Dev Log

#281

Ah, I see your point there, especially about high-level accounts, they’d definitely have something to lose. Yeah - that wouldn’t be out of question. Course, I don’t have much power over what Kong decides to do :slight_smile:

As for a special Kongregate prize, sounds like a cool idea! I’d love to do something like that tied to a Kong challenge, but I’d need buy in from the Kong admins on that one - they’re the ones who set that stuff up, at least in terms of prizes tied to out-of-game kongregate stuff like the trading card game.

#282

Checking in real quick about what I’m up to this week:

  1. Baby-sitting the kongregate build and fixing bugs / dealing with lost saves / etc.
  2. Stabilizing the latest download version and get a patch out this week
  3. Working on a potential download solution for kongregate customers
#283

Update:

I’ve figured out how to deliver downloadable versions of the game to Kongregate players. It turns out to be even more secure (and easy) than I thought. It will be basically impossible to gain unauthorized access by posting the url publicly as this involves some simple server-side validation, and it should be as convenient as possible for players to get their downloads. It’s still theoretically possible to gain access, of course, if someone’s determined enough, but this should be more than sufficient to push them to bittorent instead.

The only potential downside is that a man-in-the-middle attack is theoretically possible, which means someone could intercept your request, pretend to be our server and deliver some other file (eg. a virus) instead of the defender’s quest download. In the AIR version’s auto-updater we have a security check for this via public/private key encryption to ensure that the downloaded file is actually from us, I’m investigating whether that can also be done in the browser client.

#284

Lars, could you put 1.0.30 on the test server? And if possible, give guidance as to why 1.0.27 won’t pick any updates for me? What should I look for, any log?

#285

I haven’t posted version 1.0.3 anywhere besides kongregate just yet :slight_smile:

#286

Update:

Been distracted lately because I’ve been working on a solution to distribute the download build to kongregate customers.

The good news: it works! Pretty damn well, in fact. It’s as secure as downloading it from our store, and it uses server-side validation to make sure you’re a real kongregate customer (not that I care about pirates, but I DO care about bandwidth).

The bad news: it just occurred to me that Kongregate might have a teensy tiny problem with us distributing .exe files on their site. Anthony’s my usual contact person at Kongregate since his day job is Developer Relations over there, but he’s on vacation so I’m waiting back on confirmation on this feature. If they nix it, the only solution that would work is distributing unique download keys, which means the feature probably won’t happen at all unless my friend in Germany can hook me up with a miraculous solution that’s both easy and secure.

Anyways, the bottom line is that I’m back to regular work and updating the test server, and HOPEFULLY pushing out a public patch on Friday while I’m at it.

#287

Update:

I’m experiencing that bug Coyot has been reporting about a hanging loading screen (it’s trying to access the localization data but not finding it). Version 1.0.31 test server upload is delayed until I fix this.

#288

Update update:

While I’m working on the test server update, I just spoke with Emily Greer of Kongregate, and apparently Kong is rolling out official support for downloadables now! So, we won’t have to roll our own solution after all, and this is probably totally going to happen now!

#289

Yet another update:

Just figured out the problem with the locales. Turns out I wasn’t copying them to the right location as part of the build script. This is fixed and version 1.0.31 will be hitting the test server soon!

UPDATE: It’s up. Dated :slight_smile:

#290

Okay, so version 1.0.31 seems stable, so I’m going to push it live to the update server. Wish me luck :slight_smile: This’ll take an hour or so.

UPDATE: Files are up on the update server. I flipped the switch on the update descriptor on the linux files which I’m verifying now. So linux is live, windows and mac to follow shortly.

Kongregate version might have to wait 'til Saturday, or Monday.

Glorious. Found a bug in the linux version. Rolling back… (I forgot to modify the export script. Fixing…)

#291

Okay, FINALLY got the download version updated to version 1.0.32. It seems to install correctly on all my test machines, so I’m going to call that good for now :slight_smile:

Kongregate version will be updated to version 1.0.32 on Monday.

#292

Alrighty, news:

First of all, I’ve fixed some of the various bugs that have cropped up in 1.0.32. Chief among them, status effects that don’t stack correctly. No more perma-frozen revenant! This will be fixed in version 1.0.34, which I will try to get onto the update server soon.

Also fixed a bug with parsing the localization text that resulted in garbled text for bow #12, and some other various sundry things.

OTHER BIG NEWS:
We are launching on the various digital distribution portals, including steam on October 30th. Turns out Steam was just waiting to hear from us, we thought we were waiting on them - anyway, cleared up that miscommunication and I’m frantically uploading files.

I will post version 1.0.34 to the update server and kongregate as soon as we can verify it doesn’t introduce any other new bugs.

UPDATE: uploading the build now. Already updated the index page, file should be done in 10 minutes.

