Since we didn’t do an update on the state of our crowd-funding effort, we want to say this first: the alpha version of Door Kickers was/is definitely a success. The future also looks bright, since having so many users back a game this early in development shows real interest in our game and there’s almost no negative feedback (really!).

Platforms

The previous update was all about getting the game on Mac/Linux. We use a home-brewed engine that was designed with portability in mind, but we didn’t put it to test until now.

The Linux version took exactly 2 days, out of which half a day was mostly setting up and fighting the installation, perhaps it deserves a post of its own that may be of interest to programmers. I haven’t touched Linux in years, but after installing the latest Ubuntu I can see why it has such low gaming numbers. I still can’t believe how slow/buggy the desktop/UI is, it made my computer feel like a 586. I used KDE to build the game, which I really like for its simplicity/speed.

The Mac version took slightly longer at 3 days, with the difference coming from having to work with the new Xcode and generally having a slightly bulkier API to work with. I can’t imagine how it would be working with Xcode every day, but this tool doesn’t look like it was made for programmers.

They’re both great platforms and each is enjoyable in its own way, but nothing beats Windows when it comes to development tools.

One week for two new platforms was more than well-worth the effort (especially the media attention), I can’t understand why more developers don’t take this step.

We don’t have a way to tell the Windows sales from the Mac/Linux sales, since for simplicity and convenience each user gets all versions at once for his purchase, but of the demo downloads 10% were Mac and 4% Linux.

Anyway, having 14% more users for so little effort, I don’t see why any developers in their right minds may disregard them.

The Mac OSX port is also the first step towards the iOS platforms: you can’t put the game on an iOS device without a Mac computer, therefore we had to buy one (thank you, buyers of “On the Move” tier 🙂 ) and porting to MacOSX is just part of that process.

Speaking of tablets, some users reported running the game on Microsoft’s Surface Pro tablet, but that didn’t come without problems: the latest video drivers ship with a bug that crashes any OpenGL game at startup…

If you’re reading this and have Door Kickers idling on your Surface Pro tablet, just download the previous driver version and it will be OK.

Can’t wait to get our hands on one of those, touchscreens should be great for our game!

Steam and the demo version

Steam: that’s our main objective right now. Getting Door Kickers into Steam’s Early Access program would also be great.

We’re rank #24 out of 1200+ games at the moment (which is a great feat, mind you!), but we still have a long way to go to top10, where the big boys hang out and where the chances of getting into Steam approach certainty.

For that to happen, we need more exposure, which has led us to the idea of doing the free Alpha Lite version. This may come right back and bite us in the ass: free versions are accessible to a much larger audience, not just the few people that have trust in funding an alpha game, and they may not be that tolerant to a game this early in development.

The demo has been downloaded over 9000 times in a week from our website alone.

Talking about Steam, Mode7 tweeted a support message for us, which shows just how great of a bunch they are, considering Door Kickers has been (wrongfully) compared to Frozen Synapse from the beginning. That caused a nice looking spike as well in our votes on Steam Greenlight.

By the way, we hope you all Ipad users bought Frozen Synapse for it? Cross Platform Multiplayer, baby 😉

Next…

We’re planning some heavy new features for the next update, as well as improved gameplay experience based on your feedback. Make sure to make your voice heard for what features you want next.

We need to add the possibility of combining GoCodes with actions, add side-stepping, add visual differentiation between each trooper’s paths, fix annoying bugs related to the interaction with doors, better statistics and so much more…

We’re also moving into a new office, which will probably cause some delays in our work during the next week.

And because you’re so awesome, we want to treat you with the equally awesome main theme in Door Kickers, download/listen to it here.