I'd heard a few reports of a problem that has been showing up, but just this week have been able to reproduce it myself. The symptoms are that, under some circumstances, returning to the main screen does not display the menu - and the only way out is to kill the app - which in iOS4 is not just a case of pressing the home button (more on that later).

Having been able to reproduce it I have a better idea of what's causing it and am working on a fix.

In the meantime here's what I know:

The app is getting a signal to say that memory is low (this signal allows the app to free up any unnecessary resources. vConqr doesn't hold on to much that it can get rid of. It purges the sounds from memory, but that's it). When the low memory signal is sent the OS itself also tries to clear out things it thinks it can get by without.

Once this has happened, when you return to the main screen the menu no longer shows up. I haven't yet been able to work out why this is the case (all my hunches have been dead-ends so far) but I'm working on it.

The reason this didn't really show up before iOS4 is multi-tasking. Suspended apps still take up some memory, although iOS 4 does try to manage this for you. It seems that if you've had lots of apps "running" for a while the memory drops lower and lower. vConqr's memory requirements are not particularly high - I've never seen that memory signal outside of specific test cases before - but iOS4 pushes the limits a bit further. I saw this on my iPhone 4, which has twice the memory of the 3GS!

That said it should be handling it better, so I'm hoping to have a fix out very soon.

In the meantime, if you're an iOS 4 user and you have this problem and are not sure what to do - follow these steps:

• Press the home button once to come out of vConqr.
• Now double-click the home button to reveal the row of running apps at the bottom. vConqr should be on the left.
• Press and hold the vConqr icon until the red "delete" overlay icons appear
• Tap the delete icon for vConqr
• You might want to kill a few more apps while you are here, too - to free up some memory
• Restart vConqr

I can only apologise for the situation and will make it good as soon as possible.

It went into review last night and was live on the app store this morning (UK time). Get the new version now!

Thanks for all your support and patience. Now I can focus on the multi-maps and iPad versions.

It's been a long time coming. Now it's here. Well, almost. The App Store can still be a bit opaque and unpredictable but, assuming approval, vConqr 1.5 should be in iTunes any time now.

This release has a lot of visual improvements, including a, much needed, complete overhaul of the player setup and card trading screens. It also introduces in-app settings, including the ability to change how bonuses are allocated and whether you inherit a defeated player's cards. Full instructions are available within the game too (in addition to the in-game help system).

When running on an iOS4 device that supports Multi-Tasking vConqr now provides Fast Task Switching.

Our beta testers have really enjoyed this update. I think everyone else will now, too.

I called Apple today and was able to speak to someone who could sort out my enrollment issues. It seems it got lost in the system somewhere and nobody was looking at it!

Within five minutes it was all sorted and we're now back up and running.

I'm just preparing for a beta round and hope to be ready for a new release quite soon. Watch this space.

I've been getting ready to release v1.5 of vConqr - so a few weeks ago I asked Apple to transfer my developer enrollment from a personal account to the Two Blue Cubes Ltd company account (that I've had for over a year - unused!). I'd been meaning to do this a long time ago, of course, but I've just not been able to do much of anything for a while.

Anyway, I was assured it would be quite a quick process, as my company account was all up and running and approved already.

Three weeks later and I'm still stuck in a limbo state where my personal enrollment is no longer active but vConqr has not been transferred to my company account either!

The game appears to still be available for sale in the app store, but I can't get to it at all as a developer.

I'm hoping this will be resolved soon - but since Apple have not responded to any of the (three so far) chaser emails I've sent them I have no idea when that will be.

In the meantime I've been wanting to start a new beta program for the new version, but as I have not been able to access my dev account I can't create any new certificates! I had hoped I could use the certificate from my last beta in the meantime - but that expired just over three weeks ago - d'oh!

Right now I'm looking at other ways to get this off the ground, but for the moment it seems that I'm a victim of Apple's Way.

Much has happened since the last post - both good and bad. We had some resourcing setbacks on the map editor front - which in turn has held up the completion of the multiple-maps feature. Since this was the headline feature for v2.0 it has meant that we're now more than six months on and still not ready to release it.

I've decided to do what I should have done months ago (hindsight is a wonderful thing). I'm going to make another 1.x release with some incremental improvements - and the log overdue fix to the landscape rotation bug.

