Dev Log

[coyot]

Or at least make it optional and requiring a click in the options, to enable those faces.

[Sitzlol]

@Sitzlol: That's a damn fine idea, actually. I'm just generally terrified to the point of outright superstition when it comes to touching the flash cookies I'm always afraid I'm going to break something! But I'll see if I can run some tests and see if I can switch to that system - should avoid a lot of bugs!

Always glad to help out - but yeah, sometimes it really helps to get another programmer's perspective on those problems

[Ohlmann]

Replacing the "bonus for Facebook like" by "political joke on Anonymous and Facebook behalf" is not much of an improvement for me.

If you want the serious debat, associating any cause to Anonymous is embarassing, because anonymous are rightly seen as mainly composed of self-aggrandizing and dangerous buffoon (oh, and it is tainted with 4chan and all the pedophiliac, racist, and machist overtone it came with). Being associated wit them is about as good as being associated with Hell's Angel, and internet privacy is a bit too important in my opinion to make cheap joke.

As a side note from a facebook game dev, the number of like on facebook is mostly useless. Don't expend effort on that, good reviews from user and easy access to your game (that may include a facebook application version of the demo) will help, but fanpages are over-hyped and hold extremely few actual value. Except if you need it for credibility with your bank or other businessman, which would be extremely sad.

[Anthony]

Hollow - Point taken about the silliness of it. For those of us playing for a while it's great, but for new users it'll be a bit odd. We're going to change the books so that they only work on Expert difficulty levels. This should postpone any silliness and reduce its exposure, without requiring us to come up with something new and put that in, which would delay the web version update even longer.

Ohlmann - We have no intention of starting serious debates here, this is purely a "cheap joke" as you said and I don't see any problem with it to be honest. Your point is taken, but we're just keeping this light-hearted and silly in a sort of self-aware, tongue-in-cheek way. We are not allying ourselves with anyone in particular, and I have no personal interest in Anonymous. It was just an internet meme we could riff on that would make sense in this context.

As for the value of fan pages, I do believe there is value there in exposure, virality, and letting fans know about new updates and improvements. I could be wrong, but there's only one way to find out. Bottom line - we don't require anyone to have Facebook to enjoy this part of the game, and we certainly aren't using Facebook as the center of our marketing efforts, just as yet another way to get the word out there and stay in touch with our fans.

[larsiusprime]

Okay, so I've been away from the forums for a bit. Here's what's up.

I'm almost done with the kong version. This took a lot of testing, but I've finally fixed it up so that it handles everything correctly. This was tricky because I'm dealing with backwards compatibility for a legacy version of the game that is already deployed and which I can't change. Whatever file format we were using back then I have to be able to read correctly and not cause any problems with.

The hardest thing to do is to set up a legitimate test case. Flash segregates flash cookies by the location and filename of the original swf, so if I upload a new unpublished "preview" version to kongregate for bug-testing, that is obviously stored at a different location than the actual live game. So, I downloaded the game from kongregate and ran it locally, then hot-swapped the swf with the new kong build, and tested it.

Of course, then if I'm testing locally I can't test whether the kongregate API works, so I wrote a KongregateSpoofer object that mimics the API's inputs and outputs. So, that took some time to figure out. After all the testing, I found a lot of bugs that would have likely caused problems, and now I'm confident it's ready to be uploaded. I'm ready to pull the trigger on Kongregate tomorrow once I run final tests tonight.

Which brings me to:

New Kongregate stuff
Kongregate has been an enormous help for us. According to our stats, 95% of our sales (at least) have originated from Kongregate, whether that's through driving traffic directly to our store's "buy" page or through kreds purchases. Without Kongregate, this game would have been a financial bomb for us.

So, while we're waiting on Steam (the paperwork is taking a *really* long time), I'm going to see if I can get Kongregate to give us another front-page promotion. To that end, we've expanded the demo version for kongregate players. So, whereas before you could only play through acts I & II, if you are a registered kongregate user you'll now be able to play through act IV, ending right before you get the dragon.

Most of this isn't going to be of any interest to those of you who already have the full game, of course. This is just what I've been up to

Hopefully having a registration incentive like that will encourage Kong to give us another front-page feature, and also offset negative feedback from raising the game's price to 100 kreds from 50. Technically this is still slightly cheaper than the regular version - 100 kreds is $9 and change - I'm not sure what the exact exchange rate is.

The kongregate version will still be using compressed art and audio assets, there's simply no way around that. It will also be a pretty big download, as the client size has increased and it has to fetch some assets to preload. So, people on slow connections might have to wait a bit, but there's simply no other way to do it without gutting the game.

