Hello my friends!
I actually wanted to post this on Sept. 3rd side by side with the two downloads but then felt a little tired and forgot to submit it, so here is some additional information regarding our alpha and the promised Android version:
As you might have noticed the game still doesn't feel very professional at all. This is a result from the fact that we ourselves aren't very professional. To fix this we will do some retrofitting in our code, what will be especially essential for the Mobile version of the Game.
Regarding the mobile version there are some things I haven't explained yet I think, the foremost being why you cannot download it yet. The answer to this is simply that we haven't done much performance optimization yet, with the result being that it is hell of a yanky experience to play on a regular android Phone with Android Version 2.1 (API Level 6 “Eclair”). There is no chance to play it with a phone on a lower API level btw...
I'll upload our current Android Built some time between today and tomorrow. Please keep in mind that it is technically optimized for The Sony Xperia Play!, but there are touch controls and stuff... On the Graphics side it isn't very optimized at all so as already mentioned above it might be a bit yanky... Also there is a chance that the mobile version of the game will differ greatly from the original version and be more arcade like.
Another important point is that even though we DO have an iOS5 Licence to port it to the...
iPhone and iPad
we cannot do this for you because of 2 reasons:
- To create a build for iOS the Project has to be build on a MAC Computer, Minimum OSX with XCode 4.x installed on it, and no one of us plans to buy a 1000 € Macbook Air (which seems to be the cheapest Apple computer currently available) just to be able to build for a platform I personally do not like at all (sorry apple fans)
- We would have to create a developers account for the AppStore as it is not possible to install non-AppStore Apps without jailbreaking the Phone. As this is a costly process (I think 50 € per year or something like that and they get some of the profit) we won't do this in the foreseeable future either.
That brings me to a question for all you Mac users out there: Is it even possible to play Loot It! on your system so far? Please give us as much feedback as possible so we can do some optimizing. Also you might have noticed that I don't have any idea how to actually start the game on OSX so please feel free to correct me if the guide provided isn't helpful at all and you figure out how to really do it. The Linux Version of the game will be ready to download for all of you as soon as we get our hands on Unity4 (yaay, and sorry to keep you waiting guys, it's technically not our fault ;) )
Back to topic. Should you have any suggestions, questions, or bugs you want to tell us about, let us know. You can message us via Twitter...
@Salynrad
@FridgeEater
...write some private messages or comments here on IndieDB
or send me an email. (You should be able to get my email address via my IndieDB profile I think...)
We might also set up a forum or something like that for general discussion as we now have 65 watchers but I'm not sure about this yet. If you want a forum for easier communication let us know.
Now for the...
Known Bugs and Problems
Segment:
- The "Mission Briefing" menu is currently not displayed at all because we haven't formatted it yet
- The "Mission Finished" menu isn't correctly formatted, but made it into the build
- We are aware of the lighting errors that sometimes occur and we're eager to fix them, but aren't really sure how we will do it yet.
- Sometimes the grass is black. We also haven't figured out yet why exactly this happens but we'll get there I think.
- The "last 2" rooms of the great house in the tutorial level are empty. This is because I forgot to enable the objects I deactivated during editing and just realized it this morning. This is of course not final and will get fixed.
- Sometimes doors don't open and ladders won't work correctly. Easy solution: Try to take a step back, this is because of how our "Interaction Trigger" is placed. But if the doors just rotate randomly or do not react at all without being marked or prompting a notice please let us know.
- The guard in the back alley whlist escapong the tutorial mission is very annoying... We'll fix this too, I have made some mistakes resulting in the guard spawning too early and thus being very hard to predict for the player.
- If you are trying to capture footage using a program like Fraps and maximize the game via the options Menu it will crash. (This is an error in the Unity3D Engine and the only workaround is to start recording AFTER you've maximized the window)
- The same problem sometimes also occurs when changing the quality settings of the game
- We actually don't explain basic movement. In case you haven't figured it out yet, use WASD to move and the mouse to look around. You can also use Q and E for turning to the let or right. (In case someone has a patent on this movement system we will change it to ESDF, WR and invert the mouse movement)
- The game crashes without warning: If this happens look in the folder you've placed the game in. You should find another folder named Crash_*someweirdstuff*. Send it to us and we'll see what we can do. Make also sure you don't press "H" 3 times in a row while in the options menu as this is the easiest way to encounter this problem.
I'll also replace the current downloadable versions on IndieDB with a new hotfix, platform dependend Code and slight improvements, to keep the downloads Area from getting crowded. You'll recieve a nice "Envelope Icon" in your Main Menu notifying you that the download is ready. Also I'll post the info here.
(I should really get a new Newspost Preview image... The current one is pretty sucky I think)
That's all for now, have a nice day, and I'll see you around!
