Dog Game

Terry Jan 31, 2013 4 Comments

dog game

Super Hexagon for Android

Terry Jan 19, 2013 70 Comments

Super Hexagon is now available for android! To celebrate, it’s having an 99c android launch sale!

Hats off to Laurence Muller, who coded the port, and made this possible. We’ve done lots and lots of testing and fixing to make this work well on as many android devices as possible, but of course, on as wide a platform as android, bugs are inevitable. If you encounter any problems, our android support page is here.

The hold up

Terry Jan 8, 2013 66 Comments

Finally, a Super Hexagon on Android update!

So, first of all, this post is 90% good news! Super Hexagon on Android is basically done. It’s been basically done for a while, in fact – we sent out beta test copies before Christmas. (We being myself and the coder who’s handling the android port, Laurence Muller of EpicWindmill.)

That testing session revealed a couple of bugs – most weren’t too serious and were quickly fixed, but one was more complicated. Since it became clear we weren’t going to sort it out in time for Christmas, we took a break and only resumed work on it again a few days ago.

The bug is an input lag issue. It appears to be limited to the Nexus 7 tablet, but we’re not sure, it may be more widespread. I’ll let Laurence explain:

To test for the input latency we used the app “Multi-touch Benchmark Test” on 3 test devices:
– Nexus One
– HTC Desire S
– Nexus 7

The idea would be that we would touch 2 devices at the same time and compare the relative latency. I’ve recorded a video of this test here (fullspeed).

To make it even more evident, I converted the video that I recorded at 60 fps and slowed it down by 50%:

If you look closely at the video, you see that the Nexus 7 seems to delay touch events in general. Touch down/up are noticeably showing delays compared to the HTC Desire S.

Figuring out that this was happening has been driving us crazy. It may not look like much in the above video (which is running at 50% speed), but even a slight control responsiveness issue like this basically kills Super Hexagon – every single touch overshoots, making the higher levels unplayable. Earlier levels are playable, but it constantly feels “off”. As far as I’m concerned, it’s unreleasable this way.

HOWEVER, as I happen to own a Nexus 7, I was originally under the impression that this bug affected all Android devices – and that appears to not be the case. The hold up was that I was getting Laurence to investigate and try to fix this “bug”, when evidently it’s actually a hardware fault with one specific android model.

So! Our next step is do so some more testing, and figure out if other devices are affected. (We’re pretty sure it’s not actually a problem for 99% of android devices out there.) After that, we’ll be looking to release the game very soon for any android device that can handle it (which excludes the Nexus 7, sorry)! Thank you for your patience 🙂

Super Hexagon at IGF 2013

Terry Jan 7, 2013 3 Comments

I’m still not entirely sure what to say, but I had to say something – Super Hexagon is a finalist in this year’s IGF. It’s up for Excellence in Design, and also got an honourable mention for the grand prize!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh

Goodbye Nexus City

Terry Jan 2, 2013 20 Comments

Happy new year everyone! I’ve used that guitar cover of The Ecstasy of Gold above as a placeholder song in various big projects over the years that haven’t worked out. It seemed fitting to share it here.

Near the end of 2012, I made the very difficult decision to abandon Nexus City (and it’s spinoff game, Selma’s Story).

For those of you with no idea what Nexus City is – it’s an RPG I was collaborating on with the writer Jonas Kyratzes. Originally a very small game, over time it grew completely out of control – at this point, Jonas and I have worked on it on and off for over two years. However, that doesn’t really paint an accurate picture – I haven’t worked on Nexus City itself since 2011, and I only worked on the spinoff game, Selma’s Story, for two months last year.

That said, even though it’s not a project I’m actively spending much of my time on, Nexus City has weighed heavily on my mind.

I’ve been thinking of Nexus City as “the thing I’m working on” since 2010. As a result, for a long time now, I’ve felt like I wasn’t really in control of what I can work on. Promising games would come along, and I’d stop myself from getting too deep into them, because I had to finish Nexus City first. Everything became a big ordered list of what I could work on and when, how long I could spend on it. It’s only when a project like Super Hexagon came along, and forced itself on me – became too much to ignore, that I was able to turn that part of my head off. And I could do it, but even then I constantly had that pressure – when this is done, I need to get back to Nexus City.

I don’t think that’s creatively healthy.

Nexus City is an amazing world with an amazing story, and there were times when I was completely obsessed with it – but the momentum is long gone now, and at this point I don’t think it’s ever going to happen. I need to move on to other things.

So, what’s next for this year? Right now – for the moment, I think I may just take some time off. I feel like I haven’t really done that in some time – it’s just been one project after another pretty much as long as I remember. After that? I don’t really know! I have a clean slate again for the first time in a very long time, and I’m very excited about that.