Abduction! for Android

Gem Miner 2 released!

Psym — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:32:30 +0000

Gem Miner 2 is now available in the Android Market for all territories.

If you downloaded very early, you\’ll want to check for updates, as there has already been a patch for the following:

- Added ability to disable pickaxe (press menu)

- Fixed lift control alignment issues on certain devices

- Fixed museum freeze bug

- Fixed small bug in one map

More screenshots

Psym — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:04:29 +0000

Release is on schedule for this Friday! In the meantime, here is a final set of screenshots…

Gem Miner 2 Release Date

Psym — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 22:52:28 +0000

Gem Miner 2 will be released on Friday the 27th January. The recent delays have been due to making sure the game works well with just keyboard controls (for devices with keyboards and specifically Google TV), creating the custom levels, and a comprehensive tutorial.

I expect the game will release with 20-25 adventure levels and more will be added over time. These levels are much more complex than the old challenge levels from Gem Miner 1 and feature multiple objectives.

The original mode (one big mine) is still available of course, and includes new features like collections and character levelling.

There is now a feature freeze, and this last month is purely going into testing on as many devices as possible, bug fixes, balance, and general polish.

More screenshots soon…

Gem Miner 2 Update

Psym — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 04:30:22 +0000

Those keeping track will notice that Gem Miner 2 is taking longer than promised, sorry!! The good news that all this time is going into more features, better UI, more maps and general polish. I hope to get it ready for a release in late December, but at the very latest it’ll be January.

In the meantime, here are some new screenshots…

Gem Miner 2 Screenshots

Psym — Thu, 12 May 2011 04:23:05 +0000

As promised, here are some screenshots for Gem Miner 2. Needless to say, this is a work in progress and contains placeholder graphics. A lot will change before release.

I’m still experimenting with different inventory implementations, so no screenshot yet, but it will require more management than in the original. Same goes for the shop and other buildings on the surface.

Gem Miner 1.3 Update

Psym — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 00:37:20 +0000

It’s been a while since I updated this blog – I’ve been working hard on Gem Miner 2 (more details in a post next week).

Also, in the last couple of weeks I’ve been adding new features to Gem Miner. An update should be out before the end of this week with the following:

Deeper mines
New ore
New item in shop – signs
Feint acheivements
Various graphical improvements
New dificulty level – extreme (save game is deleted when you die)
Giant Gem position randomized
Bug fixes

Abduction! 2 Music

Psym — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 06:57:58 +0000

One of the biggest improvements in Abduction! 2 is the sound. Not only are there loads of new and high quality effects, but there is great music as well. The composer recently posted a video showing off the music:

For other developers looking for someone to help out with music, I can’t recommend Chris enough. You can contact him via his web site here: http://www.chrishodgescomposer.com/

Abduction! 2 Reviews

Psym — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 05:02:20 +0000

The first Abduction! 2 reviews are unanimously positive!

If you find any more, please leave a link in the comments.

Abduction! 2 arriving this Friday

Psym — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 03:13:41 +0000

I’m very happy to confirm the arrival of Abduction! 2 in the Android market from this Friday, 10th September.

Click to view slideshow.

Some of the highlights:

- 60 hand crafted adventure levels
- 60 dynamically generated classic levels
- 14 colourful and varied landscapes
- New platform types, including trampolines, spikes, fans, and rockets
- 38 characters to unlock and play
- Dozens of accessories to customize your character
- 6 original music tracks
- Special levels to unlock including a pie-eating mingame, 8-bit, and 3D modes

More details at launch!

Some thoughts on LVL and obfuscation

Psym — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 01:44:39 +0000

There has been quite a bit of talk recently about the new Android licencing and how it might be easily and automatically stripped from apps. I’ve been thinking a little about this and how to obfuscate the use of the licencing to improve piracy protection. The way I see it there are two main aims – prevent any kind of automatic script so at least there has to be some manual work, and secondly to make that manual work as tough as possible.

I know very little about obfuscation and piracy prevention, so I’d appreciate any feedback on whether the approach below makes sense:

Prevent automated circumvention

As far as I can gather, the trick is to change the code to always give a positive licence verification result. Looking at the sample LVL code, it looks like you pass in a package name for licence verification. My suggestion is simple – as well as checking the licence for the app, occasionally also check the licence of a package that you know will fail. If that comes back as positive, you know the app has been tampered with.

By putting the licence check in more than one location, and building the package name dynamically, so that sometimes the same check should pass and other times it should fail, I think this would fool most automated scripts.

Make it a real pain to manually change the code

Assuming the above is a valid tactic, then there is plenty you can do to make circumventing it a real pain. Multiple checks throughout the code, each behaving differently, along with obfuscation would make it a more time consuming task.

Not immediately reacting to invalid licences would also help. Instead of displaying a message or just quitting when the licence is found to be invalid, if the app continues to work for a day or two (or a certain number of uses, etc..), then it’s likely that bad releases will find their way onto piracy sites, reducing users faith in them.

Again, please correct me if you have a better understanding of this issue, or if it can be further improved.