Tag Archives: Apple

It is better to know your comrade’s mettle before the real battle begins, is it not?

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I have finally managed to get The Lords of Midnight and Doomdark’s Revenge ready to return to the stores. Yes I know it’s taken a while and in reality it’s been a labour of love, but we are almost there. I have had both games running on iOS, iPadOS, OS X, Windows, and Android.

I am hoping to release the games during January, I have put a lot of work into this rebuild of The Lords of Midnight and for that the game will now cost a total of NOTHING! I initially intend to keep a price on Doomdark’s Revenge, although if you’ve already paid, you won’t need to pay again. But I also intend to include some In App Purchases in the future.

Right now, I would just like to get as many people testing them to make sure that they are behaving as expected. I am sure there are a few little niggles, and I know there are a couple of small UI features that I removed; awaiting a rebuild. I just decided not to hold up the release because of them.

To start testing The Lords of Midnight…

To report any issues either use the links supplied as part of iOS/Android testing system, visit my issues page on GitHub or fill in the form at the bottom of these page. Please provided as much information as possible, screenshots if it helps, and details of your device.

Some of the things removed.

  1. Detailed map needs the ability to scale.
  2. Desktop – Cursor images need adding
  3. The compass gadget is missing from the look screen
  4. Desktop – Some keyboard shortcuts are missing
  5. Mobile – Some gesture shortcuts are missing
  6. Desktop – Only runs in a window. Should open a window in 16:9 at about 75% the hight go your desktop resolution.

Known issues

  1. Splash and Credits screen crop badly top and bottom
  2. Desktop – Direction number keys are mapped incorrectly
  3. Scrolling indicators/icons missing from think page and popup info pages
  4. Names on the map collide with each other
  5. Options screen has incorrect options on it for platform

Some of the changes.

There have been some UI changes that I have added either for flourish while I was rebuilding or out of necessity.

The landscape view now adapts to your screen resolution much more dynamically. It keeps the same aspect ratio (1.3333) of the original for the height of the view but allows the width to grow. The affectively gives you a wider field of vision or wider devices. I did feel originally that this was an unfair advantage to those on with resolutions closer to the original, but in the end I decided that the advantage was minimal as most people look around them anyway,

  • Downs of Shadows
  • Plains of Valethor

The Think page changed a little. The first is that the text now scrolls vertically if it gets to long. Again this was to help with certain resolution issues. But also each think page now scrolls horizontally in a fashion more akin to scrolling pages on mobile devices. Note the page indicator at the bottom of the screen.

He thinks again…

The following screens show some new additions to the think screen that allow to take certain actions direct from there.

  • Recruit and Guard
  • Fight
  • Approach
  • Disband Group
  • Leave Group
  • Unhide

Showing the new display when it’s night… more like the original.

Two changes that have happened on the main menu. A bigger scrolling area for the stories and a new stile menu screen.

  • Load story
  • Main Menu

Report Issue

He rode on towards the Tower of the Moon a little more gladly

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Thanks to the generosity of Scott Gibbens, who took time out from his 170 mile journey home at the end of a busy day at work, to swing by my place and lend me his iPad2 for testing… the new build is now working on all the devices it can. The only restrictions I have had to make is iOS7. This removes iPhone 1-3, and iPad1, and iPod Touch 1-4. Unfortunately, there is just nothing I can do for these old devices anymore. For the record, the current version in the app store will continue to be available and work on those devices that have already downloaded it, it’s just no future versions (should there be any) will be available.
This new build has gone out to the external testers, and as long as I get the ok, it will head to the store next week. All being well, I will do the same for Doomdark’s Revenge. I intend to release both LoM and DDR for Android, Windows, and OSX as well to unify the releases. However, Blackberry, and Windows Phone will not be getting this release.
 
For the record, this is what is available in this release…
 
1. Added discovery map
2. Added ‘tooltip’ info on map
3. Added cleanup button for lords on select screen
4. Change to undo system ready for difficulty modes
5. Added ability to UNDO from the gameover screen!
6. Handle new screen resolutions
7. Built for latest IOS SDK
8. Support 64 bit devices
9. Cosmetic changes on scrolling views – dithered
10. Update of engine to align with Doomdark’s Revenge
11. Misc minor engine fixes ported from Doomdark’s Revenge

The Moon Ring lends us the power to change our plans

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For those of you that do not follow my personal blog, I thought I’d update you on a few issues that have been plaguing me… for those of you who have, you can skim down to nearer the bottom…

About six months ago I received an email from Marmalade detailing their intention to withdraw from the SDK market. Marmalade is the system I used to develop The Lords of Midnight and Doomdark’s Revenge in order to facilitate the cross platform nature of it. Using Marmalade gave me the ability to target iOS, OSX, Android, Windows, Windows Phone, Kindle, and Blackberry.

A month or so later, Marmalade confirmed that the SDK had been sold to another company, and that further support may become available from them.

That process has now taken place. I have less than a month of my Marmalade licence left, and they have not turned off the Licence server to I can still build and continue to work. However no future support will come from them. The new company are offering a 12 month bridging licence at $100 more than my previous licence fees, but this also comes with no support. I’m also not convinced that they intend to be around for the long term. The main reason they appeared to by the Marmalade system was for internal development.

A few weeks ago I received an email from Google. Doomdark’s Revenge was now in breach of one of their policies and needed to be resubmitted or removed from the store. A quick recompile and the problem was solved.

A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Apple. The Lords of Midnight was due to be removed from the store in 30 days. This is due to them culling old apps that were not being updated and/or were not 64 bit. If the App is removed people who currently have it will still be able to play it and re-download it, it just won’t be able to go on any new devices or be updated.

In theory, a recompile would solved the problem, and as I had slowly added some new functionality, this should gain me a stay of execution for possibly another 5 years.

Over the last few weeks I’ve ben wrestling with a Marmalade SDK that is not supported and an inability to build a new version. Eventually, after a lot of heartache and pain, and getting close to just giving up, I have managed to get a working build, however, there is a catch, it doesn’t work on iPad1, iPad2, and iPad Mini 1. iPad1 is no surprise, I can’t target anything lower than iOS 6 anymore and iPad1 only goes to 5.1 The iPad2 and iPad Mini is more of a problem. The issue appears to be the Marmalade system incorrectly reporting those devices as Retina devices even though there are not. I’m still trying to fix this, but it’s proving difficult without current access to any of the devices. So, I might have to make a decision. The deadline is under two weeks now and in order to stave of the executioner, I might have to upload a version that doesn’t support those devices. And this is where the real catch is; I can’t exclude those devices without going iOS10 or purely 64 bit, or both.

Using iOS10 would allow me to target iPhone5 up, and iPod Touch6G, iPad4 up, iPad Mini2 up. Going 64bit would be much more restrictive.

It hurts to think I might lose iPad2, iPad3, iPad Mini1, and iPhone 4, it seems harsh, especially as I have an iPad3 which it does work on! I have no idea how many of these devices are currently playing the game, Apple don’t break down the numbers to devices with that amount of granularity.

To be fair, I don’t have a current enhancement plan for the games, so it’s not like people who currently have the game will be losing out much, but it just feels wrong.

I’ll have to make a decision early next week in order to upload LoM and DDR and at least stop the rot. However, once those versions are up, I don’t know how much longer I might be able to build them again for.

Long term, I need to look at porting the games to another platform, and this is something I have spoken about before…