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BCF - March Update

BCF - The Rebuild - March Update

 

 

It's been  a month since we posted an update and we're very sorry for the lack of updates.  Josh has been dealing with some personal problems that required all of my time and I haven't even been on Facebook for 2 weeks.  Things have finally settled down and Josh can turn my attention back to Longshot and we have some news we want to share with everyone.   The best way to present this is breaking it down with the good, the bad and the ugly:
 
First - the good news is.  Most everyone that follows Bobblehead and Longshot knows that David and Josh have fulltime day jobs that are constantly getting in the way of working on the game and prevent us from supporting and growing the community and improving the game the way we want to.  The good news is that over the last 2 weeks we've been able to figure out a plan to get a fulltime person to work on the game and support the community and help us finally finish the web version of the game and grow it from there!  And - we'll finally be able to respond to requests, fix bugs, and add features on a regular basis and hopefully build the game into a massive success.
 
The bad news is that the new fulltime help won't be starting for about 3 weeks and we haven't made much progress on the game for the last 3 weeks due to fallout from the Texas storms and some personal circumstances.  We are now WAY behind what we initially planned and that sucks!! Everyone waiting on the web version has been patient and understanding and honestly you guys are awesome with putting up with our lack of progress but we know y'all are running out of patience with us.  That's why we lined up some fulltime help.  Hopefully everyone can hang with us and be ready to jump back into the game as soon as it's ready. 
 
Now the Ugly- we still have 2 major problems we have to fix before the game can ship and the more we look at them the worse they get.  We made a massive mistake with using Unity as our engine and honestly I hate Unity at this point.  The Unity game platform sucks and their support sucks even more and I will never choose to use them again.  Even with adding a fulltime person to help we still have a couple of months of re-doing a big chunk of the game.  We're not exactly sure how long it'll take yet to get everything done and get the game rolled out.  We know that we will be done before June 1 for sure and hopefully before May 1 but it will be more than a month from now.  
 

We know that timeline sucks! We planned to be done 2 months ago so this is a huge setback for us and why we are doing everything we can to try to get the game out as fast as we can.  When our fulltime help starts we're confident we'll make make progress quickly and we'll be able to put out a high quality game everyone will enjoy playing!  Thank you for sticking with us till now and for your patience and we can't wait to get this game update out there!!

Answers to a few common questions about the update:

  • Will the game keep working on iOS?  Yes - the game will be available to all iOS players.  If you have connected your facebook account to your device or to gamecenter then you can continue to play the game from your apple mobile device. 

  • Will we keep our current team?   Yes - if you'd rather restart your team from the beginning and re-experience BCF in the new version you can contact us at support@longshotgames.com and we will hook you up.

  • Will my team get challenged while the game is unavailable?  Teams that have not been connected to an iOS device and are not able to be played will be put on Byes until the game is updated so you will not lose trophies or be challenged until the game is back available.

We'll keep everyone updated on the game through Facebook and on the blog here and on the mailing list!  Believe us - we want to get this done more than anything and can't wait to get the game out and have everyone playing again!

BCF - The Rebuild - Delayed!

BCF - The Rebuild is Delayed

 

We apology to our web Facebook users, we are still not ready to release the update of the non-Flash version.  Basically - David and Josh messed up and there's no sugar-coating it!  We drastically underestimated how long it was going to take to get this new version of the game ready and get it running on apple devices.  With Flash officially dead we thought we had a quick solution for porting the game using the massively popular Unity Game Engine.  Unfortunately, the time-savings we expected to get by using Unity have not materialized and actually have been a net negative trying to get the game ready for iOS.  The Longshot team has been working round the clock the last 2 months but the game simply isn't ready.  We are pushing as fast as we can and have brought on 3 additional people to help us and try to speed things up but we are still several weeks away from releasing the update.  

We know this is disappointing - after thousands of hours of work put in by the team it's painful and frustrating for us and we know it's just as frustrating for you to not have the game ready on time like we had planned.  We don't have a definitive release date yet but it will be at least a month away.  The iOS version of the game will continue to be available and users can continue playing as usual on apple devices.  For our web-based Facebook users all we can do is ask for your patience and know that we will release the rebuilt version as fast as we possibly can. 

I wish there was something more we could do except ask for your patience while we get the game update ready.  We will post weekly updates on the development status and as soon as we can commit to a date we will let everyone know.  We may even have early-release gameplay and beta testing opportunities for those that stick with us!  We know this is a huge bummer and again we are very sorry! We will keep working hard to get the game ported and back on Facebook as fast as possible!

