Space Tripper...

Or in the case of this game, you can forget about the 1st gen iPod and 1st gen iPhone - the game is just doing too much for those devices to handle.

And it's touch and go whether the game will run on the iPhone 3g now, as iOS 4 runs slower than 3.1... So it will likely be that this game will be for the newer hardware. I'm waiting to see how the beta 4.1 pans out in the cpu speed stakes before I commit to the iPhone 3g now.

So in a way a large part of the market has gone to begin with.

What's annoying is the game ran on the iPhone 3g on iOS 3.1 pretty well - it just goes to show how bad iOS 4 is for games... There are heaps of games that ran well on 3.1 and jerk around on 4.0 now - Apple have just moved the goal posts again


At the moment Luke and I are busy doing a windows mobile 7 project and as soon as that is out of the way, I will get back onto Space Tripper.

 

Ok, some update on this.

1. The inner game is done, I'm just tracking memory leaks.
2. The menu system needs finishing off, which will include Game Center.

But before the menu system can be done Luke and I need to get Jet Car Stunts on windows mobil 7 completed.

Some bad news, the game will only be for:

1. iPad (which means the game cannot be released until iOS 4.2 comes out)
2. 3rd gen iPod
3. 4th gen iPod
4. iPhone 3GS
5. iPhone 4

The reason for this is iOS 4 takes more memory and the MBX chipsets cannot cope with the game now. I'm a bit gutted about this because the game ran pretty well on iOS 3.1 on the older hardware. It's a strange situation to be in because for the game to run well you would be forced to never upgrade and loose out on game center and all the new stuff.

Some good news because the game has been optimised to death the newer hardware can be overloaded with effects and handle things pretty well. Recently I updated the graphics for the higher resolution displays and on an iPhone 4 the game is simply overloaded with effects and looks fantastic while running silky smooth - I would say it looks console quality and blows what ever the PSP can do out the water.

Release date:

Some time after iOS 4.2 comes out, so probably the end of Nov or early Dec.

For people waiting for this, just hang in there because this game is starting to look very slick indeed

 

Here's a screen grab from the iPhone 4. When I get some more time I need to get a video together...

 

We are doing the final QA to the Windows Mobile 7 version of Jet Car Stunts but I'm working on Space Tripper as well in spare moments.

As soon as the QA stuff is out of the way I'll be full time on Space Tripper. In realistic terms we are aiming to get it out for XMass now.

Been such a small team, doing the Windows Mobile stuff has delayed things on a major scale, including new work that Luke wants to do and of course Space Tripper. Anyway, things will be back on track by the end of the week

 

I'm working on it right now

There was a point when I upgraded the iPhone 3GS to iOS 4.2.1 and found out that the game was losing fps somewhere. After getting some information off Apple I have - yet again (this seems to be never ending) - made changes to the render engine, to do with how to update dynamic VBOs. This I am doing over the Xmass break.

With these changes - so far implemented - the game now runs smoothly on an iPod 2nd gen, which has not run well since iOS 4.0 came out. So now the game will run on the iPod 2nd gen

The game is now universal and after the render engine update I will be implemented Game Center and Openfeint.

There was a period 3 weeks before Xmass that it was considered to drop the game due to it not running on the 3GS and I did some work on the iPad version of Jet Car Stunts, so no work was done while we waited on answers on way iOS 4.2.1 slowed the game down.

But now I am working on it full time and I'm pushing to get this finished now.

The game supports Opengles 1.1 and 2.0, so there are some shaders in now for the newer hardware - this was needed for fillrate issues on the iPad.

So an update on supported devices:

1. iPhone 4 (retina support) - the game looks incredible on this device
2. iPhone 3gs
3. iPad
4. iPod 4th gen (retina support) - the game looks incredible on this device
5. iPod 3rd gen
6. iPod 2nd gen

The game does work on the iPhone 3g but it suffers from slow down - I really wish I could not include that phone in the build but on release we need to support the 2nd gen iPod. But I would not recommend anyone with an iPhone 3g to buy the game, unless you can put up with slow down.

This project has been hell to work on, the game ran pretty well on iOS 3.1 on all devices at the time but as soon as iOS 4.0 came out it ruined a lot of things.

Anyway, in my mind, the game runs very well on the devices I mentioned above on iOS 4.2.1, the amount of objects running with all the effects runs at a very high framerate. It's actually quite astounding and I can say there has never been a game like this on the App Store, pushing things to the limit... I guess it's the most optimised iOS game of all time

Hopefully the game will be out around the end of January or sometime in February but definitely before GDC.

 

Hopefully we will not disappoint you...

I'll be making a video soon.... It will probably show each device running the game. Also I want to show how overloaded the game gets and will show each device running the most overloaded level with the death cheat on with all the baddies on the screen, particle effects going off, massive big alpha explosions, and lots of bullets flying around, with no slow down.

It actually puts a lot of games to shame, especially 2D ones... And a lot of developers will wonder how all this is possible So I agree that Space Tripper will be one special game on iOS.

 

You are funny