Hello All! It's hard to believe I haven't posted anything on this blog in over half a year. As most of you have no doubt noticed, my beautiful project has fallen a bit by the wayside.
Life, as usual, has gotten in the way. Since finishing school in Japan I've gotten a new job in the US that keeps me insanely busy. It involves staring at a computer screen pretty much all day, so by the time I get home the last thing I want to do is spend another few hours looking at a screen. It's a shame really, as I've loved the time I spent here. In all that gloom, there is some good news. For whatever reason, the Google Play Gods have decided to change their unholy algorithm or something, and in the last couple months there has been a huge uptick in the number of downloads Horror at Adesaw gets on a daily basis. I'm seeing weekly traffic that is easily 6 or 7 times above what I've been getting in the previous year, and that's put a huge smile on my face. How much pleasure this project has given me, even after more than a year and a half after I released it. More downloads means more people asking me questions and making requests. That means I'm finally going to take the time and, you know, do something as a developer! Hopefully within the next week a new update for Horror at Adesaw: Prologue will come out based on the two main questions/requests I've received in emails: 1. Fix the dang hint bug! This actually was brought to my attention many months ago which concerns a bug in the hint system. Once you get to a certain point in the game, the hint gets 'stuck' and doesn't match your game progression.This occurs because of one single annoying line of code that wasn't placed properly and messed everything up. It's been fixed and tested, so the hint bug should be a thing of the past once the new update hits. 2. Let me give you money! This is the more shocking one by far. Surprisingly enough, I've gotten multiple requests for a way get rid of ads in the game. Some have been very...rude about this (I'm looking at you, one lady who gave the game a 1 star rating because they thought ads were annoying), but the vast majority of people have actually said they'd be happy to pay to remove the ads. One of you kind souls has even said they will wait until after an ad-free option is available until playing the game. As I promised I would already fix the bug issue and youtube tutorials lead me to believe its relatively easy to implement, I will be adding an IAP (In App Purchase) to buy an ad-free version of the game. Since I'm not planning to make it rich off this game and would appreciate the small amount of beer money this may send my way, the ad-free version of the game will cost a simple $1. No more, no less. My goal is to get this out by the end of the weekend as I will be out of town for most of October. Like I said before, life happens and I can't make any firm promises. Fingers crossed and if I don't talk to you before, Happy Halloween!
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Hello all and happy 2019!
Things have been quiet on this end, but rest assured I have been continuing work on the next installment of Adesaw and the upcoming game NEON DARK Things have been weird with the development cycle, so let me give you a brief rundown after the jump on what's been happening in the last months of 2018 here at Doc Fishopolis Ops: Hello everyone! I will keep this short and sweet so I can get back to work. I'll have a more detailed post in the next week or two, but I'd like to tease the opening lines to an upcoming project. Its not much, but it drips of venom:
"Red smeared across the blacktop. Strobing red and blue, oscillating between foreground and background. A silvery light sheathing the world in an otherworldly glow; the full moon glowering above. The night is cold, and long. And there are creatures waiting for the darkness to overtake us all. Welcome to Horror at Adesaw." Wow! I'm slightly ashamed to say, but it's been nearly a full three months since the last blog post here at Fishopolis Ops. Life has a funny way of completely ripping your attention away from your hobbies when....well, having to deal with 'life' stuff. In the last few months I've completed graduate school in Japan, moved to the opposite end of the world, and dealt with the inherent headache of setting up life in a new city i.e. apartment hunting, furniture buying, job begging, friend finding, ad infinitum.
Needless to say that is (mostly) behind me! I'm about all settled in the strangely always-sunny weather of Southern California, and cackling to myself as friends are forced to trudge through the freezing, wintry months. Hopefully this means I'll have some more time to devote to game development, and to keep you all aware of the progress being made. With that, let's make this a very long post to make up for lost time. After the jump, I'll discuss the latest update to Prologue, the google play store, and some general information on what's happening with Initiation and NEON DARK Hey everyone! I told you I wouldn't disappear after regular dev diaries went on hiatus :P It's been a while since I've given some love to Horror at Adesaw: Prologue (HaAP) so I decided to tinker with the code a bit this week.
One of the most frequent criticisms I received about HaAP is that it was too easy to get stuck. This isn't a problem specific to my game -- it's an overall problem for a lot of interactive fiction in general. While some of the fun of this genre is the sense of exploration, it can be frustrating to open and closer a drawer for the 100th time trying to find that hidden item to get to the next stage of the game. To solve this, I introduced a hint system to the game that can be accessed via the menu bar. The process is simple: be stuck, click "Get Hint" in the menu bar, view ad, get hint. Hooray! Currently there are about 13 (very fitting?) hints you can receive that will dynamically display based on your progress in the game. As a warning, IT WON'T HELP YOU UNCOVER EVERY SECRET IN THE GAME. It will, however, guide you through what I generally considered the "natural" progression of the main plot elements necessary to get the full story experience. As interactive fiction game should really be mostly about self-discovery rather than simple hand-holding, I decided to leave out hints on a few subplots to act as easter eggs for the most dedicated players. And that's it! The update should be available on Google Play now. As a final reminder, to use the new hint system you will need to start a new game. Good luck! Hey all, just a quick notice regarding the dev diaries over the next couple months.
As regular readers have probably noticed, dev diaries have been inconsistent for the last month. Partly this was due to vacation traveling, but it's also a very busy time of the year for me. As many know, I'm a grad student that has just graduated, which means I am busy preparing for the graduation ceremony, coordinating visits from relatives to visit, and packing up my life in Japan to head back to the States. On top of that, I need a job! For these reasons, I probably won't have time to do regular weekly diaries. I'm still working on Adesaw and NEON DARK in my (limited) free time, but I don't have the time to do write about my work. Sorry! I will try to keep more active on twitter though ,and maybe make some more posts that aren't directly related to game dev. We will see. Thanks all! Hello everyone and welcome to the return of our dev diary! Yes, I am aware we're a day late, but life always more hectic than you think after returning from vacation^^ Needless to say, I haven't had much time to work on Adesaw or NEON DARK, but I wanted to share some from the writing side of game dev instead of the game mechanics side. So, after the jump, let's look into NEON DARK's opening monologue!
Hey there everyone! Just a quick update, but the next two weeks there will be no dev diary from me. I am going on vacation for the next two weeks and won't be have time to work on Adesaw or NEON DARK. I will be in a place that will allow plenty of inspiration for both though :D
See you all 8/23!~ Hey all and welcome to another Adesaw DD! The weather in Japan is sweltering, so while I'm hiding from the sun there's been plenty of time to work on Initiation. These last few weeks have been very heavy on the programming side, and extremely light on the story-writing so we'll be talking about gameplay mechanics again today. Most of the story writing will be on hold until the foundations of the mechanics are laid -- it's hard to write something when you don't know the format of storytelling your game engine will require! So after the jump we'll be talking about the general daily game loop your character will experience as he walks the hallowed pathways of Adesaw University...
Hello everyone, and welcome to a new dev diary! This week we are going to look at the user interface for Horror at Adesaw: Initiation. Behold! Beautiful color and a plethora of new features! After the jump, let's talk a little bit more about the stylistic choices, and some hints on those new systems...
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