This week saw the release of vConqr 1.1 - finally! It was submitted to the app store on Monday (15th December) and went live on Thursday (18th). This quick turn-around on Apple's part was counter to recent experience, so it took us a little by surprise, and with a new website that wasn't completely finished. So, apologies for any rough edges.
So, what's in the release? Well the biggest change is the UI (user interface). First the graphical elements have been improved - especially the army number labels, which are now nice rounded bubbles. Small things like that make a big difference and give a more polished feel.
More significantly from a usability point of view are the changes to how you interact with the game. Gone are the sliding buttons, which not everyone liked. Now, once a territory is selected, tapping it again moves armies, or attacks (depending on where you are in the game). Tapping and holding moves all or attacks continuously. This leads to a more direct feel to the game. Do read the instructions on the website, even if you had the previous versions, to ensure you are familiar with all the gestures. We think they are pretty intuitive, though.
As well as what went into the release, what didn't make it is significant. Unfortunately the new A.I. didn't make it. It hasn't been dropped entirely, of course - a lot of work has gone into it and is nearly production ready. We're going to get that out as soon as possible.
Some other things that have been mentioned previously, that didn't make it in this time are: ability to choose initial positions and sound. Some work was done on sound, but we ran out of time to do it justice for this release, so look for that soon too.
We have quite a list of features and improvements that we want to get into vConqr. We do read reviews and we do listen to people's suggestions and feedback. I've mentioned A.I., sound and setting initial positions - they're coming. Some other common requests are different game options (card trade values, getting other players cards when you knock them out, A.I. speed). We'll be getting those in as we can too. But the two biggest requests, of course, we've intended to put in from day one. Those are downloadable maps and network play. We've already put a lot of development effort into these features and will be releasing them in the near future.
As of this moment, we are two developers who are writing this stuff part time. We both have day jobs at one of the world's largest banks. As you can imagine, in recent months our workload there has been ridiculous. Working late (sometimes until after midnight) hasn't left us the sort of spare time we've needed to put all the features into vConqr that we'd wanted to by now. Now I'm not telling you this as a sob story. There's a bright side, and that's that we seem to be through the worst of that, and in the new year we should be back to something like our normal long hours.
So if this update seems to have taken a long time for few features: watch this space! We'll be making more noise very soon...
