Archives » March 2009

v1.3 brought with it some major changes in how maps are loaded and displayed. While this has lead to better graphics, colourised territories, and will allow us to easily provide multiple maps, the initial cut has a slight performance hit as compared to previous versions. This is noticeable when scrolling around a map other than at the default level (there is a very slight lag). It appears to be more evident on older hardware. While this doesn't really affect game-play, we take such matters very seriously. We want your experience to be perfect! In addition the initial load time has increased as the app has more work to do to process the map data.

We've been hard at work optimising these issues away and have made some headway. According to current trials the lag has been cut to about 30% of current levels, and we believe we can improve further still. And we should be able to cut the initial load time to under two seconds (most of which is just loading the app itself anyway).

Once this work is finalised we'll be putting out a 1.3.1 release. We expect to submit this within the next week.

After months of hard work we're proud to announce the release of vConqr 1.3! This release, which was pushed to the App Store last week, contains two notable new features, sound effects and colorised territories, both of which we have discussed in previous blog posts.

For more information about what's new in this release check out the release notes and if you're curious as to what the new visuals are like then checkout the recently updated screenshots page.

We love getting feedback, so when the update appears let us know what you think of v1.3 in the comments or by leaving us feedback.

Over the weekend we released vConqr v1.3 Beta 3, bringing us even closer to the final version. Assuming we don't find anything major in this beta then we only have a few little things on our to do list and then we can push this live into the app store! We'll update the blog when the release goes live with a full set of changes, which should hopefully be this week.

One of the most highly requested features since our very first release has been the colorizing of territories by player color, so you can easily see which territories belong to which player - and who has control of the map at a glance.

We're pleased to announce that v1.3 has exactly this feature, which has been made possible by our new dynamic map technology. The ground up rewrite of our graphics layer has not only enabled us to colorize the map but also brings new pop out animations, smoother scrolling and better performance when zoomed out. Take a look at the screenshot and let us know what you think!

No longer do you have to sit in silence when playing vConqr as the game will soon feature a full range of sound effects to give you audible feedback when playing. Hopefully the explosions will make crushing your enemies that much more satisfying!

We originally planned to get sound effects into v1.2, but the aggressive timeline for that release meant that it didn't make the cut. Due to the extra incubation time we have sound effects for almost every action in the game, as well as some home grown jingles when you win or lose a match.

We've just dropped the first beta release for the next version of vConqr. As always we're looking for people to give us early user feedback and find any outstanding issues. If you'd be interested in participating in the beta please get in contact with us by submitting a support request, sending us an email or leaving a comment on this post.

If the beta goes as smoothly as we think it will then you can expect a release very soon. In the mean time check back this week for some updates with details of the new features in this release!