First of all, if you are playing Spirit Lake:The Game and looked here because you are having a problem, let me just start with this, from our readme file we finally got around to writing.
STOP AND READ THIS
90% of the problems users have can be prevented by doing these three things.
1. Make sure you have Windows 7 or 8, or Mac OS 10.7 or higher
2. Use Firefox as your web browser on Windows and either Firefox or Safari on the Mac. (The game has been extensively tested using the Firefox web browser, which can be downloaded free from https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/ for both Windows and Mac computers.)*
3. Make sure you have not blocked pop-up windows.
Okay, now that’s out of the way, here is what this post is really about ….
It’s almost 4 a.m. and the Windows installer for version 2.10 is being built (compiling). I haven’t been blogging here a lot because I’ve been involved in a million tiny fixes to make the game better. These include:
- Finding video clips that are smaller or larger than the size of a small laptop screen and changing the default screen size.I have very poor eyesight so I have an ultra-large monitor. Many schools use low-cost laptops with really small monitors, so the students have to scroll down to see the whole video on their screen if there is ANYTHING above the video – title, anything.
- Finding input pages for the problems where the submit button is off the screen. You might think it would be logical to scroll down, but remember, some of our users are as young as 4th grade.
- Fixing the memory game where sometimes you’d end with two cards that didn’t match. That bug is gone.
- Fixing a bug where when you had a wrong answer, were sent out of the game to study, then passed a quiz, you came back to the game in the wrong place. (Dennis fixed that one.)
- Making an automated installer for Windows so people no longer need to extract the files manually. This also creates a buffalo icon on your desktop. (I’m partial to buffalo.)
- Making a video clip to explain perimeter for students who need more of a hint.
- Deleting unnecessary movie formats, to make the overall download speed faster and the total space required on your desktop smaller.
- Writing readme and license files.
- Adding more sound, so when you are walking in the woods, you hear birds singing and other wood sounds. (I actually recorded this in the woods on Sully’s Hill.)
- Adding Easter eggs.
…. there is a lot more, but you get the idea. Basically, this update is cleaning up and fixing up to give the game a more professional feel and appearance and reduce as much as possible any frustration our users might have experienced in installing it or playing it.
Having better sense than to distribute anything I finished at 4 o’clock in the morning, I’m uploading the self-install for Windows now before I toddle off to bed. Once our testers have had a chance to download it and check it out, it will be available to download by all of our licensed users and our Kickstarter backers.
To all of the people whose email I haven’t responded to in the last week- um, sorry, but now you know why.
*We recommend using Firefox on Windows. The game has also been extensively tested using both Firefox and Safari on the Mac, neither of those should give you any problems. Some users have reported no problem with Chrome but we haven’t tested the game with Chrome as much. Many people have had problems with Internet Explorer. We’re working on it.