Demo

Not a Clone Update: New Demo, Future Plans!

| Taro Omiya

Those keen-eyed followers of Not a Clone may have noticed that a new build has been released for both the iOS and Android full-releases, as well as the demo releases on various web portals. What’s new in these builds? Let’s start with the changes in the full release.

Due to many requests, Not a Clone now supports iOS 9. We confess that the only reason iOS 10 was the only supported OS on release of the game was due to the fact that we haven’t tested the game thoroughly on older devices. It would be really embarrassing for us to release a game that hardly runs on your device, so we took the cautious route. Fortunately, we have recently confirmed that the game runs smoothly on iPad 2 and iPhone 4S, so we marked the game to support iOS 9!

For Android, the animated start screen is back! That’s right, this goofy title animation can be experienced in its full glory:

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For both platforms, we updated the description of the Extra Life upgrade to have two possible entries. Here’s the original, which is still in the game:

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And here’s the new description:

extralifedescription

Why have two descriptions for a single upgrade? As it turns out, Not a Clone has some adoptive difficulty modifications: the first upgrade you earn from the tutorial actually changes depending on your score. For most people, they’ll earn the Extra Life upgrade for free; for better skilled people, however, their first upgrade will be Blinged-Out Case. For the latter crowd, Extra Life does make an appearance on the shop later…but not as a free upgrade. Thus, the original description wouldn’t work for these audience.

Incidentally, support the charity movement this weekend!

For the demo, we’ve basically updated the code base to match the release version of Not a Clone. Additionally, the Coming Soon dialog has now changed to Available Now, since the game is obviously released.

As mentioned in the Post-Mortem this week, we do have a ton of free updates planned for this game. For the first major update, which we estimate to be released during the holiday seasons, are more achievements. Some of them will reward prizes for achieving them, too! We’re also planning on adding more microgames, including a few that will be unlocked by default. There will be more upgrades, of course, and a few convenience options will be added in, such as low-power mode. So we hope you look forward to those new changes.

If you haven’t seen it already, here’s the past recording available on Twitch:

Watch live video from on www.twitch.tv

Not a Clone Update: What’s This? Another Demo Release?

| Taro Omiya

Some of you may have noticed that a new version of Not a Clone Demo has been released. This is quite a rapid turnout compared to the last release, which came out a full month after the demo debuted. What’s going on?

In short, we’ve been syncing the code and assets for the demos with the recent private beta releases so that both will have the latest development changes in the game. This should help us respond more quickly to the comments on the demo and from the beta testers. Of course, since we’re now working on bugs and small enhancements, the changes between the different versions of the demo will be relatively minor.

In any case, we haven’t actually posted the changes made since the first release, so here’s an extensive list on what’s been done so far:

  1. Updated how the loading screen looks to appear more like a text message screen.
  2. Changed the bottom of game over screen to use less screen-estate.  High scores button is now placed in-between restart and home button.
  3. Added a new music for challenge mode.
  4. Added more sound effects, both for pop-up events and a couple of microgames.
  5. Updated credits to include our current beta testers.
  6. Reduced WebGL memory usage by packing sprites into less image files.  PC/Mac/Linux build remains unchanged.
  7. Updated Angry Monkeys’ physics.  The monkeys no longer collides with the slingshot or each other, and the shot-direction is based on the position you’ve let go of the slingshot, not the direction the sling moves.
  8. Background music now fades-in before a microgame starts.
  9. Reduced memory usage on all platforms by loading most sound effects and music on-the-fly.
  10. Clicking on the pause button no longer triggers a mouse-down event on a microgame.
  11. Made challenge mode a lot easier by dramatically increasing the amount of time available to the player.  The previous times assumed the game was played on a multi-touch-supporting touchscreen, but there is now a different time set for mouse.
  12. Fixed a few typos in the loading screen’s text messages.
  13. Doubled the animation speed of Light Tiles.
  14. How the first couple of microgames are selected is a lot less random.  If the player’s best score is below 15, they will always be served with a predetermined order of microgames.  If they score higher than or equal to 15, the first 10 microgames are those that either have low number of plays, or a low rate of winning.
  15. Fixing “Clone of:” label not being translated properly in Pig Latin (fun fact: the language’s purpose is to confirm our localization script works).
  16. The speed-up is calculated differently.  It’s a little easier in the beginning, but gets harder towards the end.

Let us know what you think of the changes!