Topic: Where's the official app? (Read 66929 times)

Tdog · « **Reply #100 on:** May 06, 2012, 10:05:07 am »

Quote from: qmech on May 06, 2012, 06:22:32 am

FunSockets

It looks like they haven't done anything yet, but plan to be a general platform for browser-based games, probably with Dominion as a launch title. That would explain the secrecy to a degree, and possibly the time delays if they have other things they want to release at the same time.

The social features the website lists looks promising, with leaderboard and achievements and user data like councilroom.

Kirian · « **Reply #101 on:** May 06, 2012, 02:24:07 pm »

Well, at least we know how it's likely to be paid for:

"Greg Mills
VP of Monetization
Greg has seventeen years of marketing, advertising and business experience in the games industry. Prior to FunSockets, Greg oversaw business development and advertising strategy for Digital Chocolate’s social and mobile gaming business."

I'd rather have paid 20 bucks than deal with targeted advertising.

Oh wait. I have AdBlock. Never mind then.

blueblimp · « **Reply #102 on:** May 06, 2012, 04:01:36 pm »

Hopefully there is an option to pay for an ad-less version. I'd do it. That would be a good situation: an ad-supported version will bring in a lot of players, and a paid option will be less annoying for frequent users. If there were only a paid version, it might not attract enough players, especially off-peak.

Axxle · « **Reply #103 on:** May 06, 2012, 04:15:53 pm »

Quote from: qmech on May 06, 2012, 06:22:32 am

FunSockets

It looks like they haven't done anything yet, but plan to be a general platform for browser-based games, probably with Dominion as a launch title. That would explain the secrecy to a degree, and possibly the time delays if they have other things they want to release at the same time.

Looks like they might be launching Citadels too? http://sandbox.funsockets.com/
It's basically the first search result for "funsockets dominion".
I doubt they want this available to the public and already emailed them about it, but I thought I might as well share it anyway.

def · « **Reply #104 on:** May 06, 2012, 05:16:56 pm »

If you wanted to overinterpret things, you could ask the question which professional developer makes the mistake to accidentally have things like this publically available if they don't want to. There seems to be some substantial amount of source code and you can even access some lobby like room for Citadels, so unless they intended this to be an open source project, this leaves me wondering.

barsooma · « **Reply #105 on:** May 06, 2012, 06:11:16 pm »

dominion.funsockets.com exists also... unfortunately username/password protected.

rspeer · « **Reply #106 on:** May 06, 2012, 10:35:32 pm »

Wow! Actual information!

"Leaderboards" is front and center on their teaser page. That is reassuring.

rspeer · « **Reply #107 on:** May 06, 2012, 11:16:52 pm »

Oh god. Why do I keep reading BGG threads? All that ever happens is I remember why not to read BGG threads.

There are multiple people there who are upset that it will not be exclusive to iOS. A replacement for Isotropic, and they wanted it to run only on their portable Apple products.

Kirian · « **Reply #108 on:** May 06, 2012, 11:38:51 pm »

Quote from: rspeer on May 06, 2012, 11:16:52 pm

Oh god. Why do I keep reading BGG threads? All that ever happens is I remember why not to read BGG threads.

There are multiple people there who are upset that it will not be exclusive to iOS. A replacement for Isotropic, and they wanted it to run only on their portable Apple products.

Yeah, that's... amusing. Sort of. I especially like the "well you can already play at BSW!" one. What the hell, people?

blueblimp · « **Reply #109 on:** May 06, 2012, 11:39:21 pm »

Quote from: rspeer on May 06, 2012, 11:16:52 pm

Oh god. Why do I keep reading BGG threads? All that ever happens is I remember why not to read BGG threads.

There are multiple people there who are upset that it will not be exclusive to iOS. A replacement for Isotropic, and they wanted it to run only on their portable Apple products.

I agree with you, but it'd be totally doable to offer both a web app and a native iOS client. That said, it's possible to make very nice iOS-targeted web clients, so I'm optimistic.

LastFootnote · « **Reply #110 on:** May 06, 2012, 11:42:13 pm »

Quote from: rspeer on May 06, 2012, 11:16:52 pm

Oh god. Why do I keep reading BGG threads? All that ever happens is I remember why not to read BGG threads.

There are multiple people there who are upset that it will not be exclusive to iOS. A replacement for Isotropic, and they wanted it to run only on their portable Apple products.

