In the last few days I have been doing some preliminary work on 1.23.
My first priority is improvement of the Community Content. There are two problems with it.
First, there is no way for you to rate the content. It means that any interesting world (and there are many) gets quickly lost in a deluge of low quality 5-minute creations. This is horrible waste, and I apologize to all the people who have spent days or weeks making their adventures only to have them forgotten under a pile of fluff.
Second, the issue of inappropriate content. Some people find it amusing to submit worlds containing nasty things. We have lots of very young users, and so I spend inordinate amounts of time manually filtering the list (big thanks to everyone who sent me a report of inappropriate content – you’re of great help!). At the moment, I immediately delete such content and the user responsible gets banned from further publishing. But manual filtering is not quick enough and too time consuming.
To solve both of these issues I’m working on a user feedback system which hopefully will solve both problems.
The work is in early stages so I don’t want to reveal any details yet. You’ll hear more in the future.
Good people from Survivalcraft Forum are organizing a sweepstakes! The prizes are free copies of the game for iOS – provided by me.
Please watch the video (thanks to daverave40) to learn more:
http://youtu.be/Q83D8Gn6hFM
As you probably noticed, Survivalcraft 1.22 has been available on all platforms for some time now. I updated the message of the day, so you should see update notification if you’re still on an older version.
In an amazing departure from their earlier performance, Apple approved 1.22 literally within hours. I submitted in on the morning of 19th of July. By early afternoon status changed to “In Review”, and shortly after midnight of the same day it passed. Awesome!
The scoreboard now stands as follows:
Microsoft 2; Apple 1; Amazon 1
To celebrate this I am getting myself a brand new retina Macbook Pro. It’s because I will be away from the office for the next month or so, and I don’t want to be forced to code on my old trusty laptop (which has a really awful screen).
Initially I wanted to buy a super high res Windows 8 laptop with a touchscreen, but then I realized I won’t be able to test iOS build of Survivalcraft on it. And then Apple outdid themselves… So it will be a Macbook :-) Shame I can’t wait for the Haswell model, which is probably just around the corner.
On Survivalcraft front, I am thinking about what to include in 1.23. There are some definite priorities. I will let you know in the next post.
[EDIT]
Almost forgot. Thank you for all the birthday wishes!
All platforms have now passed the certification and should already be available for download/update (or will become available shortly). I am still away, but should be back in a couple of days.
In the meantime, please enjoy the game :-)
If you need something to watch, here’s the latest Let’s Play from daverave40: http://youtu.be/6-2a6f6nSdE
I am currently out of the office, but Apple have beaten all expectations and approved 1.22 within hours. 1.22 is now available in App Store. Enjoy! I’ll write more about it later.
I have just finished publishing 1.22 to all platforms.
Here’s the version numbers:
- Windows Phone 1.22.5
- Google Play: 1.22.3
- Amazon Kindle: 1.22.6
- Apple iOS: 1.22.4
As a final change, I wanted to increase the number of rye seeds dropped from fully grown rye, but I screwed up. By accident I published Windows Phone version without the increase, and so had to reverse the change on all other platforms to keep the behavior identical everywhere.
Anyway, as it is now, you only need about 20 blocks of rye field to keep yourself alive on bread alone. I don’t think that’s too excessive.
The app is now in certification at Amazon, Microsoft and Apple, and things are out of my hands. From my experience we are going to see some results in about a week.
I am curious which platform will be certified (or failed) first. Let’s have another race! If you remember my old posts, the score so far is Microsoft 2 Amazon 1. Apple did not have a chance to take part yet, this is the first submission made at the same time as the other platforms. Good Luck to all contestants :-)
Personally, I bet for Microsoft coming first.
I have just uploaded the second bugfix update in 1.22 series. Hopefully this will be the last one.
Here’s the list of changes in 1.22.2:
- Boats are slightly faster
- Pressure plates mounted on sides and ceilings work correctly
- A setting to disable community content
- No longer able to smelt air in the furnace
Please update and test test test :-)
If there are no more serious bugs discovered, I will publish this version to all platforms.
For some time I have noticed that certain users get their fun from publishing indecent stuff to Community Content. This is very bad, because we have a lot of very young players.
So far, I have been manually scanning the database and weeding out this rubbish. Offenders are blacklisted and lose their right to publish anything.
Unfortunately, this process takes a lot of my time that could be better spent improving the game.
I am thinking of adding a more automated mechanism, but before this happens could you please help by reporting to candyrufusgames@gmail.com any suspicious content you encounter? The report must contain the exact name of the item in the community list (including spaces and special characters), otherwise it may be difficult for me to find it.
Thank you!
Apparently, you can craft air blocks in 1.22! That is an awesome bug :-)
I tried to reproduce that, but I can’t. Can someone tell me what exactly I have to do to make them? I want to fix it for 1.22.2.
I have just published 1.22.1 to Google Play. As usual, it should appear in the market in a couple of hours.
1.22.1 is the first bugfix release in 1.22 series. Here’s the list of fixes:
- Fixed can’t sleep in creative
- Fixed flower stems dropping full flowers when harvested
- Fixed look control locking up
- Fixed no fish spawning in the water
- Fixed projectiles not honoring water density
Please update, keep testing and commenting. You input is very valuable.
Survivalcraft 