Wednesday, September 28, 2011

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.

36 comments:

  1. What is the difference between the free version and the full version?

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  2. I was a beta tester do I get a free full version

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  3. Bought the paid version earlier today, loving it so far. Every now and then I get a urge to relive something from my past and for the past month or so it has been digimon. This app is just what I wanted, I already put up a well deserved 5 star review and I look forward to future updates. Only thing I really wish it had was a solo battle system, but I am guessing that is what you were calling ghost battles. You should be very proud of this app

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  4. Just purchased the full version. I have been looking for something like for some time but it never would appear in the market so stumbling upon this was rather lucky.

    I do have a question though, how often will pets get hungry and need to go to sleep? Also how often will they sleep for? I enjoyed some versions of the Tamagotchi pets, those ones being the forgiving ones that understood you had a life and only really needed to check on them for about a minute 3 times a day. Is that how this app is? Or is it like the earliest versions where the pet whines every 5 minutes then dies while you're at school. I am hoping for more of a relaxed version that lets you take care of the pet every now and then but does not become a hassle.

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  5. @Ryan Mackenzie
    Differences will be further elaborated upon once the trial version is released.

    @Alwc Odessa
    Thank you for buying the application I hope you are having fun with it! And thanks for the 5 star review! A solo battle system is indeed what I meant with the ghost battle system, work on this will start some time next week.

    @Anonymous#1
    Generally I am not able to give away the application for free.

    @Anonymous#2
    Thanks for purchasing the application! As for your question:
    Every pet will get hungry on different times, as this varies for each pet, some pets get hungry fast others should be able to go without food for a long time. However, this game is quite forgiving in its care-taking. The sleep function of the application doubles as a 'pause' function. The pet won't wake up by itself, it will be able to sleep at any point of the day and while it is sleeping, stats such as hungry, potty and such don't increase as fast as they normally would ( around 30% of what they normally would ).
    Furthermore, the pet will not die on you if you don't take care of it for a day or so; this was done because, as you state, a lot of people have lives and obligations so they don't have time to pay attention to the application all the time. All mistakes made during its life cycle are accumulated and only near the end of its life cycle are these mistakes used to determine whether the pet dies early or not. So you can rest assured, you can leave it alone for a day or so, it won't just go and die on you.

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  6. Thank you very much @myClassicPet. It has been enjoyable so far, my pet has reached its 2nd evolution (little snake guy) and I am enjoying it. This is literally just like the old tamagotchi/digimon toys from when I was younger. I've been trying to subtly convince my brother to get it. One I love to support small projects (in school for game design) but I also want someone to battle heh my reasons are not entirely sefless.

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  7. Hi the loving the app I have managed to get about 6 people download it but none of us can finish a battle. We can start a fight and they start shooting at each other but it never stops. How long should a battle take or is this a small glitch we are having? I look forward to your reply.

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  8. @Anonymous #1:
    Thanks for the buy, I hope you will further enjoy the application!

    @Anonymous #2:
    Thanks for the buy and thank everyone else! It is either a glitch or you guys are very VERY evenly matched... I must admit the battle system was a bit premature... I will be pushing a new version ( 1.0.1 ) in a moment with a 'possible' fix for it! Thanks for the comment! I hope you guys further enjoy the application.

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  9. Me and my brother just battled our pets. His is a 2nd generation and mine a 4th. His status are in the 50-70 range and all of mine are 200+. The bluetooth battle disconnected 4 times before we were able to finally get a match going. When it started my guy only had about 33% of his health left which even if that were the case my health would be roughly equal to his with much more powerful attacks. After a long battle my pet eventually dwindled down and lost. Is this a bug or is there something we are missing that effects the battles? Also his pet never took a single bar of damage.

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  10. Is "good" karma represented by a filled up bar or empty bar?

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  11. @Ryan
    Good karma is represented by a filled up bar. However, for one pet 50% may be enough to count as 'good' while for another pet 75% is required to be considered 'good'.

    @Anonymous
    I'm sorry that you are experiencing these bugs. I have narrowed down the bug that is responsible for a one pet not hitting another even though there is an obvious gap in their statistics.
    As for the disconnecting part of you post; How far apart were your devices when you tried it out? Try to keep them as close to each other as possible. I myself haven't had any disconnects with my test models so I can't really say much about this.

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  12. It has started almost 100% consistently after the first few connections dropped so not really any complaints there. Still anytime we battle the health starts at random percentages and my pet never damages his. Also battle progress very slowly, even now when our status are about even (still cannot hit him) it takes forever for either pet to take damage.

    This is all by no means a unplayable bug, especially since you said you kind of just slapped the battle system into it but next time you are able you should take a look at the battle system again.

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  13. Edit: I see you just updated the game again, I'll be sure to battle again soon and let you know of the results

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  14. Hello I am the anonymous that has been leaving updates regarding the battle system. I just got through another test battle with my brother earlier. Everything went perfect. The beginning health was only slightly down (my guy was pretty sleep, I'm assuming that affects it) and the battle went much quicker this time around. Also both pets got hit and mine finally won a battle. It makes sense since his status are a fair bit higher than my brother's pet.

