Unity3D Game Developer, WebGL Developer

v1.4 for the Trench Run has FINALLY been approved by Apple ( still making its way around the planet ).  This version fixes a major memory issue experienced by 1st Gen iPhone and 3G iPhone users.   It also has a couple of other minor fixes as well.

The one nice thing about this fix is we were able to put the nice 3Gs version of the trench into all versions of the game now – so it looks beautiful no matter what you’re playing it on 🙂

3Gs Trench

We’d been able to hand out a few copies to people who bought the app on a 3G and 1st Gen iPhone and they all reported that the game worked perfectly on their devices with the update!

So if you gave us a bad review on the app store because of the game quiting, freezing, dying on you, would you PLEASE install the update and try again?  We would REALLY appreciate the help and a positive rating if you have the time.  Apple has taken their sweet time in approving this fix, and the ratings have killed us on this one issue.  VERY VERY FRUSTRATING!

Also, I think we’ve done everything we can possibly do to service the people who spent their hard earned money on this game – and we took it a step further this time 😉

I had meant to hold on to this easter egg for a while, but since this bug cause such a problem for a many gamers out there, I’m letting this one out early to say “thank you” for your patience and time!

Easter egg:  Fly in the Millennium Falcon:

Millennium Falcon Cockpit view

Dog Fight View

Features:

*  Fly as Millennium Falcon

*  Insti-gib cannons – one shot kills/destroys.   You only get 4 blasts at a time, but one bolt destroys the object.

How do you get to it?!

click Play Now.  When you see the Death Star in the next screen, touch the Death Star’s cannon area (inset circle area when the big bad laser comes out).  Now play as the Millennium Falcon 😉

OH and PS> if you’re a supposed iPhone app reviewer, please try the game in JEDI mode and adjust the sensitivity ( you know, because, it’d probably PLAY better ) – OH and don’t forget to try the ARCADE MODES which make game play infinitely longer…just a request 😉

For those of you who bought Trench Run and ran it on a 3G device, you might have had some of the problems I listed in the last post.  Essentially, it was a memory issue.

We’ve been up late working on fixing the issue, and we finally found some white elephants in the app to kill off that brought the memory not only under 4omb’s (which is ideal for an iphone app) but we brought it down into the low 3o’s.

It now runs VERY well on a not only a 3G iPhone, but now works JUST as well on a 2G (1st gen) iPhone!!  I installed and played it on my 1st gen iPhone tonight and it was very smooth.

We’re testing internally tonight, and we’ve asked some of the people who purchased the app but entered negative reviews because of the 3G performance to help us test the app.  We were able to reach out to a few people who made the purchase to help us out and let them know – we’re not here to steal anyone’s money, we’re here to make a kick ass Star Wars game 😉

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

And to make it up to all of you who will be waiting patiently for the 1.1 update in the app store, I’m going to reveal ONE of the easter egg ships (Darth Vader’s ship).

instructions>controls – touch where it says “toggle cockpit”  – play 😉

I know that can’t make up for being frustrated initially, but hopefully, you guys will give it another chance and enjoy flying as Darth 😉  The 1.1 update will be well worth the wait, I promise!

********* UPDATE  **********

This is feedback from one of the users on a 1st Gen iPhone (8gig) – he originally purchased and it was unplayable:

the difference is night and day. I made sure to NOT restart the phone and played with both music and sound enabled to get a sense of things. Not sure if there’s something specific you all are looking for, but barring that, here are my notes after 2 sessions totaling close to an hour of game play:

– opening video plays much smoother

– loading screens on the order of 5x faster (not scientific, but the difference is dramatic)

dogfight:
– very, very slight lag when tie fighters explode
– no lag during general flight or when firing and missing

trench levels:
– overall, very smooth
– controls more responsive, playback less jerky
– slight jerkiness returns when vader shows up (still very playable)
– videos when you fail/win are both smooth

– exiting to the home screen is cleaner (music doesn’t continue to play for several seconds anymore)

We just got word that the Trench Run game was approved by Apple!

Click here to get it on iTunes

To celebrate, how about a few extra screenshots you haven’t seen yet?  Enjoy 😉