I’ve been hard at work on Fortunate Bear’s next product, but I wanted to lift my head long enough to give a quick preview of what I’m working on. Keep in mind, it’s very early in development and maybe 20% (if that) of the features are done. But without further ado:
(Video is HTML 5, so you’ll need a recent browser.)
As a bonus you get to see my fantastical art skills. The codename for the project is Vectorspring, and I hope to be showing off more as it progresses.
I’ve officially launched my new website Hearts & Tactics today. Ever since I started work on Black Maria, I’ve been wanting a website where I could talk about hearts, and pick up tips on how to play better. As a rule, the better I can play a game, the more I enjoy it.
Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot out there when it comes to places to talk and learn about hearts. Don’t get me wrong: there are tons of places to play hearts. There were two dozen iPhone apps last I counted. It’s hearts strategy and tactics information that’s lacking. There is information out there, but it’s scattered and hard to find. I lost count of how many broken links I ran into when doing research.
Anyway, Hearts & Tactics addresses all that. It has a comprehensive strategy section covering everything from passing, playing, and shooting the moon. It’s not just for advanced players either: it contains strategies for beginners too. It has place where you can talk with other hearts players about strategy, your favorite variations, or where you like to play. It even has a brief bit about the history of hearts, if you’re into that sort of thing.
The goal of Hearts & Tactics is to get more people playing and enjoying hearts. I think teaching some basic strategies and providing a place for those interested to congregate and help each other out will do a lot. So go check it out.
I officially released Black Maria today. If you like card games — especially if you like ones that require strategy — and you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you should give it a try. If you don’t know how to play hearts, no problem, the game will teach you how. It’s also free, so there’s no reason not to go try it right now.
Update: I’m no longer able to take any more people into the beta program at this time. Thanks for your interest!
I’ve never been much for twitch-based computer games, instead preferring ones that require a little more thought and strategy. In fact, I tend to prefer real world card and board games to the computer kind. One of my favorites is the hearts card game, which requires dodging hearts (penalty cards) while trying to force other players to take them.
The only problem is I don’t always have pocket space to carry around a deck of cards, nor do I really want to. And don’t get me started on finding three people who know how to play hearts, and finding the pocket space for them too. Apparently these people have standards, and sometimes restraining orders.
Anyway, Black Maria is how I like to play hearts. It uses the rules I prefer (although they’re configurable through expansion packs) and fits nicely in my pocket. Even better, it comes with three witty opponents who — as far as I know — don’t know any lawyers. The difficulty, rules, and even opponents and backgrounds can be changed through expansion packs.
If any of this sounds remotely interesting to you, I encourage you to try out the Black Maria beta, and leave me some feedback about what you think about Black Maria. Despite the price tags listed in the app, the expansion packs are actually free for the beta, so be sure to give them a whirl too.
There have actually been two releases since Illuminate 1.0: 1.0.1 and 1.0.2. I didn’t announce 1.0.1 before because it only contains compatibility fixes for Lion, and until Lion is released the fixes don’t help anyone.
The 1.0.2 release includes several bug fixes and minor enhancements. Originally they were going to go into the first 1.x minor feature update, but that’s taking longer than I originally expected. Here’s the changes in the 1.0.2 update:
Fixed problem where grouped windows were not grouped together in Cycle Windows. Includes Adobe document windows, Xcode 4 windows, and Safari’s Top Sites windows.
Changed Cycle All Windows feature to be always visible in the menu, so users can find the functionality.
Fixed a crasher where accessibility callbacks where calling dead objects.
Fixed incompatibility with St. Clair Software’s AppTamer that results in bad performance in Illuminate.
Changed the close and minimize shortcuts (W and M, respectively) to work regardless of the modifier used to invoke Cycle Windows.
Added an option to include minimized windows in Cycle Windows.
Changed license information storage from the preference file to the keychain. This will allow the preferences to be thrown away without losing license information.
Changed the newsletter signup dialog to no longer automatically select an email address in order to prevent accidental signups.
Fixed incompatibility with Rainmaker’s SpellCatcher that caused Illuminate to fail on launch.
