Think about the future…

icon_512x512I finally submitted the OSX version of The Lords of Midnight to Apple last night, it’s been a long time coming, a lot longer than I expected. I didn’t start it as early as I expected due to supporting the mobile version until March. Some of it has been because of technical issues, I struggled to get the code, more accurately the resolution code, to work satisfactory. Another part was being burnt out. I hadn’t realised how much getting the Mobile version out, took out of me. I found myself not really interested in developing the desktop version, so I found myself bitting at it and not staying focused. In fact a lot of the code ended up being developed on a Saturday morning while my daughter was diving, like I am now. I have a an hour and a half to kill while she dives, you can only give your full attention for so long, and that was always a good excuse to have my laptop with my and work on LoM.

All being well with the Apple submission process, the game will be available in the Mac App Store for the Summer Solstice. The Windows version needs a little more testing and I need to find a home for it to be distributed. If that all doesn’t happen during the next week in order to hit the same release date, I suspect it will be the week after.I now find myself thinking about the next steps. Jure has already started work on, if not almost finished, the artwork for Doomdark’s Revenge, so there is nothing to hold me back there. I suspect that the actual next steps will be a new build of the mobile version of LoM to include the scaling map, the keyboard controls ( for bluetooth keyboards ), and a few bug fixes that were dealt with during the desktop development. The desktop code is just a different branch of the mobile version, so I just need to roll everything up. Being truthful, I also need to put an advert in the mobile version for the desktop version, it would be nice to pickup at least another 6k unit sales.
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Update

dragonI thought I’d post an update of where things are at, at the moment.

I’ve been having a bad run of “can’t be arsed”, this is not just on the Midnight front, but with a number of things. It happens now and then. I think part of this is due to the fact that from October I worked tirelessly on Lords of Midnight right up to release, and then followed the release with two months of updates. In the end, I think it burnt me out a little. That combined with the day job and that I work for some of my clients in the evening as well. The problem is that I have now lost a little bit of momentum and I just need to get that back…

The desktop version is almost ready. I hoped to put it into test a few weeks ago, but didn’t because I was waiting to add one more feature, which is the MAP scaling and movement gadget. I did the temporary graphics, but haven’t implemented it yet. Once that is in I will make a request of Jure for the final graphics and then upload for test and open the forum for testers.

I intend to formally request Jure start work on Doomdark’s Revenge at the start of May, so that is my new goal; I’m going to aim to have the desktop version in test and DR started by the 1st May. And then aim for DR to be ready for at least the Mac App Store  by the end of May.