Thanks for the great response following last week’s request for testers to help with the iOS Destiny engine Beta program. It’s fantastic knowing there are so many of you out there wanting to help in the development of Celtic Heroes.
We’re finalising the details of the Beta program right now so please keep an eye on your inbox to see if you’ve been successful in your application. Tentatively, we’re looking to roll the Beta program out in stages. The first stage will target the newer, more powerful iOS devices as we’ve already got a pretty stable version up and running. The subsequent stages will open the program up to some of the older devices that some of you may be using to play the game currently. Celtic Heroes is a pretty resource intensive game so we have to do some heavy optimisation to get it running on devices like the 3rd gen iPhone and iPad one. It’s not just about frame rate but also fitting the levels into memory and these devices have even less memory than some of the low-end Android devices. Our coders and artists have to do some pretty clever things in order to get the game to run with as few compromises as possible - in terms of visual quality and to prevent negatively affecting in the game experience itself.
I’m aware that there has been some discussion on the forums as to the support for older devices. We are aiming to support our current user base with the iOS Destiny engine but as some people have pointed out there may come a time in the near future where Apple revise what is called their ‘minimum deployment target’. The current deployment target is iOS 6 but if this changes to iOS 7 with the next OS update then we can no longer submit apps for devices that don’t support iOS 7.
As well as optimisations to the game itself, we also have to consider how we deploy the beta program to those successful applicants. With Android being a more ‘open’ development environment we can distribute Beta versions virtually at will, but Apple has a slightly different policy. The number of participants is restricted and the app itself has to be distributed through different channels. I don’t want to get into a format war but one of the advantages of Apple’s approach is that it greatly lessens the chance of apps containing malware but it does make our job slightly more long-winded. As part of the deployment, we also need set up separate servers to hold a subset of the existing player data as well as testing out our process for migrating this data from one database to another. These servers are held off-site so we need to set them up and admin them remotely as well as doing some thorough testing.
Of course, with so many eyes on the game, we’ll also need to collate and address all the feedback you’ll be producing. Although we have a stable platform to build on, there may well be a number issues that crop up, so we’ll need to gather details of these and feed them on to the relevant departments to fix. The Beta testers themselves can help with this process by producing clear descriptions of the issues as well as steps to reproduce them where possible. Screenshots are also very helpful One thing we have to consider as well is the overall game experience. Our iOS player base has grown used to playing and interacting with the game in certain ways and while we’ve kept the gameplay as similar as possible and concentrated on improvements to performance and visual quality with the Destiny engine, there may be instances where players might notice subtle differences to their game experience and play-style. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this type of feedback in order to make the transition as seamless as possible for the final release.
As you can see we’ve still got some work in front of us before we get to a final release of the Destiny Engine but with your help and valuable feedback we’re on course for a release in the not too distant future.
One of the other benefits of releasing the Destiny engine, apart from welcoming Android players to Dal Riata and vastly improved graphics, is that we can concentrate on providing more content. One of our other big projects this year will be the Mount system and I hope in the next few weeks to get some time to talk to the designers and give you guys some more information on our plans for that.
As well as providing new content freeing up the Coding and Art teams after the Destiny release means we’ll be able to look at those little things that will make your time in Dal Riata more pleasurable. These may range from balancing, graphical glitches and adding more variety to the game world and your interactions with it.
Talking of releases, in the next couple of weeks you’ll be facing up to some new bosses that drop some cool items as well as some story quests. We’ve also taken a look at the drops given by one of our most popular existing bosses as well as making it easier to find items in the huge supply of items within your inventory. We’ve also given some of the skills an individual flavour with some new animations. We’ll be running these updates soon on the Beta servers so if you’re keen to get a look at them, keep an eye on the Announcements thread. There’ll also be bargains galore to be had in flash sales we’ll be running allowing you to stock up on useful items vital for your adventures. Oh and you’ll also get the chance to get some really cool stuff for free!
