Although we would be more than happy to continue working on the game, making more upgrades and adding new features, our time is limited and currently the game is not getting enough sales to justify the resources that would take to improve it. So, if everything continues like this, v1.3 will be the last update of Little Racers.
We’re doing our best, trying to market the game in every way possible, but our resources are very limited and can’t invest money on advertising, specially for such a limited market as Xbox Live Community Games is.
The plan
We’ve come up with an idea that could work, but we need some help from our fellow readers and Little Racers fans. To make it simple: You help us promote Little Racers, and we’ll add new content and updates to the game. Don’t be afraid, there’s no money involved in this. All you need to play this promotion game is a Twitter account.
Below you’ll find some of the features that some users have asked for, and some others that we have thought of. Every feature has a cost assigned: That’s the number of tweets needed for the update to be enqueued into our development plan.
The rules
If you’re interested in one (or more) of the items, all you have to do is to post a Tweet with the tags #xblcg , #littleracers , and the update you’re interested in. For example, if you’re interested in the “More tracks” item, you could post a Tweet with the text “I’ve played Little Racers and want more tracks! #xblcg #littleracers #moretracks”.
We’ll check Twitter every day for tweets with the #littleracers tag, and update the item count with the new data. Twitter accounts with less than 10 followers will count only as 0.25 points, and those with no followers will not count. This is to avoid creation of empty Twitter accounts.
It is possible to vote for more than one item if you’re interested, at least until we get some feedback on this contest. Of course, the best way to achieve the required number of tweets is by telling your friends about the game so they retweet your vote.
Improve game menus (font readability, improve usability of some sections, etc.). 175 Tweets. #improvemenu
Background game finder to look for online opponents while playing single player. 1/250 Tweets. #backgroundfinder
Online lap records. 200 Tweets. #onlinerecords
Challenge mode, with missions like “Beat this lap time”, “Win this race”, “Win and don’t crash”, etc. 250 Tweets. #challengemode
Drop game price to 200MP: 2/500 Tweets. #dropprice
Track editor: 1/750 Tweets. #trackeditor
Single player career mode: 1000 Tweets. #careermode
Please take in mind that, even if the item gets enough tweets, it won’t be done right away, it will take some time to develop etc. Also, the required number of tweets could change over time, depending on the impact of this promotion on sales.
Of course, if you have any kind of feedback or idea about this promotion attempt, or some additional items that we could add to the list, we’re more than eager to listen to it.
v1.3 update for Little Racers is available for download. You’ll have to redownload the game since updates aren’t automatic yet in Xbox Community Games.
This is mainly a bugfix release. It features the following improvements:
Bugfixes
Fixed crash issues when the connection couldn’t be established while trying to join a game from an invite or via the find games section
Fixed crash when directly starting the game from an accepted invite
Improvements
In networked games, other cars’ horn is silenced when a car reaches the finish line.
Now cars can be controlled with the D-Pad.
Improved upsell screen.
Fixed minor translation issues both in spanish and english.
This is probably the last update of the game in the near future, we’re focusing on 2 new games, we’ll post updates on their development soon. Also we’ll be starting a special promotion attempt on Little Racers soon, so please stay tuned.
We have got feedback from some people, and experienced the problem ourselves too. In some cases, when trying to join an online game, it crashes to the dashboard with a “Code 4” error.
This error happens when the connection can not be established, we’re not sure yet about the reasons for this. Also it seems that accepting an invite when the game is still not loaded also causes a crash.
We’re working on a patch that should treat both errors aproppiatedly and show a message instead of crashing.We’ll try to determine the reason of the failed connections too.
Until the patch is issued, we recommend you to join a game via “Quick connect” instead of “Find Games” or accepting an invite. The quick connect option does not cause the crash, it just creates another session if you can’t connect to an existing one.
We want to thank everyone that is out there playing online, we’ve had lots of fun racing against you.
Finally, after a troubled review, the v1.2 update is available for download. You’ll have to redownload the game since updates aren’t automatic yet in Xbox Community Games.
Remember the changes for this revision. The most important ones are the freezing fix and the incorporation of the Multiplayer mode.
Full Change log from the v1.1 version:
Bugfixes
Fixed freeze issues that happened on V1.1, they were due to the Sound.Play() framework bug and memory leaks.
Gameplay tweaks
Lightened car textures to improve visibility and details.
Reduced engine volume
Handicap effect is more smoothed to reduce the “stats hiccup” that it could produce
Set a minimum speed below which the car doesn’t reduce speed when crashing
Now cars going over a wrong side can’t collide with other cars. They get a ghost effect when this happens.
Crashes don’t affect car attributes at all (before they did for half second).
Improved cars grip.
Cars are slowed a little more when skidding
Cars can turn a little better when skidding.
