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This game is 5 months old already, so no changes will be ever made. I'm not going to put it on carts, although it is available from places such as The NES Dump for a long time.

I somehow doubt that NES games of this style had more than 7 stages. Maybe you think of some other style, but we were thinking about Donkey Kong or Popeye, which had twice less stages.

Well, I was thinking more in terms of games like Door Door and Wrecking Crew, but I see what you mean now that you bring those two specific games up.

Still though, even though DK and Popeye only have a handful of stages, they'll repeat after you get through them all, and with each iteration, the challenge increases. Once you get through the work week in this game, you're dumped back to the title screen.

If you'd like me to imagine this game along side DK and Popeye, I need to pretend that this is a faithful NES port of an arcade game. In that case, you've done a good job with the overall aesthetic and the gameplay itself, but I get hung up on the fact that the game just completely ends after 7 stages, instead of doing what those other games would have done, and repeated them with a shorter time limit or something.

Again, this is a good game, but I think it could've gone a bit farther. If you ever decide to revisit this concept, I'd be interested in seeing it.

Actually, there was an idea to make next loops with more difficult levels, by putting more characters on the existing levels - more different level layouts would be really difficult to design because of limited screen space. You can see it in the source code that there was support for few characters per level initially. I can't recall the exact reason why I decided to not do it. One of reasons was lack of free PRG memory, and CHR was filled up too, so no extra characters. NROM was set as an intentional limitation, you know, to have a point where the project should be finished - otherwise it could be extended indefinitely.

Drag wrote:The factoids are a cool touch, but in the later stages, the action is just too frantic for me to actually stop and read them

I saw it as a way of compensating for no multiplayer mode. The non-player in the same room watching you play is probably reading them.

Macifom wrote:

thefox wrote:Tried it out, cool! Sound did seem a little bit choppy at times though (nothing too drastic, using iPhone 4).

There's definitely room for improvement in the current iOS build of Macifom. For performance-related reasons I'm not using the sync-to-sound approach I do on the desktop, which is why you'll occasionally hear hiccups in the audio.
That, external controller and external video support are at the top of my to-do list for the next version. I'll push an update to the Zooming Secretary app when it's ready.

How about a landscape mode?

In case more people start to get interested in having their homebrews "ported" to iOS, there are couple of more possible features that could be useful with small changes to the games:

- Game Center support (achievements, etc)
- Audio could be played back using MP3/whatever using some special register writes to take care of some of the audio issues (and to get more flexibility)

It's too bad the controls are inevitably so crappy, though. I have tried playing the Mega Man 2 Lite from AppStore, and while I was able to complete the level (the lite version only has one level), it wasn't very enjoyable.

That and possibly support for other control methods more suited to a flat touch screen, such as Zapper support and tablet controller support. (Is the Oeka Kids tablet documented anywhere beyond here?)

thefox wrote:How about a landscape mode?

In case more people start to get interested in having their homebrews "ported" to iOS, there are couple of more possible features that could be useful with small changes to the games:

- Game Center support (achievements, etc)
- Audio could be played back using MP3/whatever using some special register writes to take care of some of the audio issues (and to get more flexibility)

It's too bad the controls are inevitably so crappy, though. I have tried playing the Mega Man 2 Lite from AppStore, and while I was able to complete the level (the lite version only has one level), it wasn't very enjoyable.

Landscape is definitely in the works, though it won't be triggered by the accelerometer.

Game Center support is a suggestion I've heard as well. Both that and the potential MP3 playback support would need a register-level API for NES to emulation layer communication. Perhaps I should start a separate thread to propose that API? It would have to be something homebrew authors would actually consider supporting.

I agree that touch-based controls don't work well for games designed for physical buttons and rocker-type direction pads. The physical feedback and exactness just aren't there. With the addition of external display and Bluetooth controller support, I'm hoping that a more authentic experience will be possible when mobility isn't a factor.

tepples wrote:That and possibly support for other control methods more suited to a flat touch screen, such as Zapper support and tablet controller support. (Is the Oeka Kids tablet documented anywhere beyond here?)

Zapper support would be cute, though in practice it might be frustrating as your hand would obscure the play area. Perhaps on iPad?

That's the first I'd ever heard of Oeka Kids and its tablet accessory. Sure beats Color a Dinosaur.

Macifom wrote:Perhaps I should start a separate thread to propose that API? It would have to be something homebrew authors would actually consider supporting.

Yeah it's probably not worth the effort right now. I would wait for some homebrew author to pick up the idea first.

BTW why no acceloremeter support in the landscape switching?

thefox wrote:

Macifom wrote:Perhaps I should start a separate thread to propose that API? It would have to be something homebrew authors would actually consider supporting.

Yeah it's probably not worth the effort right now. I would wait for some homebrew author to pick up the idea first.

BTW why no acceloremeter support in the landscape switching?

I had been worried that the accelerometer was fiddly and would cause unintended orientation changes during game play. In practice, it hasn't been an issue and, if it ever were, the orientation lock option in Settings will take care of it.

The latest Macifomlite codebase supports rotation between portrait and landscape on both iPhone and iPad, as well as new control methods. I'll be posting a new game with the updated codebase next week. After that I'll push the changes upstream and integrate the new features into Zooming Secretary.

Excellent game! I'd like to see if there will be changes on it.

This game is completely finished, so I don't plan to make any changes.

I asked hubs, who lurks in #nesdev, to test this and the other games in the Streemerz bundle. His reaction: "streemerz and lan master were my favs [but] zooming secretary was fkn brilliant as well"