However, in view of the recent release of the iPad I'm just finishing off a first cut of an iPad ready universal binary. I'm aiming to release this universal binary within the next 2-3 weeks.

I've had a number of emails from very patient users, concerned about the continued delay and silence, so I thought it was time to let you all know where we are - apologise (again) for the delays - and thank you for your patience.

I have other plans beyond this which I hope will lead to me working on the iPhone and iPad fulltime in the near future. If you're interested in such things at a technical level I tend to post more on my personal developer's blog at: levelofindirection.com.

I know everything has gone quiet on the vConqr front just lately. Unfortunately I had to take another job for a while which sapped all my time (and energy). I've finished there now (although I will be taking other contracts - not quite making a living off this yet) so development on v2.0 of vConqr is in progress once again.

In the meantime, it has emerged that there is an OS 3.0 related issue with the current version that's out there: rotation is not working. While I did check this during the beta period (it was broken in the first beta, but working later on), it seems it regressed again for the final release. Due to being off the radar for a while I've only just picked this up. Expect an update to fix that soon.

v2.0 development was going well, with the first part of a UI overhaul in place and multiple maps loading. Now I've fixed a nasty crashing bug that surfaced before I disappeared I hope to pick up the beta releases again. For an early view, see this earlier blog entry.

Update 1.3.1 just went live.

As hinted at previously, this version addresses some issues that were introduced in 1.3 - especially in the areas of performance and memory usage.

The result is a faster, smoother, more responsive game that is rock solid.

Enjoy!

v1.3 certainly seems to have polarised our users. Most have been very positive about the new graphics system, with it's colourised territories, and the additional of audio. However, some people have not liked these features. Oh well, you can't please everyone. Or can you?

Before we discuss that further, a more serious issue seems to have crept in. The new graphics and sound obviously have an extra memory overhead. Unfortunately a small number of users have reported crashes while playing the game - especially while using the iPod app at the same time. This is something we take very seriously! Although we do test for these things, evidently this has not been enough - so we have made some improvements there. With some more aggressive memory tests we have been reproducing the conditions that lead to a crash and I'm pleased to say that, as far as we can tell, we have eliminated them!

If you have experienced a crash while playing vConqr, we can only apologise and promise that this update should hit the app store as soon as possible. If you can't wait, or you just want to help out, consider joining our beta programme and get the updates early.

So, back to pleasing everybody. Obviously the way to do this is to make certain features optional or customisable - and this is something we have planned for a long time. The next major version, currently in development, has extensive options and settings for such things - including how territories are colourised. But, as we appreciate that the addition of audio may be more of an issue for some people, we have including settings to disable it in 1.3.1.

Finally, a couple of people reported that 1.3 introduced a bit of a lag when panning around (especially while also zoomed). While the majority of users have either not noticed this, or not been bothered by it, it is also something we take very seriously and a lot of work has gone into 1.3.1 to address this. Again, we'd appreciate additional beta testers to make sure it is perfect this time.

As we've mentioned in previous blog posts, we're always keen to include more people on our beta programme. The more feedback we get the better we can make the experience for everyone - and that's our number one priority!

As we get into the development of version 2 of vConqr, it becomes all the more important for us to get our releases tested by as wide an audience as possible.

If you'd like to join our programme all you need to do is send us your UDID (device ID). This can be obtained a couple of ways.

1. iTunes. When your device is connected to iTunes, go to the summary page. Where it says "Serial Number" if you click it once it will change to "Identifier (UDID):" and show you your UDID. It might look like you can't copy this string - but if you just hit Apple-C (or ctrl-C on Windows), it will copy the string anyway. You can then paste that into a mail and send it to us.

2. Using Erica Sadun's "Ad Hoc Helper" app. This is available as a free download from the app store. Just search for "Ad Hoc" and it should be the number one result. Once downloaded, opening the app presents you with an email composer screen. Simply enter our email address and hit send. Simplicity!

For a one time thing, the first option might be faster, but if you think you might join any other betas, or just want a one click solution, get the helper app.

So all that remains is for us to give you the email address to send to. For anti-spam reasons I'll spell it out:

betas [at] vconqr.com

Just replace the [at] with the usual symbol (and remove the spaces) and you're good to go!