• Doubloon upgrade currency
• New Accuracy Leaderboard
• Game Center Integration
• iPhone 4/Retina Display Images
• Redesigned About/Settings page

Doubloons

The biggest change with this version is the new upgrade currency called Doubloons. In Traveler’s Quest, we have an in game currency called gold. This currency is earned through hard work and effort in the game, burying treasures, receiving gold for purchases of your buried maps, and daily gold income from buried treasures. It takes time, and a lot of treasures to gain a large daily income. This gold can be used to level up your bury, detect or purchase anything in the in-game store. So where do Doubloons come in then? Doubloons are a way to purchase upgrades with real world money. Each Doubloon is equal to 1 gold, which makes it easy to put a gold/doubloon price on each upgrade. The upgrades are listed as costing a certain amount of doubloons, however the reality is that the upgrade uses doubloons first, and then, if you do not have enough doubloons to purchase an item, it will also use gold to purchase an item. This makes the assumption that you would want to use your real world money before using in game gold to purchase an item. When you tap the purchase button, you will receive a pop-up which will show you how many doubloons and how much gold you you will spend on the item you wish to purchase, making it abundantly clear where the “money” is coming from before the purchase is made.

New Accuracy Leaderboard

Accuracy is something that most players feel is important. We have listened to the players, and found a way to make accuracy even more important – in the form of a new leaderboard! This new leaderboard encourages players to get as close as possible to the X before picking up the treasure. Players who constantly pick up treasures closer to the 1 mile mark will not rank as high as players who get as close as possible to the X. Players who pick up treasures between 1.5 and 1 mile will find that there is also a negative accuracy, which will take away from their leaderboard score. The accuracy bonus could also be thought of as a sharp shooter bonus.

Game Center Integration

What game is complete without Game Center? Adding Game Center allows us to not only track the leaderboards individually, but also among our friends. You can determine if your friends have finished the same achievements as you, and compare scores more directly between friends. In game, your Game Center achievements can be seen on the Achievements tab. In the Game Center App, you can compare your achievements and leaderboard scores with your friends. See which collections your friends have finished and more!

Retina Display Graphics

Of course with the iPhone 4, the need for retina display images became apparent. While these graphics are not perfect yet, they are a very large step in the right direction. Look forward to seeing more in future updates!

About Page

Our About/Settings/Info page has received some attention this time around, adding links to our Facebook fan page, Twitter feed, Support page, as well as our application pages. The Traveler’s Quest logo image even goes to the Traveler’s Quest app in the App Store, so you can quickly and easily let everyone know how much you love our humble little game!

United States: 5
Mexico: 2
El Salvador: 3
Venezuela: 4

Hurricane also made the Top 25 Paid Weather applications list in:

Canada: 16
Deutchland: 24
Espania: 23
Luxembourg: 20
Slovenia: 23
Sweden: 13
Turkey: 18

The biggest coup is being back in the Top 5 US Paid Weather applications. While the weather category is still relatively small compared to other categories, it is definitely tough to stay in the Top 10 apps, and to gain Top 5 notice. As the season progresses, and we release our next version of Hurricane, we hope to continue the trend, giving our users the best hurricane tracking in the Atlantic and Eastern North Pacific.

April 6-10 was the National Hurricane Conference. This year it was held in Austin, Texas and covered a lot of great information including specifics about Ivan and it’s effects on the people of Texas. One of the major subjects of discussion was the Saffir-Simpson scale. Some say that the scale does not accurately portray the storm surge of a hurricane. I feel that the real problem is the lack of understanding of storms which are very strong (major) while out in the Gulf of Mexico, but weaken as they come closer to land.

Scenario – Hurricane WhatsHerName:

Hurricane WhatsHerName is a category 5 hurricane out in the Caribbean and moves into the Gulf of Mexico, hitting no land. The storm remains a category 5 hurricane for greater than 24 hours. The storm surge of WhatsHerName according to the Saffir-Simpson Scale is expected to be greater than 18ft at landfall, if it remains a category 5 hurricane.

WhatsHerName runs into some shear before coming to land in the Gulf of Mexico, dropping her winds and making her a cateogry 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. WhatsHerName is within 36 hours of land, storm warnings are posted. Since her winds have brought her down to a category 3 hurricane, the scale says that her storm surge should be 9-12ft, if you take the scale literally. However, the physics of water tells us that we should really be expecting a greater storm surge because the larger water base has been stirred into action, and water does not slow as quickly as winds. So, in reality, you should be expecting somewhere between category 4 (13-18ft) and category 5 ( greater than 18ft) storm surge with this category 3 storm.

The Saffir-Simpson scale works great when you are going up the scale. However, the flaw is when you come down the scale. It is my belief however that the scale is not at fault, but the understanding of the physics behind storm surge by the media and possibly our models which informs the public of what to expect. The models are getting better however, and we now have experimental storm surge data which will be available for the 2009 hurricane season.

With any luck though, our weather media will be able to do a great job of educating the public on what to expect this year, and hopefully prevent a large amount of the problems we see when the storms come our way this year.

In the mean time, make sure you are prepared for hurricane season this year. You can never prepare too early, only too late.