Back on Track

So the world eventually righted itself after a rather tumultuous past few days.

This has been a good lesson about how completely communication can fail and the consequences of when it does. To be fair to everyone, we all made mistakes. So let me lay out what happened.

Here in the office its T- till doomsday, when we have to ship it off to Apple. We are constantly testing, gathering data, triaging our problems & attempting to find the quickest/stablest solution possible. In short, we are in crisis mode. We are reacting quickly to any & all feedback coming in.

So when we hear that our tutorial is a completely failing system from someone who has been in the industry a lot longer than we have, we trust that they are a good indicator.

Naturally we respond, re-prioritize & begin work.

The thing is there was a lag time in communication. Our publisher meant to supply us with more in-depth information regarding why they believed the tutorial does not function properly, they just wanted to give us a heads-up about some of it. While this has great intentions, it caused us to over-correct & over-react.

Thankfully phone conversations ensued & we course corrected. There were some losses though. During this I lost about 10 hours working on something that would never get implemented, at this late in the game that can be pretty serious. Mike stepped in though & took over what I was would have done though (had I not been re-writing the tutorial), allowing us to stay on track.

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Learned some stuff about push notifications this morning. In order for a device to send a notification to another device, ie: "Its Your Turn" or "Game Over" or "You have a Game Invite" you need to be hosting your own server.

Why?

Well, because in order to send this information, some pretty important data needs to be passed back & forth between you & Urban Airship, the guys who actually send out the Push Notifications. This information could be sent over the web from the phone, but doing so is completely unsecured. Any script kiddie could intercept the data & begin broadcasting messages to all of your users.

To avoid this, you have a middleman, your own server. Your devices send their request to your server, which then securely uploads the data to Urban Airship.

So maybe a post launch update, overall its pretty lightweight server load wise. We just don't have the time to setup our own server at the moment.

Conflict of Opinion

I delayed a day to avoid throwing too many words on the screen....

Yesterday, while we were working diligently away, Marguerite came in & announced that the marketing side of the publishing house we signed with thought that the tutorial we had created was complete & utter rubbish...We needed to redo it right away.

There are many things wrong with this & I will attempt to keep my professionalism.

So first off, it is completely in their right to tell us as such. They may have their own criticisms of our product. However,

To do so without any additional direction or concrete reason why our tutorial fails so decisively does not help push the conversation forward nor endear the two parties. Simply exclaiming that it is terrible, helps no one it only causes more problems.

To the defense of our tutorial we have hard data of the number of people who have played the game via testing & at conventions. Not to mention the victory we won at the Strasbourg Film festival. At that venue the game was held up entirely by its own design. We were not present to walk players through. And the final result was that we won Best Work in Progress.

The timing of this feedback also comes at one of the most in-opportune times. Pathogen is going gold master/ code lock next Friday the 19th. A week and half notice on such a "obviously failing" system is simply not professional, especially since the marketing crew had a build, with the tutorial included on Sept 10th, exactly 1 month ago.

So what do we do?

Well, you bite the bullet. Act professionally & change it.

In reaction, some things are simply getting cut.

- Pinch/Pull Zoom is out, too many problems have already arisen. No need to continue to fight it.
- Push Notifications are also out. Not enough time to learn about how this works, was causing some minor headaches trying to get it implemented a few days ago.

My time is now exclusively dedicated to this new tutorial.
 - We spec'ed two different paths, picked one & I started to dig into it.
 - Ultimately it is a far more restrictive, guide-me-by-the-hand kind of tutorial that eliminates most difficulty/challenge.

Some final notes. I accept that the tutorial was not perfect, it was functional & in my opinion served its purpose with a modest success rate. I would have no issue with addressing the short comings of the tutorial as first week update. Especially since that would have provided us with real time, market driven data about how effective the tutorial truly is.

But its not my call, so I'd better get back to work.

Up to Speed.

Well, congratulations to Marguerite! This past Saturday she was married!

Nice to have everyone in the office again. Had a good meeting about Pathogen, getting very close to the end now. Two full work weeks, we are aiming to go Gold Master on Friday October the 18th. We will push to Apple & wait for their approval. During the down time we will get the media engine up & running as we try to gain as much attention as possible.

Pathogen will (cross your fingers) launch at the end of the month!

Three main hurdles exist:

1. Stability of Online: Progressing very well, we crunched over 60 issues last week, the last thing we need to examine in detail is the invitation system.
2. Pinch/Zoom: A rather good headache now, getting some advice from campus before we switch gears & try something else.
3. Push Notifications: The code we paid for is simply not integrating. It causes the game to get stuck forever trying to install it on device. We have a support ticket into Milkman Games & will hopefully hear back soon.

We need to sit down & plan out "post launch", what are we going to be focusing on? Android? Ranked Play? etc.

That is a conversation we will be having with Gamblyr potentially tomorrow.

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Caught a good optimization bug this morning, Particles from the Victory screen were not getting destroyed in the campaign. Thank goodness for the Profiling tool.

