How the Games you Play affect the Games you Write

While I haven't played all the games in the Civilization series (2, 3, and now 5 and 5 with G&K), I have found that the strategy and "4x" aspect of the series is rubbing off on my planning for the next game I'm working on.

Specifically I am taking things up a notch to go from more of a classic VN to something that is more of a cross between an Adventure game and a Dating Sim. So there will be the planning of your essential resource (your time) to try and raise certain stats (to win the girl or guy you choose), and the partnership you achieve will unlock one of the Adventure paths you are then able to solve. Which should encourage folks to solve multiple paths to unlock the final path that requires several of the other paths to have been solved first. I'm trying to come up with something that isn't too gimmicky to explain how you are able to do that, but I'm sure I'll find something.

Of course the idea here is that if you aren't sure what you should write next, maybe you should take a look at a couple of your favorite games and see if there is some way to do a fresh combination of some of the features from each.

Final Score - Microsoft 0, NaweGR Games 0

As the silence may have clued you in, even with several MS engineers trying to help, it was not possible to get Alta, Texas through the MS Store approval process. No matter how detailed the walkthrough, or how much help was offered by myself or the folks from MS who had contacted me, it still kept coming back to trying to get folks who do not use English as their native tongue to try and understand a game where reading was almost entirely the point.

I'm out my fee to be part of the Windows Store developer account, and I am only comforted by the fact that folks who have apps in the store keep telling me how little they are making. IOW, it's not like getting in would have made THAT much difference to my bottom line.

Time to turn my attention to an Android port methinks.

Alta, Texas - Desktop Version - For Windows, Mac OS/X, and Linux

Full/Paid Versions of Alta, Texas

Purchase for Linux        

Purchase for Mac 

Purchase for Windows

Alta, Texas is a Visual Novel/Game about the fictional town of the same name, and the University situated there. Explore the town, meet some of your fellow students and other citizens, and maybe even fall in love! A few screenshots are below:

Your Childhood Friend

The Local Cafe

Your School

The University Cafeteria

The Local Bookstore

And the Mysterious Art Student

Purchase for Linux             

Purchase for Mac              

Purchase for Windows

Download is approximately 100 MB. Please make sure your data or internet plan allows for large downloads!

If you are unsure about your compatibility, PLEASE try the demo version first:
http://nawegr.blogspot.com/2013/01/alta-texas-demo-version-for-windows-mac.html

If the demo runs, you should have no issues running the full version.


If you like the game, help me by sharing it.

• Make some noise: tell your friends or anyone you think might be interested in “Alta, Texas”.
• Use the share buttons in social media if you feel like it.
• A few sincere words: I am always trying to improve. I'm always interested in receiving your opinions and will take them into account for future projects.

System Requirements:

Windows -

• 1366 x 768 Resolution or Higher (may run on lower resolutions but not guaranteed)
• Windows 7 or 8 (may run on Vista but not guaranteed)
• 2 GB of RAM

Macintosh -

• 1366 x 768 Resolution or Higher (may run on lower resolutions but not guaranteed)
• OS/X 10.4 or Higher (may run on 10.3.9 but not guaranteed)

Linux -

• 1366 x 768 Resolution or Higher (may run on lower resolutions but not guaranteed)
• 2 GB of RAM
• Distributions - Has been tested on the latest Versions of Ubuntu and Mint. May work on others.

Alta, Texas - Demo Version for Windows, Mac OS/X, and Linux

Demo Versions of Alta, Texas

Alta, Texas is a Visual Novel/Game about the fictional town of the same name, and the University situated there. Explore the town, meet some of your fellow students and other citizens, and maybe even fall in love! A few screenshots are below:

Your Childhood Friend

The Local Cafe

Your School

The University Cafeteria

The Local Bookstore

And the Mysterious Art Student

Download the Free Demo from any of these links:

Linux Demo (MediaFire)       Linux Demo (Ge.tt)
Mac Demo (MediaFire)          Mac Demo (Ge.tt)
Windows Demo (MediaFire)  Windows Demo (Ge.tt)


Please note that by default both the Music and the Voice volumes are set to MAX. That may make it harder to hear some of the voices. Go to the Preferences and play with the sliders to find the combination that works best on your system.

System Requirements:

Windows -

• 1366 x 768 Resolution or Higher (may run on lower resolutions but not guaranteed)
• Windows 7 or 8 (may run on Vista but not guaranteed)
• 2 GB of RAM

Macintosh -

• 1366 x 768 Resolution or Higher (may run on lower resolutions but not guaranteed)
• OS/X 10.4 or Higher (may run on 10.3.9 but not guaranteed)

Linux -

• 1366 x 768 Resolution or Higher (may run on lower resolutions but not guaranteed)
• 2 GB of RAM
• Distributions - Has been tested on the latest Versions of Ubuntu and Mint. May work on others.

