Like you said, I think preventing Hookbot from unlocking the hats is the best solution. Removing the whole purpose of Hookbot for these new levels does seem a bit strange. I love the brutal difficulty though, and I think they look fantastic. What are the chances of the 3.5 update having OF data restore? I'd like the new DLC but I really, really can't face restoring and starting the game afresh.
Yes, he added me as a friend. I'm tempted to send him an OF message. I am coming to believe that he is just really good. I was a bit surprised to see the initial scores he put up on the new levels. It helped me figure out that I was still missing a lot, but I'm curious how he figured it all out -- usually I need to see that someone has scored higher than I have, and then I know that I'm missing something. I guess he just spends a lot of time playing and exploring every path.
Interesting. I know what you mean - he did seem to figure out where everything was hidden remarkably quickly. If he is really that good then all credit to him; I'd like to talk to him about it though. Kepa, the update has unfortunately rendered my game unplayable too. I've had some time to play it today and it's like the characters are swinging through soup - at first I thought it was a new altered-gravity feature of the new levelset, but then I played some Skull and Bull levels and they're the same. The hooking and swinging is slower, the hooks are unresponsive and laggy. Changing characters, hats and levels makes no difference. I'm on an iPhone 3G on 3.1.2 firmware. Hope you can push out a fix for it soon as at the moment I can't play it at all.
We're hard at work trying to figure out exactly why some people are getting performance problems. The weird part is that not everyone is... if everyone was getting this bug, it would be easy to fix. Send all the info you can. We'll try to jam in OF save restore into 3.5. It might end up delaying 4 a little into next month, if we did that. We're also going to definitely make Hookbot have no ghost in the Ghost Realm, but he won't be able to unlock the realm's hats, either. The latest Paul Reubens (aka qpawn) news: screenshots taken directly from his phone does imply something is up. See for yourself: Though further data still implies he isn't cheating. He most likely just is really good, and also most likely reads this thread to see what the latest scores to beat are. Why he doesn't post to the thread: Most likely for the humor value of having people accidentally praise him.
Man, I can't get past the double lava part around 80% of the stone hats level. I always enter at the wrong angle and can't get through.
@Kepa: I had a thought about the whole DLC thing and Hook Champ. You've stated many times that you'll never charge for level packs, or big game altering changes. I think you've just seen how shady developers are able to be with the app store, releasing half baked goods with empty promises of new additions that never come. I think you have noble intentions coming out saying you'd never charge for updates like that, but I've come to believe that you've got it backwards. What I mean is, HC was a very complete game to begin with. It had a lot of levels, features, rewards, great graphics and polish. Version 1.0 was a fantastic, full game at $2.99 when it first came out. So why would it have been so wrong to charge for extra level packs, as lots of other games successfully do? I don't think anyone here would have thought you were trying to rip them off, or get them to buy the "rest of the game" after the initial purchase. Instead, you now have a real mixed bag of DLC types and a mixed bag of opinions to go with it. Don't get me wrong, I am very happy and grateful to have received so much extra content for free since buying HC. It just seems like having different playable characters is more of a core element of the game, which would make sense to be included to everyone for free. Then, there's no whining about someone being better because they bought a better character. You're just allowing everyone to have a different play experience with the levels available to them. Level pack DLC would just be a way for people to pay a little extra to get more of a game they love. Someone who's not completely devoted to HC probably wouldn't even care there's new free levels anyway. The big time fans of this game are the ones that look forward to new levels the most, and we are the ones eager to buy cosmetic DLC just to give you more money that we hope in turn goes to making more levels. It's seems like a convoluted process, when you could just be saying here's a new level pack for $1. I hope this isn't coming across the wrong way, I love what you guys do and this is just my opinion on the matter. I really respect the fact that you try so hard to be transparent to your customers, and that you spend so much time here interacting with us. EDIT: omg I NEED that PeeWee outfit!!
Kepa, that screenshot is awesome. If we could all get a pee-wee character, then we might be as good as qpawn. I agree with you in that I think he is good. And I've thought that he reads this thread, and laughs his ass off about all of the qpawn discussion. Or maybe he is 6 years old, and his parents won't let him have a TA account. EDIT: hold on. qpawn's OF icon is now that pee-wee character that Kepa posted. So he is reading this. Or, Kepa, are you qpawn?