    Overall well done, the app plays out just like the old Tamagotchi and Digipets and you also responded quickly to bugs even with such a low customer base. I will see what I can do to raise the nostalgia of some of my classmates with androids to try and get them interested.

    (One minor error is that my brother's victory percentages are always reverting to 0.0% even though he has won several battles. Nothing major but thought you might want to know about it)

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  15. @DerKrieger
    Hello! Thanks for signing up for an account on blogger, makes the comments a lot easier to read and manage.

    I am glad to hear that the battle system now works as it should on your devices and that you enjoy it. Being sleepy, or any other stat does decrease HP a little, however your second bout should be started with full HP if I'm correct.

    Your brothers percentage being reverted to 0,0% does sound troubling. Has he reset his pet between reverts? Has he dropped out of battles? Did the pet evolve in between?

    Also, I appreciate the amount of patience you are showing with the application!

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  16. I have a fifth generation ghost pet, and it is age 22, and I have been getting notifications for a couple hours telling me it is about to evolve. However there is no bars on the evolution bar and it hasn't evolved.

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  17. Has not reset his pet, we did have a battle where I dropped out to answer a phone call (this was during the take forever, couldnt hit phase) but other than that no. Also my victories are recorded at 33.3% now which is accurate for all the battles we have had. Our first battle he was 2nd generation, now he is on his 4th. Perhaps it has wiped since then. My pet has been 4th generation the entire time so that could be why his victories are saved.

    Again no problem at all, I am having a blast with it. I just know it is useful to have actual feedback on a problem or else there really isn't anything you can do.

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  18. @DerKrieger
    When a pet evolves, the number of Wins, Draws and Losses of a pet are set back to 0. Your brother should be able to see the number of wins / losses he had a previous generation in the Manual in the Evolution Chart by clicking on his current pet.

    @Ryan
    Firstly, congratulations on getting to the fifth generation already! I don't know what currently causes notifications to happen with your current pet, might I ask what the interval is you have set for the notifications? The Ghost is a strange pet though, try letting it starve or letting it hold up its poo for a while, see what happens.
    Anyway, I will be running tests with the ghost pet and notifications on my devices now and see what the bug is, thanks for notifying me ! :D

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  19. I have the notifications set for five minutes, and I keep getting them.

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  20. Understood, I do have a couple questions regarding some status.

    How much weight is too much? Does it vary by pet or generation? What is considered fat and what is not? Is there a way to make them lose weight without making them hungry again?

    And care mistakes; What all are considered care mistakes?

    My pet just evolved to the worm dragon thing in generation 5. Apparently i made 10 care mistakes before and he weighs about 70 kg right now.

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  21. @Ryan
    I have been running the application with the ghost pet for almost a day now and although I got a notification, it was only once and certainly not every 5 minutes. Might I ask you what your pets stats are ? ( Hunger, Potty, etc, etc ). To be honest, I'm a little baffled by your reports :P

    @DerKrieger
    There isn't something as 'too much' weight. Maybe you can call it an oversight but, I didn't calculate in obesity for the pets. Weight is only used when determining the evolution of the pet.
    As for losing weight, letting it work out will make it lose weight, letting it starve a little will make it lose weight. Losing weight can be pretty hard though.

    Care mistakes differ for each pet. A care mistake is counted whenever a certain stat goes over a certain percentage. For example, if hunger goes over 95%, this will be counted as a care mistake.

    Lastly, congratulations on reaching the fifth generation! Never thought people would reach the fifth generation this easily.. who would have known! :D

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  22. At the time I had no Hunger or Potty. Full Happiness, Karma, Health, no Sleepy, and Full Energy.

    The stats for strength right now are 7351, defense is 4298, and speed is 4647, and health is 3112.

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  23. @myClassicPet haha I see, so is there anything wrong with feeding him only the finest and fattiest of steaks?

    @Ryan sweet mother of enormous status...

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  24. @Ryan
    Ok got everything noted, and to be sure, it was making the notification sound every five minutes, right? It's not the notification icon not disappearing from the bar on top, right?

    @DerKrieger
    Well, pets don't have vascular diseases so you can keep on feeding him steaks, however they do increase the weight a bit more than the mushrooms or candies, if i'm not mistaken.


    The Slot Machine can indeed be abused as it doesn't drain energy and increases stats.

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  25. Yes the mushrooms and candies do increase weight but after a lot unlike steak which is about every other piece. My thing is that my 5th generation dragon wyrm thing eats so much he almost always gains 1-2kg. If being overweight were possible you would have to rebalance weight a bit more. As it is now my pet is simply expanding every time he eats, which includes right after exercise. Run on treadmill to lose 1 Kg, eat 3Kg worth of mushrooms to make up for it.

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  26. Quick questions: How old will a pet likely get before they die of old age?