Reduced a bit max car speed.
“Random” Car class only selects classes between E and A, to avoid too slow or too fast cars.
Lessened wait time after choosing cars to 3 seconds
Improvements
Improved a lot game performance on crowded races.
Improved ingame font readibility.
Improved upsell screen.
Sign in screen shows the sign in level needed (Guest on local games, Signed in on System Link, and Gold over Xbox LIVE).
Reduced gamertag text size on sign in screens.
Improved the song start system when starting a race.
Player icons aren’t show on race countdown
Improved skid particles
New features
Online Multiplayer mode
System link, Xbox Live
Integrated championship mode, can be restarted over and over.
Joining system much like Race Driver GRID: You can join while a race is in progress but cannot race until the current race finishes.
Allows host migration
Allows invites
Quick join and find game features.
Public and private session features.
Added dynamic obstacles to many tracks, they serve two purposes: Add more movement on screen (races were a bit “static”) and serve as walls, but less clausthrophobic.
When a crash issue is found, the game tries to show the exception message on screen instead to giving a Code 4 directly.
Added one extra particle effect on crash
Added intermitent vibration when going off track or over the pianos.
Added a cloud system to add some extra variety to tracks.
Added 2 new tracks, “Derby” and “Asphalt”
Now the time difference to the car in first place is shown when finishing a lap.
Car color configuration is saved automaticallly for each player.
Race configuration is saved automatically.
Added a tips section that browses all the loading tips available.
Added ingame sounds for events like race start, race finish and last lap.
Now cars leave a colored trail when going fast.
Added a detailed trail when the car is going in first place.
Added a section about car attributes on the how to play.
If you follow our Twitter account, you might already know that the review process is stalled at 75%.
Why is that? The review process for Xbox Community Games (also known as Indie Games) states that, if the game is translated to many languages, each language has to be reviewed before getting accepted. That’s perfectly logical and understandable.
Our game is translated into english and spanish. That means that we need some spanish Premium users to review our game (2 people if we’re not mistaken). Sadly, it seems that not even one spanish reviewer has tried the game since the review started about two weeks ago.
That’s the main reason for the v1.2 update delay (around two months since it was finished).
It’s sad, but it seems that right now there’s no reason to translate our games into spanish, even when it’s free for us since we’re native speakers. It’s not Microsoft’s fault, we agree with the review process, it’s just that there aren’t many spanish reviewers out there. We’re doing our part of the job, and review other games in spanish as soon as possible.
Our apologies for the update delay. We’ll notify you when the game is available as usual. We just don’t know how much time it can take.
A rare error that could appear on race finish has been the reason of failing the update. This issue will be fixed right away, and next week we’ll post the update again for review.
We have improved a bit the website, with minor improvements to the looks, such as the favicon. Also we’ve integrated a bit our Twitter account with the website, so that now posts on the website will be posted on Twitter automatically, and also our last tweets will be shown on the right sidebar.
We hope you like these changes.
WaaghManMay 24th, 2009NewsComments Off on Improved our website
Lately I’ve been playing some Community Games made by other developers. I’ve found many of them to be original and pretty polished, but also find that most of them lack something I reallycan’t describe. I’m putting here a list with mini-reviews.
Biology Battle
The first Community Game I bought, also one of the most polished CG out there. With a gameplay very similar to Geometry Wars, the game features one single-player mode and many Vs. modes. It has a very interesting life/death scheme: You start the game in life mode, in which a combo meter goes up for staying alive. After some time and defeating three rather easy bosses, you are given the option to enter death mode whenever you like. When entering this mode, the combo you got multiplies by ten and stays there.
So, it’s very important to stay alive for a while in life mode to ensure a good score later in death mode, but if you change too late you won’t have enough lives left to get a good score. Also there’s a text telling you on which position are you on the global scoreboard while you play, it’s very interesting and challenging.
I was able to reach Top 5 when the game came out, now I barely reach the Top 100. Now the game is sold at 400MP, so it’s worth checking out.
Halfbrick Echoes
First of all: Halfbrick is the name of the company, the name of the game is just “Echoes”.
This game came out pretty recently, with nice art design and production values. The gameplay is interesting: You need to get to all the specified points on a level by walking to them. When walking you leave a trail. When touching one point of the level, an “echo” appears and travels by the path you left. If you touch them you lose one life. So basically it gets harder when you’ve touched most points of the level.
Although interesting, I didn’t find the gameplay fun enough so I’ve not bought it. Anyway I recommend trying it.
Sol Invasion
A game where you control a fleet and have to survive as much time as possible.By killing you get resources that enables you to improve your fleet or your own ship, so the trick is to kill lots of aliens and spend resources to ensure your fleet survives.
