My apologies, a new poll, some spoilers and some surprises.

Hi guys, I am sorry I haven't written in a while, I have had a lot of work to do and I have been quite sick lately, but I will make it up to you with some special surprises.

First I will start with some spoiler images from the next update: Barking spider, crouching pygmy, I will post the link in case there are some people who would not like to see the pictures. I fyou have trouble viewing them I would happily send them to you, just comment here or e-mail at pygmywarehouse@hotmail.com.

http://thepgforum.com/3.0/updates/28exc.php

I would like to thank hdgreen for those pictures.

Next is some fan work I did in honor of the new update:

All theses pictures were made with the apps Doodle Buddy and Zombie Me!

And last but not least is something that took some preparing and (thanks to some delays) some time; I got and interview with Dave himself, so here it is my loyal bloggers:

1: What influenced the creation of this game?
Allan and I just tried to come up with a simple project that we could finish before getting distracted by a new idea. We had worked on a bunch of flash based games before this and one idea came to mind that was easy to develop and have a fun mechanic where you could swing little characters and drop them on the ground.

2: How do you get the ideas for most of the updates for Pocket God?
The update ideas come from a lot of different areas. Many of them come from suggestions by fans but a lot of times we have no idea what we are going to do until a couple days after the previous update.

3: A little while ago (around return of the Pygmy) you announced that the price would go up to $2 but then you stopped. What caused you to change the price and then what caused you to go back on your decision?
A lot of fans were complaining that they didn’t want to see us raise the price and see our rank suffer. We were also about to hit the 1 million sales mark and we didn’t want a potential ranking slip to hurt our chances we would reach it. After we delayed the price increase for a couple weeks, we felt the best thing to do would be to take it off the table and continue being $0.99. The hard thing about making announcements in advance, is that we are very quick thinkers and change our minds pretty frequently.

4: Many people are wondering this and there are always debates about it: is there going to be a Pocket God 2 or some sort of follow up?
Yes, there will definitely be a follow up but we have no idea when it will actually happen. It’s really hard to work on a follow up without putting a good deal of the work for PG1 on hold so it really depends on how much longer we decide to keep making updates. However, its getting pretty close to the point where we really want to work on a new PG themed game. Also, when we say Pocket God 2, we think of a game that is very similar to the concept of the current Pocket God game except we take the functionality to the next level and offer better skinning of the pygmies, bigger islands, friends, etc. Our next Pocket God game will probably not be Pocket God 2, but instead will be an actual game that uses the Pocket God Characters and Powers.

5: How many updates do you plan to do before you stop updating Pocket God and do you plan to release a DLC for every update?
We will try and release DLC with every update but we aren’t sure how many more updates we have in us. We have our sights on finishing out this year and then we’ll see what happens.

This last question is a little late but its good for those of you who were too lazy to read the SOTI :P

6: You announced on Twitter the name for the next update is Barking spider, Crouching Pygmy, any chance we can some hints on the new features?
Yes, it will include a giant spider that the pygmies can do battle against. We recoded the combat so it’s a bigger challenge than it used to be and also added trex/spider combat challenges. The spider web has some cool functions as well and we added a Halloween Skin Pack. There are about 13 objects that have Halloween themes like the Meteor, fish, and statues.

A new poll is up, Dave announced that after the next update there is going to be another trilogy with a new island that a lot of fans have wanted so here's the question: What do you think the new island will be? THe poll will be up for 2 weeks so vote now.

Well see you around and have fun

spidey146

Barking spider, crouching Pygmy SOTI and end of poll!

Hi Pocketgodders! Today the SOTI (state of the island) was released on Touch Arcade has just been released. The SOTI is where Dave writes about the next update, in this case Barking spider, crouching pygmy, Dave has announced that the next DLC will be Halloween themed and will be for many objects, not just one, so here is the SOTI with the icon at the bottom. WARNING, it is VERY long:


