Droid Odyssey BETA v1.07 Release Notes

We had to do a quick patch to the recently updated v1.06 of the BETA to chase down a couple of rookie mistakes we made!

Here are the changes:

• Fixed the Force Close when opening options.
• Fixed (avoided?) a weird force close that occurred during a multi-touch event

There are also some additional smaller fixes that we are going to wrap up in to a 1.08 release, namely:

• Smarter pre-loading of help (tutorial) images to save memory for lower end devices
• Fixed incorrect reporting of Multi-Touch selection in Options upon new install.

We will also be adding these new features:

• Adding a “Recommend” function to recommend the game to your friends!
• Added new “Extras” section which (for now) contains the Options and Feedback function, but may include other stuff in the future.

Thanks!

Advertisement

Droid Odyssey BETA Hits 50,000 Users

Exactly 1 month after publishing the first BETA version of our little game, we’ve hit 50,000 downloads (51,002 to be exact) according to the stats on the Android Market.

Thanks to everyone who has downloaded and played the game, and especially to those who have provided feedback.  It has been a great help!

 

Droid Odyssey BETA 1.06 Released!!

We are happy to announce we have (finally) completed work on the update to Droid Odyssey BETA.  This took a bit longer than expected as we decided to squeeze in several much-needed improvements.

Most notable in this release are:

• Completely re-written sound engine.  This should rectify problems occurring on some devices where sound files were being reloaded during gameplay due to sound system failures
• Added multi-touch!  For devices running Android 2.0 or later (API level 5) we are now supporting multi-touch for on-screen controls
• Added support for hardware keyboards with customizable controls.  Some devices have pretty crappy touch-screens so (hello CLIQ users), for those lucky enough to have a hardware keyboard you can now use this ans customize the controls to suit your preference.
• Added on-screen control configuration options.  Some users reported problems with the on-screen controls being too near the device controls and accidentally hitting the device HOME button during gameplay.  To overcome this we have added different configurations for on-screen controls.
• Added help/tutorial screens when starting a new game.
• Changed droid movement behavior.  Many users suggested that allowing the droid to “float” after releasing a directional control was counter-intuitive.  Although he was behaving “correctly” according to the physics engine, this meant that certain parts of the game were unnecessarily difficult (and for the wrong reasons).  The droid will now cease horizontal movement when you release the corresponding movement control.

This pretty much wraps up the new additions/bug fixes ahead of the full version.. which we REALLY hope will be done by Christmas.

You can download the beta (on your device) here:

http://market.android.com/search?q=pname:com.carboncrystal.ro

Droid Odyssey BETA

Thanks!

Droid Odyssey BETA 1.06 Update RELEASE NOTES

We are just finishing off the final touches for the upcoming 1.06 update to Droid Odyssey BETA.

This update focuses on bug fixes, primarily associated with some control responsiveness issues reported.  Unfortunately on some earlier devices we are seeing issues in control responsiveness and despite our best efforts it seems this is actually an Android problem:

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=7836

For users experiencing these problems, if you are fortunate enough to have a hardware keyboard we are adding customizable keyboard controls to this release.

This should help users with devices running older Android versions (including Motorola Cliq users).

We are also introducing an alternate on-screen control option to avoid problems on some devices where the on-screen controls are a little too close to the handset home/back buttons (including HTC Aria users).

We’re aiming to push this update out in the next day or so.

Thanks!

 

Support for Droid Odyssey BETA continues to grow

We are getting some wonderful feedback, and a couple of very complimentary reviews.

Here’s one posted recently:

http://www.indiegamemag.com/droid-odyssey/

Thanks Meg!

And another one.. a little older but no less appreciated:

http://www.droidgamers.com/index.php/game-news/android-game-news/855-droid-odyssey-beta-a-little-robot-and-the-ability-to-distort-the-laws-of-physics

Thanks Andrew.

Why the device permissions?

I couple of users have asked why Droid Odyssey BETA needs phone state permissions (android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE).  This is a fair question so we thought we should explain this.

The game has a “Feedback” function in which users can respond directly to us with suggestions or bug reports.  In order to make this as valuable a process as possible, we use the READ_PHONE_STATE permission to gather information about the device.    Because there are literally hundreds of different devices running Android we can’t hope to fully test the game on all platforms, so we use this information to help us understand and diagnose any issues.

This device information is also sent to use when an unexpected error occurs in the app.. for the same reasons.

Here is an example of the information we gather:

Device ID: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Game Version: 1.05 BETA
PRODUCT: htc_liberty
BRAND: cingular_us
DEVICE: liberty
DISPLAY: (480.0×320.0)
MODEL: HTC Liberty
ANDROID VERSION: 2.1-update1

We use the Device ID merely to track whether the same error is occurring several times on the same device.   The rest is fairly self explanatory.

Hope this clears things up!

Droid Odyssey BETA 1.06 update

We are just getting ready to ship the next update to Droid Odyssey BETA (v1.06).  This next release will contain a few new configuration options for the controls to accommodate users who have hardware keyboards, and particularly users for whom the on-screen controls interfere with core phone functions (HTC Aria users mostly).

We have also received reports of control responsiveness issues and are working to improve this.  Hopefully we can squeeze in some control response improvements in this release, but it may be pushed to the next release if we can’t devise a really good solution.

We are also working on incorporating some game play instructions in response to user feedback, and steaming ahead with level production in preparation for the full version release later this month (hopefully!)

Stay tuned…