I am still getting isolated reports of black-screen bugs in version 1.0.32, but they don’t seem to be universal. Can anyone who was experiencing this in version 1.0.32 try 1.0.34 and let me know if that has problems, too?

#293

Fixed the black-screen bug - turns out I was trying to read from the config.xml file in an unsafe way, so if it wasn’t found it would hang on startup.

This is fixed in version 1.0.35, which is live on the test server now. I’ve also fixed a few other bugs - most notably the status effect stacking problem, which was leading to perma-frozen enemies. Also fixed some text glitches, double damage bugs, and other sundry things.

Ran version 1.0.35 through a browser test and it seemed okay, so I uploaded it to Kongregate. This version also solves a bug where some registered kong users weren’t getting the extended demo even after logging in.

I’ll upload version 1.0.35 to the public update server tomorrow if no huge bugs are found in the download version.

#294

The extra 37MB in the form of deqf_air_steam.swf is not on purpose in the DL version, right? :slight_smile:

#295

Nope, that’s a packaging anomaly, I’ll be sure to remove that next time around :stuck_out_tongue:

#296

So, what’s the plan once you guys get on Steam? I’m assuming you sell for full price in October-November-December, then go 50% off during the Christmas sale, then join the Humble Bundle 3-6 months after that?

That tends to be the plan for most indie games.

#297

Well, the plan right now is this:

Our current price of $9.99 is technically a “33.33% off” discount, we’ve decided. When we launch on steam, this will be our launch price, effectively a 1-week launch sale, and after that we’ll go to $14.99. Based on all the data, I expect most of our sales with Steam are going to come during deep discount periods, so we need to give ourselves a little room to go down.

To take the edge off the higher price a bit, we’ve been talking about no longer selling the soundtrack separately, and bundling it with every new sale from then on.
We’ll also be participating in every single sales promotion that Steam invites us to. I have no idea what we’ll be asked to participate in, if anything, but I can’t foresee us answering anything but “YES!”

As for the Humble Bundle… who knows. I’ve been emailing those folks continuously for months, I even got a response back a while ago, and they said they’d consider it, but obviously we’ve fallen through the cracks there. Honestly, right now I’d be satisfied if they just let us into the beta for the Humble Store web widget so we can replace FastSpring once and for all. I’d be delighted to get into the HIB, of course, but I must admit I’d feel kind of weird about what it’s become if being a proven success is now a prerequisite for consideration.

#298

Spent all day fiddling with settings on our Steam panel. Finally got the builds working on Steam - that was a rush! From my developer’s account I can now download, install, and play the game from the steam client. That’s awesome! Still working on getting the mac build to work.

In doing all this, I found a new way to package the installers. Apparently you can create a “standalone” package that packs in all the Adobe AIR dependencies, so you don’t have to run that cheezy installer thingy and worry about whether you have the latest version of Adobe AIR or anything (or bother installing/updating it). I figured this out because Steam prefers if your game can install “silently”, ie, without having to prompt the user with any kind of message. So, now, on Mac and Windows, I can deploying a build simply by copying a folder with a bunch of stuff in it, with an executable that you run in the top directory. The only downside to this is that the user can’t get the latest security updates to adobe air automatically, but I can always package those in to the next release/patch myself.

I think I’ll still keep the regular installer for the main version of the game, but the good news is this means the experience will be better on Steam, and we have an option in our back pocket for players who have trouble with AIR on Mac/Windows.

This sadly won’t work on Linux, as it’s a feature of Adobe AIR 3.0, and the last supported version on Linux was 2.X something.

I have no idea how/if we’re going to deploy the linux installers on Steam, but I’m on some sort of Valve Linux mailing list now so I should get some answers soon.

It looks like nobody’s reporting any major problems with the version 1.0.35 build on the test server, so tomorrow I’ll push it live.

#299

I can see a lot of open bugs out there - and while there’s no really critical issue, I think that several are either very low-hanging fruit or things that look a bit embarassing when they happen.
In the first category are all typos, and in the second I would include 564 and 543 for sure.

#300

Mn… the $14.99 price point worries me, because I love playing Defender’s Quest so much that I bought it instantly once the demo ended on Kongregate, but I can’t find myself thinking I would have impulse bought it at that price. At a glance it’s a tower defense game with only six units and 2D graphics. Compare with:

Dungeon Defenders: $14.99
Orcs Must Die! 2: $14.99

$9.99 is a nice, safe impulse buy price that most people feel alright with shelling out for, and 25-50% off during the Winter Sale would pick up plenty of stragglers.

But then again, I’m not a marketing guy or a game designer, so you guys probably know more about this than I do. :stuck_out_tongue: I’m just happy it’s going up on Steam.