[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Arlanthir:
First of all, sorry for the absence.

I see there are some continuous key topics which people revolve around, most of them problems with the game, so I must address them.

Note that this game isn't only mine, I'm just the programmer and as such, the one that has to fix these things for you. ;)

( Let me start by saying that I'm currently using DirectDraw for the graphics and DirectShow for the sound output. If that helps anyone figure out what their problem is (by their, I mean the problem this game has with them, rest assured that I know it is I who has to fix it), feel free to comment on that here. )

Second, I want to filter some complaints. As you can see, Touch The Music is now a 0.3 version. Unfortunately, that number is below 1.0, which will be (if everything goes according to plan) our first full-fledged release.

That means that most features aren't there yet!

We don't have the options menu yet, we don't have multiple tracks, etc. It's absolutely normal.

We do have sound.

It came to my attention that some samsung phones (i7xx) have problems with sound output (thank you Jinxx). While this seems to be fixable with a different ROM, I'm told there's nothing to do with samsung ones.

I'm going to debug what I can with anyone who has a phone that doesn't support sound. Ultimately, I want to try some other libraries for playing music (more on that later). But at least having the problem with DirectShow fixed wouldn't be bad.

Also, multitouch support.

Some users are pointing out that multitouch is not working properly.

This is difficult for me to understand, because multitouch is handled exactly the same way as a single touch is.

Latest Onyx ROMs on Elfin seem to be a lot less responsive (since some update with the TouchFlo stuff and HTC smooth scrolling). They don't work at all with Touch The Music. That's why I'm still using Onyx 4.1.2.

So personally I think it's an HTC "feature". However, if the game feels responsive in everything but the chords, that's a strange different problem.

I'm going to debug that as well with people who have these problems.

It seems I'm blaming it on the ROM/device. Yes, I am, but not only.

Everything runs perfectly fine on my closest devices and ROMs (Elfin, Touch HD, Diamond). But because of the infinite customization windows mobile offers to sellers, users and developers, it's hard to make it work perfectly on any given setup. I'll make every effort to make this as flexible as possible, but I can't promise you it will work on your specific setup.

This can only be achieved with the close debug I told you about. Thank you for understanding this.

This is the best and the worst part of developing for WM.

I know that having an Elfin is no excuse. I could receive donations, split with Jakob, buy myself other devices, repeat.

Well, it's not that simple. As you may have noticed, we're shipping some music track(s) on this. While some labels will overlook this while we remain in the anonymity, that won't happen if we start receiving money.

So if you want something to be fixed, I have to ask you please to help me debug it. I included a log.txt file on 0.3, but it does almost nothing yet. To debug this game, all you will need to do is run the game, describe what happens and send me the log.txt on future versions.

I was hoping to have some time out to experiment, but I think I'll release a fix for the log, so you can start helping me sooner rather than later.

Other than that, don't expect updates for a while. Touch The Music is getting featured in more sites as we speak, and in every one people are bashing it for not having XXX, YYY or ZZZ. This is not a release.

While I make no case of it because I'm very well treated here, where people understand the need for even alpha testing, I think I deserve to have some time to prepare a solid feature rich version and have some voices quiet down. Please bear with me.

Thank you all for the feedback, and of course you don't need to apologize for not reading all the posts. But please make an effort to read the first one regularly (when the title changes date).