TAG | development
23
Train Conductor 2: USA – iPhone 4/iPad graphics, upcoming improvements/bug fixes
2 Comments | Posted by AgentSimon in Games, Train Conductor
Train Conductor 2 USA (TC2) is the best game we’ve ever made. We’re really proud of the way it looks and plays, especially when compared to the original Train Conductor. However the launch hasn’t been without issues. In fact, we’re quite embarrassed by some of the bugs that crept into the game before we submitted it to Apple.
We are really sorry that the graphics on iPad and iPhone 4 were not up to scratch. The complaints are totally warranted – we are and have always been listening. It’s completely our own fault for wanting to get the game onto iPad and iPhone 4 right away, but not having enough time to stick to our own quality standards.
Here’s how we’re planning to adress the iPad and iPhone 4 issues:
We’ve been working nights and weekends and, fortunately, we’ve been able to fix many, many bugs while giving the HD graphics a major overhaul! On both iPad and iPhone 4, all text is now crisp and hard edged, buttons are pixel-perfect, train models have increased detail, particle effects sparkle at high resolution, the HUD is cleaner.
We’re pleased to say that this major “World Leaderboards + bug fixing and graphical improvement update” was submitted to Apple just *yesterday* and it will arrive on the App Store shortly as a free update soon!
Graphical improvements in the 1.1 World Leaderboards update:
You're looking great Penny
The trains sparkle in the sun!
when HD and SD collide...
I score better in HD
Train Conductor 2: USA all crisp and clean
What’s next:
Since submitting the update we’ve continued to improve the HD iPad and iPhone 4 graphics — they will be prioritized and made better with each subsequent update. We’re really hard at work developing techniques to make better use of the screen space and to have the graphics render more cleanly on all resolutions and devices – not a simple task for the first major game to be distributed as a Universal App.
These improvements will arrive alongside new locations (such as Seattle), a bevy of achievements to keep you busy for hours, and some exciting new gameplay that we are still hush hush about.
We read every single bit of feedback that we can find. We believe in making super fun, tight experiences that feel great to play and so it means a lot to us when people aren’t happy. Here’s a list of feedback to date, and what we plan to do about it:
- “I miss the multiplier” (Georgina, TouchArcade) – We can’t satisfy everyone on this one. There were complaints from the original game arguing that the multiplier system was too complicated. We tend to agree that it needed simplification. Ultimately though, with endless play mode that old system just couldn’t work. Your multiplier would be reaching numbers larger than human beings have ever imagined. We wanted to start with a simpler scoring mechanism, and build on it. Stay tuned.
- “Missing the PROGRESS METER. Now we have no visual indicator of the requirement for unlocking the next area” (thespaciousmind, iTunes user review USA) – We agree that the experience points of Train Conductor Australia were a motivator. With TC2 we really wanted to focus on high scores and sharing and competing with friends. We felt that high scores didn’t receive anywhere near enough attention in the first game, yet they were a core part of the train conducting experience. We will fix this issue in a future update by giving more feedback about what you have to do to unlock the next level.
- “I was surprised about lack of Plus as well. Perhaps they are holding off in anticipation of Game Centre?” (eugekav, TouchArcade forums) – Two reasons; first, Game Center is on it’s way and we didn’t want to have Plus+, Game Center and Facebook – it would have been a complete mess. Secondly, we wanted to integrate the leaderboards into the experience a lot better than we could with Plus+. With Achievements (a.k.a. Awards in Plus+ speak) we’ve actually got all of the important Plus+ functionality anyway. World Leaderboards will arrive in a couple days, and Achievements shortly after. What features of Plus+ you’d like to see in TC2? Let us know in the comments.
There are some big things coming, so keep your eyes peeled and your fingers ready 
Please keep posting with suggested improvements, levels you liked best, questions about design decisions, etc… We plan on keeping an active conversation going so we can keep improving the game.
Thanks
TC2 Development Team
Happy birthday to The Voxel Agents – now one year old!
This is Agent Simon here. Recently we’ve been reflecting on our first year as an indie game studio, and at the April meetup of the IGDA Melbourne Chapter I presented a retrospective of the business side of running the studio. I’ve posted the slides (link at the bottom), but first I thought I’d give some context to the presentation.
Slides accessible at slideshare and in PDF
Going indie is very rewarding and enjoyable. It is also extremely hard to make a living from it. We wanted to share our experiences to help others who are planning to start an indie studio. The retrospective covers our mistakes, our successes, the things we did that gave the most value and some harsh realities of the indie financial situation. To succeed as an indie, you need to be well organised and have a clear plan. We set out with some pretty outrageously unachievable goals, and although that blind optimism has certainly helped to get through some difficult times, I think we’ve mostly stuck to the goals and we’re now well on our way.