Here is the updated Kill List

Pathogen Checklist

To Do:

1. Facebook & Twitter Icons
2. Graphics critique pass on Online
3. Final Music & SFX
1. Music
1. Menu Soundtrack
2. Ingame_01
3. Ingame_02
2. SFK
1. Selector sounds
2. Expanded Cascade
3. Win/Loss Condition
4. Complete the Zoom Feature
5. Swap out Achievement Text
6. General Optimization
7. Loader
8. Temp User Icon
9. Achievement Icon - 512x512
10. Game Center Icon w/o BG
11. “Rate This App”
12. Add Push Notifications
1. Your turn
2. Game invite
3. Game Over
13. Fix Rendering of Dot Lines on Campaign screen
14. Add back button to campaign sublevels | Necessary?
15. Trigger an End State on campaign
16. Update iTunes Connect w/ New Screenshots (4, 5, iPad) & Icons - Can only be done during an App Update
17. Change over iTunes ownership to Gamblyr
18. Change over FLOX ownership to Gamblyr
19. Change over UrbanAirship ownership  to Gamblyr
20. Invites only to players who have Pathogen
21. Redesign Level 3 (Locked Down)
22. Redesign Level 5 (The Nuclear Option)? | Change AI difficulty first
23. Cells get permanently stuck with a White Flash in some tutorial levels
24. AI is playing a turn after Victory condition is met
25. Alignment Problems with Completing a level on medium difficulty.
26. Ai is too difficult on Medium & Easy settings
27. Capture Zone Optimization
28. Lengthen the gap between when a player's turn ends & the AI’s begins
29. AI’s should not be able to earn players an achievement
30. Players should win tie games in the campaign
31. The achievement for completing a “world” is being triggered after any level is complete.
32. AI ran out of valid moves, stops game progression
33. Retrying a level does not properly dispose of data?
34. More useful Error Screen when connecting to online
1. No Online connection
2. Not signed into Game Center.
35. Align Cell Selector White Flash
36. After click on map in Game Setup, highlight Next button. Do same on Player selection after pick a player?
37. Double check functionality of Erosion Zone, Player cells disappearing after the zone has opened up?
38. Finishing the right hand “path” does not unlock the last level.
39. Confirm button text placement on iOS
40. Player name text size in OnlinePlayer on HD iPads
41. Percentage Bar In-accurately showing player %'s
42. Add Domination victory in Online
43. “NULL has surrendered” - does not pull in accurate player nickname/alias
44. No win from surrendered game, Victor, on Player Profile
45. No cells updated from surrendered game, victor, on Player Profile
46. Cell did not update correctly? When transforming to Squares? - Picture.
47. If a higher evolved cell is selected & played makes an invalid move, the piece disappears.
48. Images not getting correctly getting removed.
49. Determining whose turn it is? - Players swapped? 2x
50. Connecting to internet on “awake” Recheck for internet when clicking online
51. Simple game summaries, font size on iOS HDD
52. forfeiting a game takes a seriously long time.
53. In online, if use a 2nd or 3rd level cell, and only have one, it disappears properly, but then is gone, so the whole row is blank until next turn
54. If a Games Status is Over, when a player goes to remove it do NOT warn them that doing so will result in a loss.
55. Integrate Social Media into Online
56. Tweak Cell Selector White Flash
57. Online Game Previews, formatting for iPhone.
58. After removing a game, open the custom Games window again.
59. Cell indicator when receive 2nd or 3rd tier cell needs to detect if 2 cells visible, and if so, highlight on right, not in middle
60. Solid cells - when return to game - are misaligned
61. Returning to Games List from iPhone
62. iPhone 4/5 Alignment Issues
63. Tile Indicator is in top left corner if join an online game and 1st player has not taken a turn
64. Nemesis == Null on Profile Screen.
65. Make player not found error in Main more graceful. If doesn’t find player, do something that alerts BWG and the player. - added error checking.
66. Make game loading problem in EntityManager more graceful - if finds GamePlayer records but no corresponding Game records, it bails back to Main. Needs to still get to online.
67. When accept invite, go into game, but nickname is blank
68. Should Accept Invite be on top, and Reject on bottom?

Known Issues:

1. Gap in Victory Screen rendering on HD iPADs
2. Graphics issue with text display/formatting on iOS
3. Large player created Maps difficulty loading
4. Clicking on Online Play will sometimes drop you into a floating background for an extended period of time due to server/internet connection speed.

Other Tasks:

1. Play through entire campaign
2. Test Achievements
3. Website Adjustments
4. New Trailer

Additional Features:

1. Challenge Your Nemesis? - set up structure.
2. Show who you are Dominating? functionality built. just need to know how it should look
3. Change layout of Post Game screen? Put Graph & Pie chart on the same screen? | REJECTED
4. Hints? On how to succeed in the game?
5. Rematch players in Game Over Menu for Online?

A Review!

Overcame the majority of bugs logged on Wednesday night from testing & In a much better place now. Continuing to do some optimization/tweaks/testing on it, but becoming more stable every day.

