KickStarter funded Also, thanks to all of the Touch Arcade members from this thread who came over and helped fund the Trese Brothers KickStarter for Heroes of Steel, an epic turn-based fantasy RPG for mobile! You can see my signature if you're interested -- we are still funding and now making for our stretch goals!
Definitely, I have the thread bookmarked for this very reason. Even if it takes me a few weeks or more, Star Traders isn't leaving my iPhone so whenever updates come out I'll see them.
Congratulations on attaining funding for the Heroes of Steel Andriod release. I appreciate the Trese Brothers' involvement on iOS with Star Traders RPG but it does seem disappointing that for Heroes of Steel to be promised on iOS that kickstarter has to quadruple it's initial goal of $12,000 to reach $50,000 in contributions. Is App Store really that difficult to port games to or financially questionable the developer would need to raise such a seemingly excessive (or at least disproportionate to Android) amount? I imagine these games use a similar under-lying engine. Either way, it is disappointing to see Heroes of Steel is one game that won't be coming to iOS.
I wonder if the fundraising difference is the game engine. I remember reading a few pages back or something that all the other games from this dev use some other engine and that they need to port that to iOS then it'll be a lot less expensive to port games over. For Android that engine has been in place a while and thus is pretty cheap to develop for. Anyway, that's the only thing I can think of that would make it more expensive other than still being new to the AppStore and iOS.
@undeadcow - the fact of the matter is pretty much how @nightc1 stated it. Trese Brothers started by developing Star Traders, which is a completely stand-alone game. Next, we developed our own proprietary game engine (called StoryTeller) for Android which has been used as the underlying engine for Cyber Knights and Templar Assault. It makes new Android game development rapid and much less expensive. However, we ported Star Traders to iOS, but we have not ported StoryTeller. We are getting a lot of feedback to this effect and know that to really achieve a wider audience we need to ditch our own engine and pick up a cross-platform development kit like Cocos-2dx or LibGDX which will allow us to get a wider platform set at the same cost. I will post a link to the update when we announce it, but we are working hard on taking that feedback and changing approach for Heroes to get to iOS and others (HTML5, etc). Thanks for the feedback and very sorry to disappoint. Andrew
We are digging in to a way to make sure that all games Trese Brothers releases in the future are multi-platform. Doing a game-by-game port is far too expensive in time -- Star Traders took almost 6 months of time to port! Stay tuned!
@undeadcow, @strivenmind, @nightc1 and others - Trese Brothers put out a critical update about our KickStarter last night, which changes the game in terms of platforms. We have specifically moved OUYA support and iOS devices down to a $20,000 stretch goal for Heroes of Steel. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tresebrothers/heroes-of-steel-fantasy-rpg/posts/411521 Most notably, it means we will be sinking the time and money into a cross-platform game engine that will allow us to release future games on a wide array of platforms at the same time. We hope you can help us get there! It may even open the door for Cyber Knights and Templar Assault to come to iOS devices!
We crossed $20,000 and landed at $20,398. Looks like Heroes of Steel will be coming to join Star Traders on iOS devices!
Congratulations! I am looking forward to it (and, like iPadisGreat, I am hopefully for the other Trese Bro games porting).
Having a game engine which allows multi-platform development starts to make it possible to think about porting the existing games at lower cost for us, but for the moment, I have to admit we will be focusing on new games on the iOS devices for the moment.
3.5.1 goes live! Star Traders 3.5.1 has been released to the App Store for both Elite and Free. What's New in Version 3.5.1 - Fixed Restricted Good Trading Rules - Display Coordinates in Rumor Status - Fixed "Hardcore Captain" Awards - Improved "Reinforced Prow" Upgrade (+2) - Improved "Aft Lance Battery" Upgrade (+4) - Improved "Rear Lance Battery" Upgrade (+4) - New Ship Artwork: Vollin Hull - New Ship Artwork: Outrigger Hull - New Ship Artwork: Linerunner Hull - New Ship: Vollin Liner - New Ship: Linerigger Freighter - New Ship: Solar Jammer - Fixed Dark Nemesis - New Ship: Pirate Lifter - New Ship: Knight Cruiser - New Space Hives: Drifting, Vast and Hulk - New Ship: Tiberia Hawk - New Ship: Excellus Cruiser - New Ship: Paladin Interceptor - New Ship: Guardian Dragoon - Fixed Issues with AI Gun Moves - New Ship: Obliterator Cruiser Mk2 - New Ship: Naval Freighter - New Ship: Victory Lifter - New Ship: Victory Liner - New Ship Artwork: Blue Victus - New Ship: Strike Fighter - Update Tiberia / Obliterator Arts
@FRS - There will be a lot more to come! Hope you are sharing Star Traders with other people you know who would enjoy the Quadrant. Sorry to everyone who was playing the Elite version, as it lagged behind a day in its update cycle.
Just discovered this thanks to someone's sig and well it is amazingly good. How did I not hear about this game here? Maybe it was android only? Anyways love it, the mini elite I thought someone should make on ios!
I'm just downloading that one and planning to give it a chance. Anyone have some good piece of advice for a beginner?
Glad you've found us. Here are a few links to guides that Cory and I have posted as well as some of the community have shared. You can also hop on our forum to find a wealth of knowledge and veteran players who are always willing t share. Explorer's Guide (player written): http://startradersrpg.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=tips&action=display&thread=178 Merchant's Guide: http://tresebrothers.blogspot.com/2010/11/star-traders-rpg-guide-merchants.html Smuggler's Guide: http://tresebrothers.blogspot.com/2010/12/star-traders-rpg-guide-smuggler.html A Quick Game Guide: http://tresebrothers.blogspot.com/2011/07/star-traders-quick-game-guide.html Trese Brothers Forum: http://startradersrpg.proboards.com/index.cgi?
