Some more information on the next update

I thought I'd shed a little more light on the next update I am working on. As you may have already read in my previous post, I am working on adding a Colosseum to the application, however, aside from this there will be a few other changes as well. These are minor chances to aesthetics of the application and the way some things work, but I thought I would list them up and post them anyway.

At the time of writing this post, I have implemented the following small changes to the application thus far:

• Changed the animations in the Def and Atk training mini-games,
• Made it so that if your pet runs a lot of 'laps' on the treadmill, he will lose more weight than normal,
• Balanced some of the higher level pets and made them harder to 'get',
• Made the higher level pets less needy, as they are adults, they are expected to control their 'urges'.

Not a very long list of changes, I admit, but more changes will be added as needed later on. Although I said I wanted to keep the blog for smaller posts, I feel that I have something to make up because of the long period of radio silence after the initial release of the application.

Long awaited update

It has been quite a long time since I last posted a blog update, so here goes!

I have been a little busy with other things so I wasn't able to work on the application as much as I would have wanted to. Although I have been updating the application over the past few weeks and trying to fix bugs people ran into, I didn't do anything worth posting about on the blog. As I believe the blog to be for bigger things than bug fixes, as these will be posted on my Twitter feed.

In this paragraph I would like to thank all the people who bought the application. I hope that everyone is having fun with it! I would also like to thank the people who have contacted me with bugs and comments on the application over the past three weeks, as well as people who were kind enough to rate the application on the Android Market. And if there are any people out there that find the application to be dull, I hope that I will be able to keep your attention with further updates. 

Speaking of which, in this post I would like to introduce a few screenshots of the 'Colosseum' mode I have been working on for the past few days. In short, the Colosseum mode is a mode where your pet can fight computer generated pets and compete in competitions in order to increase your Colosseum Rank. When the update hits the Market, people will find that the 'Bluetooth Battle' option in the menu has changed to 'Battle', clicking this will open up a select screen where people can select either 'Bluetooth' or 'Colosseum', as shown below.

Clicking the right and left menu buttons will cycle through the menu and clicking the middle button will confirm your choice. After clicking on Colosseum, one will be confronted with two statistics, the Colosseum Rank and Experience level. As one fights battles in the Colosseum, one will gain experience points and if enough experience points are gathered, one will increase in rank. Just like a usual RPG training and leveling up system I suppose. I haven't decided yet on what kind of merits will come with a higher rank, although I am currently thinking of making certain evolutions easier if one has a higher Colosseum rank.

From the this first screen, one can cycle through a number of screens. The Colosseum is divided in three levels of difficulty; the Novice, Champion and Elite levels. Each level has twelve Colosseum Tournaments, each of which are won by fighting three matches. In the image above one can see three different types of squares, the big open squares are Tournaments that haven't been won yet, the big black squares indicate that that particular Tournament has already been won ( one can however participate again ). Finally, the little black squares indicate a Tournament that hasn't been unlocked yet. Some matches will only unlock after a certain Colosseum rank has been achieved.

I believe that this covers the initial introduction of the Colosseum mode pretty well. There are still some little things that need tweaking with the Colosseum mode, so I won't be releasing this update yet.

Aside from including a the above mentioned mode, I will also be changing some of the animals statistics. It appears that it is quite easy to get a pet to evolve up until generation 5, so I will be making it a little bit harder in the future. And there will be some other minor tweaks in the way stuff works, however this will be further elaborated upon once the time comes.

And this concludes this blog post. If there are any questions, feel free to post a comment, email or tweet. Also, I hope that people like the idea of the Colosseum mode as portrayed in this post.

A release

As people who read my Twitter have already noticed, today is the day that I am to release the application on the Android Market and this time around I am going to release it.

Actually, the application is already live! A link to the application can be found to the right of this post, also a QR code that, when scanned, will redirect your device directly to the Market application and find myClassicPet for you. At the moment the full version is online, however the free version will be launched later today or tomorrow, there is still a little something that needs to be added, so please be patient with me.

myClassicPet Full Version

Now that this is out of the way, I would like to thank all the Alpha and Beta testers that helped me debug the application and make it a better application. Special thanks go out to all of you who helped me over the past few weeks and you will find your name in the Credits section of the Manual inside the application. If at some point in time a tester would like to be excluded from the list, have his or her name updated or something else, feel free to contact me.

Now that the application is actually released I guess that it is time to work on further updates for the application, things such as a Ghost Battle function, more sounds, make the application interact in more ways with the user and other people running the application and so on. I hope that people who have supported me in the past will keep supporting me and this project in the weeks and months to come.

A minor setback

Today I have a little bit of bad news for you all.... As you might have already seen in my Twitter feed, I was planning to release the application on the Android Market today, however, because I still haven't been able to get my Google Checkout account verified I am not able to publish the application on the Market just yet....
My sincere apologies to everyone who was waiting for a release today.

Because posting just the above few lines would be a waste, I will also post some more information on the application. So here goes!

Brief Description ( As shown on the Market )

myClassicPet is an Application that tries to emulate the old Tamagotchi keychains from the 90's. For people not familiar with these keychains; this Application houses a so-called virtual pet, which you are expected to take care of!

You will have to feed it, see it to the bathroom, give it its medicine, let is sleep, play games with it and make it work out. When your pet is old and strong enough you will be able to battle your friends and their pets over Bluetooth!

The Application currently houses 16 different pets, can you unlock them all? Download the Application now and become the strongest creature breeder in your neighborhood!


Basic information

• Has 16 animals in total,
• Users can battle their friends and their pets,
• Tamagotchi style pixel graphics,
• 7 Different mini-games,
• Currently 852Kb on phone memory and 280Kb on SD card,
• Has optional Notification Service, the service is started periodically versus running 24/7,
• Runs in landscape mode only,
• Has six different background colors to pick from,
• Price for the full version is 0,99.

