Progress report

This blog will be a bit more technical than usual, but I want to clarify exactly what we are working on and how we are doing it.

A screenshot of the work-in-progress mobile game, shown in a previous blog, was one of several functional mock-ups running on the existing game engine. Since then, I’ve pushed ahead with the development of a new game engine and key decisions for the new platform. In previous blogs I mentioned converting iGP Manager’s race viewer to use WebGL, but the scope of the project is much bigger than that.

We’re rebuilding iGP Manager as a HTML5/WebGL web application (currently it’s a series of PHP/MySQL web pages). A web application is a website that behaves like an application, typically minus the normal loading times of a website (Google Docs and Gmail are great examples). There are many benefits to redeveloping iGP as a web application. For example, pages will load faster, I can build in a complete multilingual translation engine and importantly, it can eventually be packaged as a mobile app.

In recent years, packaging HTML web applications as mobile apps has become mainstream and achieved near-native performance. It is less common to see mobile games using this approach, but for a management game like iGP Manager, the technology is adequate and continues to improve. HTML-based mobile apps are also much easier to maintain across platforms, which is ideal for a small team like ours.

To redevelop iGP Manager as a web application I’ve had to go back to basics. Questions like “How will pages be loaded and displayed?” or “How will all text be loaded and translated?”, and “How can it all be as efficient as possible and later packaged as a mobile game?”. To my knowledge, very few people have built a game like iGP with HTML5/WebGL and there are almost no references to help us along. It feels a bit like we are paving a path for the emerging field of HTML5 games.

The underlying service, the front-end interfaces and gameplay are all being rewritten in the process, applying lessons we have learned, even from testing previously unreleased updates. Next month, my work will move on to the fun stuff – making the game fully functional and integrating many gameplay improvements and suggestions we have received.

Alongside my work, improvements continue to be made to the stability of the platform. Updates in recent months have greatly improved stability, but more is being done to provide better service, latency and more uptime for you. To optimize the service, we are going as far as stripping out much of the old networking code and rewriting it.

Rather than launching one giant update with everything, these updates will come in stages. The most likely course of events is as follows:

1. In Q3 2015, iGP Manager is re-released as a web application with revised gameplay and a totally new interface and user experience. Initially, it may be English language only and a Java race viewer will still be used.
2. Full translations are added to offer a multilingual experience for international users.
3. A new WebGL (non-Java) race viewer is integrated in to the web application, providing full cross-platform browser support, while preparing everything to be packaged as a mobile application
4. When ready, after several tweaks to accommodate the platform, iGP Manager is packaged as an app, co-existing with the web application

Releasing in stages like this will mean we can continue to prioritise desktop gameplay in the meantime, and work out any quirks before taking on new platforms and territories.

It’s fair to say that in the past, the developer blogs often glossed over the details. I will do my best to be clear from now on about exactly what we are working on and what stage of development we are at. At present, I am doing the majority of the work, such as redeveloping the website as a web app, while another developer is upgrading the underlying service. And on that note…

We’re hiring!

We are seeking an additional HTML5/WebGL developer. Prior experience with Cocos2D-x or Cocos2D-JS is preferable but not a requirement. If you have a good grasp of WebGL we would love to hear from you.

If you are interested in applying for more information, please contact us using the Contact page, here: http://igpmanager.com/contact