Finally getting back into work mode after recovering from a cold last week. We submitted the update last Wednesday night and everything is looking good. Since then we have been resting up and taking care of bookkeeping matters which is quite the pain.We have been getting some really good feedback about our T-Rex DLC. there is some confusion about whether you get all the options or just a single option for $0.99 and we want to make sure everyone knows you get all the options for that pack and you can go back to the screen at any time to change your T-Rex back to the original or another skin without having to pay again. As far as the results (in case you're a dev and are thinking of implementing DLC). We haven’t received much of a backlash from going to 3.0 only. We might get 1 email every few days about it and most of them are fairly understanding, but might not have the money to upgrade right away. We have had some issues with reviews where people think that going to 3.0 means that the game isn’t compatible at all with iPod Touch. I'm not sure if these reviews are by people who are trying to spread false information because they are angry or they just didn't bother to read the message that tells them to upgrade to 3.0. We lost about 10 ranking points in the top paid apps (US) due to the 3.0 change but it seems we are fairly stable at 33 right now. Even though new users dipped, our overall sales of DLC + new users are better than what we were getting before with just new users. Also, the sales curve is a little steeper with DLC than with new sales. For us at least, new sales decline at a pretty slow rate while DLC has a huge spike when the update first comes out but a pretty rapid decline after that. Although, after a week, it seems like DLC sales is settling into 27% of new sales. It will be interesting to see when the new DLC pack comes out whether its sales will add to this figure or just replace it. Also, keep in mind, we have a pretty big fan base and a lot of loyal users that continue to check out our updates. It would be interesting to see what other apps are seeing with their DLC figures.Apple recently announced that they are allowing free apps to charge for DLC. We have no plans to offer a free version of Pocket God with a $0.99 upgrade fee. Right now we are afraid that if we switch to free+DLC, we may lose some of our visibility on the Top Paid apps list but I don't want to say we will never go in this direction because obviously I didn't think we would be moving to 3.0 or offering DLC until recently.About the update, we are introducing a humongous spider into the graveyard island. We retweaked combat with the T-Rex and the Spider to make it more challenging and also added it as a challenge that you can do with friends. There are new achievements for combat based on the lowest number of spear throws it takes to knock one of these down and I have to say, it's pretty hard. Because if the difference in sizes, each monster needs a slightly different strategy to take it down. Some of the betas had a reaction that it was way too hard at first but there are techniques you can learn in order to get better at it over time. I think it will end up being a fun challenge and it brings more life into the T-Rex so those skins don't go to waste. We also made the spider web interactive, you can drag a pygmy into the web, call a small spider down to cocoon it, and then trigger a bunch of baby spiders to eat the pygmy from the inside out.We also added a new DLC Halloween Skin Pack to this update. Instead of skinning a single object and giving it lots of options, we chose to pick a lot of objects and give them a Halloween version of it. I swear to god, I haven't typed the word Halloween so many times in my life compared to this last update, and every single time I find myself singing the Halloween spelling song I learned as a kid. "H-A-Double L-O-W-Double E-N spells Halloween". God, I'm so sick of it already ...anyway, so there are cool Halloween versions of a bunch of objects like the volcano, the bird, even doodler. Screen shots will be released in the near future on the blog. Allan did a really good job with them, you can enable each skin individually so as we release new skin packs, you'll be able to mix and match.From the technical side, I was able to optimize some things. There was some polling going on with challenges that were dragging the cpu down by about 10%. So it should run a little quicker. I hate to be one of those games that asks you to reboot your phone before playing but that helps too. I noticed that the iPhone 3G that I use for personal reasons can be really slow after a bit of use. Not sure what it’s from, maybe a lot of apps, a lot of music or whatever, but it can run a lot slower than a 1G iPod touch that has hardly anything on it. Once I reboot though, it seems to go pretty quick. We also ran into a wall in terms of texture memory, we currently have 5 1024x1024 16 bit texture atlases and 2 1024x1024 PVR compressed atlases that are in RAM while the game is being played. This combined with other assets give us a 30MB RAM footprint which is right on the edge of the suggested amount of memory that iPhone apps should use before serious problems start to happen. We managed to add all the new skins and assets from this update to the existing atlas space but we won’t be able to add new atlases to the game so that means no new functionality without figuring out a system to dynamically load pieces into memory on the fly. Most games do this already but you end up seeing a small stall between screens or levels in their game. I think we can figure out a method that will do this on the fly but it will take a big cleanup effort to complete. So this means that the next update will be a cleanup update and it will probably take longer than 2 weeks to complete. We will still find some kind of functionality to add to the update (and DLC) but our main focus is to improve startup time, improve frame rate, and implement a good dynamic texture and sound loading system that allows us to add DLC and new features in an easier manner. Not sure how long this cleanup will take but we are trying to get 3 major updates out before the end of the year. It will end up being a new trilogy and will include a new location, something a lot of people have been asking for.

Just to end it off i ended the poll early beacause, well, we know what the next update is :p, so here were the rankings:

Spider: 66%

Werewolf: 28%

Clash of the undead: 4%

We will have a new poll up soon and remember, if you have any ideas, fan art, or anything you want ot see at this blog, e-mail us at pygmywarehouse@hotmail.com

Enjoy!

spidey146

Pocket God Glitch Central

http://www.pocketgodglitchcentral.blogspot.com

There I post glitches of every update. Some are funny, cool, or just plain weird. So go on it as much as you can, comment on it, vote on polls, and tell everyone you know to visit it!

