I haven’t blogged in awhile, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy.  With the help of Big Fish, I’ve translated the game into Dutch, French and am currently working on Spanish.  Then I’ve got Italian, Danish, Swedish, Portugese and a few other languages still left to do.  Needless to say, Best in Show has gone international.  Translating the game is a lot of monotonous work and the first time through was slower than subsequent translations have been. This week in the middle of working on the Spanish translation, I was a little bored and wanted to try something new so I started working on porting the game to Flash.

I am happy to announce that you can now play Best in Show: Arcade in any browser for FREE!  The Flash game that we developed is a stripped down and simpler version of the full game.  There are no fences, dog abilities, spares, pet store, stat tracking, undo button, squirrels, special cards, etc.  The new arcade version of the game is all about competing for high scores by going for big combos.  Everything is integrated with MochiGames so you can unlock achievements and challenge your friends.  Here’s a breakdown of everything Best in Show Arcade:

• Each hand of Best in Show Arcade costs 1 Paw Coin; when you run out of these coins it’s Game Over.
• Clearing Cards fills the bone-o-meter in the top-right – the better the combo the quicker this fills
• When the bone-o-meter is completely full, you will earn another paw coin
• You score points by clearing cards and getting perfect hands.  There are points bonuses for combos.
• The Wild Card – play wild cards by clicking the button.  This allows you to play any numbered card so choose carefully.
• Hands are randomly generated and randomly dealt – EVERY TIME you play will be different.
• A Perfect Hand will also give you a boost for your Bone-O-Meter.

Big Fish Games provides monthly sales statistics so the only way we can track how Best in Show is doing right now is by checking the BFG sales charts every morning.  We’re actually doing better this week than our release week and have reached an all time high at spot #65 today.  That’s the #65 top seller for PC out of all of Big Fish Games!  Not too shabby!  That equates to #4 on the Card and Board Games Genre page.

It’s going to be tough to dethrone Fairway CE or the original Fairway Solitaire, especially since Fairway CE was developed/published by Big Fish Games, but if you want to help – check out Best in Show on BFG.  Pepper could really use some treats and new toys though, so I’m looking forward to getting our first month sales figures and could use a check for all the hard work.  There will be exciting new announcements in November too!

One of the best things about releasing the game today on Big Fish Games has been the instant access to user reviews and lists of technical issues.  Unfortunately, we have only so much control over how Big Fish Games installs things and how our game interacts with their game manager.  That being said, we do have the power to post helpful tips and clarifications right here on our developer blog.

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Issue 1: Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package is needed to run our game

If you download the game directly from us and get a charImage.mfx cannot load, then you need to download Visual C++ 2008.  I send our customers right to Microsoft to download/install the most recent version:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=29

Unfortunately, Big Fish Games installer tries to automatically detect install/repair/remove this package.  A lot of people on Big Fish Games are complaining that they have Visual C and they are prompted to repair it because the version BFG is pushing is not the most updated version found on Microsoft’s website.  If you have Visual C and you’re installing Best in Show on Big Fish Games and you get a screen telling you to repair Visual C – you can ignore and close it.  The newest version of Visual C++ works just fine.  If you have it installed the game should work just fine (as reported by several users over on BFG).  It’s very annoying that Big Fish’s Game Manager handles the Visual C++ thing this way but there’s nothing we can do about that… or that their game manager closes when you launch the game.  This is more of a minor technical annoyance than an actual technical issue though.

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Issue 2: The Cards turn, flip, fall, animate slowly

There have been a handful of people that have complained about the graphical slowdown of the cards flipping over, being dealt, or clearing from the playfield.  We would love to fix these problems, but need information on the computers that these people are using.  I have messaged a couple people about their computer specs over on the BFG forums and have not gotten any responses yet.  My guess is that these people are using PCs below the minimum system requirements shown on the game’s page.  We only have so many computers around the office to test on… we’ve run it on Win7, XP, and Vista.  The version of windows has little to no affect on performance unless the newer versions of windows are really pushing and stressing older computers.  The game runs a little slower on a 4 year old PC running Vista, but not to the degree that people are complaining about.  The only computer that we have in our office that has excruciatingly slow animations is our Win7 Starter Netbook with an Intel Atom N455 1GHz processor.  The game runs, but not well.  The way a game runs can be affected by so many things and we would love to try an help anyone experiencing slowdown on Big Fish Games or otherwise.  We just need you to contact us so that we can collect information about your PC and identify the problem.

