<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">netrek-dev,<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><b class="">Netrek version 1.1 for iOS is out!</b></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><img apple-inline="yes" id="16B7249B-3FB7-4539-8BFF-E0B94E9CAECA" src="cid:7718A10F-4D73-493D-B14C-5E941C2DB3E0@hsd1.ca.comcast.net." class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><b class="">First, let me talk about UI improvements:</b></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">- Abandoned “drag to set course and speed”. It doesn’t work well for dogfighting.</div><div class="">+ Speed is set by a stepper in the bottom-right</div><div class="">+ Course is set by tapping near the edge of the tactical screen.</div><div class="">+ Tapping near the middle of the tactical screen fires torps.</div><div class="">+ The first tap each second on an enemy ship within laser range fires lasers.</div><div class="">+ Any other taps on enemy ships fires torpedos.</div><div class="">+ Increased the “boldness” of planets with armies and ships with kills in the “long range scan circle”.</div><div class="">o Tapping on a planet continues to lock on to the planet.</div><div class="">++ <b class="">Pinch-to-zoom tactical screen</b>! You can zoom out to see the whole galaxy or zoom in to a very close tactical view in real-time while fighting!</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><b class="">Possible improvements for future:</b></div><div class=""><b class=""><br class=""></b></div><div class="">o When tactical screen zooms out to the whole galaxy, change to a “strategic” view, rather than the current “big tactical view”. Currently you can zoom out to see the whole galaxy, but each planet/ship is too small to be useful.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">o I should add a “tractor nearest enemy” and “pressor nearest enemy” buttons on the left. But for now you cannot play Hockey with Netrek for iOS.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">o I may bring the “zoom” feature to the MacOS version.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><b class="">Next lets talk about iPhone support:</b></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">It works. I hope we will get more players as a result. It’s very helpful to be able to search on “Netrek” in the iPhone App store and see a result. I plug <a href="http://www.netrek.org" class="">http://www.netrek.org</a> in the App Store description.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">But the reality is that Netrek on iPhone is not much fun. Netrek is designed to be played on a larger screen with a 3-button mouse. iPad, especially with a 1-button mouse, works ok. Playing on iPhone with small screen and tap-only is just not as fun.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">But I’m still glad to have done the port. I even got some kills and dropped two armies on an enemy planet with Netrek for iPhone during yesterday’s 6PM t-mode game. But from a dogfighting standpoint I’m sure my opponents were saying I was “free beer”.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><b class="">Other notes:</b></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Apple’s developer conference is Monday. I’m hoping we’ll get improved multi-button support for iPad.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">As always, the binaries are free in the Apple App Stores. Code is open source at <a href="https://github.com/darrellroot/Netrek-SwiftUI" class="">https://github.com/darrellroot/Netrek-SwiftUI</a> I’d appreciate downloads, positive App Store reviews, and GitHub stars. Each of those improves Netrek visibility to new players.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I’d suggest that any of you who signed up for Apple TestFlight to delete those versions and use App Store release versions. Code is now mature enough that I do not expect to run further TestFlights.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Partially related question: I’m looking for a cloud Linux server/provider with both IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity that includes a Swift compiler. If any of you have any suggestions, please email me.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Darrell Root</div><div class="">darrellroot AT <a href="http://mac.com" class="">mac.com</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div></div></body></html>