Barking spider, crouching pygmy

Hiya, for those of you who don't know the next episode title has been released, it is called Barking spider, Crouching pygmy, does that give anyone ideas? They haven't said much about the new update but apparently from some of the beta testers the icon is really awesome and Davlan said "I hope the next creature doesn't 8 legs". Stay tuned as we try and get as much detail as we can and keep your eyes peeled for many other surprises. Remember, if you have any fan aret, cool pictures, suggestions or anything at all just e-mail us at pygmywarehouse@hotmail.com, have fun!


spidey146

iPocketGod

Here is an awesome blog run by iPocketGames! He made an awesome blog so go over there and check it out!!

www.ipocketgod.tk

How to be awesome in Ooga Jump!

To be good in Ooga Jump you have to be very careful. First, while you are jumping make sure of what clouds are around you. Most of you say that some clouds disappear under you when you try to jump on them. That is true but if you look closely a disappearing cloud (also called wispy cloud) is different from a regular cloud you jump on. I have marked it on the picture above. The cloud circled in red is a disappearing cloud and the one circled in blue is a regular cloud. You can use lightning clouds to give you a boost and go higher but using it too much will eventually make you fall. This is my first guide so hope you like it!

Good Will Haunting info

Hi guys, I see you have met Raheel, he used to run a great blog that he unfortunately closed down but now he's here with us! So as I said earlier the newest update has been released along with a couple of little treats and after spending about a day or so with it I love having a desk in the corner :P just joking) these are my reactions:

It is probably one of the biggest updates out to this point and I'm sure there are many more to come, there are SO many things you can do, her's a list of the many different things you can do accompanied by a picture (in advance, I'm sorry the pictures are like that, I'm still new to this :P)

Getting a ghost: All you have to do to get a ghost is be on Skull Island and kill a pygmy, presto! You may only have 6 ghosts at a time (one of each pygmy).

Moving a ghost: Quite simple, just drag him around and when you take your finger off he will move to that destination (Tip: The ghost works like the lightning, he will move in whatever pattern you move youur finger in, he just won't do the entire thing if it's too long)

Getting rid of a ghost: To get rid of a ghosst simply drag him to the white circle that appears in the top-left when you hold a ghost, this will allow him to "cross over" in to the after-life and leave.

Banshee scream: To do a giant banshee scream just hold your finger on one of the ghosts and he will scream, killing all pygmys.

Scared to death: To scare a pygmy to death drag a ghost across and next to a pygmy, he will spin around the pygmy, then scream and the pygmy will clutch his heart and die (it's basically a pygmy's own personal banshee scream, which isn't exactly a good thing :D)

Possesing: One of my favorite of the new abilities, an Exorcist-inspired ability which is the only of the ghost-powers not to kill the pygmy. What you do is do the same thing as scared to death but instead of stopping next to the pygmy, stop in the pygmy. The ghost will possess the pygmy, he will turn his head all the way around, vomit (yes, I said vomit) then fly up into the air, the ghost will come out of him and the pygmy will hurtle towards the ground.

Carried away: Carried away is one of the simpler ones, and often accidently happens when you are trying to do another ability. You just drag the ghost from above, down onto the pygmy, he will grab him and carry him away. The thing about this one is that after they fly off the screen, neither of them come back (meaning the pygmy that died doesn't turn into a ghost)

Pulled into ghost world: One of the harder ones to do, to do this you must drag a ghost underground and curve it back upwards under the pygmy. The ghost will go into a portal in the ground, then pop back up next to the pygmy and pull him under with him.

I would like to thank the once-again amazing saintsalive for supplying us with this detailed picture on how to do pulled into ghost world

DLC (downloadable content): One of the coolest things about this new update is the brand new DLC, which you can buy for only $0.99! It is a way of the devs to help get a little funding without charging for the updates themselves, which will always be free. For this DLC you can customize the T-rex with 5 skins, 5 hats and 5 tatoos. Here is the answer to a commonly asked question: Yes if you buy the DLC you will get all 15 items.

The items are:

Skins:Metal, Dragon, Pygmy, Prisoner and Purple (Barney-like)

Tatoos: Skull, Heart, Tribal, Lightning and racing number (0)

Hats: Top hat, Headphones, Pygmy-style (goes great with pygmy skin and tribal tatoo) Viking hat and an awesome Sombrero (Dave you rock :D)

Here you can see the new icon: The DLC shop

This is the DLC information screen

The "succesful purchase" screen

This is where it really happens: The customization screen (currently wearing Purple skin, Sombrero hat and Lightning tatoo)

And finally here is my dino in action (wearing Dragon skin, sombrero hat and no tatoo)

PHEW that was a long post but I hope it helps all you Pocket God fans out there, but please stay tuned for a very special surprise in the next couple of days.

have fun

spidey146