Jan18
Let the world championship begin!
posted by Stuart * 35 comments
A world first for the Commodore 64, version 1.4 now allows gamers to vie for global top scores in select titles.
Global Leaderboards
No doubt many of you may remember crowding around the screen with family and friends, as you all played the classics on your Commodore 64, constantly challenging each other for that elusive number one spot in the high score chart. Undoubtedly, you reveled in your glory when you grabbed the top score, whether it be Uridium, Paradroid or whatever happened to be the hot title at the time. Perhaps you were the best at your school, club or even town; but, are you the best in the world? Now is your chance to prove it with global leaderboards for select games using OpenFeint.
We’re very excited about this update, as it is the social and competitive aspect that makes gaming fun for many of us. Unfortunately, we can’t just flick a switch and magically all the titles have global leaderboards, for each title there can be quite a bit of work to achieve this so we’re starting out with a set of games that work well with this concept. Good candidates were those that are quick to play, so you can immediately keep trying to better your score. Paradroid is certainly the odd one out, we want to see everyone who can own the 999 droid 
Round One
Arctic Shipwreck
- Leaderboard for high scores
Lemans
- Leaderboard for high scores
- Achievements
- Lemans Bronze Medal (5 OF points): Scores 10000+
- Lemans Silver Medal (10 OF points): Scores 25000+
- Lemans Gold Medal (15 OF points): Scores 50000+
- Lemans Elite Driver (20 OF points): Scores 100000+
Jupiter Lander
- Leaderboard for high scores
- Achievements
- Jupiter Lander Trainee (5 OF points); Scores 3000+
- Jupiter Lander Navigator (10 OF points); Scores 15000+
- Jupiter Lander Astronaut (15 OF points): Scores 50000+
- Jupiter Lander Interstellar Traveller (20 OF points); Scores 75000+
Nebulus
- Leaderboards for high scores
- Planning to support achievements as you complete each tower (future update)
Uridium
- Leaderboards for high scores
Paradroid
- Leaderboards for high scores
- Achievements
- Command Cyborg 999 - Pwnd! (20 OF points)
Achieved when you transfer / take control of the 999 unit, most powerful droid on the ship.
As you would expect, we’ll be adding leaderboards and achievements to more titles in the future.
Other improvements for v1.4
This update was almost entirely focused on adding support for global leaderboards; however, we did enable fixed 50 frames/sec refresh rate for iPhone 3GS and 3rd gen iPod Touch devices. You’ll really notice the difference in scrollers such as Uridium, Paradroid and Kikstart.
What’s planned for v1.5?
We’re going to continue this approach of focusing on one major area per update, so 1.5 will be focused on usability and playability. Controls and the UI are going to get some work, which we’ll detail in a future post to solicit feedback.
More games please
We’re readying more titles for submission to Apple - some of which we expect in the coming week or two.
