I'll definitely be picking either this or blue skies 3GS up or both. Anyone who has the regular versions of both have a preference of one verse the other (I know, completley different genres).
I'd like to jump in here as well. Why would anyone expect these updates to be free? He's doing great work, and needs to pay the rent. If a full-fledged visual overhaul isn't additional value worthy of support then I don't know what is. As an allegory to enforce some perspective, if someone paid you a dollar to shine his shoes, do you think that the dollar is for: 1) A single shoe-shine, or 2) A club card so he can have his shoes shined by you permanently?
I don't have a problem with all new games either. It's a pretty significant upgrade new hardware. Those who don't have a 3GS won't have any use for it, but those of us who do have it would appreciate having some new titles that show off some of its capabilities over the previous generation. It would be nice if it could be rolled into the existing version, though it would make it bigger (all those new normal and bump maps and such) but I'm not going to fault the guy for wanting to get some additional mileage out of some all-new high-end features. The guy deserves it for all the work he's put into it.
I'm willing to pay for graphical enhancement on my 3GS...I understand that this cost the developer resources. My concern wasn't that it had to be free necessarily, but for some reason I thought it would be better as DLC perhaps since there is no new content being added that I can see. I think it's just that I have a bit of a mental block buying the same game twice...for some reason it makes more sense to me to pay to upgrade the existing game I own. This would, of course, upset the people who don't have the game already, so you can't please everyone. I think I'll just suck it up, buy it, and be happy that some developers are making games that are utilizing the 3GS specific strengths. I hereby retract any previous statements that expressed concern since I reserve the right to change my mind.
I'v been playing both of these enhanced 3GS games and will say that the updated graphics make all the difference. This is my second time playing through each game and its even better. Environments are animated, much more detailed, and the texture shading is excellent. Gameplay is the same, but those who enjoyed the originals and own a 3GS should get these once they launch.
Maybe you paid a dollar for this game. But I didn't pay a dollar for this game. I paid the original price of 7.99 for it. Nice job on the graphics. It does look outstanding. But I don't see myself buying the same game just for updated graphics.
As a developer these 3GS versions are just a stepping stone towards future 3GS only games. I had never used OpenGL ES 2 before, or written any shaders in GLSL. I have a lot of experience with DirectX9 and HLSL which helped however. Doing 3GS specific versions was necessary to get the code working and now I can use it as a starting point for even better apps. While it is just some extra eye candy, I think people will want to try out the 3GS enhanced versions just to see what their phone can do. It's not the same kind of excitement when the app store first opened and everyone bought SMB out of curiosity, but I'm sure some people will think these versions are cool. As for different versions, I just don't have the code merged into a single application yet. You guys don't realize how much the code has changed and what kind of effort and time it would take to combine the new with the old. I also like being able to put a 3GS brand on it and show different screenshots in the App Store.
RPGGuy, As a compromise is it possible to offer a upgrade button in the next release of the original game that will allow you to buy the 3GS version at a reduced price? Thanks for the great games I have enjoyed them both just hate to have to buy them again. Rad
I'd buy it. Well, I will probably be buying it anyway, but a sale price would certainly take the sting out of users who paid for the original version and want the enhancements. I could certainly understand the sort of work that would go into the new version compared to the old; it's a whole new set of APIs you have to play with and merging it with the old code would be a huge freakin' task.
I thought this is what OS 3's in-game purchasing was for? Or does Apple limit the type/amount of content/code you can provide in such a purchase?
DLC doesn't work that way. These aren't extra items or bonuses you can buy that the game code already supports. It isn't just window dressing with new textures and such. This is new code. A different app, effectively, different routines that handle new graphical elements differently with different graphics handling routines. Code isn't self-modifying; you can't download new programming routines and have them integrated into the game -- not unless your game was designed to work within a modular architecture to begin with, which is highly irregular for a game. Stuff like this is a pretty significant rework of the code itself. To expect this to be something you can buy with DLC is essentially like saying you want to buy a new house, but you want it to occupy the same space as the one you're already living in.
Ah thanks for the info. I'm not a developer by trade and I certainly don't know much about the make up of the apps when they've actually been deployed on to the device (I've poked around with OpenSSH but not very seriously). So to be clear, I assume that the apps are just monolithic binaries and aren't composed of a multitude of files/libraries etc? If that's the case then what you say makes a bit more sense, but saying that how would developers integrate any new functionality/content? And do Apple have a very specific limitation on what can be added to an app via in-game purchasing? I feel this is an important issue as I'd understood that developers were free to add whatever they like (even in the most extreme example, of adding an entire new rendering engine for example) and this would cater to the specific scenario of upgrading apps for 3GS-based improvements. EDIT: Yeah with your post and Frand's on the other thread it's a lot clearer now about DLC, so thanks again. It looks like developing for the app store in future may be a bit more complex then with the advent of these new hardware capabilities that are coming with each iteration. I'm just concerned that we may lose some of the indy developers who've been so promising so far when they have to content with more complicated architectures to take advantage of different hardware specs.
Another reason not to make it an upgrade is that it requires OS 3.0, which will cost ipod touch users another $10 if they haven't upgraded yet. The new version uses the new OS 3, new OpenGL ES 2, and requires the new 3GS phone, so it makes sense to make it a whole new app and keep the old one around for existing users. I am still waiting for Apple to approve this, so hopefully they won't give me any troubles about it being 3GS only.
There are a bunch of 3GS specific apps already available, although they're not reproductions of existing apps (i.e. apps using the magenotmeter/compass functionality). Fingers crossed for a smooth approval process mate!
Yes and no. Prorgamming in high level, structured and object-oriented languages (C++/C#/Objective-C, etc.) is in itself kind of modular. You make calls to APIs that themselves are like modular chunks of code, and your own code exists as a series of modular functions, and the source code files themselves typically contain numerous include files that are effectively modular collections of bits of modular code. Or maybe modular isn't the right term here -- compartmentalized is probably more accurate. Anything you write can be written with modularity in mind if, at the outset, you recognize that you might have to swap in different code for different functionality, such as the ability of high-level emulators to slip in different rendering engines, different input engines, different CPU engines, and so on. Most games are not written this way though because most games have no need to be, and it's a lot of extra work to make them so, and it's a hell of a lot more work if you want to change existing code over to being modular because it means going back and changing how everything you want to be modular works in the first place. Frankly, that's far more trouble than it's worth. Besides the same restrictions they place on full apps, they also won't allow executable code to be downloaded via DLC. (That's why the recent C64 emulator was rejected even though it was fully licensed.) Rendering engines may or may not be considered executable code, I don't know how Apple would interpret it, but knowing them, they'd probably rather err on the side of caution and reject it.
How many of you were willing to shell out $299 for a little more speed and updated graphics? I know i was. So what if you have to buy this game again.
