3,287 (or 164 score and 7) days have passed since I released the first version of The Lords of Midnight remakes on the Apple Store. Over the next few days, weeks, year I would release both The Lords of Midnight and Doomdark’s Revenge for iOS, OSX,  Android, Amazon Fire, Amazon Underground, Windows, Windows Phone, and Blackberry.

As you all know the choice to continue the remakes was difficult after the loss of Mike, but in the end I felt the need to keep these games in some way alive on modern devices. To that end I chose to keep the game look and feel very similar to the original and just apply a light refresh or paint job.

You will also know of the issues I have had with the SDK that the games are built on. Without going too technical, the games are native c++ but in order to reduce the workload for me, I used a thin amount of an SDK called Marmalade to help facilitate the cross platform support that I needed. But Marmalade got out of the business and I had to move to another SDK, Cocos2d-x, which has taken some time.

About this time last year I almost finished the migration after having bitted at it over the previous few years and I was making really good progress until life kicked in and completely floored me when it came to any personal projects and development. Basically the increase in workload brought about by the Pandemic just made sitting in front of a computer in my spare time – a misery.

I finally started picking up again recently, and here we are…

So I am glad to say that The Lords of Midnight is now available again for iOS, OSX, and Android. Windows will be available just as soon as I work out the best way to distribute it as currently the old versions are still available on GoG. These games are now completely free and will remain so. (I may add other purchasing options later for additional content). Doomdark’s Revenge will follow very shortly. The game is fully running I just need to do a lot more sanity checking.

The frontend of the games have been completely rewritten so some things may feel a little different.

There some known issues… 

1. There appears to be a random crash bug that I have been chasing down for a while. As far as I can see it has something to do with the graphics rendering of the SDK but as of yet I have not been able to pin point it. I will keeps chasing this down.
2. Incorrect sizing of filter buttons on mobile
3. Android back button doesn’t give option to close the game from the main menu

There are some missing features…

1. The compass has been removed. This will be replaced shortly.
2. Some of the gestures have not been recreated yet.
   1. Pinch and Zoom on the map
   2. Quick access to the Map from the look screen
   3. Drag to move
3. Button to revert scale to normal on map screen
4. Use of haptic feedback on mobile
5. Next and Previous buttons for desktop on think and select screen
6. Cursor image on desktop
7. Escape key usage on desktop
8. Shortcut keys on desktop

And a few features I wanted to add which I will try to get in soon…

1. Add filter for ‘Hidden’ on Map and Select screen
2. Add option to disable ‘Are you sure” for night prompt
3. Add in game option on Tutorial popups to mute/unmute tutorial

There will likely be a new build in the next few days as I made a couple of changes during the Android release that needs to ripple through to all versions, I just didn’t want to mess with the current release schedule by submitted the latest changes to all variants.

Moving forward I am not 100% sure what approach I am going to take. I am already aware that Cocos seem to have downgraded the importance of their c++ engine as there hasn’t been any updates in the last two years. I’m already starting to move to a new system – this time Unity – I think this might have more future proofing. The only problem is, this becomes a complete rewrite in c#. In the end this opens up much more opportunities for the future direction of the games. It may be that the current versions are kept ticking over as they are as I focus all my energy on rebuilding the new system.

Anyway, apologies for the delay, but I hope you can all enjoy The Lords of Midnight and look forward to Doomdark’s Revenge in the New Year.