[color=#cc0099]We are delighted to announce that we have begun beta testing the Fallen London app on Android!
This beta will allow us to determine whether or not launching on Android is viable. While there are only a handful of iOS devices, there are 12,847 different Android devices currently available - which could increase our support burden past where we’re able to cope with it (a more in-depth explanation can be found on our blog).
We will be opening the Android beta to those interested in batches. The first group have received their email last week. If you’re interested in joining the beta, you’re welcome to sign up with a Gmail address or an email address associated with a Google Apps account - as the testing is done via Google Play.
Please be mindful that a final release is still dependant on successful testing. We’ll post updates here and on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblras they come![/color]
Oh, lovely, lovely, lovely!
Great work!
EDIT: After the thrill, I found out this which looks good for you and for all developers who have problems because of Android < 4.4.
As of June 2016, Android Lollipop (5.0 – 5.1) is the single most widely used Android version, operating on 35.4% of all Android devices accessing Google Play. The second is Android KitKat (4.4), with a share of 31.6%. Version distribution edited by Skinnyman on 7/19/2016
I haven’t followed the iPhone Beta too closely when that started. Does the Beta testing mean we’ll be playing with a separate (sandboxed) version of our character? (i.e. what we do in the app won’t affect the main character and vice versa)
Yes, at least at first - we were switched over to live characters a little while before release, if memory serves, but the bulk of your testing will be done with an older version of your character.
I received an email (on 8.07.2016) that I will receive an invite the following week, but I still don’t have one. Will all be well or have I missed it somehow? :(
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We will be testing in batches, so if you haven’t received the invite link yet (and you’ve signed up with a Gmail address), you will be part of the second batch. These will go out in August.[/color] edited by Absintheuse on 7/20/2016
A quick question about the sync: As I understand, the beta app operates on a copy of the original game and all changes/decisions that happen in beta will be discarded? Am I safe to test things I wouldn’t do with my character normally, such as dying, as they will have no consequence once the app is out of beta?
In the message I received there are three points:
[ul][li]The app will not yet sync with your live character on the browser game. This is a protective measure to ensure any nasty bugs in the incomplete beta don’t affect your live character on the web.
[/li][li]Logging into Fallen London will log you out of any other active play session. This means you’ll have to log in again when you switch back from a new platform (e.g. if you play on the browser and start testing on an Android device, you’ll have to log in again when you return to play on the browser game). This is intentional, and necessary!
[/li][li]To make sure you don’t lose any progress on the app, prompt a manual sync or wait for an automatic sync before switching between different devices or the browser game. If you don’t, you’ll see a ‘Warning: character data is out of date’ message when you next log in on mobile. [/li][/ul]
1&3 don’t make sense to me together. Does it mean that the app will sync with browser only on demand? What if I make diverging choices (e.g. login to app while doing Lost Heiress, destroy the Comtessa statue whiile in app but don’t sync, login to browser, leave Comtessa alone, then login to app and press sync? edited by Johanna de Silentio on 8/1/2016
[quote=Johanna de Silentio]
1&3 don’t make sense to me together[/quote]
I would take it to mean that the app won’t sync with your live character (the one you play in browser), but it will sync with your “testing” character (which you can only access from the testing app, but it still needs to sync to somewhere).
#2 means that you can’t use the same login in both “live” and “testing” environments at the same time. I don’t think this was 100% necessary (unless enforced by steam’s/google’s legal terms), but I can see how it makes development easier and testing more thorough.
[color=#46f2ca]xKiv has it pretty much down. Feel free to be wayward, spendthrift and rash with your character on the beta app. At present, what you do in the app will have no impact on your live character whatsoever.
We’ve done this to ensure any nasty bugs in the beta can’t corrupt the live game. We’ll switch the beta over to people’s live characters nearer launch, at which point you’ll log in with your current characters and be able to see syncing work between the app and the browser.
We’ll make sure you know this is happening before we switch![/color]
Where can/should we report apparent bugs in the beta, or get clarification as to what things are bugs and which aren’t? (I, personally, have a thing where the “Toast notification content” bar never retracts and consequently covers the top bit of text.)
