Watch out, the evil fish are causing some serious trouble at the Golden Gate! What’s next, will these creatures take over the whole Earth? Luckily The Supernauts will come to the rescue soon!
Here’s a little sneak peek at the concept art created by our 2D artist Antti. Stay tuned, you will get more treats later on!
In a previous blog post we have covered how to do build automation with Unity and how we use Jenkins for automated builds and testing. The topic of this post takes a closer look at our automated testing systems and daily QA builds specifically for iPad, since we are developing The Supernauts for the iOS platform.
In short, Jenkins deploys each version of the server to our development environment. As the commits roll in the server revision changes every ten minutes or so. In case something fails, the error is reported to our Flowdock Team Inbox, so our developers immediately see what is happening (and how often).
Both the client and the server component run based on the same game logic, so we need to keep the client in sync with the current revision of the server.
For actual game testing we use TestFlight that enables easy distribution of builds to beta testers both inside and outside of the company. At the moment we are using the TestFlight desktop application to send out a fresh build of the game on a daily basis. The application automatically finds the archive, which makes it easy to upload the build and notify the testers without going to TestFlight’s website. Nice.
To make sure that the iOS client build actually works – with all those commits coming from every direction – we run a set of servers for the daily QA build. In addition, we have a Jenkins task to deploy the server and the changes in the database. This means that anyone can deploy the daily QA build to the beta testers.
Thanks to TestFlight and automated deployment practically everyone in our team can create the daily QA build and update the servers. What still requires manual labor and a special set of software are the iPad builds done with Unity (and Xcode). Our next aim is to automate these tasks as well. We have just started to work with this to get it up and running. It seems that it should not be too difficult, since TestFlight has an upload API and we already run Unity in batch mode to create the Web Player builds.
Summer seems to be over, but the Cru wasn’t ready to let it go just yet! To celebrate the last days of summer we had a barbecue party at the rooftop terrace last week – before the fall, rain and darkness arrive. Our agenda was very simple: the evening was filled with food, refreshments, music, games and relaxation.
Our after-work get-together was greeted by sun! The grill was full of corn and sausages (both for carnivores and vegetarians). So that no one was left hungry, we also ordered pizza! Yep, food didn’t run out and we had a good amount of leftovers in the fridge to share at lunch next day.
The evening continued indoors playing games – probably not a surprise to anyone!
Since we all are so intensively working with The Supernauts and other tasks, these kind of casual gatherings are great opportunities to hang out with workmates outside the office hours.
Looking forward to the next time!
I recently moved from Berlin to Helsinki to join the Cru so I’d like to share some thoughts and observations on my experiences about living in Helsinki so far, as well as recommend some favorite restaurants in my new home town:
First of, it is great to be in a place where everyone speaks English. Germans (and Berliners in particular) speak better English that they are given credit for but you still come across people who do not speak English when dealing with banks, customer care, internet providers and local government.
The second thing that I really love is that Finland is basically a cash-free society. You can go for weeks without having to use cash since every place you visit has an electronic payment solution. You mostly insert or swipe your card, enter your 4 digit pin code and your purchase is completed. This is very different from Berlin where you have to make sure to carry cash, find an ATM that won’t charge you 3-4€ per transaction etc.
Dealing with the authorities to get a tax card, health insurance, and residency approval has all been a breeze. Similar to my home country of Sweden (and unlike Germany) pretty much everything has been computerized so once you get your “social security number” you can apply for everything online or over the phone. It was very easy and quick to get everything sorted and most letters and information from the government was provided in English as well.
Finding a place to live proved to be more expensive and difficult than in Berlin (but easier than Stockholm). For the first months I have stayed in a temporary apartment provided by a relocation agency. Thanks to a little help from friends and acquaintances I have now found my own place that I will move into shortly. Compared to both Stockholm and Berlin Helsinki is a lot more “compact” and easy to walk/bike around which I love – a 30 minute walk to the office is a great way to start the day.
Finally, here’s some tips – if you are in Helsinki and are feeling a bit hungry I have found two awesome places for eating out so far: La Patrona is a great place which serves really good Mexican food and Sävel has the best burgers in town.
Photos via Flickr/Creative Commons:
terrace by Visit Finland
Restaurant Day by tulenheimo
Helsinki city view by Ilpo Torn
Aleksanterinkatu shopping street by Milton CJ
WIRED UK choose Grand Cru as one of the 100 hottest startups in Europe, and in the Helsinki scene the magazine listed us among the top ten startups. WIRED considers that these companies have the best chance of making a global impact beyond 2012. Obviously, we’re Super excited about this! The Cru thanks and feels very honoured to be on the list.
“Social-games developer Grand Cru has raised $2 million in funding without even releasing a game.”, writes Wired. The magazine also briefly presented our first title The Supernauts, which we are working on at the moment. In addition to Helsinki, Wired ranked interesting startups from nine other cities: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Paris, London, Istanbul, Berlin, Stockholm, Tel Aviv and Moscow.
We’re proud to be in a good company with the Helsinki based startups:
1 Ovelin
2 Kiosked
3 Tinkercard
4 Audiodraft
5 Grand Cru
6 Mendor
7 Powerkiss
8 Steam Republic
9 Thirdpresence
10 Grey Area
Congratulations to all!
The magazine is already available on iPad and in print, so if you’re interested to find out more about these exciting and promising startups remember to get your own copy!
