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Wildhollow Trial Modifications
I have a suspicion that I’ll be releasing a beta trial of my adventure/management game Wildhollow v0.4 later today or tomorrow, if all goes well. I thought v0.3 was relatively solid, but there were still a number of things to improve for v0.4. For example:
- More eye candy for the minigames
- More eye candy when tending animals
- Additional dialogues and items of interest in most locations
- Click a button to check for new versions – and if so, download the upgrade
- Trial version limitations and nag screens
The upgrade feature is a simple version checker plus redirection to the Wildhollow webpage where some PHP scripts will run. It may be simple but it will be a major time saver when I release updates! If you’re running a trial version, it will redirect you to the updated trial download; if you’re running a full version you’ll have to enter your e-mail address and it’ll authenticate the e-mail with the purchaser database before sending the upgrade.
The last item is trail version limitations.
So far I haven’t bothered with having a trial/full version but from now on the trial versions I release will be limited to 60 minutes, have a nagging screen, and be content limited. There are three reasons why I have content limitation as well as a time limit:
- The download will be smaller
- Games are always cracked, and with missing content I’ll ensure that it’s slightly harder to get a full version of the game. You can’t just run a patch to remove the trial limitations
- Related to the second item, I chose to have a really trivial method to determine trial vs full version. I assume that the game will be cracked swiftly either way so I’m taking the least problematic route for me. Thus I really need to have content limitations – otherwise I’m guaranteeing instant warezing of the game. As it is now a pirate will have to get hold of the full version first, at least
All good reasons, I think.
Tags: adventure, casual games, Games, Indie Games, Wildhollow