It was freezing early this week in SA - In related news...

While I still don't hold a Magic Ticket, it was rather a cold day in Texas last week, and some folks from MS did reach out to me to try and work through the Windows Store issues. Without getting into the testing issue, they did agree that except for one small item that normally wouldn't have kept something from being approved, they couldn't find anything wrong with the app as it stood. Not a full apology, but as much as I can reasonably expect.

More to the point, they did give me some suggestions that should not only help get the app through the store review process this next time, but that I feel are actual improvements to the game. So I am making those changes, and hope to have good news to report in about a week or so on both the App and the Desktop front.

The two versions of the game will still be a little different. The app version will be a little shorter, and will not have a couple UI items that are more appropriate for a desktop game. The Desktop version will not have a full Win 8 UI, since it is designed to run on Win 7 as well. I will also have a "demo" version of the Desktop game that covers the first 25% as a free trial, while the app store will only have the full version. Given the differences in how the stores are setup, I think that makes sense as well. There will probably be a slight price difference driven more by the content difference than the other items.

Just wanted to make sure I was keeping folks up to date so that it isn't too big a surprise when I finally get the releases out there :-)

It's Official - Microsoft Doesn't Understand Visual Novels

And Alta, Texas failed certification again today. This time the complaint was that I had a screenshot that wasn't in the game. The reason the tester couldn't find it is because the tester did not take the route that the screenshot was from. My instructions said to play the game through all three choices on the first question menu, and the tester said they went to the main menu and couldn't find any choices.

Anyone else suspect this is being outsourced to people with a minimal grasp of the English Language?

I give up. I see nothing to indicate that MS is serious about addressing the issue of giving developers a way to communicate directly with the folks doing the testing. I doubt that submitting it another twenty times with more and more instructions is going to solve this, and I doubt anyone is going to put that kind of time in just to be in their App Store. If you can have a $2.99 program in the Windows Store that is nothing but a wrapper for Picasa, but I can't get my game in, then I think you know what you can expect to find (and not find) there going forward.

I am not going to let the work go to waste. I will release a desktop version of the program. But you can be certain that it will be a cold, cold day before I try to put any of my work in the Windows Store again.

Updates on Javascript Example

As promised a little more about the File Reads and Writes for Win 8 Javascript. First let's look at where I was doing my error checking. As a couple folks pointed out, the way I am doing it isn't "guaranteed" to work. By that I mean that because this is an asynchronous operation, there is no guarantee that the Error Counter variable would have been set by the time I check it's value. Now part of the delay in posting a revision is I wanted to spend some time playing with test cases. In MY experience with the code, I could not come up with an example where the "right" answer did better or worse than my answer. Still, I agree that it is dangerous to assume that you can get away with something that works that might not always work. So a revised save version would be:

Windows.Storage.ApplicationData.current.localFolder.createFileAsync("Mysave01.sav", Windows.Storage.CreationCollisionOption.replaceExisting).done(
                    function (file) {
                        save01File = file;
                        Windows.Storage.FileIO.writeLinesAsync(save01File, myStats).done(
                            function () {
                                  fileMenuTitle.text = "File Saved - Click Cancel";
                                  fileMenuTitle.text = fileMenuTitle.text + "\nto Return";
                                  fileMenuTitle.color = "green";
                                  save01Exists = 2;
                            },
                        function (error) {
                            WinJS.log && WinJS.log(error, "sample", "error");
                            errCount++;
                            fileMenuTitle.text = "There was an error saving that file.";
                            fileMenuTitle.text = fileMenuTitle.text + "\nPlease Make Another Selection.";
                            fileMenuTitle.color = "firebrick";
                        });
                    },
                    function (error) {
                        WinJS.log && WinJS.log(error, "sample", "error");
                    });

You could make the same changes (and should) to the Load. The one difference is that in the Load since you are reading in multiple lines, you need to make sure the load has completed before setting the success message and flag - since you could conceivably have an error on one line and success on the next. That's unlikely (more likely once it failed it would stay failed), but again, better safe than sorry.

While the answer here was fairly straightforward, the JSON discussion is a little more complex. The timing of someone adding an article to Hacker News on JSON that discusses some of these same points was fortuitous. Using the same argument as above, JSON in many cases is faster and simpler. But not all, and not always. So while I "could" rewrite this to use JSON.stringify and pull the object back in with JSON, I don't think for my use that would be a good idea. That doesn't mean it might not be good for your use, but I would suggest considering how flexible your object definition is now, and is likely to be in the future, and then decide if having your own functions or using JSON is the best for what you are trying to do.

With that said, we'll see if I can announce the App in the store before I do my next tutorial or not :-)