We're still calling this first version a Beta, simply because we don't have a QA department or an army of technical staff at Lexicon Games to thoroughly test every nook and cranny of both the server and client app. We've certainly tried to make everything as stable as possible before release, but there are some things that we'll simply have to find out as we go along. Once we're confident that Nombers has reached the level of quality that players expect, we'll remove the "Beta" tag and release an ad-free paid version as well.
Sad to say, the first launch did start on a slight downer. We became aware during testing that in some rare cases an Android device might have trouble with our secure connection. Connections would randomly get dropped and only about 1 in 5 requests to the server would actually go through, making the game a lot less playable. We had already concluded that it was a software problem on that specific Galaxy S II phone, as other Galaxy S II's didn't have the problem and an upgrade to a custom ROM solved the problem, so we deemed it safe to release the game as-is.
Unfortunately now that we're live, it turns out that the problem is not so rare that we can ignore it. We already had a plan B in case this might happen, which we've quickly implemented. So after having been live for only a few hours, the first patch release is already up, which should solve the connection errors that some people have experienced.
So now that we're up and running, what's next in store for Nombers? Here's some things we have planned:
- Firstly, a multiplayer game like this isn't complete without the ability to search for and invite friends to a game, so that's high on our list of to do's.
- Secondly, the game is currently a one-size-fits-all app which works on all Android devices from the oldest T-Mobile G1 with Android 1.6 up to the latest Android 4.0 phones and tablets. This is awesome because it means that everyone with an Android device is a potential customer. On the other hand, this also means that Nombers doesn't take advantage of any modern Android features. So we're planning on creating a separate Android 2.2+ version of Nombers with some exclusive features. One of the first things we'll want to do is support multi-touch pinch-to-zoom and push notifications through Google's C2DM service. Including C2DM support would also allows us to add a Chat feature, which is something that people generally seem to like.
- Finally, we might want to make a user interface a bit more tablet-friendly in the future. Currently Nombers on a tablet in landscape position looks a bit odd. Sure it works, but you can tell that it's a phone app stretched beyond its comfort zone.
But that's enough about the future. Nombers is available right here, right now. So go download it! You can find it on the Android Market, or simply by following this link:
https://market.android.com/details?id=org.lexicongames.nombers.client