Finally, a common request we get is from people who bought the game on kongregate and want to upgrade to the download version. In the past the way we've handled this is to individually give out $5-off discount coupons (roughly equivalent to the 50 kreds paid on Kongregate), back when the game still cost $7. As we're a small team, it's hard to handle these requests manually, I think we might *still* have a backlog of these requests (if you're still waiting I'm sorry!). Our ability to do things like this moving forward depends on us figuring out an automated solution.

So, now that the price on Kongregate will more or less match the price on our site, in a perfect world I'd *like* to give people a free copy of the downloadable version, but the issue is how do we do that in a way that doesn't involve me manually answering hundreds of emails. I've got an idea for something we can try, but I'm going to hold back on promising anything until I can see if it will work. If we can't think of an easy solution, then the kong version and the download version will be two separate "products" - owning one copy doesn't get you the other. If this idea of mine does work, however, then chocolate ponies will fall from the sky and we'll all dance around on rainbows.

[Hollow]

Awesome news all around! I just hope the download copy isn't considered a seperate product from the Steam copy. But I guess you guys will cross that bridge when you come to it. =)

[frus]

Is there any news on the possibility of Steam keys after buying it as a FastSpring customer?
I would love to pick up the game after having played the demo, but I hate it when I have games that aren't on my steam account, so I'm waiting for the steam release. But if getting Steam keys could be confirmed I could pick it up through FastSpring and finally continue playing .

Thanks in advance

[larsiusprime]

Answers to your questions:

1) I am now *pretty sure* we'll be able to give Steam keys to all of our previous FastSpring customers. This is because 1) we have your email addresses, and 2) Steam hasn't told me otherwise yet and everything I've heard from them so far points to yes (though they still haven't given me a direct answer to this question). But I'm pretty sure.

2) I CAN say for certain that if we distribute downloadable copies to our Kongregate customers, we will not be able to also give them Steam Keys. Although some of you might be disappointed with this, it's the best we can do at this juncture. Honestly, though, a downloadable copy is a pretty big upgrade for the kong version, which so far has been completely tied to your browser.

Here's why:
If we eventually make downloadable copies available on kong, whatever solution we use for Kongregate will only be "kinda" secure, which means anyone with some technical know-how will likely be able to get free download links for themselves without paying. I really don't care about that, as people are already pirating the game, and it's easier to just grab it off bittorrent than to hack the kong game for a free download.

So, if we provide a simple download solution that is easy for the customers to get but just inconvenient enough to encourage pirates to go to pirate sites instead, there's not much potential for abuse. This is because piracy, though I don't condone it, is not the same thing as theft - sure, people get the game without paying for it, so we're not getting money, but we're also not losing anything, at most we're just losing "potential sales" (whatever those are). My only real concern is to not have to pay for bandwidth unless it's a paying customer.

Everything changes with Steam Keys. Steam keys are finite, and people are willing to pay money for them, so the incentives for hackers are entirely different. Now, hackers have good reason to break in and steal the Steam keys, because that's more valuable than a generic download. And once they use a Steam Key, it's gone. I'd be particularly afraid of people trying to steal them for re-sale. It's just too much of a risk. Furthermore, I'd need to deliver these things individually and securely, and that requires a fancy server-side solution, which is more work than we're really prepared to do right now.

So if you buy the game on Kongregate, I'm afraid we can't give you a steam key, but - if our solution works - we can give you a downloadable copy of the game, which you should be able to access for as long as we can keep our servers online.

As a final note, moving forward, we eventually want to replace FastSpring with the Humble Store (if they'll accept us), which would give us an easy way to give out Steam Keys with each purchase of the game from our site. It would also put a permanent end to this "expiring links" nonsense.

ALSO:
This all, of course, depends on us actually being able to deliver any download solution for Kongregate. I'm now pretty sure it will work, but no firm promises (or chocolate ponies) just yet!

[Sitzlol]

So when is it going online on Kongregate then?

[larsiusprime]

Later today, with any luck!

[larsiusprime]

Kong version is live:
Click here for Defender's Quest on KONG!

The "give people a free download" thingy problem has still not yet been solved, but I think I can make it work. I'll let you know as I progress on that front. If/when I figure it out, it'll appear as a new option in the kong build of the game if you've unlocked the full version.

[larsiusprime]

Also: The Kong version is 1.0.28. The last downloadable version was 1.0.22. I'll update both to 1.0.29 and/or 1.0.30 on Monday.

[larsiusprime]

Kongregate version is now 1.0.29. This should fix the "extended demo" bug for registered kongregate users.

[Hollow]

I hope you would hold off on giving out free download links to Kong users until the Kong admins promise to ban anyone who posts the download links in the comments.

