You can trust the computer. The computer is your friend!

News

We gathered in our millions around the Consoles of our cities to hear the announcement. Whole families turned out and stood out in the plazas waiting for the rumblings from inside the machine to herald its latest edict for the good of humanity. We stood in silence, until a deep red light flicked on from a scanner situated near the top of every Console, and a laser scanned over the suspended crowd, surveying. Counting. And then the Console spoke the words of Central Nexus.

All humans are to report in an orderly fashion to their nearest RecycloMat Facility. Transportation will be provided free of charge by Central Nexus – your friendly system overlord. There is no need for alarm and recycling is painless. Central Nexus wishes at this time to thank you for your peaceful co-operation in this hazardous waste recycling operation and wishes you continued happiness and contentment for the remaining duration of your current form.


Find out how you can thwart Central Nexus’ evil plans! Download the game right here on Puppygames.

Please note that all existing and new customers are entitled to a FREE Steam key (available now, if you were waiting). If you like you can still buy it directly on Steam as well from here.

43 thoughts on 'You can trust the computer. The computer is your friend!'

  4. Grabbed the Demo, put it in my Application folder, started: “Synchronization of Ultratron failed” then “Launching Ultratron failed”

    *sadface*

    Running OSX 10.8.3

    1. hmm, not had any experience yet of 10.8.3, but it sounds like it’s actually successfully started up at least… what logs are output in the Console when it fails?

      1. Console?

        I start the game, then the splash screen appears, it shows the messages, i can click on “continue” or “quit”. Clicking on either option closes the app – it’s not crashing.

          1. Perhaps I’m not savy enough but I started Console and then started the ultratron app. Nothing is showing up in console. Then I did a search for the term ultratron in the console. Only thing it found was:

            19.03.13 11:08:36,244 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[155]: ([0x0-0xffdffd].Ultratron[15257]) Exited: Killed: 9

            1. You don’t need Java installed to play it. Are you running as an administrator on the machine, or just an ordinary user? Behind a firewall or proxy? Any strange antivirus stuff running?

                1. It just showed up once not everytime I start ultratron. I had Ultratron installed a few years ago perhaps some leftovers are causing the issues – so I have repaired permissions, deleted all puppygames related .plist files I could find, trashed the app and downloaded it again and still it does not work.

                  I don’t use any proxy, firewall or antivirus just plain OSX 10.8.3. BTW the windows version runs fine when booting windows 7 in bootcamp.

                  Meh I give up and wait for my steam key to try again with the steam version.

                2. It looks like a badly formed URL. I just downloaded the demo, here’s the contents of my .ultratron/ultratron.log file:

                  Args: []
                  Proxy: DIRECT
                  Proxy: DIRECT
                  Status: CONNECTING
                  Task: Updating Ultratron…
                  Downloading index file: http:/downloads.puppygames.net/ultratron/update-macos-puppygames.index
                  Downloading net.puppygames.installer.updater.DownloadContext@1703c2db, http:/downloads.puppygames.net/ultratron/update-macos-puppygames.index
                  Status: FAILUREread “Thread-6”
                  Task: FAILURE failed to download sync data!
                  DownloadContext.onCrash::net.puppygames.installer.updater.UpdateException: Synchronization of Ultratron failed
                  java.lang.NullPointerException
                  at net.puppygames.installer.updater.URLComponents.parse(URLComponents.java:14)
                  at net.puppygames.installer.updater.HttpClient.download(HttpClient.java:22)
                  at net.puppygames.installer.updater.DownloadSync.downloadIndexFile(DownloadSync.java:279)
                  at net.puppygames.installer.updater.DownloadSync.getIndexFile(DownloadSync.java:234)
                  at net.puppygames.installer.updater.DownloadSync.access$0(DownloadSync.java:231)
                  at net.puppygames.installer.updater.DownloadSync$1.run(DownloadSync.java:48)
                  at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722)
                  net.puppygames.installer.updater.UpdateException: Synchronization of Ultratron failed
                  at net.puppygames.installer.updater.GameUpdater.main(GameUpdater.java:106)
                  Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: failed to download sync data
                  at net.puppygames.installer.updater.GameUpdater.main(GameUpdater.java:95)
                  DownloadContext.onCrash::net.puppygames.installer.updater.UpdateException: Launching Ultratron failed
                  net.puppygames.installer.updater.UpdateException: Launching Ultratron failed
                  at net.puppygames.installer.updater.GameUpdater.main(GameUpdater.java:123)
                  Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
                  at net.puppygames.installer.updater.GameUpdater.launchEmbeddedGame(GameUpdater.java:171)
                  at net.puppygames.installer.updater.GameUpdater.main(GameUpdater.java:121)

                    1. For those who don’t want to wait for the 3.0.1 update to fix this, you can do it yourself by updating /Ultratron.app/Contents/MacOS/ultratron.sh and adding the missing slash in the value for “-Dnet.puppygames.installer.updater.GameUpdater.indexURL”.

