Wtf, Unity/Xcode/iOS?

What a waste of a day.

Somehow, i end up losing somewhere around 6-8 hours of work time to what is possibly the top 5 most ludicrous bugs i've ever dealt with in my programming career.

For months now, we have had a stable level 1-1.  Suddenly, a line of code that does objective checking on our trigger system (kill enemies 4,5,6 drops a chest, that sort of thing) stops working.  The line that's the culprit?

var tempArray : Array = new Array(gObjectiveList);

for those of you not verse in programming, all this is doing is essentially making a copy of an existing array.  The array wasn't empty, or null, or changed in any way.  It's the same old array we'd been copying for months with no issue.  In fact, the Web/Mac/PC Builds don't even give off an error.  Only iOS, and only in ONE spot where this line was called.  This type of initaliziation is called in our code maybe 20 times in different situations.

The solution?  Do the exact same thing, but in a different way:

1. var tempArray : Array;   
2. for (all objects in gObjectiveList) tempArray.Add(gObjectiveList[i]);

insane.  time poorly spent.  Now i wish i knew who to blame.

Check out that new site banner

Pretty badass.  I know.

(takes a bow)

The Weekly Grind 12/09/2011-12/16/2011

I like how my dedication to daily blogging lasts for like, 3 days, then i can't keep up anymore after that point.

Anyways, let's not focus on what i can't do, and on what we have done.  We're very close to finishing up the banshee queen level.  Today i also added all but one cutscene for Chapter 2-1, and we added the opening cutscene for 2-2.  The BQ level is really coming along.  I really like how our boss fights completely change the pace and strategic thinking of the game.  I also like the playbalancing that's been happening.  Chapter 2-1 is particularly daunting.  The first two fights really make you stop and think about what you're going to do.  More than likely players will die attempting the chapter the first few times, but we put the really tough stuff up front so it wasn't such a big deal.  Later chapters though, all bets are off.

We have a name!

Well, after some serious soul searching, and what seemed like an algorithm that ran through every possible combination of names, we got a name.

DTSQ is now Dungeon Crawlers!

We're very excited, we like the title.  It doesn't do the proper homage that "Busters" did, but it definitely fits the theme, especially since the game is a 'Dungeon Crawl'.

In case anyone is interested in the story of "Dungeon Busters", here it is.  On July 29th, Mindspark Interactive copyrighted the name.  We definitely had the idea to name the game "Dungeon Busters" well over a year ago, but we didn't copyright it, and we weren't sure that we would use it (lesson learned).  They also grabbed the domain "DungeonBusters.com".  Then, about 2-3 weeks ago, the name of their game suddenly changed to "Dungeon Rampage".  It appears that the game has fully moved over to that name.  All memories of the busters name have been removed from the game, but Mindspark still owned the copyright.  We tried reaching out to them, and we succeeded in getting in touch with the right people, but the process would simply have been too costly.  So here we are, with our new name.

Also, a little update about the game:

- Banshee Queen level is now in, and she's awesome.

- We added a cool glowing sign that marks the end of the level so that players don't leave the level before they want to

- chapter 3 is almost complete.

New Screenshots Up!

Check 'em out in the Media section.  Too bad i didn't notice the Mac OS Titlebar was in the image until after i uploaded them.  Whoops!