Under the hood

Busy busy bees here hacking away with Hoodownr codebase. We're preparing a build for next weeks Slush 2013, tech company and investor meetup.

The slush build will have most of those fun things our playtesters during assembly2013 and wärkfest asked to have to grok what the game is about. We've also improved the build deployment process so installing it is easier than ever. This time around things should be really straightforward for testers.

On the backend side, we've been botbuilding and discovering all kinds of neat things we can do with the game. Neat things like making it easier and more intuitive. People who have seen the game already were surprised how easy it is to play. Newsflash: It just got even easier.

The backend work also contributes to a good few gameplay elements we're going to incorporate in Hoodownr. It's fun to see the project evolve.

Last night's build didn't work on Froyo anymore due to google policy. What followed was a mad rush to a local theatre production company unofficial headquarters to get the DOCOMO galaxy mk1 (a.k.a the shitphone) properly cracked and reflashed. Where else would you have your phone hacked?

After a few hours of Z and Jonttu trying to break the devices Japanese carrier-locked backbone and me and Merja talking about the situation with play rehearsal spaces here in Tornio, the phone finally yielded and runs Gingerbread now. And the latest build of Hoodownr.

Jonttu was wondering why we would support an old piece of crap like Gingerbread. The answer is obvious of course but it made me remember our four letter words project a few years ago on IOS. The game has a heavy self-organizing cell algo and we decided it should run on iPod mark 1. The algo was heavy even on a current iPod at the time but Dr Lukasz's madskills came into rescue and sure enough, the release is perfectly playable even on that iPod that looks like an early proto of a touch-screen device. If that's not a win I don't know what is.

Professionalism is the thing that is not immediately apparent goes the old Finnish saying. We want to show you more.

A beautiful snowy day in Northern Finland. After a cup of coffee, I'm going out to do a run with the latest build. Forgetting about testing while you're testing means you're doing something right.And that's the plan!

See you at Slush
Sami