Server release - Badges and View Range

This week I released a new version of server code.  Most changes won't be noticeable until people upgrade to the next phone version, which should be ready in a few weeks.  Even then, you can't force people to upgrade, so there will always be people using older phone code with new server code.  So it seems like there is no harm in releasing the web changes earlier than phone changes.

One change that takes effect immediately though is new badges.  New badges are calculated on the server and their images are stored on the server too (until they are built into the next phone version).  So we've got all kinds of new badges, a few shown below.

But first, here is something funny/stressful that happened with the release.  One of the changes was to return the user's view range from the server.  This is to enable different view range(s) if the user buys Monster Binoculars.  Since the circle on the map has a radius of meters, I made the view range in meters.  But my distance calculations on the server were in kilometers.  I thought I should be consistent and change everything to one or the other to reduce the change of mistakes.  Of course when doing so, I introduced a mistake.

What happened is I changed the pickup tolerance (the range that you have to get within to be close enough to catch the monster) to meters, but I still had the distance in kilometers.  So it was basically checking that if your distance from a monster in kilometers -- say 0.1 kilometers -- was less than the pickup tolerance in meters -- 100 -- than you caught the monster.  So people could catch monsters from 100 kilometers away!  That is, monsters at your level, and it actually only gets them in batches of about 5 KM, so really it was within 5 KM.  But right when I tried out the new version, I caught 4 monsters simultaneously.  I realized what was happening right away and fixed it before anyone else caught a big batch.  Then I deleted mine to be fair in the leader charts.  Thank goodness I caught it right away or I could have had a mess of data on my hands.

Some new badges, below:

Game Sound Effects

We've all been thinking a lot lately about sounds for the game.  The first version of the game has two sounds -- a siren-like noise for catching a monster and a trumpet call for a new level.  One user gave us feedback that the siren is not a great sound if you're in a car, and we had to agree with that.

So Matt made a "Rawwwr" sound that is really good and we were planning to use instead.  We liked it so much, we thought "let's make more monster sounds"!  One per monster is quite a lot, but we started giving it a try.  Matt made some good sounds, but we couldn't really agree on what monsters they matched with.  It was seeming like it might be even more work than we already knew it would be.  So then we thought maybe we could make one sound per level, like a sound for trolls, a sound for vampires, etc.  Even that was tricky because monsters at other levels wouldn't have a consistent sound.  It would be weird if you hear some strange rodent noise when you catch a Vulture, or a bird noise when you catch a rabbit.

Now I think we're going to make a new musical sound for catching a monster and use the "Rawr" sound when the map appears, kinda like a "Hello", which is consistent with our web site.  That should be in our next version, which I hope to have ready in a couple weeks.

In-app purchases so far

We have had three people spend 8.99 on 1000 coins.  That's our most expensive option.   It seems like a good ratio that of the 80 people playing, 3 went straight to spending 8.99.  And we've had a couple 0.99 and 1.99 purchases and a 3.99

The bad news is that one of those users sent me an email that he is "concerned about the longevity of the game" considering he has already spent his 1000 coins and thinks its too much to keep paying. Honestly, I thought the 1000 coins would last longer.  

So we're thinking of a few changes.  First, we're going to make an even bigger coin package. Second, we might make an unlimited nets package.  Third, I might drop the coin price of the special items.  Right now, the Medusa mirror costs 300 and the silver 200.

But anyway, the purchases are encouraging!