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Issue 3: People over on BFG think Windows 7 is the problem

Big Fish Games lists the Operating System for Best in Show to be Windows XP/Vista on their website.  This is very frustrating since the game was developed and tested on a Windows 7 PC.  The game runs on Win7 great.  I have a large screen Win7 64 bit game that runs the game incredibly smoothly.  If cards are flipping slowly, it is likely due to your computer specs and not your version of windows (although Win7 does have a lot of graphical features that can ‘stress’ older systems).  Anyways, it’s a complete misconception that the game does not work on Win7 – it does.

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Issue 4: There’s a glitch on Level X where there’s no dig card/Acorn/etc. and I can’t get a perfect

It’s not a glitch – it’s challenging level design.  Right around the 8th/9th Level and certainly after the Regionals competition, some hands have obstacles that can only be cleared by using the correct dog ability.  I love that some people have figured this out on the BFG forums: “Anytime you think it might be beneficial to switch your dog for one that has a special “powerup trait” that you need, you can click Menu, then Dog Select. From there you can switch dogs, return right to your same place in the current layout, and then sic ‘em on the problem. So far, I have switched to the dauschund using this method because I had a Fence but couldn’t get to a Fence card. This is about the only time I would ever think it’s so great to have a dog of mine that will dig under a fence.” We believe that what makes Best in Show standout is this challenge and learning curve.  Collecting and Training Dogs to unlock their abilities is crucial to get Perfects on every hand.  Figuring out and discovering what Dog abilities fit your play style is what this game is all about.  That’s why there are no penalties for switching dogs!

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Those are the only technical issues that I have seen come up so far.  It’s good that it’s a small list, but I am annoyed that I can’t figure out why the game runs slowly for some people.  Maybe they have too many programs open or just a really old machine… I don’t know.   Hopefully, we’ll be able to get in touch with some of these people and investigate further.

Best in Show Solitaire has been released on Big Fish Games today and was featured in their Daily Game Splash email.  You can find it right on the homepage under today’s new releases or Felix’s Favorites (or just click here).  It took a lot of work to hammer out all the bugs and tweaks that BFG required, but we are thrilled to be features on such a large game distribution site.  Best in Show will be available on other distribution services later this year, and once all of this work is finished we will be able to focus on porting the game to new platforms.

Here’s an awesome new trailer of Best in Show solitaire that shows off all the features and fantastic gameplay. The PC version is finished, so if you ‘preorder‘ now – you will get the Strategy Guide, Level Editor and PC Version of the game instantly. We will increase the price once the Mac and Linux Ports are finished. We also have a content limited PC Demo Download to try for free.

Zak and I got our dogs together this weekend for some synchronized swimming.

I’ll leave out the part about Vada (she’s not in the game for a reason!) attacking Pepper.

For all those Best in Show players out there, I thought it was worth posting about how to use your old profile and save data without having to start over from scratch.  We’ve learned a lot from working with online distributors and receiving feedback from our players.  One very common problem was that the game was not able to write to the Program Files directory that it was installed in.  While this is an easy fix in Windows – it’s still not good to get an error message when you’re trying to relax and play solitaire.  It also happens to be a requirement for some online distributors that savedata is located elsewhere…so we’ve moved all the save data.

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You can boot up the new build and start fresh or you can follow these simple steps to copy over you old save data and continue the game where you left off:

• Go to the the folder where you installed the first Beta (or even the Alpha) of Best in Show (C:\Program Files\Best in Show Solitaire\ by default)
• Open the Data Folder
• Copy profiledat.ini and yoursavefilename.ini
• Go to your C Drive and create a folder C:\bestinshowsave\ (if you’ve launched the most recent build this folder will already be there)
• Paste all of your save profiles and the profiledat.ini file into this folder
• Launch the game and continue where you left off!