      1. Seems they mixed it up with Dungeon Defenders. That name popuped up when I tried to register the key.

      2. It doesn’t launch for me – it says I need to run it via Steam, but that’s what I’m doing!

          1. I wish, but the same happens to my friends on Linux. Only with Ultratron, all your other games work without problems on S4L.

  6. Any chance holders of old-timey legacy keys will receive Steam keys? I do love having all of my game data available via *thecloud*
    😀

  7. please god tell me this is going to be an update for the xblig version too, or even a brand new release. worth paying for twice 🙂

    1. well, that’s up to Paul Cunningham… but you do realise that he spent months on it and it only made about $100, don’t you?

      1. It did? Ugh, why does anyone still bother with XBLIG. Introversion made no money from their games there. Blocks That Matter lost on it. SMB lost on it (although I don’t care in that case). Fez lost on it. Why does anyone even release there?!

          1. I, for one, appreciate Paul’s efforts on the XBLIG port. I’ve owned it on PC/Mac for awhile & picked up the 360 version as well. Personally, I’ve found the uncurated Indie Games storefront to be a general waste of time; it takes way too long to browse the details of any given app, and it’s even more difficult to find the “diamonds in the rough” like Ultratron. I suspect that most people don’t do anything more than browse through the most recent list of game additions, thus missing on any of the previously-released games worth having.

            I don’t turn the 360 on much these days though, as I’m getting a better value out of PSN+ than I ever did out of Gold. I’ll be getting my Ouya in early April, and pretty much skipping the next generation of “big name” consoles for a bit. It’s become entirely too monetized, paywalled, and just plain expensive and tiring to keep with it all.

  8. This is a great update with a lot of great changes, but I’m not sure about the colors. Like sometimes the level is red with cyan details on the floor and then the enemies are the same red and the shots they fire are the same cyan. It can make it hard to recognize what’s what. Why not make the enemies and shots more distinct from the level?

  9. Hi there,
    I just picked up Ultratron, which completes my PuppyGames collection for now. I’m a big fan of each and every one of them, and while Ultratron is no exception, I just wanted to mention a huge gripe I have with it so far.
    Relative to your other games which are generally very visually crisp and distinct, I have a TERRIBLE time distinguishing enemy fire/etc this time around. I understand that you want to make it as stylish as possible, but there tends to be an absolute MESS of colours at any given time, and I frustratingly take damage that I couldn’t see coming.
    Ultratron feels like it has the potential to be the most fun of the four titles, but this issue of excessively flashiness is spoiling a large portion of it for me.
    If its too late to do anything about it here, it maybe something to think about for the next game.
    Thanks.

  10. Hey Cas,

    Is there any way to trigger the boost on a controller? Having to move a hand off your joypad onto your Shift key or right mouse button doesn’t work in a game like this, where you need your hands on your controller sticks at all times.

    Thanks!

    1. Apparently buttons “4” and “5” on the controller do turbo boost. Or right mouse button if you’re a mouser.

      1. Ah HA! Button 5 (the left bumper button on the XBOX 360 controller) works! I could have sworn I tried that before and didn’t notice anything. (Maybe because the speed boost is very short before you upgrade it?) In any case, button 4 (the yellow Y button) didn’t seem to trigger the boost.

  11. It’s not finding my wireless xbox controller on windows 8, 64bit. Doesn’t find the wired one either. Both controllers work on other games. Any ideas? (This is with the 3.0.0.3 demo)

  12. Hey Cas, been busy getting killed and wanting to throw my mouse through my monitor in Ultratron. So thanks! 🙂

    Just a thought to toss out there for funding opportunities: Sell the ‘Nameadroid’ version of the game that allows you a copy of the game and the opportunity to name your droid. ‘Scunthorpe’ already being taken mind you.

    Same for regions etc.

    Keep up the good work!

  13. I don’t know for sure, or if I’m just crazy/have gotten used to it, and I couldn’t find any patch notes, but I’m almost positive you darkened the stages or something to tone down the excessive flashiness in Ultratron. Thanks for that.

  14. With all your older games getting facelifts, it’s had the almost ironic side-effect that “Revenge of the Titans” – your newest game – has ended up looking more or less the *least* graphically fancy one, interestingly. Any plans on remedying this in the foreseeable future?

    1. I suppose we could add some fancypants effects to Revenge except that it’s not really an “arcade” game so they might look a little out of place.

      1. Nonsense. 🙂 They fit beautifully with your aesthetic, and would look great in action, I would dare to assume.

        Some vague scanlines, that awesome, new effect you’ve got going on where the screen looks almost concave like on one of those old-timey TV monitors, the screen colour-warping nonsense that makes it look like your GPU is melting, a new title-screen to go with it… Mmmm. So sexy.

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