Happy Turkey Week!

Have a great Turkey Week!

The Red Saint 2: Crossover Improvements

While working through fun-factor updates and upgrades to the core saint engine, I'm finding a few places that I intend to upgrade TRS1 on. This may have a fringe benefit of lowering both the memory profile as well of the size on disk of the application, which is exciting for anyone (like me) still stuck on legacy devices. In either case, it'll be general enhancements for TRS1 in addition to a spot of new content that I've been sitting on.

At some point, in the not too distant future, I'll be getting my hands on more current Android hardware to see what Saint runs like. As is, it's a guessing game. I know some folks have reported some issues with the newest crop of devices. Sadly, emulation only works so well and buying up all the hardware is expensive.

Hardware support is a huge frustration as an independent developer. It's incredibly difficult to maintain an application across a fleet of devices with quirks that you don't own. However, if some soul out there has some older "new" hardware they're looking to discard, I'll gladly take it to test on! Just bump me an e-mail.

Meanwhile, back to mapping out the world that built itself...

The Red Saint 2: Notes on Exploration

The first area that I wanted to solve is two-fold:

1. A sense of fresh locality and exploration
2. A world that would continue on, but with interesting variety

The second edition of Saint is still story driven. The story picks up largely from where the Immagickus left off, but then carriers the player in yet another quest to rescue Julia from herself. The true beauty of what I wanted to solve in TRS2 is the ability for the player to feel that sense of wonder and exploration that comes from being in a consistent, self-contained world.

TRS1 is fairly close and the world shifts about as the player completes quests. What happens to Harvey is one such example. I really wanted to revamp that idea a bit, using the Tome of Immagickus as a tool to making that happen.

The sense of exploration is the big rub. I love that feeling of "this is new, no-one else has been here yet" that one gets from games, especially the new ones. It's like the smell of a new car, the run from Kelethin to Qeynos before PoK, or forgetting that midnight was four hours ago in the matrix-colors of Smaug. Fun days there and, since I can't quite find a title to give me that experience, I'm going to try making one... again. :)

The red saint 2: notes on exploration

One key lesson for me on TRS:1 is the insane rate at which content is drawn down by players. You guys are awesome. Too awesome. Not just that though, but in day to day testing in a shop of one ( plus or minus) testing the same zone set over and over becomes a lumpy old tire. To combat these effects I have a new solution that I'm building into the story of Immagickus.

More soon!

Android, WP7 and Apple

So, today I learned that many Android developers are a) stopping development or b) jumping over to wp7 (since it was rooted today) in the wake of the on-going Oracle, Google lawsuit. After all, why build an app with a java back-end when, anywhere between today and next year, java may not even exist on Android for reasons not at all technical.

The perspectives from various senior developers in different companies goes like this.

* Even if Java wasn't dead, how do you compare development of Silverlight to Android?
* Google can't afford to let this happen. They'll just write a big check... and then drop Java.
* You're seriously thinking of leaving Android for Microsoft or Apple?
* What market share is Android likely to hold when Visual Studio is shipping with all the base tools required to do WP7 apps and is giving away VS?
* Will Eclipse exist in another year?

Insane as it sounds, I have a new plan that involves Android. The plan?

The Red Saint 2.0.

Android,beyond java

As a developer watching the billion dollar companies redefine what java is and is not, I can't help but notice that no matter which way the court case goes that java is dead in android.

Google should properly license the energon mark from hasbro and let loose a true silverlight competitor.

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/application-development/2010/11/11/apache-foundation-threatens-to-quit-java-steering-group-40090833/

Not good :(

Things I'd change with trs2

First mistake I made with trs1 is under appreciating what it took to send updates out. E.g., fixing one room meant an entire deployment of the app. Players shouldn't have to download the entire app for a small content update. Pocket legends really demonstrates to me that you can do iterative updates without asking players to download the entire app at once. That helps a great deal.

Sequel

The entire google, oracle and android situation has not been kind to motivating more android related updates. I started this blog as a way to pass the time until I can figure out how to sort out the entire mess.

1. Build app. Check.
2. Make something I like. Check.
3. Have laundry list of bugs and features. Check.
4. Thousands of players. Check.
5. Discover platform may be extinct soon. Check.

So, do I start up the engine again and just pray nightly that google doesn't change the entire framework or do I move to another platform?

Wp7 and apple at least own their sdks...