I like to think of running an indie studio as pushing a snow ball along. There isn’t any one single thing that you do that will make you successful, but each successive step forward helps to slowly build the snowball bigger, and hopefully one day it will be big enough to start feeding yourself from it (we’re not there yet).
There’s a very vibrant community of indie developers in Melbourne, and in the hope that we could help, we were really happy to share all the details. The presentation covers how much we invested, our income and expenses and a quick summary of our marketing and production approaches, as well as other tidbits.
The slides are available on slideshare and in PDF. There is a lot more detail I would have liked to add but couldn’t in a 30 minute presentation. I am now developing the retrospective into a full article and if there’s any aspect you’d like covered in particular just leave a comment. You can be notified when the full article is ready by following us on twitter, facebook or via RSS.
Good luck to those who applied for the Film Victoria funding round.
Assistance starting an indie studio in Australia:
- IGDA Melbourne Chapter – a bunch of friendly developers
- GDAA – Game Developer’s Association of Australia
- Multimedia Victoria – ICT industry support body
- Film Victoria – the Victorian funding body for game and film production
- Freeplay – Freeplay is an independent games festival that focuses on the creative and artistic side of making games
- New Enterprise Initiative Scheme – government income support for new enterprises
Last week we announced Train Conductor USA and showed some screenshots of the Grand Canyon level. This week, I’ll be covering our New York level.
Regular New York travellers will feel at home with the new subway track numbering, based on real MTA subway lines.For now we’ve chosen the 1, 4, C, Q, and S lines, but, as always, we’re open to suggestions. The visual style in the subway is very urban (as you would expect) and features some stunning graffiti details. In the final level, look out for buskers performing on the platforms!
Manage real MTA subway lines in the NYC Subway!
The challenge in this crowded NYC subway level is to avoid the columns between the tracks. You’ll really need your conducting hat for this level! We’ve played with many different column layouts, some more complex than others. So expect to see several variations in the final game!
Avoid the obstacles between the tracks to be sure the trains arrive safely.
Watch this space for more upcoming levels and inspiring new art and music!
Train Conductor is coming to the USA!
Everybody has been waiting for us to add new cities, and we’re finally ready to announce which ones. Get ready for a big suprise, because we are definitely adding new cities, but they belong to a whole new continent!
In this latest sneak-peak video you can see footage of two fantastic locations.
Build bridges over the Grand Canyon
In the Grand Canyon players will have to build bridges to connect trains across the gap. This unique new gameplay will challenge your train management skills. You only get one opportunity to get each bridge right, so don’t mess it up!
The Grand Canyon
In the future we’ll be announcing details of the hotly awaited survival mode, as well as posting details of new cities and funky new gameplay!
If you have any suggestions for which US cities you’d like to see first, be sure to let us know. Leave a comment, or tweet about it!
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Crystal clear graphics in the upcoming Dolphin Hero update.
0 Comments | Posted by AgentSimon in Dolphin Hero, Games
The graphics rendering of Dolphin Hero has been massively upgraded and its like playing Dolphin Hero in HD! Everything is sharper and the colours are more vibrant.
The difference is astonishing!
The graphics rendering has been drastically improved.
The difference is due to a relatively simple change in the way we do things and we will post about it soon.
So this post should be the first of many weekly roundup posts. The week marked week 3 in development of our first game DolphinFantastic (working title) and things are shaping up very nicely. We made some big improvements this week, we’re a lot more comfortable with the device, and user testing provided a lot of valuable direction (more on that later).
Entering the week, we had 2 different play modes prototyped. From some internal testing one version was clearly showing promise, and thats the version we decided to go ahead with. I got busy working on feedback mechanisms for the user, adding scoring and putting more graphics into the game, while Tom was busy working on the all important texture tool, to mash up and compress our textures. Now that we’d picked a play mode, Simon could focus on a final look for the game, and putting together a long to-do list.
When the game was a bit more polished, it was ready for user testing. This was the first chance we’d had to try it out on unsuspecting people, and it turns out that southbank is pretty much the prime location for them. There’s always a wealth of people milling around, and all it takes is a friendly smile to get their attention (Trying not to look too much like sales-people). We realised after the first two people that we had a lot of work to do, and this drove the direction of the game for the rest of the week.
First thing that had to change was the “Missiles” – the bright red triangles flying across the screen. Some people thought they were directional arrows. We slowed them down, and put some proper graphics on them, now we have pufferfish, and the game plays a lot better.
We also needed to work on the pacing of the game, instead of just randomly dropping loads of items on the player. Tom whipped up a nice pacing system for Simon to play with, and we slowed things down a lot, so new players wouldn’t get scared away.
Come weeks end, we had a game that was playing pretty well. We did some user testing on Friday night and things were good if not great, after sleeping on it we’re pretty happy, and with one week until our target release date, we’re pretty excited.
Still plenty of work left.
- Matt