Score Downtime; Deluxe
Well, Tris has done astonishingly well — download count as of this morning was over half a million. Unfortunately, the amount of traffic from the score system completely and totally overwhelmed the shared hosting my database and script were sitting on. I've talked to the host and am hoping to find some good dedicated hosting soon; for now, though, the global score system is simply dead.
In the time in which I wasn't fiddling with and worrying about the score system, I got a few additions made that I'd seen a lot of requests for. Tris 1.0.2 (I've submitted a 1.0.1 but it's chilling in “In Review” limbo) lets you set the movement sensitivity, whether the sidebar appears on the left or right, and whether pieces rotate clockwise or counter-clockwise. Also, there's a bit more of a delay when a piece lands before it gets locked into place.
There's one or two suggestions I've received in comments here that I'm pretty sure I'll add at some point — all, alas, from "anonymous", so I'm unable to properly credit them. One involves multitouch, and letting the player drag and rotate a piece at the same time by tapping with a second finger while moving the first; the other, simpler if a bit less intuitive, would have a tap on the bottom row or two drop the piece immediately.
Another thing: I'm considering what I can do for a Deluxe version of Tris. The original version will stay free, and get the bugfixes and most features that I add in future, but the non-free one will get some improvements over the original. Mostly these improvements are features I would like to add to the free one but that would be time-consuming to implement. What I've got planned so far:
I'd welcome any other suggestions. Is there something you'd absolutely have to see in Tris to pay a buck or two for the Deluxe version? Let me know.
In the time in which I wasn't fiddling with and worrying about the score system, I got a few additions made that I'd seen a lot of requests for. Tris 1.0.2 (I've submitted a 1.0.1 but it's chilling in “In Review” limbo) lets you set the movement sensitivity, whether the sidebar appears on the left or right, and whether pieces rotate clockwise or counter-clockwise. Also, there's a bit more of a delay when a piece lands before it gets locked into place.
There's one or two suggestions I've received in comments here that I'm pretty sure I'll add at some point — all, alas, from "anonymous", so I'm unable to properly credit them. One involves multitouch, and letting the player drag and rotate a piece at the same time by tapping with a second finger while moving the first; the other, simpler if a bit less intuitive, would have a tap on the bottom row or two drop the piece immediately.
Another thing: I'm considering what I can do for a Deluxe version of Tris. The original version will stay free, and get the bugfixes and most features that I add in future, but the non-free one will get some improvements over the original. Mostly these improvements are features I would like to add to the free one but that would be time-consuming to implement. What I've got planned so far:
- Sound (piece rotation, piece landing, row clearing, possibly music)
- Row-clearing animation (this will be pretty, I promise)
- Leaderboard split up by time period (separate top-ten scores for the past day, week, month, and, uh, eternity)
I'd welcome any other suggestions. Is there something you'd absolutely have to see in Tris to pay a buck or two for the Deluxe version? Let me know.
posted by mahalis | 1:51 AM
11 Comments:
I have a suggestion. Add the frater that let's you save a piece for later and swap it back at any time. This is in like every tetris and in my opinion is vey necessary. Otherwise, a perfect app.
I have a suggestion. Add the frater that let's you save a piece for later and swap it back at any time. This is in like every tetris and in my opinion is vey necessary. Otherwise, a perfect app.
Very sleek application. You are a great inspiration to other developers. Thank you.
Hello again. About your global score problem; The client has a copy of the top score list. Maybe, before submitting, you could have the client check if the score is even worth submitting (will it make it into the global top N scores?) - and if not, don't submit. Maybe you are doing this already, but I thought just in case.. :) Might reduce the server load a little. Keep up the good work.
@ anonymous #1/#2: Thanks, I'd forgotten about that. That feature will definitely be in Deluxe.
@ johan: Yeah, that's probably what I'll end up doing. I'll probably keep a top twenty or so, in case I have to remove names from the list (before the whole system went down, someone got a high score and used the space to advertise their website...). But that's roughly what I'm going for.
I noticed that many times when you spin a piece in place, it ends up a block to the left or right of where it started, which obviously shouldn't happen.
Also, in response to your paid app: Maybe only the owners of the paid version would be able to submit their scores to the global scoreboard?
Oh, and when you set up a piece to fall into place and pause it, when you come back to the game, the position of the piece reverts to the starting position.
I think you should charge for the free app that's in the store right now.
I wouldn't mind paying for more features or future updates
When will you submit 1.0.2 to Apple?
Hey, would love to maybe help you out with the scoring system. What is the hosting provider you are using?
You can contact me on my site: djpic.net
Let me know ;)
can't wait to have the new version in my hands...
:)
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