Space Miner Blast - Spinoff of Space Miner: Space Ore Bust.

Those people... have a very weird opinion.

 

You wouldn't even know. Do you have a retina device? Anyways, everyone has their own opinion.

 

For our normal, retail games, retina support is free. Ninjatown: Trees Of Doom has already been patched to support it and Space Miner will be upcoming.

However, it doesn't make a lot of sense to put in the extra time and development effort for retina support if we can't monetize it. If that were the case, we'd never have added it in the first place.

Our game looks fantastic at normal resolution, and features all the great 3D effects you see in other high quality 3D iPhone games. I don't think there is a pure free 3D game on the app store that has this level of visual polish. If there is, let me know because I'll download it!

However, at Retina resolution, even I stop and say "Damn that's pretty." It's not like we just jacked up the resolution. We re-did the art, we rewrote all of our low level shaders, and optimized the crap out of it. So I think it's worth the $.99 we're asking.

Hopefully you'll give it a try, if not, then I think you'll be missing out.

 

Many people are upgrading their devices to the latest generation. I just paid 300 dollars to get my new retina device and now I have to pay to enjoy it? That's letting the older devices have it for free, but making us pay to enjoy it to the fullest extent. There are many free games on the App Store that have retina. The have in app purchases also, but retina is free from the start. I just think you guys charged for retina to get more in app purchases. Sort of greedy. I think that retina should be free no matter what.Nothing will change my opinion. Call me what you want.

 

can't wait
looks cool and I see if I will purchase the retina thing.
I really enjoyed the first part of the game for a 79ct steal!

 

Ummm, yes? I can't even tell if that is a serious statement.

Why does that have any relevance whatsoever? Is your expectation now that you deserve a lifetime of free entertainment because you spent $300 on a phone?

By all means, keep playing those games and not ours. We aren't forcing you to do anything.

Yes. That is exactly why we did it. So our thinly veiled plot to extort $.99 from you has been found out.

I think you need to tell Eli about this so he can write something about our unethical business practices. I mean, this is a call to arms really. You need to do something about evil businesses like ours who try to take money from helpless App Store consumers! Obviously making games like these cost almost nothing so we are just being greedy right?

Of course if we unlock all of our features, people will just gladly part with their money if our game deserves it, right? It's not like people would complain over a mere $.99 for a high quality game, or... err... wait. Yeah. I guess that won't work after all.

 

Really looking forward to this and I am sure I will buy the extra ships.

Really surprised people would complain about paying .99 for retina, since the game is free.

 

I deserve it for free when everyone else if getting it for free.

I will, don't worry.

I wouldn't be complaining if the game was $.99 to begin with. Is your game not good enough to sell on it's own? Do you really have to charge for graphics? I never said you have to unlock all of the features, just retina to us who own retina graphics. It only seems fair. I've been a big supporter of you guys from the beginning. I just find it absurd to charge for retina graphics. That's all.

 

Now I know what the voice of reason sounds... er, what it reads like.

 

1) I'm not demanding anything.
2) Show me where it says only a tiny percent of users upgraded to the iPhone 4 and the iPod touch 4th gen.
3) the iPad is a new device. The iPhone 4 is just an updated version of all previous iPhones. It wouldn't make sense of apple to make a new device and not have it's own store. That's happening with the Mac.

 

Thanks for the vote of confidence Eli!

Those are some great reasons to charge for the high res pack, but in this case it isn't the real reason. The retina graphics fit in the 20MB download limit.

It does come down to cost though. The game was finished in August without Retina Graphics, and we decided to hold it back in order to add retina support. Adding retina support can be trivially easy for many games, Blast is not one of them. Our initial retina port ran at about 10-15 fps, and that was just by turning it on. We spent a lot of time working on that, rewriting shaders, and optimizing our graphics engine and got the framerate up in the 60 range again. Then we went back and re-did textures and sprites so that they are sharper. All in all that was about six-eight weeks of work, and the result is something that look really awesome (in my unbiased opinion )

What does that boil down to in dollars and cents? Without disclosing actual sums, lets just say that it far exceeds what our bandwidth costs would be if it turns out to be a hit. By about two orders of magnitude. We are not a garage studio working on the side - this is full-time work by developers who receive salaries, benefits and all that good stuff so adding features like that add a direct real-world cost to the game.

The ironic thing is that the retina graphics are free - previously you would just get the ships. It's not like it's a separate purchase. The key point is that it is free for our customers.

Anyhow, I wanted to set the record straight - we want to be upfront with our audience. Hopefully you'll give the game a shot and think it's worth the extra $$ to get the retina graphics (and other ships, and no ads).

Rock On! (Mining/Ore related pun intended).

 

Don't worry about it anymore guys! I just won't download.

 

Awesome comment.

Can't wait for the game!