A portion of a 4cr interview with dev Four Horses...
4cr: How long did it take to port the game to the Nintendo 3DS? What is different in this version?
FH: The port was really very quick. The original code is written in Objective C, and I converted it to C++. The languages have a lot of similarities, but the syntax is very different, so almost every line of code required hand modification. Having said that, I had the intro running in 4 days, the menus working after another three and the first level playable from start to finish after about another 14 days. All this was done on my lunch breaks and evenings and weekends.
There aren’t many differences. I dropped the leaderboards as they would have drastically delayed the release without adding a huge amount to the game. Users can post their “game complete” screens on Miiverse to compare scores at least. All other changes are generally cosmetic, for example I removed the “pause” button from the HUD and replaced it with a lives counter instead, we added achievement notifications and an achievements screen into the game (Game Center takes care of those on iOS) and added a way to see your best results at any time. There were a few bugs fixed that were present in the iOS version, and a new achievement was added. It is a really tough one to get!
4cr: How goes the development of the Nintendo Switch version of Kid Tripp? Do you have an estimate on when it will be released for Nintendo’s hybrid console?
FH: Well, I haven’t actually started the Switch version yet, but the code is in such a state that there will be very little work to do to get the game running exactly as it is on 3DS. I plan to start that work on Monday and keep a blog on the Four Horses website to track the progress. I’ve set myself a goal of getting the game running fully in 5 days. I have no idea if that is realistic or not, but it’ll be fun trying. After that there will be considerably more work with all the fiddly additional tasks that will have to be done for the Switch version such as handling multiple user profiles, controller config changes, switching between TV and handheld, the home menu, etc. I don’t know when it is likely to be released, I’m not familiar with the process and it is very likely to require more than one submission to get the builds approved by Nintendo, but I can’t see it being released outside of 2017.
from GoNintendo
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