Category: Uncategorized

It’s been almost 2 years since we released a game (The Descent) as we’ve been busy building and managing eCommerce apps for some of our clients. Early in January 2017 we decided to play around with some puzzle game ideas and have been working on a gameplay mechanic prototype ever since. We opted for a different development methodology this time – play test game mechanics first on a crude prototype and focus on technology later. Years ago we would have started with a specific technology in mind and then try to fit gameplay into the technology code already in progress (bad approach).

The prototype has pretty good potential to morph into a game of its own so at this moment we would like to announce Stargazer – targeted for release by Q1 2017. It will be exclusive for Android initially.

Stay tuned for more news.

 

 

We just released an update to The Descent (v1.2) but we realized that a small but pestering bug was introduced related to achievements (boo!). Somehow, even though the game only has achievements you can unlock once, Game Center will keep showing the “you’ve unlocked achievement..” after unlocking the same achievement over and over again. Somehow we believe Game Center doesn’t really know you’ve unlocked the achievement so it keeps unlocking it all the time after you earn it. We are looking into the issue ASAP and will let you know (via a blog post or a push notification directly to The Descent app) when we find a solution.

Luckily, we also released a free version of The Descent that is now available for download:

The Descent Free!

This version doesn’t exhibit the weird achievement bug mentioned above and it also shares the leaderboard of the paid version of The Descent. Switch now to the free version so you don’t get blasted by repeated Game Center “new achievement unlocked” notifications!

After a couple of hiccups during the v1.1 app update review process, The Descent v1.1 is finally released – available exclusively on the App Store. We added music on the title screen and new sound effects on the game over and new record screens. Some bug fixes have also been included in this update.

We’re working on the v1.2 update which will include more bug fixes and some new UI elements. We will also be including push notifications to help us keep players informed when new game updates are available.

At the same time of the v1.2 update we will be releasing the free version of the app for players who want to try the game before purchasing it. The v1.2 update and the free version of The Descent are scheduled for release sometime this week (depending on how the update review takes). Stay tuned!

 

 

 

 

We are happy to announce the official release of The Descent for iOS. Last week we officially submitted the app for review but now its finally available on the App Store

You can also check The Descent’s official website for more information:

The Descent official website

Stay updated! We are currently hard at work in my grandma’s basement getting ready for the 1.1 release which will introduce new sounds effects, translations to other languages, bug fixes and other cool stuff! Tell your friends!

New year, new beginnings (año nuevo, cero clientes). We are pleased to announce our new website and finally the release of The Descent – a game we’ve been wanting to release since 2010. We had been thinking of changing platforms for our website (for quite a while) and finally made the decision to migrate from a custom-made website (hosted in Heroku) to WordPress. We decided that we want to change the mentality of “doing everything ourselves” and instead adopt best of the breed platforms and leverage their strengths. In this way we can make updates to our website constantly instead of waiting for website updates and release cycles.

We are very happy with the release of The Descent after the challenges (development and emotional) we’ve faced for the past 5 years. The story of the development of The Descent is very bittersweet and I am planning to share with you the full story in a different (and quite lengthy, but sleep-inducing for some of you) post. Welcome to our site and stay put!

I am posting this to save you the headache. For all of you who are right now diligently coding your way through the final weeks of deployment, make sure you take into account what I am about to tell you. Probably you already know this, and I’m not really sure if Google detailed this information in the Android Developers website (I didn’t really see it in their deployment checklist), but here we go.

Most of us (Helldorado Team included) have not written code from scratch, but rather, have based our codebase on an existing template taken from the internet, etc. This is true when you want to get a code skeleton for a specific purpose, for instance, an OpenGL rendering framework or something similar. With this in mind, sometimes we have the bad habit of not changing the package name of the application we based our code on, and this in turn comes to haunt us during the actual deployment process.

Therefore, make sure the package name of your android application DOES NOT contain the following strings: “google” or “android“. If the package name of your application contains any of the previous strings, Google Play will not let you deploy your application. We ran into this issue with Condor Wars (the app’s package name was com.android.CondorWars), and when we tried to deploy the app at 4am in the morning, we realized, tired and frustrated, that we had to make a quick code change before deployment.

Quick code changes before production deployment, even if their effect seems to be benign at best, are the worst things you can do in the final minutes before actual deployment. We renamed the package name to com.helldoradoteam.CondorWars and resumed the deployment process. Google Play accepted our deployment package as we celebrated the release of our first game.

Later on we realized we hadn’t changed all references to our old package name in the code, which caused the game to crash in various places. We released a patch to version 1.1 in order to fix the package name issue.

The lessons learned here is to have the correct package name of your application from the very early stages of the SDLC cycle. Fix things now to avoid headaches from last minute changes later.

Naturally, I would just go on and say nice things about android development. True is, the Helldorado Team development team confesses that due to deployment issues we have faced in the past week, we will rethink our original strategy of picking Android as our development platform of choice.

We made it abundantly clear in the past that we had chosen Android because we were familiar with Java and because I was going to buy an Android phone (Samsung Galaxy S). That was back in Fall 2010, Android’s popularity was rising and its outlook was somewhat promising. But now its Fall 2012, there’s countless Android devices, API Levels, etc and honestly it is getting really hard to support every single permutation of Android phone and API Level. Props to Chris Pruett for what he was able to achieve with Replica Island. He is kind of an unsung hero in the Android development community, but honestly Helldorado Team is not hear to play the same role. We are not here to prove anything to anyone. We are not here to prove that we can write code that can run smoothly and without crashes on every available device, we are here just to create fun, playable games. We don’t need this headache. We realized that the reduced development time that came from  our previous familiarity with Java is being offset by increased maintenance efforts post-deployment. We are currently a team of two. Elioncho is running a restaurant full-time, and I am currently pursuing an MBA. We are both extremely busy and we want to use our valuable time creating quality games, not debugging the reason why the Option screen crashes when you press back button on the Xperia phone while this works perfectly fine on a countless array of other devices.

We are now venturing into iPhone development, it will take at least a pair of months to get up to speed, but depending on how the development and deployment of Condor Wars for iPhone goes, we will make appropriate decisions regarding our platform or choice. If everything goes smoothly, Android will cease to be our platform of choice and will just be a pile of dust left behind (Sorry Pebo).

After 2 months of development, Elioncho’s original game was recreated for the Android platform and is now available at Google Play. Check it out!

UPDATE: Condor Wars is no longer available on the Google Play Store