There were far too many people linking to pirated versions of your game in the comments last time to openly take business away from you and the admins refused to ban their high level accounts because "They would just create new accounts". That was total BS.

[larsiusprime]

If we give out download links, we'll do so with just *enough* of a security measure that they won't work if posted publicly somewhere, like in a comment thread.

The idea is to make the link only accessible from the flash client itself. This is already what we do in the download version for the auto-updater - the game can access the update server, but if you find out what site it's trying to access, you can't go there just by plugging the url in your browser's address bar - it just gives you a 404 error.

This can definitely be spoofed/hacked for sure, but that requires you to tinker with your browser settings, write a script, or install a special plugin. That's too much work for your average pirate, and they'd rather just go to bittorrent/pirate bay instead. This "secure enough" security measure I'm talking about isn't really there to stop piracy (that's impossible) so much as it is to encourage people who insist on pirating to get it somewhere else, rather than leech our servers and rack up bandwidth charges.

As for people posting pirate links in our comment thread, I definitely appreciate your zeal! I do also sympathize with the kongregate admins on this one. I can speak from experience that there's no reliable way to consistently ban people like that as they really *DO* just keep popping up with more dummy accounts (especially if it's run by a dedicated botnet over a range of IP addresses), and they don't have enough staff to police comment threads. The tried and true method for huge sites like that with limited staff is to outsource that policing to the users. Fortunately, this seems to work - fans who aggressively downvote and report the comments generally keep that stuff from showing up too much.

So, I definitely don't encourage piracy and I appreciate your concerns here At the same time I don't lose too much sleep over people pirating the game.

[Hollow]

I can speak from experience that there's no reliable way to consistently ban people like that as they really *DO* just keep popping up with more dummy accounts (especially if it's run by a dedicated botnet over a range of IP addresses), and they don't have enough staff to police comment threads.

I meant mostly as a general effort of punishment.

If you ban someone with a level 10-40 account for posting pirated games on Kongregate, you're probably not going to stop them from reregistering. But what you've done is said to the public that piracy isn't to be tolerated on a gaming website and if you do it, you'll be giving up your account and all the time you've put into it. Anyone who does want to post pirated links has to go through the effort of registering and validating a new account every time they want to, which ups the hassle to the point where some trolls simply won't want to bother with it.

Since Kongregate's only measure against pirated game links is "delete the game link, do nothing to the poster", there's no incentive not to try and screw over anyone who tries to sell a game through Kong. They don't even have to police comment threads, they just have to see the comment reported and click 'Ban' instead of just 'Delete'. I'm not sure why they choose the latter, since it sends a message to other indie developers that Kongregate can't be bothered to actually punish pirates, when Valve perma-bans anyone who even reccomends piracy from their forums.

[Hollow]

Also, may I suggest a weekly challenge prize on Kongregate (like the cards, or boxes for Dream World) where upon completing the Kongregate challenge, players unlock some special prize in Defender's Quest?

A Book of Kong, perhaps, that adds +# HP to all defenders based on the user's Kongregate level if that's possible. Or if it's not, a Kongblade with a 1% chance of Poisoning, Bleeding and Burning on hit.

[larsiusprime]

Ah, I see your point there, especially about high-level accounts, they'd definitely have something to lose. Yeah - that wouldn't be out of question. Course, I don't have much power over what Kong decides to do

As for a special Kongregate prize, sounds like a cool idea! I'd love to do something like that tied to a Kong challenge, but I'd need buy in from the Kong admins on that one - they're the ones who set that stuff up, at least in terms of prizes tied to out-of-game kongregate stuff like the trading card game.

[larsiusprime]

Checking in real quick about what I'm up to this week:

1) Baby-sitting the kongregate build and fixing bugs / dealing with lost saves / etc.
2) Stabilizing the latest download version and get a patch out this week
3) Working on a potential download solution for kongregate customers

[larsiusprime]

Update:

I've figured out how to deliver downloadable versions of the game to Kongregate players. It turns out to be even more secure (and easy) than I thought. It will be basically impossible to gain unauthorized access by posting the url publicly as this involves some simple server-side validation, and it should be as convenient as possible for players to get their downloads. It's still theoretically possible to gain access, of course, if someone's determined enough, but this should be more than sufficient to push them to bittorent instead.

The only potential downside is that a man-in-the-middle attack is theoretically possible, which means someone could intercept your request, pretend to be our server and deliver some other file (eg. a virus) instead of the defender's quest download. In the AIR version's auto-updater we have a security check for this via public/private key encryption to ensure that the downloaded file is actually from us, I'm investigating whether that can also be done in the browser client.