Hi folks, Colin / @domipheus here.

It’s been quite a hectic couple of months. As you will have seen, Gears of Glory: Apex Ace is not available – even though it’s July, and the releases all said coming May 2012.

Well, to put it bluntly, I screwed up on the timing. I’ve certainly learned something from this experience, in that it seems journalists don’t seem too bothered by launch dates. This is the opposite of what I expected – I thought having a launch date would give some credibility to Domipheus Labs as an unknown entity for journalists to draw on when trying to get some press coverage. Turns out if you have an interesting story to tell, they will cover it regardless.

I’ve had less free time to work on the game lately – mainly due to becoming a dad for the first time. This is one of the reasons I don’t like the ‘indie’ label – I am very much a hobby developer, who takes his work seriously. I have not quit my day job in search of some far-fetched indie bliss.

The new plan stretches out the release, but I think it offers the best chance available to make Gears of Glory: Apex Ace a game I can be proud of.

Domipheus Labs Online Services

****Previously, Gears of Glory: Apex Ace was an IndieCity only title, using its fabulous game framework. They offer an amazing percentage of the cost price (85% to the developer if they integrate leaderboards/achievements). However, for me, I needed more fine grained control of the leaderboards. Like in my Leaderboard Ordering post, I wanted ordering control, and other smaller things I may talk about in later posts.

In addition to this, it quickly became clear that I was going to need to roll out distinct game versions for each distributor I was looking at, and that these would then have disjoint leaderboards. For the amount of units I intend to ship, I really do not want a fragmented userbase.

So, Domipheus Labs Online Services was born.

Online Services, for the lack of a better name at the moment, is a fully-fledged RESTful web service for game licence checking, leaderboards and achievements. I did look for available 3rd party platforms, but most did not cater for small ‘indie’ player sets, or looked as though they were awash with too many features. Still my leaderboard ordering problem was left unfixed, despite them offering way more more in terms of features.

With Domipheus Labs Online Services, Gears of Glory: Apex Ace will ship on far more distribution platforms than before – and the playerbase will remain one, single universe with everyone connected into the same world and championship standings.

Also, as a developer, the cost of developing the Online Services component was far cheaper than having many different builds of the game for the various distribution channels, and having to test and support each one. For me, it’s a win-win.

There are greater things destined for the Online Services platform in due course. The user management, and licensing aspects of the service are incredibly valuable to indies which are often overlooked by the larger ‘Game Service’ providers as being too small. I have spoken to some indies personally and they have expressed an interest in learning more about the service and how it can help them. If you are interested in learning more, get in contact.

So, Domipheus Labs Online Services will launch alongside Gears of Glory: Apex Ace, and power all of the games online features, including user licensing, management, analytics, leaderboards and achievements. It is expected to be opened up to other indies in due course, with a range of affordable pricing options, from free up to a few coffees a month.

Open beta releases

Back to the main Gears of Glory: Apex Ace release schedule. It’s now moved from a fixed release date, to having no release date with features being rolled into several beta releases.

Release One will feature the Season Circuits. These are racetracks which ship with the game, and each one has a global leaderboard in which player standings are calculated, and challenges sought. Leaderboards contain not only the lap time of the entry, but are tagged with the actual recording of that players lap. So whilst the game is Single Player at this point, you will be racing ‘against’ other players in the game world.

Release Two will feature the Track Builder. The track builder is pretty much feature complete in terms of how it fits into the game, however, the facilities to share these tracks with people do not exist at present. This will be discussed and developed into a ‘shopfront’ of the most popular user tracks, with people being able to publish creations to it. At the moment there are no plans for this to come with In App Purchasing.

Release Three will feature Multiplayer. Multiplayer has been a real struggle to implement, not because of the engine or actual game mechanics, but because of the way in which the internet works now with everyone behind routers. For a game to really be multiplayer, we need master lobby and NAT introduction servers, and this is something again Domipheus Labs Online Services may help with. I have always said I don’t want users to need to go and open router network ports, which seems to be what most smaller indie developers do. This really is not a good user experience, especially in a pick-up-and-play title like Gears of Glory: Apex Ace.

Release Four will be the full, non-beta, release. The beta releases will all be priced cheaply, with the purchase of a user license granting access to all future beta and main releases of the game. After Release Four the price of the game will increase to reflect it’s complete state. ****

At the moment, I am gearing up Release One to happen in late August.

I really hope this has cleared up the state of development currently. I know it’s been very quiet lately. But development is going full throttle. The game is currently playing nicely – as long as you like technical racers, that is!

Lastly, Launch Platforms.

Gears of Glory: Apex Ace will become available on the following platforms:

• IndieCity
• Desura
• Indievania
• Direct from Developer
• __ Steam Greenlight

This has been a very long post, so finally – please tell your race fanatic friends about the game. The game needs an active leaderboard community to be fun. You can keep up to date at by liking the facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/gearsofglory****.

Thanks for reading, you will all get the chance to play the game soon!

Colin