Release Post-Mortem

Posted by Toumaz on July 31, 2010
Stats, Updates / 12 Comments

Everything went better than expected, one might say.

The only real issues that popped up were an immediate one, which was due to me being a total klutz and having forgotten to clear out a few tables, which caused the master server to disconnect any and every player after they had finished a game. There’s also currently an issue related to players leaving games, which will be fixed shortly, as well as a few minor client bugs (available loadout won’t refresh, unable to ready up) that might take a little while longer to fix until I can push a fixed version.

By popular request, I’ve added a list of achievements and ranks to stats.sealhunter.se. Have fun trying to get some of them – I can be rather mean, at times!

All in all, I’m absolutely overwhelmed by the amount of players (or rather, by the amount of time you guys have poured into this already) with more than 1,200 matches finished in less than a day, and I’m very happy to see that people seem to be enjoying the game!

‘Til next time, and happy hunting! (108,106 seals and counting.)

Seal Hunter 1.0 released!

Posted by Toumaz on July 30, 2010
Releases / 13 Comments

It’s been a long and awfully bumpy ride, with procrastination shining through the whole time, but it will hopefully all have been worth it.

Seal Hunter v1.0 has been released!

I won’t keep you held up for too long: Go grab it now, and kill some seals!

If you like it, though, spread the word. Hell, if you’re feeling crazy, you can even donate to help keep hosting costs down if you like it enough. Be sure to check out the forums and your awesome statistics, too.

Enjoy, and make the fishing industry proud!

Almost There!

Posted by Toumaz on July 22, 2010
Development / 17 Comments

Okay, so. I suck at updating this here thing, I think that has been made perfectly clear over the course of this time.

Anyway! The Release Candidate was just released privately. What does this mean? This means that the release is creeping very, very close. If you want a more precise indication, unless there’s any really horrible bugs that somehow pop up from absolutely nowhere, expect Seal Hunter to be released within the next week. I’m sorry I’ve been so bloody slow in developing this, but life in general has kept me awfully busy – and it is well known that all programmers are lazy.

So there you have it – expect some multiplayer seal hunting goodness to hit the ‘net in a week’s time or so. And on a final unrelated note, we totally won the Gamer’s Choice award with Eggnappers at SGA2010 as well! Thanks a lot to everybody who voted for us.

See you online very soon!

Summer Update

Posted by Toumaz on June 07, 2010
Development / 9 Comments

So. In case any of you were wondering on how to neglect a blog in the best way possible, this is how you do it!

The last few months have been hectic for me, including a frantic two week crunch for our school game project (featuring the game’s scripting engine exploding a week before the final presentation), traveling woes, my  computer not doing what I tell it to, and Company of Heroes automatching. Yeah, I need a bit of fun on occasion, too. :(

Where does this leave Seal Hunter, though? As I’ve possibly mentioned earlier, the scoring system is truly the last little bit that goes into the game, and I’m still sorta waiting for a reply from the original developers on that particular detail (hi!). Not that receiving a reply would’ve mattered, anyway, as I’ve been insanely busy myself. :)

The statistics page is sorta-up, though (but not publicly accessible), and I’ve spent what little free time I’ve had to improve on that further. I really hope I’ll be able to properly release Seal Hunter this summer – it might not be in the most polished of states, but god damn it, you’ve waited long enough.

As I promised in the forums (you should totally go visit them), here’s the two game projects I’ve been working on across the last school year:

I’m greatly biased towards Eggnappers, myself, seeing as we had a lot more time to truly polish that one up. If you want to do me a great favour, go download Eggnappers and try it out with a friend or three. If you want to do me an even greater favour (and if you enjoyed the game, of course!), please click the Vote button beneath Gamer’s Choice, because winning the Gamer’s Choice award would be quite awesome indeed.

On that note, I’ll be attending the Swedish Game Awards Game Day Expo later on this week down in Stockholm. Come by our hope-to-be booth and say hi!

Multitasking

Posted by Toumaz on March 06, 2010
Development / 16 Comments

Another blog update that ended up being written all too late. Anybody surprised? Didn’t think so. :)

For all Russian players, I’d like to tell you about a new Russian fansite that has been finished up fairly recently – sealhunter.ru! If you’re one of those bear fighters from the east, you might wanna give it a gander.

While progress has been slow, I’ve spent most of what little free time I’ve had lately trying to iron out the last few not minor bugs left in the Beta, as well as streamlining most of the interface and menus. Optimistically speaking, we are relatively close to a public release. (At least I can promise it’ll be out before 2012, because, y’know, the world’s gonna end.)

What’s been keeping me busy, you ask? A school game project we’re polishing up before submitting it to the Swedish Game Awards, cleverly enough named Eggnappers (if you want to register an account and become a fan of our game, that’d be all kinds of nice of you, and it’ll help us more than you might think). In about a month I’ll be entering another game project, so yeah, my schedule has pretty darn hectic lately.

Regardless, I promise I’m truly making some progress on Seal Hunter – I suppose you could label me as a kind of a perfectionist, and I really don’t want to release a half-arsed game, because you guys deserve better. I’m sorry for taking so long, though, and for a lack of updates – I hope the finished game will make up for it.

And for a laugh, if anybody would be up for it – let’s have a Q&A session! Simply put, if you have any question related to Seal Hunter (the more complex the better!) ask it in the comments of this post and I’ll be sure to answer them all in a Q&A newspost later on!

…Please?