We got a you-tube video made about us!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqZ38G16ado

Its from the Strasbourg Fantastic Film, & from what I can make out of it they are giving a general overview of the game mechanics before talking about what they like/dislike. It is in French, making the translation a little difficult though Google Beta Translate give a impression about what they are talking about.

Pinch/Pull are becoming a nightmare for Matt, just as it did for me. We are now asking for help on the Starling Forum's & will go from there, time to get an experts opinion.. We are so close too....

No, please we want you to break it.

Yay! We finally got Online working in a testing session! & Immediately we got people to break it!

Sweet, have updated the Kill List with the newest list of bugs that our players found. Matt is working through the majority of those problems as we speak.

Some weird ones though... Should be interesting to dive into.

Got new Sound Effects as well & have integrated them already.

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Talked about an actual release date the other day, until now it was pretty ambiguous. Always "some time in October" was the sentiment. Having a date to shoot for helps to shape our deadlines.

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Boston Fig sent out a newsletter announcing the winners of the "Figgies" awards (not the greatest name in my opinion). Strange that it took them this long. We were expecting them to live tweet the winners & have the results up on their website the day after, not 2 weeks later. Congratulations to all the winners!

Our next event will be the Vermont Tech Jam on October 18-19th. Going to be way more laid back than at FIG, which will be nice. Marguerite is also giving a talk at the event, while I man the booth.

The Kill List

Getting very close now.

We got FLOX back up & running this morning. Online should be in a good state again, which is nice for testing.

Still playing around to build a better Pinch/Zoom. Matt has tried two different ways that worked wonderfully on PC, but lagged on device. Curse you mobile devices for not having enough RAM... Going back to what I had built & trying to tweak from there.

Put an "End State" into the game. When you complete the final level the credits pop up, thanking you for playing. Kinda wish we had created some kind of narrative structure so that it was more rewarding, but we lost that opportunity a long time ago. Pathogen is very strictly a game system, yes its pretty, but its not pretending to be anything its not. An honest system is not something you find very often, instead most developers attempt to shoehorn a story into a game that doesn't need it/gets in the way. Though I can kind of understand why now. Live & learn.

Here is what our kill list is looking like at the moment. Its a little messy, but we don't have to be that organized since its just Matt & I at this point in time.

Pathogen Checklist

To Do:

1. Facebook & Twitter Icons
2. Graphics critique pass on Online
3. Final Music & SFX
1. Music
1. Menu Soundtrack
2. Ingame_01
3. Ingame_02
2. SFK
1. Selector sounds
2. Expanded Cascade
3. Win/Loss Condition
4. Complete the Zoom Feature
5. Swap out Achievement Text
6. General Optimization
7. Loader
8. Temp User Icon
9. Achievement Icon - 512x512
10. Game Center Icon w/o BG
11. “Rate This App”
12. Add Push Notifications
1. Your turn
2. Game invite
3. Game Over
13. Fix Rendering of Dot Lines on Campaign screen

14. Add back button to campaign sublevels | Necessary?

15. Trigger an End State on campaign
16. Update iTunes Connect w/ New Screenshots (4, 5, iPad) & Icons
17. Change over iTunes ownership to Gamblyr
18. Change over FLOX ownership to Gamblyr
19. Change over UrbanAirship to Gamblyr
20. Invites only to players who have Pathogen
21. Redesign Level 3 (Locked Down)

22. Redesign Level 5 (The Nuclear Option)? | Change AI difficulty first

23. Cells get permanently stuck with a White Flash in some tutorial levels
24. AI is playing a turn after Victory condition is met
25. Alignment Problems with Completing a level on medium difficulty.
26. Ai is too difficult on Medium & Easy settings
27. Capture Zone Optimization
28. Lengthen the gap between when a player's turn ends & the AI’s begins
29. AI’s should not be able to earn players an achievement
30. Players should win tie games in the campaign
31. The achievement for completing a “world” is being triggered after any level is complete.
32. AI ran out of valid moves, stops game progression
33. Retrying a level does not properly dispose of data?
34. More useful Error Screen when connecting to online
1. No Online connection
2. Not signed into Game Center.
35. Align Cell Selector White Flash
36. After click on map in Game Setup, highlight Next button. Do same on Player selection after pick a player?
37. Double check functionality of Erosion Zone, Player cells disappearing after the zone has opened up?

Known Issues:

1. Gap in Victory Screen rendering on HD iPADs
2. Graphics issue with text display/formatting on iOS
3. Large player created Maps difficulty loading
4. Clicking on Online Play will sometimes drop you into a floating background for an extended period of time due to server/internet connection speed.

Other Tasks:

1. Play through entire campaign
2. Test Achievements
3. Website Adjustments
4. New Trailer

Additional Features:

1. Challenge Your Nemesis? - set up structure.
2. Show who you are Dominating? functionality built. just need to know how it should look
3. Change layout of Post Game screen? Put Graph & Pie chart on the same screen? | REJECTED
4. Hints? On how to succeed in the game?
5.