Permissions

1. Storage
   Save backup save files to the SD card.
2. Network Communication
   create Bluetooth connections.
3. Phone Calls
   Read the SDK version of the phone.
4. System Tools
   Turn Off and On Bluetooth on your phone.
5. Account Information
   User Accounts are used to link save files to.
6. System Tools
   Automatically start at boot to start a periodic Notification Service
7. Hardware Controls
   Control vibrator; used during Notifications.
8. Network Communication
   Market license check

And up here we see a screenshot of what the application MIGHT look like when it is released on the market. ( Needless to say, I created this image myself and it isn't an actual screenshot of the Market )

And this is about all the information I can think of at the moment, as most of you might notice, a lot of this has been copied over from my first blogpost though... hehe....

Anyway, I hope that I'll be able to release this application soon enough, I know that a lot of people are waiting for it, I myself am also eager to release the application though. I hope you all have a good weekend!

A little update, Credits

Testers shown in
alphabetical order
( And yes, Alpha should
indeed be spelled 'Alpha'
and not 'Alfa'  :P )

It has been roughly two weeks since I last posted something on the blog so I thought to myself, now is as good a time as any.

The beta period has ended a week ago and I would like to thank every tester who applied for the beta and sent me feedback over the past month. Everyone who actively participated in the beta will be mentioned in the Credits section of the Manual of the application. Below is a screenshot of what the credits look like at the moment. If, for some reason, someone wants to be left out of the credits or wants their name changed, feel free to drop me an email, twitter message or better yet, reply to this blogpost. This also goes for people that have participated but that I have forgotten to put on the list. =)

Aside from this, there isn't much to say about the application. The last two weeks I have been busy cleaning up the code of the application, trying to make it run a little bit faster and smoother, changing the basic statistics of every pet so that they have different needs.

I will be making a new post shortly with more information on different versions and when the application will be released on the Android Market.

Another developer update

And here is yet another little blog update, detailing what has kept me busy over the past few days.

First up I would like to say that I further refined the look of the Manual, most of it now looks like the Settings menu of your phone (But with color icons instead). Rather than designing my own elaborate manual interface, I have chosen to go with the more standard Android look, this was done for two reasons; 

firstly because my understanding of the Android SDK still isn't as good as I would like it to be and secondly, this is a familiar look for android users which means that most people who are used to using android should have no trouble flipping through the manual. 

Although, if time permits, I will look into designing a custom manual interface.

Secondly, I added six background colors to the application so that users can tweak the application to their liking. I am thinking of adding more colors in the future, however at the moment I will stick to these basic six colors and see what people think of them. The colors have been well received by most beta testers, which I am glad for.

Thirdly, I added the notifications I said I was looking into last week. The notification system doesn't run full time, so people shouldn't be worried about their battery life (it is an optional feature, so you can turn it off if your phone appears to drain faster or run slower). At the moment the user is notified through an Android notification when their pet is either Hungry, Sick, Wants to go Potty or is Sleepy. ( The option is set to false by default so you do need to enable it in the Options menu ).

I have also been working on a new mini-game for the application, a dice game which will combine both skill and luck. However, because the application doesn't have a currency or item system, it is kind of hard to think of earnings for when the player wins, or losses for when the player loses.

Another thing which I have started working on is a growth-chart / evolution tree for the application, showing what pets you have had in the past and what their stats were when they evolved, so that it is easier for people to get the same pet again, if they so desire.

This is it for today's blog post, and finally, I would like to once again thank everybody who has been willing to test the application on their devices and report back their findings. These people will be mentioned in a credits section of the application when it gets released.

On that note, I still haven't thought of a release date, however I expect it to be somewhere in the middle of September.

Screenshot (manual design still subject to change)

Selecting a background color

A notification 

The in-game menu

A new look for the manual

Another look at the manual

All the colors

A blog update; A manual, notifications and colors!

First off, I want to thank every person who has applied for beta testing and sent me feedback on the application. The feedback was really helpful and it all has been taken to heart and will, in some way or another, be processed into the application.

It has been little over a week since I started this blog so I thought that it might be a good idea to post another blog post ( and add a few more pet images to the Pets page ). Since I also have a twitter account, I figure that it might be best to use the blog only for larger updates, but alas, I digress.

One of the things a lot of testers asked for was a manual to go with the application and I am pleased to say that at the moment the manual is my top priority. My original reason for not adding a manual was that because when I was a kid, my tamagotchis either didn't come with a manual or came with a manual in a language I couldn't read, so part of the tamagotchi experience for me was having to find everything out myself. But, as I found out, this wasn't really the case for a lot of people who played with tamagotchis. Although I still think that exploring a game / application is half the fun of it all, there will be a manual to go with the application soon!

Aside from adding a manual I have also been looking into adding real-time notifications to the application. At the moment, even though you aren't using the application, your pet will become hungry without notifying you about it, which can be quite a pain in the ass as a lot of people probably don't have the time to check up on their pet every so often or they will simply forget .

Furthermore, because the application is called 'myClassicPet' I thought that it would be neat for people to be able to tweak the layout of the application to their own liking, and thus at the moment I am looking into changing the background color of the application or even adding a background image to the application to make the application and the pet feel more like your own.

On a special note, the user Nexer even created a fan-facebook page which can be found here.

On a final note; 
The beta is still open, so people can still apply by sending me an email. I am still trying to find out how the application scales down on smaller devices and how it scales up on larger devices. ( However, this doesn't mean that people with mdpi devices aren't welcome to apply ).




Screenshot (manual design still subject to change)

The manual 

The manual 

The manual 

The manual 

The manual 

Trying out a different background Color

Trying out another background color