Re: [blind-gamers] A Dragon Reborn

[Tobias Vinteus]

Hi, If your goal is to reach the widest possible audience, then it would seem to me that staying on Windows would be the better choice.   Technologies like haptic feedbakc and spatial audio are available on Windows, after all.   There is one more thing to consider. I have an iPod 6th generation. Many apps cannot be updated due to the last supported OS version for that device being iOS 12. This means that your games might potentially stop working or at least wouldn’t be able to update on older iOS devices. Being able to afford newer devices might not be as easy for us in the blind Community compared to people in general. On a sidenote this rarely happens on my Android device despite its oS being several iterations behind.   Being no exper, I don’t know the ammount of effort it would take to port a modern Windows game to Xbox, but I would imagine it to be comparatively Little, furthermore strengthening the argument to stay on Windows.     If you haven’t already don eso, I would recommend you perform some kind of market survey to gauge which platform would be the most profitable one to develop for.   Just my two cents. I wish you good luck and am looking forward to what comes out of Draconis in the future. Cheers, Tobias         Skickades från E-post för Windows   Från: Cara Quinn Skickat: den 15 maj 2023 18:51 Till: blind-gamers@groups.io Kopia: Cara Quinn Ämne: [blind-gamers] A Dragon Reborn   It's been a long while, but it's finally time to announce the start of a new chapter for Draconis Entertainment, LLC. The dragon is awakening yet again!   This new incarnation of the company brings big and exciting changes. We will explain those and some of our plans for the future here, but know that we aren't spilling all the beans quite yet. What fun would that be!   The world has moved on!   Our first announcement is that we are bringing new and enhanced versions of our classic games, along with brand-new titles, into the modern age and on to Apple platforms, with an emphasis on iPhone! Thanks to VoiceOver, the overwhelming majority of the visually impaired community has access to at least one of Apple's operating systems, and this will make our games available to the widest possible audience. It's hard to believe sometimes, but that little rectangle of glass we all carry in our pockets has infinitely more power than any of the PCs or Macs that our legacy titles were developed on, and with the tight integration of Apple's operating systems, we will be able to easily make new releases available for iPhone, iPad, Mac, or AppleTV going forward. This approach means that we can integrate newer technologies like full 3D spatial audio, touch and accelerometer interaction, and support for console game controllers and advanced haptics.   What does this mean for our Windows products?   We know how beloved these games have been over the years—we love them too—and we want to bring all of them, with expansions and new features,  into the twenty-first century, so they can be enjoyed by new and old generations of gamers alike. The support cost for the original Windows games, some of which were new when Nintendo 64 was the hot ticket and Xbox didn't yet exist, is simply too high to manage for a small company like us, while also investing in the future.   We will be bringing our Windows development to a close and giving these games new life on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and AppleTV. That said, for the time being, we will continue to offer downloads of the installation packages for our legacy catalog on our site, and customers who purchased them may request replacement keys within reason. (For more details, see the Legacy section of our new website at https://draconis.llc.)   Back in March, the legacy Draconis Score Server (DSS) and Draconis Online License Factory (DOLF) for the Windows versions of ChangeReaction 2 and SilverDollar, migrated to a new host and received some modernization. As you've already seen, this brought much needed stability to both of those services.   So what’s up first?   With all of that in mind, we're pleased to introduce major updates to the Mac versions of ChangeReaction and SilverDollar. Freed from the cross-platform constraints of developing for both macOS and Windows, we have been able to add some new features to these titles. The most exciting of which is full-support for any of the console game controllers supported by Apple platforms. These include the PlayStation DualShock 4 or DualSense 5, the Xbox X / S controllers, the Nintendo Switch JoyCons, any MFI controller, and others. SilverDollar now includes a great deal of new and remastered audio, support for Apple Silicon, and countless bug fixes and tweaks.   These upgraded titles will be available as free updates to anyone who purchased them previously from the Mac App Store. SilverDollar 2.0 is out now and is available for free. ChangeReaction 3.0 will have its price reduced to $4.99 in the US when it is reintroduced in the coming weeks. (Prices will vary based on exchange rates.)   Looking forward, the development to bring a mix of new and familiar titles to life is well-underway, and we can’t wait to show you what we’ve been working on! The future is bright.   We know the dragon has been sleeping for a very long time. We appreciate your patience and support more than we can say. Thank you for the last twenty years. We hope you'll join us as the dragon is reborn.     Cheers!   Cara                     _._,_._,_ Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#126268) | Reply To Group | Mute This Topic | New Topic Your Subscription | Contact Group Owner | Unsubscribe [arch...@mail-archive.com] _._,_._,_