Inside Pozirk Games

03 Sep

Real price of a smartphone

My old test BLU Vivo Air phone became too old, both physically and “mentally”.
The battery is playing tricks showing 40% in one moment and then dropping to 0% another and Android version is 5.0.2, which is soon will become unsupported even by my own games.
At the moment I still set minSdkVersion to 19 (Android 4.4 KitKat), but targetSdkVersion is already forced by Google to be 30.
Btw, in OpenFL it is done in project.xml file:

<config:android minimum-sdk-version="19" target-sdk-version="30" />

A neat list of all the Android/API versions can be found on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history.

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26 Jun

Gambling on interest rates… no more!

Real estate is kind of a national obsession in Canada (like everywhere else). Those, who have already bought the house, feel like they won a lottery, those who haven’t, still dreaming to win.
Both are checking prices and trends regularly.
Interest rates are as low as they can get, but prices went up a lot.
Checking from time to time what’s on sale around me, I can’t stop wondering how prices can be so high.
Anyway, I’m not writing about gambling on real estate today. ๐Ÿ™‚
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02 Jun

2 new solitaire games, weird lags and high CPU usage

I have added 2 new games to All-in-One Solitaire (HTML5 version only for now) and the very next day started receiving complaints about the game being slow…
I have tested the game on all the computers I have, one of them is 6 years old, and the game was working as smoothly as before.
I have a feeling that the problem is because of the latest OpenFL/Lime, as it still has lots of bugs and every update is kind of a gamble, while some bugs are being fixed, others appear. 😥
Thanks to one really nice and skillful player, I came to the conclusion that the game is working slow only on computers with AMD CPU and, maybe, in Chrome browser.
None of my computers have AMD CPU, so I’m not able to 100% confirm this weird bug.
Luckily, I was able to rollback to the older version of OpenFL/Lime.
It will be challenging to release new updates though…

New games are Lady Jane Solitaire and Alhambra Solitaire.
Alhambra is a tricky one, I had to cheat a little to make a winning gameplay video. 😉
Lady Jane Solitaire Alhambra Solitaire

19 Apr

Solitaire and Mahjong updates

Finally I have released updated versions of Solitaire and Mahjong games on all the platforms including iOS.
As I mentioned before, I added more layouts to Mahjong for the total of 200 layouts and added 2 more games to Solitaire: Cromwell Solitaire and Demons & Thieves Solitaire.
I must say Demons & Thieves Solitaire is a tricky one, it is not hard to win, but fairly hard to win fast.
I’m giving 11 minutes to get bonus score, but there aren’t many players who were able to get more than 728 base points so far.

23 Mar

All-in-One Solitaire, 2 more games

Cromwell Solitaire Demons and Thieves Solitaire
I have added 2 more games to All-in-One Solitaire: Cromwell Solitaire and Demons & Thieves Solitaire.
While working on the game I have made some modifications to other games and it caused major problem for website users.
The problem with HTML5 version is when browser caches .js files, but doesn’t cache resources like .jpg and .xml.
Whenever I update the game users’ browsers keeps loading old code, but new graphics which completely breaks the game.
Never had this problem with Flash, but they say HTML5 is better anyway…
I need to figure out some simple way to fix that, so if I update something users always load new version.
Telling everyone to clear the cache is not really helpful. ๐Ÿ™

26 Feb

What was wrong with Flash?

I have never had any problems with Flash Player myself.
But I’ve heard lots of complaints about 0-day vulnerabilities, etc. Of course, no support for mobile browser. Flash Player is not open source.
Maybe, maybe…

Anyway, I’m keeping Flash version of my games on the website as they are still working for me and some diehard players don’t want to switch to HTML5 version.
Moreover I still play some of the games from time to time, like Resistance Is Useless and Mad Tanks.

12 Dec

iCrap

Did you know, that after around 5 years your iPad/iPhone will start to work slowly, apps will start freezing or crashing.
The same might happen to Android devices.

It happened to my iPad Mini, that I only used for testing.
It has iOS 9.3.6, it is still working, but veeeeeery slow.
Most apps stopped working, my own games just crash.
Battery is still fine, but Apple needs more sales, thus the results:
Apple fined for slowing down old iPhones.
The same happened to my test Samsung tablet, so it’s not just Apple.

The reason I’m writing about this is an email from one of the players:

If you can choose your next device, choose laptop. It small enough, it can work without battery, you can always delete ugly Windows 10 and install whatever you want.
It won’t die in 5 years or sooner, unless you drop it. ๐Ÿ™‚
Online version of All-in-One Solitaire is always available to play in any modern web browser.

If you still want a tablet, try to not download and install system updates, stay with original version as long as possible.
Usually every new update has more “features” thus consuming more resources and making your device slower.