DCSquares: GOAT Games Edition

Several years ago, GOAT Store Publishing contacted a bunch of homebrew Dreamcast developers about putting together a commercial disc with homebrew games on it. DCSquares to be included on GOAT Games, Volume 1, and I started working on several improvements to the game, improving single player mode by adding challenge levels, and adding multiplayer support.

GOAT Games Volume 1 was never released, but below is a video showing off the updated DCSquares. The sound effects were not working on this Mac build, as it was only tested on the Dreamcast. Multiplayer is also difficult to demo on the Mac, as it requires multiple controllers.

Random Stats

Two years ago I gathered some interesting stats from the DCSquares score database. Here’s an updated version of those stats using the data as of today:

General Stats

* Total users that have submitted a score: 457
* Total games played: 54,132
* Total squares collected: 1,564,992
* Total time spent playing: 38 days (note: scores entered through the website do not record a time, so this is actually higher)
* Average games played per user: 118
* Average number of squares collected per game: 48
* Average score per game: 30,556
* Average combo per game: 47
* Average game time: 61 seconds
* The most users that have scored the same score is 74. They all scored 1,080 points.

Players by platform

* Windows: 55%
* Mac: 43%
* Linux: 2%
* Dreamcast: 0% (only 23 scores ever submitted for Dreamcast)

Hall of fame:

* Highest score: Harryfronman scored 677,472 points
* Highest combo: captain collected 354 squares in a row
* Most squares: Harryfronman collected 731 squares
* Longest time: jason survived for 16:47 minutes

Hall of shame:

* Lowest score: runkennyrun scored 1,000 points (scores below 1,000 are rejected)
* Shortest time: Baphmomet survived for 2.3 seconds

16 players only collected 1 square but managed to score more than 1000 points.
99% of players use the in-game score client, only 1% of scores were entered through the web.

DCSquares for iPhone

I’m putting the finishing touches on porting DCSquares to the iPhone. I’ll have more info soon, but in the meantime here’s a teaser:

Last.fm for iPhone and iPod Touch version 1.0.2 Released

Last.fm for iPhone and iPod Touch version 1.0.2 is now available on iTunes. Here’s what’s new:

* Bug fixes and stability improvements
* Defer error popups until device is unlocked
* Disable auto-lock during playback
* Improve playback of tracks while device is locked
* Start buffering the next track near the end of the current track
* Fix display of events for non-English locales
* Properly display ampersands in radio station titles

To install the update, click “Check for updates” at the bottom of your iTunes Applications list, or tap the Updates tab of the App Store on your device.