We’ve had a busy last couple of weeks working with publishers, portals and distributors. The good news is that Best in Show is most certainly headed to some casual game portals (It’s still better to buy directly from us though). As part of this distribution process, we have created an in-depth manual and strategy guide. This bonus item will be available for everyone who buys the game directly from us – it’s one more free bonus and reason to buy directly from the developer. The guide goes in a lot more depth than the tutorials and explains some of the finer elements of the game. More importantly we have some great tips and strategies in there! These will tips will help you train your dogs, unlock achievements, and get even more perfect hands and moolah.

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We’ve also added a ton more features and will be releasing another Beta very shortly (so preorder now, because the price is going up).  The most significant additions are the 11 new levels (that’s 99 new hands) to enjoy and 30 unlockable achievements.  We have also tweaked dog prices and scoring. Keep an eye out for the new build this month!

We are happy to announce that our game is currently available for Pre-Order from our website. You’ll save 50% by pre-ordering and will be able to start your quest and start training your dogs instantly after payment! We’re offering a sweet deal where you can get Best In Show, Storked! and The Magic Toy Chest all for only $19.95 during this pre-order promotion. Thanks for supporting us and we hope you enjoy the game!

What is the Best In Show Beta?

The beta is a pre-release period when the game is being balanced, polished and fine-tuned for eventual release. The game is not deemed finished and there are still some levels to create, bugs to squash, and fixes to make.

How do I get in on the beta?

We only want people playing the beta copy who are very interested in the game and supporting our studio.  As a result, we are making beta copies of the game available to people who pre-order the game. Obviously, once the final game is released, those people who pre-ordered will get the final finished and polished copy along with some other goodies.

What do I get for Pre-Ordering?

• You get early access to the game (PC Version) at a discounted price!
• You help fund the development of Best in Show
• Once you’ve bought the game, it’s yours. No DRM.
• FULL PC, Mac and Linux versions of the game when released
• Level Editor Tool (when released)

How long will the pre-order/ beta period last?

I am not sure how long the pre-order period will last, but as we add features and get closer to release the price will increase and get closer to the final release price.

Will the game cost more or less than the pre-order price?

Pre-Ordering will save you 25-50% off the final release version price of $19.95.  Remember that

Why would I pay for an unfinished game?

You don’t have to! The game will not be released until it’s finished. This is just an opportunity to play the game early, and to give feedback to the developer in time for us to actually improve the game and fix any issues before the general release. If you don’t like the idea of paying when a game is in beta, simply sign up for our newsletter and wait until the game is released. The game is working and playable right now, so you aren’t buying something with placeholder art and unfinished mechanics. This is a playable game.

Is there a demo?

No. Not yet, although of course there will be one on release day.

How do I give beta feedback?

Please send bugs, feedback, and other email harrassment to mike@graduategames.com. Feel free to comment on this blog post as well

So how do I pre-order?

Click here and buy the game. You will automatically be sent a link to the beta copy of the game. Thanks. We really appreciate it!

The Best in Show Solitaire alpha 3 is finally available.  It’s been a long time coming but the final alpha of Best in Show is finally available.  Nearly all of the final features of the game are in this build…and yes, we finally have SoundFX and music!  We are really curious to get feedback on the music since there is ambient nature sounds and some light thematic music loops.  I am leaning towards using the ambient natures music loops for the gameplay and using the music loops for all the menus, but would love feedback on the matter.  Some of the new features in this build are:

• Music/SoundFX
• Options Screen – volume adjustment etc.
• Trained Dog abilities (some)
• Loyal Dog abilities (some)
• 3 finished levels
• Newspaper Story Sequences

I’m sure there’s more, but that should give you an idea of what you’ll find in this final Free Alpha version of our game.  This will be the final free alpha, but once we get into beta we will be putting the game up for pre-order.  Preordering the game will help you save 25-50% on the final price of the game and will entitle you to the PC, Mac and Linux versions.  We are going to throw in the Hand/Level Editor Tool as well.

Please contact us with any bugs and feedback.