Well, it’s been a pretty crazy week, ending up with Cally’s Caves 2 being talked about on our favorite podcast. It’s pretty surreal to tune into something we listen to every week, only to hear our game talked about!
Here is the link to the Toucharcade article, where you will find the links for whatever you use to listen to podcasts!
ios
Cally’s Caves 2 is OUT NOW!
Hey everyone, you can download Cally’s Caves 2 for free now 🙂 Enjoy!! Let us know what you think.
Cally’s Caves 2 releasing TONIGHT, here’s some codes
With the impending release of Cally’s Caves 2 tonight, here’s a few free promo codes for early access! First come first serve (if you read this). Redeem on the Appstore!
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Cally’s Caves 2: Releasing July 1st on the Appstore!
Well, we’ve been approved by Apple, and the game is finally about to launch. Our release date is next Tuesday, July 1st, and the game will be available completely free. Here are some gifs to celebrate!
Development Diary #12: Testing an iOS Application Using Gamemaker
Sorry about the lack of posts lately. We have finally submitted Cally’s Caves 2 to Apple for review, so we are going to try and get back to posting regularly!
Testing a game on an iOS device seems like it should be a simple process, but we learned the hard way that minor details can complicate things at any time. In this dev diary, we will outline the steps of our testing process using Gamemaker: Studio, in the hopes that it may help some people overcome the same complications that we faced. This entry will be a bit technical and specific.
Note: We are using Gamemaker: Studio version 1.3.1344, and you will need access to a Mac.
1) Get your code ready for mobile.
We were developing a game that uses touch controls, but convenience necessitated being able to test on PC as well. This led to us having 2 control methods, and needing to switch between them. When we needed to export an .ipa file (the file type for iOS applications), we would need to disable the pc controls. We also based our resolution coding for iOS based off of the “display_get_size()” function, but when testing on windows we would use “window_get_size()” for everything to work properly. So, before you export your .ipa file, make sure you have everything ready for the mobile version. Continue reading
Development Diary #11: Making a Trailer
We just posted our first trailer for Cally’s Caves 2, and since we were figuring it out as we went along, nothing seems more appropriate than a dev diary on how we made it. You can use it as a cautionary tale, or get some tips that may be useful for your trailer, it’s really up to how you judge our final product.
Background
When we made the trailer for the first Cally’s Caves game, we used a very popular screen recording software called Fraps to capture our footage. We then used an editing software named Proshow Producer to edit the clips together and make our trailer. While this was a decent way of doing it, we had problems with the overall video quality. Fraps recorded high quality footage, but when we stitched together the .avi files that Fraps makes, then rendered the project again in Proshow Producer, there was a severe decline in video quality. Add Youtube’s compression to the mix and we ended up with a pretty grainy trailer, as you can see for yourself above.
One thing we think worked out nicely for the Cally’s Caves trailer was how the footage was edited to the music, and ramped up as it went along. We knew we could use some of the techniques we had learned making that trailer and make the trailer for Cally’s Caves 2 way better.
Cally’s Caves Trailer!
We just released our first trailer for Cally’s Caves 2… Here it is!
Cally’s Caves 2 OST now available on Bandcamp!
Since we had wrapped up our soundtrack work on Cally’s Caves 2, we figured we might as well put it up on Bandcamp and see what happens! We will be linking to the Bandcamp in a “support the developers” tip in the game. It’s pretty much our “donate” button for Cally’s Caves 2, since the game will be totally free. Enjoy the tunes, and if you like them, there’s 21 full tracks for only 3 dollars. Also, if you don’t want to pay, there’s always our Soundcloud, which has a decent number of the tracks available for free.
Development Diary # 10: Implementing Feedback from the Beta
Sorry it’s been a while since our last update! It’s crunch time for Cally’s Caves 2, which means we are spending a ton of time polishing, bug fixing, and getting ready to submit to Apple. In our last post we detailed how we hoped our Beta test would go, and at this point we have wrapped up the testing phase. It didn’t last the 8 weeks we planned on, it actually only took about 2 weeks to receive feedback from all of our testers. We thought it would be a good time to discuss the feedback we received, and how we are using it to make our game a lot more user-friendly and fun.
The Testers
We ended up having 15 people beta test Cally’s Caves 2, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but for an indie developer like us, it was a gold mine of useful information. I put a post up on my personal Facebook and Twitter pages, and the testers all volunteered from there. Of all the testers, only 2 people tested the game on iPad, 5 people used iPhone 5 or 5s, and the rest were on the older iPhone 4 or 4s models. We were lucky to have a wide range of devices testing the game, and that’s mostly just due to luck with who signed up. We also (as detailed in our pre-beta dev diary), sent out an introduction package and survey with the beta files, which most of the people filled out. It also helped to have my phone near me, as testers would often text me the bugs, which I would then add to my to-do list. We did have people report quite a few bugs, which was amazing because we may have never found them if we were testing the game ourselves. Continue reading
Cally’s Caves 2: Development Diary #9 – Getting Ready for Testing
Putting something you crafted into someone else’s hands is a harrowing experience. When that person’s gaze locks onto the object you created, a shift happens. What was once your private project is no longer your own, and a singular experience becomes shared one. It can be amazing or terrifying, but either way you will walk away from that shared experience with an idea of how you could have approached your creation differently. The beauty of game development is you can choose to incorporate the feedback you gain from sharing your creation with others before your product is finalized. This is why we have dedicated a two-month period to beta testing Cally’s Caves 2. In today’s Dev Diary we will discuss how we have approached the 8-week beta test period of our game’s development, and what we hope to gain from putting Cally’s Caves 2 in the hands of playtesters.
Cally's Caves 