Good point. :P Thanks for porting the game!
I see the point of having an app in the store in order to grow your base of active players. But why don’t you create a responsive version of your website first? That would benefit all devices/OS and you would not be forced to give Apple a huge share of your earnings.
I’m all for it if it works!
I’m concerned about how an offline version would work though. Even if going to “offline mode” prevents you from taking actions in Fallen London, you could still delete your local content to “save scum” luck-based activities. And obviously if losing your local content locks you out of your character, playing them offline would be too much of a risk, I’ve lost smartphone data before.
Still, if a fair way can be found to pull it off, more power to you! It will certainly save me a great deal of trouble when travelling abroad.
So exciting! I echo (haha) all the other Android users who will wait with bated breath for our turn. Of course, perhaps I speak too early as this is surely dangerous territory–"Just one quick action before bed…" Ah, well. Fallen Londoners do not shirk from danger!
edited by DanaKScully on 5/28/2015
One slight downside of offline play – assuming you’ll actually be able to take any action offline that you would online – is that all the text, probabilities and information about rewards would be available to anyone who pulls the files out of a jailbroken iOS device. I do hope that Failbetter encrypts this stuff more than in Sunless Sea, where it’s all pretty easy to read with a JSON editor. There’s a reason all the rare event percentages are listed on the Sunless Sea wiki.
(I’m assuming here that save-sate hacking won’t be possible for Fallen London because it’ll be caught and rejected when an offline client syncs with the servers.)
I had hoped that there would be an app for fallen london. To read that it will be an ios app is a huge disappointment though.
I am German hence I only know the numbers for Germany where way more people use Android instead of ios.
But of course apps are made for iphones because of vanity reasons instead of being smart and making apps which cover a way bigger market.
Huzzah! Wonderful/
[quote=metasynthie]One slight downside of offline play – assuming you’ll actually be able to take any action offline that you would online – is that all the text, probabilities and information about rewards would be available to anyone who pulls the files out of a jailbroken iOS device. I do hope that Failbetter encrypts this stuff more than in Sunless Sea, where it’s all pretty easy to read with a JSON editor. There’s a reason all the rare event percentages are listed on the Sunless Sea wiki.
(I’m assuming here that save-sate hacking won’t be possible for Fallen London because it’ll be caught and rejected when an offline client syncs with the servers.)[/quote]
Well, we already have a pretty good idea of what most of the probabilities for luck challenges are. But I will echo your and Ian’s concerns over the balance between preventing savescumming and allowing offline play. Personally I won’t be too broken up if it doesn’t make it in, since it wouldn’t be a downgrade from the current setup, but it’s a nice thought.
I would suggest that tacitly insulting Failbetter is not a good way to get them, or anyone else, to see your point of view.
If anyone’s interested, you can read about the usually cited business reasons for developing on iOS first, especially for free games that have in-app purchases:
The second one’s from Google themselves. For whatever reason (more disposable income? more adults vs kids? more accustomed to paying for apps or higher prices?) iOS customers spend more than Android customers – on average, mind you, which tells you nothing about any particular individual. (Personally I’d guess it’s because there are more people with iPhones and iPads who, having spent more money on their luxury-ish device, don’t think much of spending a few bucks here and there on apps.) So if you’d like Failbetter to continue to expand FL at a sustainable pace, keep putting out new content, etc it’s prudent to expect them to invest first in the platform that has a better chance of bringing in more paying customers to support the game.
[quote=Ian Hart]I’m all for it if it works!
I’m concerned about how an offline version would work though. Even if going to "offline mode" prevents you from taking actions in Fallen London, you could still delete your local content to "save scum" luck-based activities. And obviously if losing your local content locks you out of your character, playing them offline would be too much of a risk, I’ve lost smartphone data before.
Still, if a fair way can be found to pull it off, more power to you! It will certainly save me a great deal of trouble when travelling abroad.[/quote]
I had to replace my smart phone last week and even losing app data for unimportant games was annoying. I definitely think there needs to prevent that from happening to my character.
A phone-friendly version sounds amazing though, since I play almost exclusively on it. It’s an android though. :(
Agreed - It’s a little disappointing that there isn’t simply a mobile-browser-friendly version of Storynexus after all these years, not only for FL but also all the other worlds. Failbetter are doing a great job with FL and SS but in this day and age it seems a little shortsighted not to have a mobile website.
