When a product such as Dredmor reaches maturity, it is often ported to a mobile tablet. During this awkward time of transition, you will doubtless have certain questions about the changes that your video game is going through. You may have strange feelings and sudden urges, and you may also note your tablet sprouting hair in strange places.
Please rest assured, this is perfectly normal.
Fortunately, Gaslamp Games is here to help you through this time of change and transition with our Dredmor-for-iPad Frequently Asked Questions guide. So here goes:
Q. When will the game be done?
A. “When it’s done.” We’re currently still in pre-alpha, and a lot of stuff still isn’t working right. (For instance: water, textboxes, going downstairs, that kind of thing.) So … yeah, we’re still working out the kinks. We’ll keep you up to date as we know.
Q. Will Dredmor be available for the iPhone?
A. Probably not; we’d have to redraw absolutely everything. The game fits on an iPad because the iPad’s minimum resolution is 1024 x 768 – the same resolution as our minimum game resolution. We’ll test – at some point – to see if the retina display on the iPhone 4S makes this viable, but we don’t think it will work.
Q. Will the game be available for Android?
A. This… is an interesting question. While SDL 1.3 supports Android, at least partly, there are two reasons why we might not go ahead and do this. The first is insufficient demand – my personal experience with Android on previous products have been that Android sales are a very small fraction of iPad sales (in fact, less than the ratio of Linux sales to Windows sales.) Consequently, it’s not entirely clear that this is something that we will actually make money on – especially on the tablet market, where Android tablets are still somewhat of an unknown factor and where the iPad still occupies 75% of the market share.
The second reason why we might not support Android is because the infrastructure for Android is so, so, hideously broken. Again, it’s *worse* than the Linux situation, which is kind of amazing. In order for us to ship on Android, we have to be convinced (more specifically, as the Technical Director for the studio *I* have to be convinced) that we can actually ship an Android version of Dredmor and have it work. Given that there are a number of horror stories floating around about people who test their software on 300 Android devices and get everything working, only to release and have everything explode on Day 1… I’m just not confident that we can do this. It is possible that we might put together an Android release for a *very* limited selection of devices (Kindle Fire, Samsung Galaxy Tab, ASUS EEE Pad Transformer) where we have some hope of having things run in a fashion that we’re happy with. That said, we’re still looking into this, and the iPad port (by virtue of the market share we mentioned above) is still the top priority.
Q. Are you redoing the control scheme? That looks suspiciously like a mouse cursor.
A. Yes. The mouse cursor is in for debugging only; we are reworking the control scheme to make it 85% more Tabletty.
Q. Will there be mod support?
A. Unknown. We would like it, but we are not making any promises.
Oh, these are neat; I can't help but wonder whatever in the world they might be for.
Please I want this on my Transformer!!!!!! **crossing my fingers**
Sorry to burst your bubble but that is the Clockwork Knights mod from the forums without a doubt. Not a transformer. 🙁
Here’s a link to the mod if you’d like to see it: http://community.gaslampgames.com/threads/clockwork-knights-2-5.1817/
I think the “transformer” remark is referring to the Asus Eee Pad Transformer tablet, not the most-definitely-a-mystery-skillset pic.
Doing an Android version that’s only specifically for the Kindle Fire/Transformer/Galaxy Tab would be amazing and completely understandable.
This pretty much echos what i’ve heard about Android development. Each device is different enough to make it such that something that works perfectly on an a Droid will literally melt on another phone. The tablet space is even worse than the phone space for consistency and unless you have the specific device in front of you, there’s about a 0% chance it will work in the field. Given the ubiquity and consistency of iPads it makes sense for such a small team to concentrate on the space that gives maxiumum compatibility for the least amount of work.
I dunno, Jeff over at spiderweb games did a port of Avadon that just works, and let’s all admit that he’s not the mostest elitist programmer evar!
Actually I’ve yet to run into an app that did not work on any of my 8 or so android devices(tablets, smartphones, and now sort of a tablet/handheld console mash). Perhaps it’s only the overly thought and designed apps that end in utter failure, i.e. end up being poorly designed from overly complex overthinking.
