A few points of interest over the last 90 days or so:
Torino Warning version 1.10 is nearly finished and should be pushed to stores shortly, after which the port to OUYA will commence. The improved game looks better, and will include the Moon at correct representational distance and scale. It has also been completely rewritten in C#, making it vastly easier to build upon for the future.
A quick example of the new look – sunlight!
The free Near Star Map just received its first quarterly update, which has been pushed to Google Play, Amazon, and the Nook.
This was a fairly substantial update, more than doubling the stellar database size from 180 to 420 stars, freshening the fast-changing exoplanet data, and adding a new UI subsystem with some educational information for users unfamiliar with the astronomy required to understand the informational notes on each star.
Feedback from users of the Near Star Map via our contact form is welcome. Our next quarterly update is planned to occur at the end of December.
Now we’re off to do some exploratory OUYA development for a few months!
A possible shift in plans is in order. The OUYA arrived ahead of schedule. I’m now thinking I’d be prudent to set up its development environment promptly and get to work on an Android console project, using whatever time is available in September not dedicated to the Near Star Map update.
For the last several weeks, I’ve been using the limited development time available to work on a series of small prototypes. Each of these represents a project I’d like to move forward with in the near term. Getting each prototype closer to playable status helps combat the sense that there are several interesting items in the list of planned projects receiving no attention at all.
Most of my effort lately has gone toward the “War of the Worlds” missile prototype, which is nearly a playable alpha. However, beginning next week all my attention for a few weeks will go toward the quarterly data update of the Near Star Map, which I intend to release to app stores by the end of September.
The Near Star Map has been released as a free educational app on Google Play. We’ve also submitted to the NOOK and are preparing to submit to Amazon.
We’ll be following up with updates to this app about once every calendar quarter. In the meantime, it’s back to work on the missile warfare game as our main focus.
UPDATE: The Near Star Map is live on Amazon and on the NOOK.
The Near Star Map is currently undergoing an update as it’s being ported to Android. Data on previously included stars are being made current to 2013. Additionally, more of the significant stars between 20 and 30 light-years away are being added to the database.
At present, I’ve attempted to include every star within 20 light-years, and all of the bright stars (F, G, and K spectral types) out to 30 light-years. Several additional near stars beyond 30 light-years are also included while I try to gradually extend the map out to 50 light-years, though not all of that data may be ready before the controls are ironed out and the Android version released.
If you have an opinion on which app stores the Near Star Map should be released to, send mail!
More than a little late on this announcement: Rocket Rangers Preschool went up on iTunes Connect late last month. The product is now in six different app stores, and we’ve begun limited marketing.
In other news, the prototype for Proxima’s next non-edutainment title is coming along. It’s a missile warfare game in the inner solar system. Here are two screens (pardon the programmer art):
If you have an opinion on whether we should focus on another kids’ educational title, or proceed with this prototype game, please let us know.
Rocket Rangers Preschool has been approved and is now also available on the SlideME Android store as well as on Google Play and Amazon. The popular Kurio brand of children’s tablets uses the SlideME store as its content provider. Rocket Rangers Preschool is now also available on the kid-friendly and powerful Fuhu nabi tablet.
Porting Rocket Rangers Preschool to iOS is also in its final stages, although once submitted we’ll have to wait out the iTunes App Store approval period, which is usually several weeks long.
An edutainment title for ages 2-6ish, Rocket Rangers Preschool is available now on Google Play. It will be released on Amazon as soon as we can do the legwork and wait out the submission period. Our partners at Skyward* Corp. are going to undertake iOS distribution.
UPDATE: Rocket Rangers Preschool is available on Amazon’s app store!
This product has been Proxima Centauri Games’ focus since the end of April 2012. If it does well in the marketplace, we’ll seriously consider a series of space-themed edutainment titles for grade-school levels. Space games that help inspire and educate the future engineers who will take our species to space one day… idealistic perhaps, but that’s what this company is really intended to be all about.
This first preschool-level game has activities for color, shape, number and letter recognition skills, differences, simple puzzles, and a memory matching game. There’s also a sandboxy solar-system activity reward that appears between groups of other games.
This last was a fun lark – using the in-game solar system builder activity to make an approximation of our own system:
