This update was a lot more work that I thought it was going to be, originally we were going to bundle it into the shark update that we are working on right now but I decided to give myself a little breathing room by only having to deliver the challenges so I could rest up a little bit. Well, I need to drill this lesson into my head, "Any code involving server integration with multiple users on different devices is always a pain". Now don't get me wrong, the team at Aurora Feint has been super helpful, and Open Feint itself works really well with the challenge functionality, its just that we decided to completely redo all the challenge screens in our own look and feel instead of just using the feint dashboard as is. If we just used the Feint UI, I could have saved myself 3 or 4 days of development.
The hard part comes in the form of testing and bug fixing. loading data from the server makes testing a little slower plus I have to constantly test with two devices in order to simulate people challenging each other. There are just a lot more use cases than in one of our typical updates.
...and btw, when I say hard, I mean hard to start and ship in less than a week. We aren't blazing any new territory with this update, it just takes time to make sure it works properly.
Now that my complaining is over, the update is actually really fun, some of our beta testers say this is the coolest update yet because it puts some competition into play. The current mini games that are challenge enabled are Ooga Jump, Bait Master, Hurricane Zaps, Coconut Bounces, Bird Bombs, and Shark Snaps. I also recoded the achievement logic so its a lot easier to connect new mini games to their achievements and challenges.
We also added 5 new idles. since the challenges are mainly code driven, Allan held a contest to determine the next 5 idles we should add to the game. A lot of really creative ones were submitted but we managed to pair it down to 5. Some of the idles even had interactions between multiple Pygmies, we purposely didn't choose any of these because it would require some coding to pull off. The idles are...
Losing their Skirt - two variations, one where they have underwear on and one where they are going comando style but a censor bar appears so you can't see their junk.
Beating their chest
Sneezing
Taking the bone out of their hair and their hair falling over their face
Thinking with a thought bubble - lots of variations for this, they think about all the different kinds of food. Maybe we can expand the thought bubbles in future.
As far as the next update goes, we will be doing sharks again, this time underwater. We have some awesome ideas for its functionality and I will be giving out small hints through out the week on my twitter.
We also have a really good idea for the one after that where we will be unlocking a new location. We are also going to take a break from cross overs for a while, we did two in a row and want to get back to some old school features.
The hard part comes in the form of testing and bug fixing. loading data from the server makes testing a little slower plus I have to constantly test with two devices in order to simulate people challenging each other. There are just a lot more use cases than in one of our typical updates.
...and btw, when I say hard, I mean hard to start and ship in less than a week. We aren't blazing any new territory with this update, it just takes time to make sure it works properly.
Now that my complaining is over, the update is actually really fun, some of our beta testers say this is the coolest update yet because it puts some competition into play. The current mini games that are challenge enabled are Ooga Jump, Bait Master, Hurricane Zaps, Coconut Bounces, Bird Bombs, and Shark Snaps. I also recoded the achievement logic so its a lot easier to connect new mini games to their achievements and challenges.
We also added 5 new idles. since the challenges are mainly code driven, Allan held a contest to determine the next 5 idles we should add to the game. A lot of really creative ones were submitted but we managed to pair it down to 5. Some of the idles even had interactions between multiple Pygmies, we purposely didn't choose any of these because it would require some coding to pull off. The idles are...
Losing their Skirt - two variations, one where they have underwear on and one where they are going comando style but a censor bar appears so you can't see their junk.
Beating their chest
Sneezing
Taking the bone out of their hair and their hair falling over their face
Thinking with a thought bubble - lots of variations for this, they think about all the different kinds of food. Maybe we can expand the thought bubbles in future.
As far as the next update goes, we will be doing sharks again, this time underwater. We have some awesome ideas for its functionality and I will be giving out small hints through out the week on my twitter.
We also have a really good idea for the one after that where we will be unlocking a new location. We are also going to take a break from cross overs for a while, we did two in a row and want to get back to some old school features.