The only ones that claimed not to were work were simply because of overly-restrictive restrictions placed on the app, but a simple build.prop change and/or sideload proved that in fact said apps did work(fpse I’m looking at you!). The only legitimate claim to not working would be arch support, i.e. ARM v6(essentially ARM11) v. ARM v7(cortex-a8, -a9, etc.) that takes advantage of newer features or features left out with the only other slight difficulty being GPUs which still mostly just work as on windows.
Sample list of apps: Avadon(has a screen resolution support restriction though IIRC 1024×600), Oubliette, Deadly Dungeons, Symphony of Eternity, Cyber Knights Elite, Star Trader RPG Elite, Cyberlords Arcology, Dink Smallwood, fpse, Swords and Earrings tales of Andaria, Zenonia 1-4, etc.
The fact that the android sales are just a tiny fraction of Ios sales is kind of a myth now. Well the amount of sales is considerably smaller but you get more money per sale and you only have to get the license once for 40$.Plus the android market share is becoming bigger every day
About the device support: Yes it is quite hard but the tablets only have a few variations so making the game for at least one (tegra 2 for example, almost all the popular 10.1 devices have it) would be a good move
Sounds like your a android fan, but not an actual developer. Have you done a mass market release of a 2d graphic title for Android tablets?
It’s not just the processor that’s the issue. It’s all the hardware, screen res, software versions, memory, bad drivers. The whole thing is a hot sticky mess.
I would spend $20 on an android version of Dredmor. Toshiba thrive owner, you could test it on the transformer, galaxy tab and thrive, just saying, I’d probably buy an iPad copy if I dont see an android one, of you make me. Lol
Yay, another disappointment. Still waiting for RotDG being available without Steam or other hooks and subscriptions. 🙁
Steam doesn’t require paying a subscription though.
:*( Sadface.
Well I guess I’ll hold out a tiny bit of hope that the retina display (and maybe a slight cut of visible area) will make bringing it to iphone feasible.
The cake is a lutefisk. ‘Nuff said.
The Rocket Jump icon makes me grin.
I understand your reasons for fearing an Android port. I’ll just say how it is from my viewpoint: I chose Android devices instead of Apple to save money for buying apps, for instance. If you’d release DoD only for a couple of tablets, I’d completely understand that and still buy a new device (Galaxy Tab, for example) to play your game mobile (and for some other things, of course) and not overpay for an iPad. As for the iPhone version – well, I have an SGS+ and I don’t think playing such a game on such a small screen would be comfortable.
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If mod support ever becomes a possibility for this I believe it may greatly enhance your profits.
I say this because it would allow you to advertise as having unlimited free user created DLC for the game.
Not to mention it would be, what I believe, as one of the first ever games on the Ipad market to contain mod support.
Anyways this will be something to keep an eye on. Keep up the great work Gaslamp!
Why so much steampunk? Am not too big a fan of a lot of steampunk stuff in DoD, sorry.
You guys rock even more than before though, that can’t change 🙂
I’ll totally understand if it isn’t worth it but I would gladly pay for an Android version of Dredmor. Heck, I still feel like I ripped you guys off when I got it for like $2 on Steam! 😀
Can’t wait for this iPad release!
I would love to have DoD on my Samsung galaxy tab 2 7.0
nexus 7. ouya. shield. im not sure the arguments against android still apply.
in fact, i will send you a shiny new digital $100 bill, RIGHT NOW, for a nexus 7 version of dredmor. seriously. ive got 249 hours on dredmor on steam, and im pretty sure id put that many or more on my tablet. international flights SUCK and i want to play it sooo bad without trying to balance my laptop on a tiny tray…
Whatever happened to this. Will there be a version on iPad?
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Android users are the ugly duckings of the digital gaming world – if all you want is to swim in money then just make it for the ios market but if you want to please your android fan base you should attempt an android version too. I’d spend money on an android port, i spend money on other games why not this one?
Do we have any update on this? Is it still possible to dream about a DoD game on iPad?
No new updates, sadly. The project is still shelved until we have time to do it right, but it’s still a matter of when, not if.
If you make this game 100 dollars on the App Store I will still buy it. Dungeons of Dredmor is an amazing game (by the way, try to raise the price on steam) I wish in my deepest reccesses of my heart that this comes out. It probably won’t though. But I can dream.
So… Any updates on this? I’ve been getting into DoD lately and would so much love it for my iPad!