Tidalis Lite -- First Beta WebPlayer!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2011/01/tidalis-lite-first-beta-webplayer.html

Big news!  We've been talking about doing a web-player version of Tidalis for a long time, but it's always been "sometime in the future."  Well... the future is now!

Tidalis Lite is an interesting experiment for us.  It's completely free, and basically a scaled-down version of the full game.  It's not a demo -- we already have one of those -- and yet it's not quite a full game, either.

We took the idea from the iPhone space, where paid full versions and free lite versions are the norm.  People are free to enjoy the lite version of a game as basically a bite-sized experience that stands on its own, or if they like it enough and want more, they can move up to the full version.

Heck, if you aren't sure after trying the lite version, you can try out the full demo.  The lite version and the demo version have a lot of overlap in what they give away for free, but there's quite a bit that is only in one version or the other.  But the lite version is the quickest, easiest way to dip your toes into the game: it's only a 6.7mb download, assuming you already have the unity web player (which is tiny, anyway).

Do note that the current version of Tidalis Lite is still a beta.  We won't be fully announcing this via press release until early next week, and in the meantime there might be some bugs.  We'd love any help and feedback folks can give us in the bug-hunting department for this.  As always, enjoy!

Click here to play Tidalis Lite in your browser.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Very, very nice.

I find it interesting and yet slightly amusing you took inspiration from the iPhone market, but your spot on.  I've noticed the mentality of the iOS store is that if you don't have a light version, you won't likely sell the app.  I'm pretty much the same when it comes to those apps.

I hope this works out to more Tidalis sales for you guys

King

[zebramatt]

The Next Tutorial button doesn't appear to work for me!

I'm running Chrome, if that has any impact.

[x4000]

I'm a big fan of a number of iPhone games, actually -- it's a huge indie market, and one I can experience without being at my desk, which is a big plus for someone like me who spends so much time at his desk normally.  There's a lot of crud on the app store, but that's true anywhere, really.  There are definitely some gems there, too.  And I'm really surprised to find that, for example, the version of Secret of Mana there seems to have the best graphics yet, and some handy onscreen quick buttons that make it one of the better-controlling versions of Secret of Mana, too.

As for the bug with Next Tutorial -- thanks!  I hadn't found that, but I have a report of it already, and a couple of other bugs.  I'll try to have a fixed version out today!

[x4000]

1.014 of Tidalis Lite is now out:

* Fixed a bug in the prior version that was not doing the "dying animation" of blocks properly, and thus was throwing off the timing of block clearing.  This was due to a trailing slash when loading the "animator files" that is allowed in the filesystem, but no in the unity resources thing (ugh! ugh! ugh!).

* Fixed a bug in the prior version where the Next button wasn't working properly to actually go to the next puzzle/tutorial/whatever.  This one was my bug, but was related to the rejiggering of all those file paths to look to the internal resources stuff.

* Apparently the issue with the going to the levels menu when in a quick game, was fixed incidentally by the other changes.

Note: if you still see 1.012 at the bottom right, then you need to hard-refresh the browser page (in Firefox, this means holding Shift while clicking the refresh button).

[Spikey00]

That's actually really cool!  I really do hope that this move would bring more attention to the game than it has received... I don't see why not. 

You'll probably want to have someone post the news over on the Tidalis Facebook page.

[Echo35]

Works very well! Any chance of making this a Lite game as it is but with a full game unlockable for those of us who own Tidalis? Also, Unit Web Player? Can we have AI War in Chrome?

[x4000]

Unfortunately, doing the full game in the browser would be... well, really unpleasant.  It's a 400mb download, and we'd have to figure out ways to break that up, etc.  AI War is in a similar boat, where it just has a ton of content and it's not likely we'll make a web based version there.  Frankly... after doing Tidalis Lite, I'm questioning if I ever want to port something to Unity web player again, heh.

[Echo35]

Unfortunately, doing the full game in the browser would be... well, really unpleasant.  It's a 400mb download, and we'd have to figure out ways to break that up, etc.  AI War is in a similar boat, where it just has a ton of content and it's not likely we'll make a web based version there.  Frankly... after doing Tidalis Lite, I'm questioning if I ever want to port something to Unity web player again, heh.

Well yes, I was assuming that's why the music wasn't there along with extra arrow graphics and such. Perfectly understandable.

[Spikey00]

>http://www.facebook.com/pages/AI-War-Fleet-Command/143457342376 Unity Web Player post

Mats Rune Torgersen I would like to say that the partial loading system that loads the UI gradually as you click on it is basically fail, because the game is still timing based, albeit not requiring much reactions. the loading lags are annoying and unneccesary, on a modest laptop for instance.

Mats Rune Torgersen id rather have one solid 5 min load before the game starts

Mats Rune Torgersen works with chrome, not with this game.

Mats Rune Torgersen in AI war- tidalis is different- could you get cloud saving for steam? i just lost campaign progress in Tidalis, like 30 levels aaargh


I'll leave that for you to answer.  :p

[x4000]

The ui spent gradually load in for tidalis lite, I don't know what is being referred to. In ai war, it does that to conserve overall ram usage.

And no, steam cloud support isn't coming, I wrote abot why in a post on the tidalis steam forums.