What's next?

I'm happy to report that Annexation is doing fine. It's no AngryBirds but those who tried it keep coming back. So I'm happy :)

So what's next?

Currently I have 3 interesting game ideas I'm thinking about. I've done some prototypes and I'm testing them out on whoever I can get my hands on. But no real work will begin till I get a clear winner.

Not to mention the fact that you like Annexation so much that you took the time to put reviews on the Marketplace. I wish to thank you so I'm working hard on the next update. So here's the list:

• Multitask causes game to freeze - player has to click back/continue game (done)
• Player's name fails to save properly (done)
• Rendering isn't fast enough (done)
• Player can't disable all move animations (done)
• Ai isn't fast enough (in progress)
• Ai isn't smart enough (in progress)
• New start position options (in progress)

Working on improving the Ai is quite challenging but also rewarding! If I find the time I'll write a post that covers what has been done to improve the Ai.

Annexation trial/buy

Annexation trial/buy version is live!

For those of you who dislike ads - you can now play Annexation ad-free for 1.29$. Available at the Marketplace.

I was hoping to keep you updated with the latest download numbers but sadly no stats are available for Annexation just yet.

Due to great reviews we're slowly climbing the ranks. It's hard to get any concrete data but judging by App Rank Annexation's overall rank in the US was 3037 (!?) but now has no rank, category rank is at 1005. I'll wait till I get more information from yalla apps and keep you posted.

First review

Annexation free has got some really positive reviews in the Marketplace (current average is 4.8 out of 5!) and we really love some of them:

nilingfeng (Hong-Kong) : 好玩 *****
arkeetek613 (Canada) : Fun simple game! Really recommend it has a quick time waster type game. *****
SornSornpaisarn (USA) : The best strategy game ever!!!!! *****

Thank you for playing dear gamers!

Our first review was just featured on WP7 Connect. The site is quite a source for finding interesting games and apps for your wp7 phone so go check it out.

Hopefully this is just a start of a trend :)

We're live!

Good news - Annexation free is live and available in the WP7 Marketplace. Read more info at OrangeBeta website.

Source control

Source control is probably the single most important tool for developers today. Sure, modern IDEs are nice and helpful, static analysys gives you great insight, code completion saves time. But source cotrol saves lives.

I could do without ReSharper, I'd suffer but I could do it. I could (and often do) go back to notepad. And yet I can't even imagine working without source control.

Ever seen something like this?

This is what we used to do. Comment out the code but leave it in "just-in-case". So you can revert back if something goes wrong. Eh?

Not anymore you don't. There's no need. Delete the line, refactor that method, rename that file. Just keep commiting those changes and leave meaningful commit messages. But that's not even the best part!

Annexation comes in two flavors. A free, ad supported version and a paid version (trial). Now the two versions are very close but do have important differences:

• Ad supported version has bunch of external dlls for ad controls
• Trial version checks in with the Marketplace for status
• Ad supported version shows ads instead of current scores
• Trial version has some limitation and a buy button
• ...

You could develop both versions in parallel - using two separate directories and lots of copying and pasting. But using a modern SCMS makes this easy. I use Mercurial.

You can branch your projects. There's a default branch for the free version and a trial branch for the paid version of Annexation. You can work on either one by a click of the mouse.

And what if you need to fix a bug on both versions? It's simple. You don't even need to use the command line. Fix it on either version, export the patch and import it to the other branch.

Could you ever go back to commenting out code sections and keeping underscore-prefixed versions of files again?

Annexation testing passed

Annexation just passed marketplace testing! The game will be published in about 24hs.

Download it and play - it's free :)

Setup

Please follow the twitter account or this blog to get the latest news and updates.

I'm currently working hard to get OrangeBeta stuff set-up. This is the current todo list:

• Finalize web-design
• Setup blogger
• Setup twitter
• Setup web-hosting
• Launch Annexation free
• Rest