You have any links to these imaginary threads? All I've seen is people complaining about that iOS version of the game being a web-based app rather than a native iOS app.

Kirian · « **Reply #111 on:** May 06, 2012, 11:44:48 pm »

Quote from: LastFootnote on May 06, 2012, 11:42:13 pm

Quote from: rspeer on May 06, 2012, 11:16:52 pm
Oh god. Why do I keep reading BGG threads? All that ever happens is I remember why not to read BGG threads.

There are multiple people there who are upset that it will not be exclusive to iOS. A replacement for Isotropic, and they wanted it to run only on their portable Apple products.

You have any links to these imaginary threads? All I've seen is people complaining about that iOS version of the game being a web-based app rather than a native iOS app.

http://boardgamegeek.com/article/9106287#9106287
http://boardgamegeek.com/article/9108784#9108784
http://boardgamegeek.com/article/9108856#9108856

rspeer · « **Reply #112 on:** May 07, 2012, 01:06:05 am »

Thinking there should be a distinct iOS version: sure, okay, that is at least a sane position to take. A naive position, but a sane one.

It's very rare to see a multiplayer game with distinct implementations that interoperate with each other, because the cost of developing it is so high, and the historical success rate of making it work correctly is so low.

This company is making a very wise choice by making an HTML5 platform they can use everywhere.

Insomniac · « **Reply #113 on:** May 07, 2012, 01:49:44 am »

Theres nothing wrong with wanting an iOS specific version. Look at Shadow Era it has a successful application on Android, PC, and iPhone. Additionally Take a look at isotropic. It's great and don't take this as anything other than that but it does have some bugs that make us iPhone users sad (reorganizing cards).

Now, with all that said even though Funsockets appears to be HTML5 only Jay has said that it will be available in the iTunes store and that it will also be available for Android (nothing of the Android store though). So I still have hope there will be separate versions for each.

Also I dont think believing in an ios specific version is a naive position?
Marmalade, Mosync and many other tools allow HTML5/CSS/Javascript development for all platforms at the same time. IE you can make an app in HTML5/Javascript/CSS and have a unique iOS, Android and PC version

Kirian · « **Reply #114 on:** May 07, 2012, 02:10:44 am »

Quote from: Insomniac on May 07, 2012, 01:49:44 am

Theres nothing wrong with wanting an iOS specific version. Look at Shadow Era it has a successful application on Android, PC, and iPhone. Additionally Take a look at isotropic. It's great and don't take this as anything other than that but it does have some bugs that make us iPhone users sad (reorganizing cards).

Now, with all that said even though Funsockets appears to be HTML5 only Jay has said that it will be available in the iTunes store and that it will also be available for Android (nothing of the Android store though). So I still have hope there will be separate versions for each.

Also I dont think believing in an ios specific version is a naive position?
Marmalade, Mosync and many other tools allow HTML5/CSS/Javascript development for all platforms at the same time. IE you can make an app in HTML5/Javascript/CSS and have a unique iOS, Android and PC version

It's possible that's exactly what they're doing, though this now stretches the bounds of my programming knowledge.

Piemaster · « **Reply #115 on:** May 07, 2012, 03:12:56 am »

Quote from: rspeer on May 06, 2012, 11:16:52 pm

Oh god. Why do I keep reading BGG threads? All that ever happens is I remember why not to read BGG threads.

There are multiple people there who are upset that it will not be exclusive to iOS. A replacement for Isotropic, and they wanted it to run only on their portable Apple products.

I think people that buy iPhones need to see their purchase validated somehow

blueblimp · « **Reply #116 on:** May 07, 2012, 04:42:14 pm »

Quote from: Piemaster on May 07, 2012, 03:12:56 am

Quote from: rspeer on May 06, 2012, 11:16:52 pm
Oh god. Why do I keep reading BGG threads? All that ever happens is I remember why not to read BGG threads.

There are multiple people there who are upset that it will not be exclusive to iOS. A replacement for Isotropic, and they wanted it to run only on their portable Apple products.
I think people that buy iPhones need to see their purchase validated somehow

Does anyone else see the irony of a (presumably) non-iPhone owner validating his decision to not buy an iPhone by accusing iPhone owners of wanting to validate their decision to buy one...

