Exciting September is over! Time for another monthly studio report!
Due to some technical troubles, there is no VLOG this month. Apologies! May add it later or just double up during October. Moving on...
iOS is out! You can find it here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/in-dust-and-air-mobile/id1632190866
Happy to report that it released exactly on the anniversary of Dust and Air leaving early access. The timing was fantastical down to even the hour.
We really weren't planning it and had been trying to get it out in July. Then after getting Apple to review it, they ended up taking weeks to finally approve it. To which we certainly pressed them for answers but they told us they were simply still going through it.
Special thanks to whatever engineer/s at Apple handled our approval process. Apologies our Cathedral Arc is so big but, hopefully it was enjoyable for you!
As exciting as this event was, we also were happy to say we opened a testing track for the app on Apple M1 Macs and found it works perfectly on our company Macbook. Unfortunately, while we'd like to simply release it for Mac right away, we want to keep the mobile version separate from the PC/Mac edition.
What this means is, we'll be doing some Mac specific revisions and releasing a separate app for it. We'd like for it to be viable for more than M1 Macs and able to be installed via a normal Mac process so we can distribute via more than the App Store.
Current ETA on the Mac port is by the end of the year. We learned a lot from the iOS port and will be tweaking the Mac version a little. Possibly even with more Mac specific branding. There is also some checks we need to do for bug issues which may or may not require us to keep or change back the UI. PC simply doesn't have the same issues as the iOS port except for one, the disappearing buttons bug which we solved by simply removing the buttons.
Will we change the UI for all platforms to match? That is on the table but, not ideal since other platforms don't have touch features. Hopefully we'll see some action from Strikeworks soon and many of the long standing issues get resolved. We hope their new office is going well.
Pricing across all platforms is currently sitting at $5 for Mobile and $10 for PC. This is due to PC having more higher resolution assets since we don't have to compress images on it like we do with Mobile. There is also fewer sale options on Mobile than on PC so we want to provide the appropriate value. We are still working on an ad driven variant for the Play Store. Expect that in the months ahead.
Moving onto art, we have a small teaser this month of the Ettingscove docks. It's only a partial image but it does show the first hints at where people will arrive at when Raven's Prayer releases.
Yes, the docks will be near the water of the cove itself. Don't worry, we've thought about storm surges and airship size when considering the design for them.
However, Spire pilots, we're sorry but there isn't a lot of places to really park that tower of yours. Yet, don't panic! We do answer that in future parts of the grand story.
Alongside with the docks image was also variants of the docks adding night and weather effects. But, that's not all! To go along with that, Georgy elected to finish up a bunch of already finished backgrounds and add the time of day and weather effects. Which speeds up future story development a little since many will come into play later.
Outside of time of day and weather, there was another update on Gwyn's room background to revise it to match the exterior placement better. So, in all, quite a lot of backgrounds got done in the month of September.
In October we might be seeing the completion of a major key image that Winks started and Georgy then followed up with some concepts on during September. It's a big image and a complex scene so, we can't guarantee it completely but, it's looking good so far.
Alright, that's it for the month of September. Thanks for sticking with us on this grand journey!
Till next time, see you in the skies!