There will be a mobile version of OHOL soon...

Christoffer · 2018-06-12 10:53:23

Our little game development studio have quietly been working on a port of Jason's game for several months. It's starting to look really good and we estimate that we will release for iPhone, iPad and Android devices in July. Here's the current version of the app icon:

Note that we are not doing anything without asking Jason's permission first, including this announcement.

OHOL fits touchscreen devices very well. In fact, I would say that the user interface we have come up with for the app will be easier even than the two-mouse-buttons interface for PC/Mac. Having no separate keyboard may be off-putting to some, but anyone who is used to texting shouldn't really have any problems.

Most of the experience will be similar to what you are used to, but there will be some differences. We will for example integrate family trees into the app rather than having them separately, and we will incorporate support for several languages. This means that we have to use different fonts, like in this screen shot (Chinese, Russian or Japanese would of course require different fonts):

Jason himself is not involved in the project. He made it very clear that he wants to invest all his time on perfecting the original game. Since coordinating releases on desktop and mobile would have meant extra work and less freedom for him to release whenever he is ready to, we came up with a model where he simply does his thing, and we take whatever he releases and update our app and our servers afterwards. This means that new content will appear first in the desktop game and that we cannot share servers. As towns typically aren't very large, our thinking is that this will not make a huge difference to the experience.

We also have some game concepts that we wish to try out in our version over time (sort of like mods), but we intend to keep one mode which is always as close as possible to Jason's. That's also the play mode we are releasing first.

Have a look at our web page if you are interested: www.dualdecade.com
You can also find links to our previous game there, if you want to verify that we know what we're doing. That game is free to play (with optional IAP to support us), but OHOL for Mobile will have a one-time cost instead.

I'll try to answer any questions you might have.

Babsy · 2018-06-12 11:00:33

gl with your venture

Christoffer · 2018-06-12 11:04:24

Babsy wrote:

gl with your venture

Thanks, Babsy!

Uncle Gus · 2018-06-12 11:27:28

Huge news! Very exciting! Can you give us a ballpark figure for app price?

Anshin · 2018-06-12 11:40:43

Flintstone wrote:

Our little game development studio have quietly been working on a port of Jason's game for several months. It's starting to look really good and we estimate that we will release for iPhone, iPad and Android devices in July. ...
Note that we are not doing anything without asking Jason's permission first, including this announcement. ...
Jason himself is not involved in the project. ...
Have a look at our web page if you are interested: www.dualdecade.com
... but OHOL for Mobile will have a one-time cost instead. ...

Will Jason be getting any of that money?

Christoffer · 2018-06-12 11:47:44

Uncle Gus wrote:

Huge news! Very exciting! Can you give us a ballpark figure for app price?

Glad you think so, Uncle Gus!
It's a bit too early to make any promises, so I'd rather not. One thing that's true for the mobile games market though, is that people demand a lot of value per dollar. So I think that it's safe to say that it will cost less than what it's worth.

What would you guys think that people would pay for a mobile game like this, if I may bounce the question back to you?

Anshin · 2018-06-12 11:52:27

Flintstone wrote:

What would you guys think that people would pay for a mobile game like this, if I may bounce the question back to you?

That depends on if Jason will be getting any of that profit.

Izzytok · 2018-06-12 11:56:02

I always thought the game seemed really fit for a mobile platform.

If it had all the features of the original game, played well and got regular updates 20 bucks would seem like a steal. Personally however I'd never pay more than 3 bucks for a mobile app.

Any amount I'd pay would have to come under the assurance that you've made right by jason though.

Last edited by Izzytok (2018-06-12 11:57:24)

Christoffer · 2018-06-12 12:00:07

Anshin wrote:

Will Jason be getting any of that money?

We'll need to ask him before posting anything that involves his economy. I hope to be able to answer later, ok?

Christoffer · 2018-06-12 12:29:45

Izzytok wrote:

I always thought the game seemed really fit for a mobile platform.
If it had all the features of the original game, played well and got regular updates 20 bucks would seem like a steal. Personally however I'd never pay more than 3 bucks for a mobile app.