DStu · « **Reply #117 on:** May 07, 2012, 04:46:12 pm »

blueblimp · « **Reply #118 on:** May 07, 2012, 04:48:32 pm »

Papa Luigi · « **Reply #119 on:** May 07, 2012, 05:32:30 pm »

Quote from: rspeer on May 07, 2012, 01:06:05 am

Thinking there should be a distinct iOS version: sure, okay, that is at least a sane position to take. A naive position, but a sane one.

It's very rare to see a multiplayer game with distinct implementations that interoperate with each other, because the cost of developing it is so high, and the historical success rate of making it work correctly is so low.

This company is making a very wise choice by making an HTML5 platform they can use everywhere.

I dunno, just thinking of Words With Friends... I like how I can play it on my Android phone, or I can go home and play it on my computer, against people on computers and iPads.

I will say that as an owner of a Kindle Fire and an Android phone, I would love to see a native Android version of the game rather than a web interface. Isotropic just barely works on my Fire; it tends to disconnect fairly often and it's pretty frustrating to use, but it can be done. It's been my experience that web interfaces/in-browser apps just don't work that well on mobile devices. So hey, chalk me up as one of those naive people who wants a native app rather than accessing it through a browser.

I suppose since Dominion is not a time-sensitive action game, a browser app COULD work. If they put some good effort into it, I could see it being totally usable on a tablet or phone, much more so than Isotropic. The other advantage to a browser game is that, assuming it is paid or has a paid option, you wouldn't have to pay more than once for multiple devices.

blueblimp · « **Reply #120 on:** May 07, 2012, 05:44:29 pm »

Quote from: Papa Luigi on May 07, 2012, 05:32:30 pm

I will say that as an owner of a Kindle Fire and an Android phone, I would love to see a native Android version of the game rather than a web interface. Isotropic just barely works on my Fire; it tends to disconnect fairly often and it's pretty frustrating to use, but it can be done. It's been my experience that web interfaces/in-browser apps just don't work that well on mobile devices.

There have been numerous reports of isotropic running mostly fine on an iPad (with the notable exception of drag-and-drop):

I haven't tried it much, but when I do it seems to work. The response to touch is a little slow, but a targeted webapp can easily fix that by supporting touch events.

This is why I don't understand the anti-Apple trolls. iOS devices are actually pretty good.

Ozle · « **Reply #121 on:** May 07, 2012, 06:09:22 pm »

Isotropic works ok on iPad.

The only thing I find annoying is interface sometimes gets a bit stuck and I have to type in the chat box to refresh it.

chwhite · « **Reply #122 on:** May 07, 2012, 06:34:42 pm »

I'm not an anti-Apple troll- my computer is a Mac, for crying out loud.

What I am anti is an iOS-only version which neglects other platforms, for the simple reason that I wouldn't be able to play an iOS-only version. Secondarily because cross-platform compatibility is important if you want to keep Isotropic's robust leaderboard and high-level, broad-based competition. That's all.

If they were to come out with different versions of the same program which were native to various platforms, and which could also enable games between platforms, I'd be fine with that. Makes no difference to me either which way.

Kirian · « **Reply #123 on:** May 07, 2012, 06:36:05 pm »

Quote from: blueblimp on May 07, 2012, 05:44:29 pm

This is why I don't understand the anti-Apple trolls. iOS devices are actually pretty good.

I'm not anti-Apple*, I'm anti-Apple-fanboy. The people in that thread who are whining that they won't have their native app because it doesn't integrate with the app store, or doesn't take full advantage of iPad graphics, it's not free-range... total baloney. Serious hipsterism.

I know a lot of people who use and like their Apple products. In most cases, they don't believe iOS is the be-all and end-all of computing. Some people do, though, and I have a problem with those people.

*I do think, and I think a lot of people agree, that iThings are overpriced for what you get. I don't need to justify not purchasing an iPhone except by saying "I paid a fifth what you did for my phone."

toaster · « **Reply #124 on:** May 07, 2012, 06:38:23 pm »

Quote from: blueblimp on May 07, 2012, 05:44:29 pm

This is why I don't understand the anti-Apple trolls. iOS devices are actually pretty good.

I don't have any problem with that...but a number of the complaints seem to be of the form "why aren't they releasing for iOS exclusively/first?" and some even take the form "the non-iOS market is tiny and should just be ignored".

I've got no problem with people who run iOS devices, I just don't want Apple's walled garden to drive the development process for the Dominion app.

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Author Topic: Where's the official app? (Read 66929 times)

barsooma