Although I find it rather easy and can get boring after a while, I found it interesting and funny. I don’t know why, but I kept playing for 30 minutes, even it’s the same all the time. Also I don’t know if the game gets harder on each attack wave, I got to a point where it seemed all the waves were more or less the same.
Air Legends
I recently downloaded the trial version of this game. Although small, the game is pretty polished, with simple yet good-looking visuals. The gameplay is fun, basically a 2D arcade shooter where you control a plane which only can shoot forward, and turning takes some time. You can do some maneouvers to avoid fire and get into other plane’s tails.
I think the game has great potential, and personally have bought it, but still it seems uncomplete. It has four game modes, but three of them are almost essentially a deathmatch: Team deathmatch, 2vs2 and 1vs1. The fourth is a mode where you paint into the sky with no defined goal.
In my opinion, the game cries for more long modes, some sort of campaign, or maybe a survival mode where you face waves of increasing difficulty, etc. Also, the game is rather easy, and you can’t set difficulty although you can set the game speed to a higher value.
It would improve a lot with a online multiplayer mode or a 4-player split screen mode.
Rabid Gophers
The most annoying game I’ve found on XBLCG so far. I’ve faced about 4 or 5 upsell screens for a simple 3 minutes play. Really. And only one mode is enabled on the trial mode, one mode you’ll probably get tired of before the demo finishes.
The more you insist, the less I want to buy the game.
Jonny Crush
This game reminds me a lot to Serious Sam, even the name of the game is somewhat similar. Anyway, I found the game not very good. The visuals are weird. There are some good effects, like the blood (red and green) splat on the screen when you kill a nearby enemy or you get hit by them, but the 3d visuals look like they could get an improvement. I’m not talking about more detailed models, I find them OK, it’s just the textures seem way too simple, also the scenario is just formed by textured cubes. Also the weapons on your hand doesn’t move at all when you shoot or move.
And finally, I found it rather strange that, even when Xbox 360 thumbsticks are analogic, the movement in the game isn’t: You only can move in 8 directions, and you’re either moving or not moving. I find that really disappointing.
If you can live with these things, the gameplay is based on getting combos for killing enemies in a row and getting a high score. There are many weapons to choose from.
The long awaited v1.2 update has started peer review process. We expect the process will take around two weeks, after that the updated game should be available for download. Remember, XBLC games don’t update automatically yet, so you’ll have to download the game again from the Marketplace when it’s available.
Full Change log from the v1.1 version:
Bugfixes
Fixed freeze issues that happened on V1.1, they were due to the Sound.Play() framework bug and memory leaks.
Gameplay tweaks
Lightened car textures to improve visibility and details.
Reduced engine volume
Handicap effect is more smoothed to reduce the “stats hiccup” that it could produce
Set a minimum speed below which the car doesn’t reduce speed when crashing
Now cars going over a wrong side can’t collide with other cars. They get a ghost effect when this happens.
Crashes don’t affect car attributes at all (before they did for half second).
Improved cars grip.
Cars are slowed a little more when skidding
Cars can turn a little better when skidding.
Reduced a bit max car speed.
“Random” Car class only selects classes between E and A, to avoid too slow or too fast cars.
Lessened wait time after choosing cars to 3 seconds
Improvements
Improved a lot game performance on crowded races.
Improved ingame font readibility.
Improved upsell screen.
Sign in screen shows the sign in level needed (Guest on local games, Signed in on System Link, and Gold over Xbox LIVE).
Reduced gamertag text size on sign in screens.
Improved the song start system when starting a race.
Player icons aren’t show on race countdown
Improved skid particles
New features
Online Multiplayer mode
System link, Xbox Live
Integrated championship mode, can be restarted over and over.
Joining system much like Race Driver GRID: You can join while a race is in progress but cannot race until the current race finishes.
Allows host migration
Allows invites
Quick join and find game features.
Public and private session features.
Added dynamic obstacles to many tracks, they serve two purposes: Add more movement on screen (races were a bit “static”) and serve as walls, but less clausthrophobic.
When a crash issue is found, the game tries to show the exception message on screen instead to giving a Code 4 directly.
Added one extra particle effect on crash
Added intermitent vibration when going off track or over the pianos.
Added a cloud system to add some extra variety to tracks.
Added 2 new tracks, “Derby” and “Asphalt”
Now the time difference to the car in first place is shown when finishing a lap.
Car color configuration is saved automaticallly for each player.
Race configuration is saved automatically.
Added a tips section that browses all the loading tips available.
Added ingame sounds for events like race start, race finish and last lap.
Now cars leave a colored trail when going fast.
Added a detailed trail when the car is going in first place.
Added a section about car attributes on the how to play.
And many other minor improvements. We’re specially proud of how the game looks and feels now, the gameplay has really improved from previous versions.
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