That is the situation for mobile games. People really expect to pay less than real value. This means that games have to sell a lot of copies in order to break even (but less in this case, because of Jason's work).

Izzytok wrote:

Any amount I'd pay would have to come under the assurance that you've made right by jason though.

This makes perfect sense to me. We'll let you know more before the release happens, so you won't have to worry about us somehow ripping him off.

jasonrohrer · 2018-06-12 15:43:51

The game is in the public domain. Anyone can do anything they want with it, including this.

These folks have asked my permission, and I've told them what I've told everyone else: it's in the public domain, do what you want, you don't owe me anything.

Most recently, they asked permission to promote their game here. I said yes, because the only rule here is "be nice," and I wouldn't count this as spam, given that it's OHOL related. Other mods and ports are being discussed here as well.

And to prove that I really stand by the public domain, see Terminal Heist, an amazing re-make of The Castle Doctrine: http://www.terminalheist.com/

There was some question initially about them selling accounts on my server (with the mobile version playing on the same servers), but there were all sorts of technical issues lurking there, and one big economic one: I can't let accounts on the main server go for less than $20, so that means the mobile app would have to be at least $20 (otherwise, people would just buy the cheaper mobile version and use the cheaper account to play the PC version, or even worse, re-sell the accounts for a profit).

So, they decided to run their own separate servers, and deal with authenticating server-side accounts using standard mobile security-by-obscurity or whatever.

They did try to offer me payment and make some kind of agreement with me about the "official" mobile version, and here's what I said:

If you really make "too much money," feel free to send me a large cash gift at some point if it makes you feel better.
As far as it being the "official" mobile version... well, I had no hand in creating it, nor will I be able to test it on my end (I have no mobile devices here at home). I also don't have the time to vet you before you start doing the work.
I also have no power to offer you any kind of exclusive. The public domain is the public domain.
Though I will say that no one else has mentioned it yet, so you are likely the first movers here.

And to further prove how much I believe in the public domain, and that I really had no hand in this, just look at that chat font! Ouch! I'd never make a font that's so easy to read....

Christoffer · 2018-06-12 15:56:13

jasonrohrer wrote:

And to further prove how much I believe in the public domain, and that I really had no hand in this, just look at that chat font! Ouch! I'd never make a font that's so easy to read....

Hehe, that font was actually created by my father many years ago, so we can use that for free as well
https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/feltpen/

jasonrohrer · 2018-06-12 15:58:22

Also, I should clarify something about my beliefs: the public domain does not grant people the right to commit fraud.

People making mods and ports and derivatives cannot mislead people. They can't say, "We drew all of these characters ourselves," or, "OHOL was our original idea." They don't have to give me credit, but they also cannot fraudulently take credit.

If someone made a port and called it "The Official OHOL Nintendo Switch Port" or whatever, and it wasn't actually approved by me, that would be fraud.

Also, my thoughts on this particularly murky corner of this issue are way less than half-baked....

jasonrohrer · 2018-06-12 16:04:28

Flintstone wrote:

Hehe, that font was actually created by my father many years ago, so we can use that for free as well
https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/feltpen/

Wait, so Lino has granted your family a license, or what? Was that part of the contest rules?

Also, the use of ALL CAPS in the chat wasn't just me being contrary.... that's the convention used in almost all comics.

That almost looks like your father's font....

Christoffer · 2018-06-12 16:16:57

But always using caps means that people can’t YELL at each other. We can’t have that.
No, seriously, It’s more the use of other alphabets which made us realize that we can’t use a white-list for allowed characters. Mandarin would kill us.

Anshin · 2018-06-12 17:11:02

In support of the mobile port:

You should use a dyslexic font. Much easier to read in general!

https://www.opendyslexic.org

https://www.dafont.com/open-dyslexic.font

Last edited by Anshin (2018-06-12 18:47:56)

YAHG · 2018-06-12 20:41:00

You expect us all to believe that lady with the bow is gonna ASK for carrots?