Answers to a few common questions about the update:

  • Will the game keep working on iOS?  Yes - the game will be available to all iOS players.  If you have connected your facebook account to your device or to gamecenter then you can continue to play the game from your apple mobile device. 

  • Will we keep our current team?   Yes - if you'd rather restart your team from the beginning and re-experience BCF in the new version you can contact us at support@longshotgames.com and we will hook you up.

  • Will my team get challenged while the game is unavailable?  Teams that have not been connected to an iOS device and are not able to be played will be put on Byes until the game is updated so you will not lose trophies or be challenged until the game is back available.

We'll keep everyone updated on the game through Facebook and on the blog here and on the mailing list!  Believe us - we want to get this done more than anything and can't wait to get the game out and have everyone playing again!

BCF - The Rebuild - Update to Jan 23rd

David, Josh and the team have been hard at work the last 6 months getting a whole new version of the game ready and our goal was to be done by Jan 1st when Flash is no longer supported.  Unfortunately we aren't quite ready to release the new version yet.  Due to complications with Facebook Release schedule, COVID, and some timing issues we have fallen a little behind schedule getting the game ready.  We are polishing up the game now and we will release on Facebook on Jan 23rd.  This sucks.  We hate that we won't have a game out for an extended period of time on Facebook.  iOS players will continue to be able to play the current version as usual. 

We are taking a couple extra weeks to continue to test and make sure we have a game that we can be happy with, we may get there before Jan 23rd - Right now we have a few things that need to be tuned up before we are comfortable putting this update out there!  And, it's possible we'll have a pre-release version out before the 23rd.  We will be working as fast as we can to get the new version out.  If you want to receive an email update for any updates and posts we make you can like our FB page here and you'll see updates on any possible early release. 

And we've had a few questions come in about the update:

  • Will the game keep working on iOS?  Yes - the game will be available to all iOS players.  If you have connected your facebook account to your device or to gamecenter then you can continue to play the game from your apple mobile device. 

  • Will we keep our current team?   Yes - if you'd rather restart your team from the beginning and re-experience BCF in the new version you can contact us at support@longshotgames.com and we will hook you up.

  • Will my team get challenged while the game is unavailable?  Teams that have not been connected to an iOS device and are not able to be played will be put on Byes until the game is updated so you will not lose trophies or be challenged until the game is back available.

We'll keep everyone updated on the game through Facebook and on our blog here!  We are excited to get this game out and have everyone playing again!

Announcing: BCF - The Rebuild

 

BCF Rebuild Version Announcement!

We're excited to announce the development of the newly built Bobblehead College Football Game.  The original version of BCF for web and mobile was built using Flash and on Jan 1st Flash will no longer be supported.  Unless we rebuilt the game on a new platform BCF would go away.  Lucky for you that is exactly what we are doing! 

On December 30th we will begin the rollout of the rebuilt version of BCF.  It's a complete rebuild of the game using the Unity platform.  On December 30th we will push out an update for iOS and push an update to Facebook.  We're really excited for all the possibilities this brings and we have lots of plans and a whole host of new features that we will be rolling out over the next year!  But, before we can start adding new stuff we had to strip the current version down to it's core and start building it back up.  The December 30th release will have a completely new look and feel to it and new gameplay. The core game is mostly the same: recruiting, campus upgrades, conferences, BFL and of course challenging players is all in the rebuilt version. Several secondary elements of the game: Things like achievements, team records and others will be temporarily removed and will be replaced with better versions of these same features.

Key elements of the game will all work mostly the same - your team and players will all stay the same and conference members will stay together as well.  Your trophy and currency bank will continue right where it was when you left off. 

We're working hard to get this brand new and completely rebuilt version ready and tested by Dec 30th but to be completely honest - we're running a little behind schedule!  We will transition to the new version on Dec 30th and we're going to do everything we can to make sure the transition to this new version is as clean as possible.  But with a brand new version of a game we hope you'll be a little patient with us during the transition until we can get everyone migrated to the new version and once the game is live we welcome all feedback!

Over the next month we'll be updating Facebook and this blog every few days with details on our development effort and what you can expect when the new version is live along with some sneak peaks at the gameplay.  We'll also be announcing BFL details, some prize details, and a couple of unique opportunities to set up your bobblehead team for eternal glory!

Thank you everyone for making this an awesome community - there are so many great people playing this game and we would not be putting in all the work to rebuild the game if it wasn't for all of you and for all the great times we have together! This is the dawning of a new age for Bobblehead and we're thankful that all of you will be a part of it with us!