Humbled
Spaceteam Android is in a Humble Bundle with Monument Valley, The Last Express, and some other great games!
Buying Spaceteam through the Humble Bundle is also a way for people who don’t have Google Play to get the Upgrades (eg. if you’re using a custom ROM or a mod like CyanogenMod). So if you know someone who doesn’t have them yet, please let them know that this is a really good deal.
In other Android news, my support contract with Apportable is ending very soon, so it will be difficult to make big changes to the Android version. I’ll continue to make small updates and fix bugs. Thanks again to everyone at Apportable for getting me this far!
The Captain’s Mess
As promised, I spent half my time last month working on Blabyrinth. But the first task, the networking library, is quite unglamorous. I get very frustrated by network programming. Why on earth did I choose to make a networked game!?!?
Anyway, I’m calling my library “CaptainsMess”, because:
a) a “mess” (eg. on a ship) is a place where people socialize (and eat) together
b) it’s a pretty good description of the code :)
I have a confession to make. The Spaceteam code is pretty bad. It was an experimental project to start with. Not only was I making up the game design as I went, but I was learning iOS programming, Cocos2d, and networking at the same time. So it was hard for me to do proper software architecture. Now it’s had two years of features added on to it, and the end result is not particularly clean. As every programmer says after every project ever: If I were to build it today knowing everything I know now, it would be so much better! C’est la vie.
Before I release the (cleaned up) library I want to integrate it back into Spaceteam to make sure it works in a real game, and also build a tiny example app/shell as a tutorial for how to use it.
Here it is in working in the Blabyrinth prototype, connecting devices and sending messages back and forth:
This is pretty exciting for me, and also simultaneously boring and painful. But once this foundation is in place I can start working on the fun parts of the game without having to worry about building on something shaky and broken.
Tendrils
The other half of my time was spent appeasing the multi-headed beast that Spaceteam has grown into. Spaceteam ESL is nearing completion. Here’s a teaser from the Pronunciation Practice menu where you can listen to, and record yourself speaking, words from the game:
And I’ve been neglecting the New Languages for far too long so I’m getting back to them. Japanese and Russian are finished, with Hebrew, Polish, and Czech not far behind! I’m going to release all 5 new languages in one big update as soon as they’re ready.
Many thanks to all my translators!
Space out!