KoDP Update

For various reasons (including illness), it’s been some time since the last post. Sorry about that.

King of Dragon Pass is now a lot closer to being complete. In fact, yesterday I went through the manual again, and was able to remove the “first draft” warning. (The manual wasn’t really a true first draft, since it was adapted from the original game’s manual. But some elements of the game have changed, and some are new. So the manual needed to be treated as a new project.)

One way I can tell it’s closer: it’s possible to win the long game. (Doing so revealed some bugs, which are now fixed.) I’m in the process of trying to win a second time, though my clan leaders don’t seem to have great heroquesting skills this time around…

Anyway, other than “Test,” the to-do list is basically empty. Which is a good thing, since a number of recent bugs were introduced while making other changes.

Testing is going to determine the release date (just as it did in 1999 — we slipped our original date slightly so that QA would have more confidence in the build). This time around, it’s mostly our volunteer testers, who have been finding a number of issues.

So while I don’t have a date, code-wise (if not bug-wise) the game is ready to go. So let me go back to trying to find bugs, and I’ll be able to give more details…

Manual

The game manual is basically the last development task before the game is truly feature complete. And I’ve finally begun converting it from the original PageMaker files to HTML with CSS.

The original was 60 pages, which is a lot to read on an iPhone. We’ll either make the same HTML available on our site, or more likely convert the multiple pages to a single PDF. (I’m not sure of the best tool to do that with.)

As usual with early screen shots, I need to caution that things may still change.

Once the manual is complete, we’ll send the game out to a new crop of testers. (We got about three times what we needed for the first round, so we have a pretty good-sized pool of potential testers now.)

Feature Complete

I keep looking at the To Do list, and it looks like all features will be implemented very soon (perhaps even today), with the exception of the manual. There are tasks that need to be done before release (such as update the FAQ to reflect the new version), and bugs that should be addressed, but it looks like everything I currently plan to do is done.

Of course, I could be overlooking something. And that’s why I’d like to accept a small number of testers. (It needs to be small in part because Apple restricts development to 100 devices.) The ideal tester:

• Has not played before (OK, that probably leaves out most readers).
• Has an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad capable of running iOS 4.1 or higher.
• Is willing to use prerelease software. The game may crash, be impossible to win, or have other bugs. Saved games may not be loadable by future test builds.
• Is good about noticing things that seem odd, and then reporting them.
• Reports them to us! The game isn’t under NDA, but there’s not much value in blog posts that an unreleased game has bugs.
• Has access to WiFi (you’ll download the game on your device, and it’s about 62 MB with overly compressed artwork).
• Volunteers. Apple also restricts promo codes, and reviewers and other marketing needs will come first.

If you’re interested, send an e-mail to bugz |at| a-sharp.com. Please include the type of device you have and its UDID.

To get your device ID:

1. Launch iTunes on your computer
2. Connect the device
3. Click the device in the DEVICES list on the left
4. Click the Serial Number (to show UDID)
5. Select Edit > Copy (to get the UDID on the clipboard)

Thanks for your help!

Status Update

It’s been about a month since I discussed the state of the project. It’s getting much closer to feature complete.

We’ve recently added a bunch of new interactive scenes, 24 in all. These are all coded and tested to a reasonable level (I doubt I’m as thorough as Rob Heinsoo and Brian Campbell were). We’ve got vague ideas for more, but nothing in the pipeline at the moment.

One of the new scenes involved a new treasure, and I figured if I was going to the working of adding one, I might as well add seven. While they can all show up, they don’t all have effects yet.

There are currently 45 different achievements (I may delete one); 41 are implemented.

We continue to improve advice and fix bugs.

With the iOS sandbox, we can’t just ask testers to send me their saved game. So I added some testing infrastructure to do this. It’s really simple with iOS, an example of how far operating systems have come in the past 11 years.

I’ve started retuning the game to be easier (or perhaps less frustrating). The basic game design means it should be possible to lose, but hopefully a greater percentage of the losses will be dramatic rather than slow and tedious.

One thing I’m pleased to note: the game seems to work well on a small screen. Sometimes the limited real estate does cause problems, but there don’t seem to be any major issues.

Dead Horses

We occasionally get queries about doing King of Dragon Pass for devices that don’t run iOS. (OK, for Android.) At the risk of beating a dead horse, I’ll repeat: one project at a time.

Remember, our resources are limited. So we’re focusing on the most common devices (iPhones, iPods touch, and iPads) with the most appropriate ecosystem* (i.e. a store that allows large downloads, and which is available in our traditionally important markets like Finland).

The iOS marketplace also has the advantage that potential players can get a device without a contract — this has been a problem until very recently with devices such as Android tablets, for example. (Actually, I’m not sure any viable contract-free devices can actually be bought, though some are announced with plausible shipping dates. As for phones, in the USA at least all are sold with contracts.)

Finally, bear in mind that we had to make development decisions some time ago. If we were starting today, we might make different decisions. But changing target platforms today (even to support iPad resolution) would mean a delay in releasing the game.

Once King of Dragon Pass ships on iOS, we can think about whether it makes sense to do additional versions.

To summarize: we can only do one project at a time. We want to deliver our game to our fans. At least you can buy a good device to run King of Dragon Pass without incurring a debt to a phone company. And unless you can travel back in time, the decision was made a while ago.

* The Amazon Appstore for Android may actually become the most promising way to sell Android apps, but an 8-click install (surely they mean “tap?”) seems like a barrier.

P.S. Note that KoDP artwork is currently at the worst JPEG compression, to get the smallest possible file size, so that copying over USB to a device is faster. (In other words, the final game will look better than the screen shot above.)

Treasures

We’re in the middle of adding new content to the game, and one of the scenes Elise Bowditch created involved a new treasure. I’d been debating a few others, so I figured it was easiest to add them in a batch.

Here’s a sneak peak.

Status Update

Hmm, about a month since the last one, so let’s summarize how things are going: the game is probably feature complete in terms of code.

Before you get too excited: there are a number of known bugs (some serious enough that you could argue that the feature isn’t really complete). And the game is not content-complete. We want to add some more interactive scenes. And a manual!

However, the tutorial is now in. Some of the edge cases (like a list of usable treasures in battle screens) are implemented. The economic model is simplified: sheep and pigs are abstracted, and barley, wheat, and rye are gone. And thanks to ShareKit, Twitter and Facebook integration are in.

What’s next? Obviously, fixing known bugs! But also getting the new events in the game. We can’t really do much testing until they’re added, because new events break saved games.

But other than some new content, I believe game and UI design are complete. Which is a nice milestone.