ACotGK: Chapter 2 Testing

I finished my run-through of Accursed Crown of the Giant King: Chapter 2 “The Duchy of Despair”. Things went pretty smoothly; found a couple of minor bugs, and more than a couple of typos, but nothing major. I’ve got to say, chapter 2 is pretty fun!

On to chapter 3!

In parallel I’m working on chapter 3, making steady progress.

The Accursed Crown of the Giant King is an old school role-playing game, single player, party based. It will be released in 2021 for Windows, Mac, and iOS. ACotGK is by Merry Prankster Games, and you can get more information at https://prankster.com/acotgk.

In-App Purchase Woes

For the past few months I’ve been working on a frustrating bug with In-App Purchases in Accursed Crown of the Giant King. It hasn’t been urgent to track down since no one is purchasing anything until the game is released (or at least beta), but still something eating up attention.

So, for testing IAP, you work in something that Apple calls the “sandbox”. You make up fake user accounts, and they can make purchases and downloads of unreleased IAPs, without having to pay real money. Very convenient!

In the sandbox, iOS IAP works great! However, with the same exact code, and same exact IAP, the download fails on MacOS. Here’s a screenshot of the download hung at 80%:

I got in touch with Apple Developer support, but they were not able to track down the issue. I wonder that no one else is running is running into the issue, and thus not a priority for Apple. So I don’t really know whether I have done something wrong, or this is a sandbox-only artifact, or a real issue with IAP downloads on MacOS.

In any case, I’ve wasted enough time on this. I’m just going to change the way IAP works in ACotGK, such that the download is unnecessary. I’ll just download all of the chapter files with the main app download, but only unlock them upon a successful IAP (with no download at all). Not the most secure solution, but I’m not really putting much effort into defeating piracy in any case.

ACotGK: The Annuncius Inn

The Accursed Crown of the Giant King is an old school role-playing game, single player, party based. I must sadly announce that it will be released in 2021 for Windows, Mac, and iOS. I was hoping for 2020 but with just 3 months to go, I’m not quite there. ACotGK is by Merry Prankster Games, and you can get more information at https://prankster.com/acotgk.

Here is a video of my playtesting through chapter 2. In this play, the party explores the Annuncius Inn, resting, picking up new quests, and meeting a new potential companion.

In the meantime I’m working on chapters 3 and 4. Look for another video soon!