Kepa can't be, he's got his own account (anyway, if he was, they act completely different, if kepa was qpawn, he would have an account on here and either be acting like the Stig from topgear and only saying "..." or speaking entirely in riddles or some other semi-insane linguistic pattern, a'la: riddle-de-deee, you won't catch meeee ) how did qpawn get that outfit, how do you unlock it? I want a fancy suit, and the monocle hat, (if only there was a top hat and cape, then I could fulfil my lifes dream of playing a game character who looks like a victorian with a grappling hook...) but seriously, how did he get it? is it something to do with that secret achievement? (hmm, he's not got any DLC...) edit, it is obvious that qpawn is jesus, LET US ALL WORSHIP HIM!!! really, no mortal could have that skill...
Kepa must be laughing his ass off at this point, while we all attempt to determine who qpawn is. Chances are, Kepa is in fact the man in the fancy suit. How else could he obtain qpawn's screenshot?
I would assume you could create a second account, right? Or as a developer you probably have more than one idevice. And I would assume that Kepa did a screen mockup with pee-wee. And that qpawn grabbed that to create his icon. However, that is way too fast from Kepa's post to qpawn's icon. EDIT: also, as I mentioned before, qpawn found all of the hidden gems on the Silver Hat level awefully fast. There is one cluster where I would have never guessed to look, until after running a good run I was still like 4000 points off his high, so I knew there was a good hiding spot which I luckily found. As I mentioned, either qpawn scours the whole level, or this is someone in the know... The mystery continues...
maybe qpawn is one of the other developers, or just a custom made bot by kepa, just to mess with us... that way, kepa will still say that qpawn is innocent, and it adds replay value as an incentive to beat qpawn's score, don't forget, we he may just be as his name says, a pawn, (especially since you could write apawn and slip slightly on an ipod/phone...)
Nice theory about "pawn". I really think we're on to something here. I wish someone would fess up, it's driving me crazy. I don't care if he's a bot or developer, but it would be nice to know how in the world he does it.
a brief history of qpawn what he has been, in order 1:a good player 2:a bot 3:a player with unholy abilities 4:a cheat 5:kepa 6:a good player 7:various people on here 8:a guy who visits here for the sole purpose of making us paranoid 9:someone who has secret content 10:kepa (again) 11:a secret bot made by kepa to boost replay value so, qpawn is either a)a good player who may or may not visit here to laugh at us b)kepa having a joke with us c)a hacker or a bot d)a bot made by kepa as a conspiracy theory or e) all of the above (a bot that was made by kepa to keep his conciousness alive forever, that has become sentient, hacked openfeint, and now comes here to taunt us and its creator, oh, and he's from the future) personally, e) is the most likely hmm sentient robots from the future? OMG QPAWN IS TERMINATOR AND OPENFEINT IS SKYNET1!!11ONEPLUSONEISELEVEN!!! (and I get a scary feeling that this is right...)
all who wish to join the qpawn-kepa-conspiracy, prchase a tinfoil hat now *gets tinfoil hat from "the shopkeeper"* *gasp!* mabye...no, the shopkeeper cant be... *puts on tinfoil hat*
I always thought of qpawn as prounounced "coupon". Like, "there's a coupon in the paper for 55¢ off Totino's Pizza Rolls". Never thought about the pawn part. But my gut feeling is that it's someone on the dev team, and they are just having a field day with all these shenanigans.
The whole point of the varied DLC's was to figure out exactly what to do with the whole DLC thing. I'm personally opposed to level pack DLC, because it seems like a cheap scam of cutting out content from a game and charging more for it. I especially thought that Dragon Age's DLC was blatant in this regard, though I liked the game itself. I do want to figure out some good way to do DLC, as it does add incentive to doing updates when you're not selling 1000 copies a day. We could keep trying out different DLC/update strategies in future games. If we settled on something we really liked, we'd stick to that. We're done with Hook Champ DLC, but in the next game we're going to try something slightly different in terms of both updates and DLC. I've already hinted at this, but I'll post our specific plans later on, in one spot. I should also probably start posting frequently asked stuff to the blog instead of this forum, and just having it in my signature or something.
I alwaysthought that the DA:O DLC was due to EA forcing them to release it early, that's why they put it in free when they finished it... anyway kepa, is it true? are you actually skynet? *yawn*goodnight everyone, its 3AM in england, If I do not return, assume qpawn has found and killed me for being too close to the truth cheerio ^_^
TY Kepa for the reply, I know it's been talked about to death in this thread. Kudos for sticking to your convictions, and I also really like how you're doing some hands on market research with some different DLC options. I'll still stand by my opinion that HC was a complete game to begin with, and I don't think anyone would have had a problem with DLC level packs. In my best Ron Burgandy voice, "agree to disagree". Secretly, this is just my way to get you guys to continue working on and adding levels to HC forever. Now, own up to being qpawn already!!
