way to slim down that number? Perhaps only focusing on a addon to the existing game?

    /Fal

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  2. Hi 151528 (if that is your real number),

    Sadly, the game is not available at all for Macintosh any more.

    Don’t forget that many of the GoG sales have been at half price or less.

    Cost estimate is very inaccurate, but a game with 500 scenes (all of which need to be written, coded, illustrated, and tested) is not cheap to make.

    If it’s an add-on, it would be to the iOS version, and you wouldn’t be happy anyway.

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  3. My friends call me 1515.

    I would indeed become a bitter bitter man should you go pure iOS, that is true. But that could not happen obviously.

    I can image that there is less income than it might look from the outside.

    I assume you imply that the addon will be new scenes and existing elements and not any functionality additions which would limit your customer base to the 35k that has bought the game on mac (i call it by its true name). Will implementing a new GUI on your existing engine and removing your legacy code be such the monumental task? From the examples you have given us and the fact that your changing code it looks like you have a structured piece of software.


    /Fal

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It’s impossible to update the original Windows version, so any “addon” would have to be for the current version.

      As for what an add-on is, that’s entirely your idea. I really don’t know what you think it is, especially when you talk about new GUI and removing code.

      You’re right that appealing only to existing customers is not always a great strategy.

      Having made apps for Mac and iOS both, I assure you there’s a difference.

      Delete
  4. Addon, extension, patch, anythiong short of a sequal that uses the mayority of existing code.

    As i have no knowledge of the code what so ever, you could say "it's full of stars" and i would accept. But it still suprices me that its impossible to update it, i thought the problem was the GUI package used, its irreplaceable then due to it's presence in the code structure.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is impossible to update the Windows version because it relies on a development system that was discontinued in 1998.

      Delete
    2. How about emulating the ios version under windows?
      In the same way dosbox emulates dos.
      I found some "ios emulators" on the net:

      http://www.xpadian.com/
      http://betanews.com/2011/10/31/want-to-run-some-ios-apps-on-your-windows-pc-try-ipadian/
      http://www.macincloud.com/

      Keep in mind that i never tested these, they might be fake or viruses.

      Delete
    3. Maybe you should give it a try, but: “There’s no access to the official Apple App store, too, which means you’re relying on iPadian’s own store for apps, which is incredibly limited seeing as it basically only works with apps that use the web or their own web-based API.” Which does not describe King of Dragon Pass.

      Delete