COMON

jasonrohrer · 2018-06-12 20:46:53

Well, you could allow the client to type any character, but then just process the western alphabet to force upper case for just those 26 letters.

Uncle Gus · 2018-06-12 22:02:59

In the immortal words of Jerold Dwight Ellis III and Garrick Demond Husbands, "I've got five on it." That is to say, I would be willing to pay five American dollars for the mobile app.

mikekchar · 2018-06-13 02:04:19

jasonrohrer wrote:

They don't have to give me credit, but they also cannot fraudulently take credit.

Quick note because I know much more about this topic than I would like. The types of things you are talking about are called "moral rights". Relevant wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights

There are a surprising number of things that moral rights can cover. One scenario, in particular, you should be careful of. Imagine that someone takes OHOL, modifies it substantially so that it no longer matches your vision (or is, in fact, derogatory in some way), and then claims "This is AnAwesomeLife written and designed by reknowned developer Jason Rohrer". While you can get a trademark for OHOL to stop people from misleading people about the product, you can not do the same with your *name*. That's why moral rights are important.

Some countries require a waiver of moral rights. Unfortunately, it is my understanding that moral rights in the US is tied to the copyright. This may mean that you forfeit your moral rights if you put the work in the public domain. It's the main reason that I don't give up copyright on my works even though I agree with your main premise. Still, it has been my experience that the vast majority of people who make derived works are nice people and usually try to comply with your wishes even if they don't have to.

Christoffer · 2018-06-13 07:29:16

jasonrohrer wrote:

Well, you could allow the client to type any character, but then just process the western alphabet to force upper case for just those 26 letters.

That sounds like a possible way. It would have to be quite more than 26 letters though. Don’t forget that most Roman languages use more than the A-Z subset of the alphabet. ÜÅÄÖØĘÊÆÑ... It would look strange for Europeans if almost all characters were caps, but a few were not. So the font would need to support them all, and then we would have to make sure to catch them all and convert them to caps. Some work required, but not impossible.
We would have more problems with the Slavic languages, though, which use the Cyrillic alphabet. At least Russian is among the top 10 to support. Japanese, Chinese and Korean don’t share characters with Roman, so with them we could follow different rules, but the Cyrillic alphabet shares several characters with Roman, like AEKOCX. I guess it’s possible that these have a different encoding than A-Z, even if they look the same. I would have to find that out (or maybe someone on this forum knows?)

jasonrohrer · 2018-06-14 06:07:59

Mike, I'm not necessarily thinking about the moral rights of an author here.

I'm more talking about matters of fact and ordinary fraud. Like calling something hand-made when it is not. Or saying, "I just picked this apple this morning," when in fact you bought it at the grocery store last week.

If someone says AnAwesomeLife is by me, they are lying. I would got to great lengths to make sure the truth was known. Just like if they said I was a murderer or whatever else. I'd want to make sure the truth was known. It's not a matter of copyright.

Now, if they said AnAwesomeLife was based on my work, they would be telling the truth.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2018-06-12 10:53:23

There will be a mobile version of OHOL soon...

#2 2018-06-12 11:00:33

Re: There will be a mobile version of OHOL soon...

#3 2018-06-12 11:04:24

Re: There will be a mobile version of OHOL soon...

#4 2018-06-12 11:27:28

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#5 2018-06-12 11:40:43

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#6 2018-06-12 11:47:44

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#7 2018-06-12 11:52:27

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#8 2018-06-12 11:56:02

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#9 2018-06-12 12:00:07

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#10 2018-06-12 12:29:45

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#11 2018-06-12 15:43:51

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#12 2018-06-12 15:56:13

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#13 2018-06-12 15:58:22

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#14 2018-06-12 16:04:28

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#15 2018-06-12 16:16:57

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#16 2018-06-12 17:11:02

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#17 2018-06-12 20:41:00

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#18 2018-06-12 20:46:53

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#19 2018-06-12 22:02:59

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#20 2018-06-13 02:04:19

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#21 2018-06-13 07:29:16

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#22 2018-06-14 06:07:59

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