First week snagging…

20140220-084247.jpgRelease week is always frustrating. On Android I just cannot test on enough devices, so I know that something is always going to bite me, and Monday morning it did. None of my Android testers had had any problems with the game loading, but Monday morning a number of devices were reporting that the game wouldn’t load. Later that night I spent a few fraught hours fighting with hotel WiFi trying to get an update tested by the affected customers, and then released.

In this instance it was an easy fix. In fact, I had already addressed the issue the previous week for the Windows release. Some last minute testing on my Mac Desktop running a windows VM, full screen, highlighted an issue of loading the splash screen. At the high resolution the splash screen was larger than 2048. When this image was being loaded, it was converted into a power-of-two texture and thus a 4096×4096 texture. The texture loader I was using was choking on that. A quick change to the affected images, across all resolutions, resulted in a fix, and a 5mb reduction in app size to boot!

This was the problem that affected some Android devices. So all I needed to do was rebuild the current version for Android and send it back out. In the end, the Android release was probably a lot smoother than The Lords of Midnight.
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Doomdark’s Revenge Status Update

Quick update. The release of Doomdark’s Revenge was not too bad in the scheme of things. Online press has been good, good coverage on Twitter, sales numbers seem to be in line with The Lords of Midnight release.

All platforms were released simultaneously, which in itself isn’t too be sniffed at. The only problem was that OSX on the Mac App Store didn’t make it. Hopefully the issues there will be resolved soon.

The only Major glitch was a graphic memory problem that was hitting a few Android devices, but with the help of some supportive customers, I was able to iron that out last night an get and update out overnight. Interesting, the problem also affects The Lords of Midnight and probably explains some of the random startup crashes and incompatibilities I’ve had there. So as soon as things settle I will update that.

Despite a stressful few hours, I think the Android release probably went better than The Lords of Midnight Android release. Biggest problem was releasing while staying in a hotel where the Wifi decided to be very very poor!

There are a few issues that have cropped up. Mainly recruiting and battles, and a few cosmetics. The Recruitment issues make the game easier, the battles make it harder. I will try and resolve all of them ASAP.