Dark Nova Android Update

Our dev team continues to make progress on Dark Nova Android. We have a new beta release today which adds sound and fixes some functions.

Also, thanks to our QA testers. If you add 5 bugs that get accepted you will be listed in the credits! Sign up to be a Beta Tester below:

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Dark Nova Android Beta Released!

Thanks to Harsh, Jatin, and Manish, our Android port is ready for early beta testers to try out!

You can get the beta here: http://code.google.com/p/dark-nova-android/wiki/BetaInstructions

It’s a very early beta so it may not be 100% feature complete yet. Take a look and tell us what you think! Our dev team is moving fast now so come help us find and kill the bugs!

Thanks for the help!

We’d like to thank everyone who has been playing and reporting back with questions, comments, suggestions, and bugs to us here at Dark Nova HQ!

We’re putting the finishing touches on a new update that will be submitted to Apple on Saturday. Watch out for it!

Also, we’d like to give a big shout out of thanks to Jatin Shah.  Jatin is a developer who’s helping us with some issues we’re having on the Open Source Android porting project. His contributions have already killed some bugs we were struggling to exterminate. Thanks for the help Jatin!!!

Dark Nova on Free App A Day!

Hello everyone from FAAD! We really hope you enjoy Dark Nova. If you have questions email support@darknova.net or hit us up on Twitter.com/dead_jim and we’ll get back to you as soon as humanly possible.

  • Dark Nova HD is in review in the App Store and should be released today or tomorrow!

If you like Dark Nova, please give us a good rating in the App Store!

May the force be with you…

Updates

Dark Nova HD for iPad has been submitted to the App Store 4 days ago! It should be going live any day now.

Also, Harsh and Manish, on our Android porting team are making good progress on the port. We’re still working through a few bugs before we release the beta. It’s getting close but it’s not quite playable yet. Hopefully this week we’ll be ready to release the first beta. Here’s a screenshot of it running in the Android Emulator:

Dark Nova HD and Dark Nova Android!

The Dark Nova team is busy! We’re working on a new release of Dark Nova with more bug fixes, more sound, and a few new features. It will be out this month.

Better yet, we’re working on some awesome high-resolution art for Dark Nova HD on the iPad! It’s going to look fantastic on the iPad’s big screen!

Last but not least we’ve just been testing an alpha build of Dark Nova for Android! Our Android Dev Team is hard at work and making great progress. Big thanks to Manish and Harsh!

Android Port Underway!

Good News Everyone! We’ve officially started our Android porting effort!

Currently our dev repo is on Google Code at: http://code.google.com/p/dark-nova-android/

If you want to help contact us!

Dark Nova 1.5 released!

The 1.5 version of Dark Nova has been released. This version fixes a whole lot of bad bugs (and yes, crashing) and adds some new functionality.

  • One issue for people upgrading: Saved Games From Older Versions WILL NOT WORK and will cause a crash. If the game is crashing when you try to load, delete it and reinstall. That should fix it.
  • You’ll have to start over, but it will be way more fun!

We already have the next version in the works. The next update has sound and graphics tweaks along with some minor fixes.

Thanks to everyone who has supported us! Enjoy!

What’s up with Open Source?

We’ve been posting about Open Source and what’s going on with the Dark Nova code. A couple of updates for you. First what we learned about licensing:

  • Since DN is a “derivative work” of Space Trader, it’s protected under the GPL regarles of what we do or say.
  • Because of the above, we can only license Dark Nova under a GPL compatible license.
  • The Apache License is not GPL compatible (there are intricacies here) in this sense because the AL does not require derivative works to have open (published) source code. This is the loophole that Greg Meach thought he could use to close the code. We were all ignorant about these implications before HyperWarp.

Our code has always been published on our Google Code repo. Interested folks can find the code here: http://code.google.com/p/darknova-iphone/source/browse/#svn/trunk

Greg Meach has unquestionably improved the code. He’s also agreed with us on the GPL protected status of the code and he’s agreed to distribute his Hyper Warp code to the public under GPL. Greg distributes his source with the app itself which follows the letter of the GPL. If you have questions about how to access HyperWarp code, ask Greg.

The future direction of Dark Nova development is unclear. We don’t want to duplicate efforts and we believe that with Greg’s additions, we have a great version of Space Trader with the unique art and style of Dark Nova. We’re releasing a version of Dark Nova (1.5) to the app store based on the HyperWarp code. The only changes we’ve made are basically to the text, not the code. We’ve changed the copyright statements and the names of ships to fit the DN universe, and replacing the images and sounds with our original content.

Greg is actively developing the code base but we’re not currently collaborating. So we’re going to see where he goes with the HW code before continuing development. We will continue to release updates on the HW code base as he continues to update it and as long as we like the direction he’s moving in.

The idea to create a “scriptable quest” engine (which Greg has slotted for HWII) has been on our ToDo list for a while. We’re excited to see his implementation of that. For now, we’re focusing on creating new content for the game engine. Plus more quests, more sound and graphics to compliment the game and make it more immersive. That’s where our talents are so we’re happy to have Greg advancing the code.

If we make code changes, they will be reflected in our Repo so stay tuned.

Dark Nova 1.5 Submitted to Apple!

We’re just waiting for Apple to approve our newest release, 1.5! This version is running on the Hyper Warp code base so it’s much improved!

Should be in the App Store in a few days!