MICRO SPACE MOBILE

So it's time for the release of the mobile version of Micro Space. It was not an easy and long journey, but it came to an end. Mobile version 1.0 is completely identical in content to version 1.12 for PC, available on Windows and Linux. But! It has some additional features related to the specifics of the platform. We also tested on some devices (Meizu 16th, Nokia 6, Realme 8/8 Pro, Samsung A52, Honor 20), but we will not mind at all if you write to us how the game is going on your device)

Well, shall we get started?

Controls

The first and most important difference is of course the game input. It was the most painful experience of my first smartphone game. I tried for a long time to deal with the work of multitouch, but this did not allow me to get the desired result. As a result, I had to create virtual keys that could work normally with multitouch. Each button recognizes a press and triggers the same events as similar keys on the keyboard. In fact, this is a small virtual keyboard that emulates all the buttons used in the PC version of the game.

For more convenience, I also made a small control tweak, which you can see in the screenshot below.

Four options (small and large) and four button layouts (normal and mirror). Thanks to this, each person will be able to choose a more convenient option for themselves.

UI

Of course, the entire menu has been redesigned for the mobile version. If only one keyboard was enough for navigation on a PC, then a more familiar version with buttons had to be created on the phone. It was also a good reason to try to make the menu more "lively". Its elements are no longer just static. They got simple smooth animations of their appearance, which of course looks much better than "monolithic standing buttons".

Minor changes

It is also worth mentioning some minor changes, some of which also became available on PC with minor patches.

1. The trigger to call the first enemy worked with reaching 2500 points, but in recent updates the condition was changed to 1500 points. This was done to increase the dynamics in the early stages of the game.

2. Deleting the world leaderboard. This was done due to the sudden temporary "death" of the service we used to implement this mechanic. For us, it was a strong and unexpected blow, as this incident began to cause critical errors in the game. For this reason, we had to cut the world leaderboard. The most offensive thing about this is that we were able to implement it even in the mobile version, but our work was wasted. At the moment, I have little free time due to the session, and all my free time I spend on a new game and the creation of version 1.2 of Micro Space. But I will try to find time to bring the world leaderboard back into the game.

3. An exploit has been eliminated that allowed a significant increase in the rate of fire, which greatly broke the balance and made the bonus increasing the rate of fire useless.

4. Bugs have been fixed that could negatively affect the gaming experience.

5. A new icon for the mobile version from my friend.

Special thanks

Thanks to the start of the development of the mobile version of Micro Space, I was able to attract a lot of people to help me with testing the game on their phones. They also supported me and expressed their opinion about the game, which helped me a lot to join mobile platforms for the first time.

Many thanks to my comrades!

• Taldarin (advice and moral support)
• geroy_sanya (icon drawing and testing)
• Shoft (testing)

And also thank you for reading this little dev diary. I hope the game came out better than my self-assessment)