But since we’re talking about apps, count me as one more Android user in the queue please.
Ios app? Oh, if it’s from the phone, I think I will finally find it in me to grind for the goat after all these years. Hurray!
Yeah, my confusion over offline play is that if I did something while offline (say sold off all my enigmas) and then proceeded to go online and do something else with them, like use them for a challenge, and then reconnected my iphone, which one would get saved?
… seriously, iOS and not Android? You know which has the larger user base, yes?
Your plans were strong, your strategies merciless. But OfflinePlayer was stronger and more merciless still. They won! Some day, perhaps, you will have revenge… (Their form was Night-Lamp, and their Baroque was 77777777.)
Offline play sounds exciting! Probably will have to do something about social actions, game file editing, and all that mischief. (I mean I cheat like a Fingerking at Sunless See but that only affects me.)
Although, personally speaking, offline play is pretty low on the list for me and I care more about having a good interface for mobile devices first.
Yaaaay though this means Fallen London will go from "okay i’ll do human being things while the actions refresh, look at my healthy life" to "stop looking at your phone and talk to us"
edit:
[quote]Will there be music?
Yes! New music, from the same composer who created the wonderful soundtrack to Sunless Sea. We’re ecstatic about this. It will of course be sensitively integrated.[/quote]
im specially excited about this
edited by GabrielleBenoit on 5/29/2015
[quote=Tarnisae]I had hoped that there would be an app for fallen london. To read that it will be an ios app is a huge disappointment though.
I am German hence I only know the numbers for Germany where way more people use Android instead of ios.
But of course apps are made for iphones because of vanity reasons instead of being smart and making apps which cover a way bigger market.[/quote]
In my experience it’s way easier to write an app for iOS (assuming they’re using Mono/Unity which they likely are) which makes it a much better first platform. There may be more people with devices running android but there are also a lot more devices running android. Android devices can also contain special tweaks to the OS. This means that iOS offers less testing and less random bugs because you didn’t think to try to run it on device X while still containing a large and active user base.
It’s also worth noting that the people I know who actually make a living making mobile games have lead me to believe that while more people have Android devices the iOS market has a larger percentage of users who are actually willing to spend money on the apps. I know for certain that at one point one of these companies stopped making their apps work on Android because there just wasn’t enough money in it. This, however, was years ago and the market may have changed.
I’m interested in how offline mode will work in the context of non-optional autofire social actions, especially those which are advantageous to avoid.
Like take the iron leagues of knife and candle for example. If offline mode works just by simply making you ineligible for all social actions for the duration of your offline play, well, that would be a tremendous boon! How broken would it be if the game of ambushing your opponent could be trivially foiled by merely going offline while you slept or something. I guess its foilable now with the moon leagues as a usable hiding spot, but that costs two K&C cards and a few actions so it can’t be done trivially or constantly. Plus you lose your parade of victories and your form. I could see iOS totally unbalancing K&C giving players a chance to attack with total impunity at no cost.
I can think of several more examples, but most of them are currently retired Mr Eaten content. So I suppose those could be trivially replaced with more appropriate content for the new format. But what about time the healer as another example? Could someone go offline to avoid it just long enough to grind out that last level of notability? To keep their noman alive that much longer? To prevent Christmas from ending so that they can stay in penestock’s wicket a few more days and create a noman even after the wicket is closed for everyone else?
I am very fascinated by the idea of offline mode, especially since Fallen London mechanics have trended more and more to relying on these sorts of forced social actions and living stories to keep the game in balance.
edited by NiteBrite on 6/14/2015
Would it be too much to outright disqualify players for PvP content + seasonal events?
I can see people avoiding game balance changes too - kind of like everyone flocking to offline mode to do another Fabulous Diamonds-Soul Trade grind or something.
Although I don’t mind something more simple and limited for offline mode, or even putting offline mode aside for the time being.
StoryNexus offline would be wonderful though swoon
These are fascinating questions, but I think TTH is an easy one to manage: set it to the device clock when the player first logs in, and have it auto-fire within the app if the player doesn’t go back online in the meantime.