Android Update

Dear person who has installed Warhead Stroll from the Google Play Store,

(yes, you are the only one to have done so),

thank you for doing that in the first place. The game will have a new and exciting v1.2 update, which will consist of the following change log:

• Bump target Android API from version 32 to 34
• That's it

This will ensure that the game stays on the Play Store for at least one year. Read below for a small and concise explanation.

Unfortunately, Google is a big wuss about robustness, so it can't make up a Final Major Version Of Android™ with no improvements at all, and changes its mind every year. Come on, guys. That's no way to do software! Take Warhead Stroll. It is a perfect app with no need for anything more! You most likely understand this, single Android player, or else I would have heard you complain.

Not even a single bug has been fixed. The game engine version is the same. Old Roger is still exploding properly. Maybe opening the project changed the Godot project settings a bit, but that is all. This might be the laziest update ever published in my history of game making, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.

The new version will roll out in the next week, because Google is such a lazy bum that it needs several days to process an almost exact replica of what I have already sent to them. Seriously. One week is enough time for me to physically ship the app (19 floppies will do) by boat from France to whatever in the US they're located. Apparently they're also in Ireland, so that helps. To process the game's .aab file, byte by byte, in one week, you'd have to read it at only 43 bytes per second. Even a mildly-skilled rapper has more bandwidth coming out of their mouth. There are spacecraft hurled beyond the Asteroid Belt with a better connection speed than that. But how many bytes actually changed? One. The one who says "target API version 34" instead of "32". That's barely more than one bit per day!

Also, I would like to point out the convoluted nature of publishing on their store, which could use some simplification. Like, I have to tell them that my game doesn't have ads, blood, children, bleeding children, real money, explicit portrayal of baby-making procedures, a major deficit of clothes on a person, realistically-represented modern weaponry, anti-privacy measures, stuff that is illegal in the Republic of Northern Androidia, or all at the same time. And every time, it's a big-ass page with lots of serious links everywhere and irrelevant warnings, not just a bunch of checkboxes. Whereas on itch.io, I just have to say: "Here's my game, it plays on those platforms, it's free". And it works, forever. And which store is full of clickbaity ripoffs, and which one has quarterly bundles about saving puppies or whatever? You know that very well.

Also, their menu is quite a bit unintuitive to browse; like a maze, full of irrelevant alpha-testing, beta-testing, upsilon-testing features, or obscure-sounding play services, Android Vitals (even though my app doesn't do anything significant to your organs), and millions upon millions of monetization menus. That's where you really see that Google is an ad company: they struggle to keep anything simple and actually friendly to the user. Even their historical search engine, the paragon of simplicity, now has an AI-powered feature which is to lie to the client.

Well, yeah, I get it, it's for protecting against evil apps. But according to Google, the main difference between evil app makers and good ones is that good app makers can re-upload the final version of their app at least once a year. But what if the game is finished and has no need for improvements? Will it go in a pile of trash? And what if bumping the API version causes new bugs, as the "old" game version is no longer available? In those times of proclaimed sustainability, how can a mobile software vendor overlook the pressing need for everyday objects to be everlasting, timeless works of utility, never to be obsolete again, transcending the ongoing modern equivalent to the late bronze age collapse, making a statement against those darn stakeholders of the iron age wanting to replace all our tools at once, full of warmth and robustness, by tools which start shinier but end rustier?

Apparently, the Apple App Store would have been even worse: requirements include owning a Mac (I already have a PC, it's basically the same, come on guys), paying more, being a real company (I don't even have a coffee machine! I don't even drink coffee, I'm not fit to become a company), and even giving one liter of blood to their CEO. Okay, that last one is made up.

The rest of this rant is for another day. If you would like to hear that rant while waiting for the game's update, feel free to respond to me, dear single Android player. I thank you for your precious time, and assure you that it was well spent on this page.

And on that, see you on the next one!

EDIT: It seems like the app finished updating. Thanks also to the second person who installed it!