As always with new games, the last 10% of development takes the longest… Especially when you want to really polish the game and provide such a good product that the buyer finds their purchase validated by its quality. So that is where I am stuck on my new untitled game, in the last 10% void.

On the plus side, I still anticipate an early April launch shortly followed by a ManaSlam update which will fix a lot of the small problems it’s had for a long time and add a bit of new content.

The main fixes coming to ManaSlam:

* Music now works well, it stops playing if you are already playing something through the iPod module and if you stop playing music the game music will resume. There is also a mute button which was requested via app reviews.

* The ‘News’ panel is GONE, I thought it would be a good idea to provide the players with a live news panel but even through my own experiences I found it to be more of a pain than a feature, especially in low phone reception or when the ManaSlam server is running slow. It’s a lot cleaner to just simply not require a network connection when first entering the game menu

* Some of the crappier images are being replaces

* I’m also looking to redo the help system and tidy up a lot of the menus, I can’t help but feel I did things the hard way and my app usability is paying because of it

The main features coming to ManaSlam:

* Universal – If you have an iPad you will be able to play ManaSlam natively without the horrible zooming issues. A lot of the graphics will have their resolution bumped up to account for this change.

* Possible iCade support, while ManaSlam isn’t really a game which needs iCade support, it is a nice to have and I would love to include it on all my games simply because I believe controllers (real controllers not motion detecting crap) need to be brought back to the gaming scene

* More to be reported at a later stage.

Well… I should stop procrastinating and get to work on that last 10% so I can finally reveal what I have been working on. Also very busy working on a website revamp and of course getting my business in order so come tax time all this app store stuff isn’t a hassle.

ManaSlam is currently featured on the AppStore for both RPG and Adventure in Australia, thank you for the downloads! It’s good inspiration for the next patch!

I don’t even remember what I was doing last 29th of February but probably best not to because 2008 was a horrible year for me in which I experienced living in tropical Queensland in a tiny unit with 2 other people with no air-conditioning or ceiling fans.

So how are the games coming along?

Untitled Project:

The game is fully integrated with OpenFeint and GameCenter with the only exception being achievements which will be put in place at the end of development. The actual gameplay is about 60% complete with a bit more work required to add challenge and keep it interesting. The game will be universal so if you have an iPad you can play it natively and if you have both your high scores will be stored on separate leaderboards so you can have a high score for both iphone and ipad versions of this game. At this stage I’m expecting to release the game within the next month.

ManaSlam 1.02:

Slowly fixing bugs, improving code and game art. Thank you to everyone who provided feedback, it has given me a good starting point. It is likely the next patch will unlock levelling to a cap of 20 with 2 new bosses and some extra statistical options. Hopefully the wait won’t be too long but I want to finish my 2nd game before I release this update.

Other:

I have a few other Apps releasing shortly, more details on them soon, they are not games but things you may find useful.

And While I’m Not Programming:

I have been playing the Darkness 2, sad to say I’m not loving it as much as the original Darkness game. It’s ok but the original was great. I also tried a game called ‘And Yet It Moves’ which was a steam special, really enjoying it, simple game with a very unique art style. Check it out!

I have been adding a lot of new things between ManaSlam and my new untitled game, very excited to reveal what I have been doing with both…. but not quite yet.

Just letting you know it is most likely version 1.0 of my untitled game will be released before 1.02 of ManaSlam, so yeah, sorry to all the ManaSlam fans but as you already know the game is free of charge so if I’m going to be able to continue developing it I need to be doing something, my new untitled game will most likely release at $1.99 so grab it quick when I announce it and help me make games for YOU! The mobile gamers who deserve the best!

The big news at the moment is that mobile app ‘Path’ had been stealthily feeding your personal contacts list back to their servers without notifying the end user. While some people probably aren’t too worried (considering the same people probably also opted for facebook to access all of their email accounts) I personally believe this is a BIG issue which needs to be addressed by Apple. How many other apps are stealthily stealing information from our contacts and calendar? You have to give permission for an app to use your location and send you push notifications, why not have to give them permission to use your contacts and calendar entries?

These are my main concerns:

1) Anyone can put out a simple game or app of any kind and feed your personal data back to their servers, this can be potentially dangerous in the wrong hands.

2) It’s not just your information at risk, do you really want to expose your friends, family and co-workers to the potential risk of spam, phishing. You have a personal responsibility to protect those people who trust you with their personal details

3) A lot of the software on the App Store is released by small companies or individuals. If they are feeding your information back to their servers they may be doing it over insecure network protocols or storing them on low security servers.

For the record, none of my apps use (or will use) the contacts or calendar API and definitely wouldn’t be transferring any of your information to my server.

EDIT:  I just discovered this website while browsing my flipboard: AdiOS. While the damage is probably already done in most cases, this software can help you detect potential risks.

Firstly, a big thanks to everyone who has downloaded ManaSlam and ofcourse to those who were actually enjoying it enough to come to this website to follow it’s progress.

Version 1.02

The hardest part about this patch is working out what to do with the Hunt Mode, I want to make it more interesting and intense but I also want to do it properly and plan it as well as I planned the main game mode, maybe even add some different aspects. A lot of work is going in to this version, thank you to those who contributed advice, it will be coming around mid March.

New Untitled Game

I decided it was time to try something different (not limiting development on ManaSlam) but working on a game with more interaction and control. I’m not going to reveal too much yet but after 3 days development it is already starting to feel very fun and potentially addictive. More details very soon!

In-App Purchase

It would be nice to start making some actual income from my games at some point soon, which is why I will be adding premium items to ManaSlam soon, the game will remain free but certain items or currency will be purchasable. Also the new game in development will be most likely released at 99 cents unless I can come up with a pricing model which will still be beneficial and support further development.

Aside from making money there are many ways to measure the success of your launch, for me it was going to be how long it took before someone with a jail broken device to try and hack / modify stats of ManaSlam, a pretty big issue in iPhone games which can only really be fixed by storing stats in a external server (which is what will happen with ManaSlam when it gets multiplayer).

For Single Player I didn’t see much point in trying to stop the hackers, in development I started writing code which would detect when stats have been modified and restrict leaderboard access, I then decided it wasn’t worth the fight and to view it more as a badge of honour for making a game worth hacking.

So thank you to the many people who have downloaded the game so far, more updates coming soon and if you are a jail breaker please care enough about the game to keep your old save data to reload after your hacking fun so next patch you don’t run in to problems

The highest conceivable DPS at the moment is probably around 20 and then all your hits would have to be crits:

While I was developing ManaSlam I discovered a good friend of mine from the DLC crew was also developing a game. He lead me to some pretty useful information which helped me polish a lot of the features in ManaSlam so thank you Kalisynth.

The game Kali had been working on has also been released, it’s only 99 cents on the appstore, get it now while it is cheap!

Game Details

iTunes App Page

If you are like me, you probably have about 15 forum memberships and struggling to remember your passwords for all of them. So i’m keeping this one very simple, its main purpose will be for you to provide feedback or ask questions about the game if you would like.

There is also a programming forum, I had a lot of trouble when I first started learning game programming because the communities are pretty hard to get in with and resources are hard to find. So if you have any questions i’m happy to help!

ManaSlam Forum

The update is available on the AppStore. Enjoy and please post more suggestions for improvements!