The save game aspect

BasGoodboy

Hey all,

The idea of my app, and I hope this is possible, is that the app, once it's activated, will keep playing non-visible on the background of the iphone.

You all know the idea of a Tamagotchi (i think at least), the idea of this game is like the Tamagotchi, my hero needs rest, and rest goes lower and lower by the hour, so you have to do actions to keep your hero alive.

Is this possible? Or once the game is closed, it isn't possible to make the rest keep lowering (cause the game is completely shut down)?

If this is possible I don't need to make a savegame, cause the game will never be completely off.

If this isnt't possible (and my best guess will be it isn't), i have to think of something else.
In this case: about the save game aspect, should i build in savegames after each action?
So when people suddenly shut the game off, the game itself remembers at next startup the last action and drops the hero there.

Like to hear from you guys?

quantumsheep

You can access time as a variable via the device's clock.

You could, for example, save the time every minute. Then load it back in when the game starts and compare it to the current time.

Based on this, for example, you can have rules that say:

"if difference in time > 1 hour, lose 10 energy."

"if difference in time > 2 hours, lose 20 energy."

etc etc

QS

BasGoodboy

That seems good man! Like that the game is closed, but when opened after 2 hours the energyloss is the same as it would after 2 hours of gaming!

BasGoodboy

Do you know if it's also possible to have a popup when the hero almost dies, even if people don't have the game open and just checking their mail or something?

The_Gamesalad_Guru

That would require push notifications and we don't have that yet but it's coming down the road.

BasGoodboy

Okay perfect, thanks a lot mate. I know enough for now.