    Also has anyone else noticed a bug where the pet notification goes off every minute or so regardless of what you have the time set to? My pet notification is suppose to warn me once every hour at the most. It was going off every 30 seconds to a minute recently and I had to turn it off for my own sanity. I check the pet and nothing was wrong, full happiness, full karama, no hunger, no potty, full health, 1 bar of energy, no sleepyness.

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  27. Been a little absent for the past few days.

    @DerKrieger
    I will look into the weight / training / food relations because it does sound as if it needs a little bit of re-calibrating and balancing.

    Age depends on the generation your pet is in, your generation 5 snake thing will reach an age of somewhere around 44~54, most likely. If it were to evolve, it would be able to reach an age of approximately 59~66.

    Also, thanks for further reporting bugs! I am kind of glad that you also had the notification bug happen to you, means that it wasn't really a freak appearance when it happened to Ryan. However, at the same time, I am kind of worried because I still haven't been able to reproduce the bug on any of my machines... Still working on it though, just wish I knew what caused it, please endure just a little bit longer.

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  28. Definitely make training lose more weight so that occasionally the player may actually want to use the steak to to plump the pet up. Thats good to hear, well care for pets can live a fairly long time (relative to pocket pets) if you care for them properly.

    The bug did not start until my pet evolved into his generation 5 form, he recently evolved to 6 and I turned it back on temporarily to see if the same thing would happen and it did. When my pet eventually passes away and I start a new one I will be sure to tell you if it is still happening then.

    P.S. My brother had the same problem start up at around generation 4 - generation 5. We both had our notification times set to 1 hour intervals if that helps.

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  29. I could upload a save of my pet the next time it keeps notifying me for no reason. Would that help?

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  30. Thanks for always posting your feedback here! I really appreciate it!

    First up, I think that I have fixed the notification bug where the application would send out notifications although nothing was wrong with the pet. The bugfix is included in the new version 1.0.3 which should be available on the Market right now.

    @DerKrieger
    The weight and training relation will be changed during the next release of the application. And congratulations on getting a generation 6 pet already... never though people would get a sixth generation in their first run... I guess I made it a little bit too easy :P

    @Ryan
    If the problem pops up again in the new version, I would be very grateful if you would be able to upload the savefile, thanks in advance!

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  31. Alright thank you, I'll update and give the notification another try. Don't worry about it being too easy, it would take a lot of testing to make sure you got the perfect balance of just enough challenge without being too demanding. Most digital pets that came out back in the day usually failed in that remark in that they made many things way too hard (didnt check on the dog every 30 minutes? Good now he is dead). I wouldnt mind if you did make it harder to get past 4 when the major content updates come around as generation 4 has so many more pet options it is kind of a shame they get passed up to the same few generations 5s and 6s. Again though thank you for being so responsive to any concerns about the game, overall it has been a really smooth release and it is fun every now and then when Im waiting for a class to start to open the app up and play with my pet for a couple minutes.

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  32. Funny that you say that, because my intention was to make the fifth and the sixth generation harder to achieve and I thought that I had properly done so, but you guys proved me wrong :P
    I was quite surprised when people were achieving gen5 and gen6 so fast.

    I myself have also played with tamagotchi's back in the day and had my dogs and dinosaurs and what not die on me over and over again because I forgot to feed it for a little while.

    In future updates the fifth and sixth generation will be made a wee bit harder to evolve to. And of course, more animals will be added later on.

    I'm happy to hear that you enjoy the application thus far. I think it's important to communicate with customers and that is why I always try to reply to every mail and comment I get.

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  33. I would like the challenge of generation 5&6 being harder to achieve but also I think by the time your pet hits generation 4+ they should require less frequent attention than they do now. It makes sense for a baby pet to need check-ups every hour or so but when your pet is older it should (just my opinion) probably need to be check a few times a day.

    Just had my first pet die at the grand old age of 63. R.I.P. Philip

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  34. I'm sorry to hear that your pet died, I hope that you can get a different pet this time around :D

    You are right though, my intention was to make the adult pets a little less demanding on people and make them more grown up in their needs. I guess I should have playtested the pets a bit more :P

    I will see what I can do during the next update though!

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  35. Hi,
    This app is only the 2nd app I've actually paid for after owning android phones for about 2.5 years.

    I'm totally into all the silly old tamagotchi pets from the past, this is certainly the most in depth and interesting one I've found on the market! It really is fantastic for the small price tag.

    My only complaint is that my friends aren't as sad as me (and own iphones) so I have nobody to battle. So an online battle feature would seriously open up the game for me. The ghost battle would be a good step towards it, but knowing there is a real person at the other end of the battle instead of a computer would make it much more enjoyable.

    Oh also I noticed that the tic tac toe can be a little predictable, if I go in the bottom right corner, the pet always goes to the bottom middle square, so more random moves by the pet would be good.

    But yea, seriously well done on the app, it's a massive step in the right direction for nostalgia but also adding your own little spin is great. I really appreciate your hard work and can't wait for future updates.. please please keep up the fantastic work!

    Andy

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