JUST ANNOUNCED!! Train Conductor - the next big hit! The first level: Alice Springs The second level: Cairns The third level: Sydney The fourth level: Melbourne ...to be unveiled soon! The graveyard shift! Keep an eye out... details coming soon! ‘Train Conductor’ places you as the greatest Station Master of the Golden Age of Steam, where, working your way from small outback train yards to the bustling industrial lines in Australia’s capital cities, you must connect tracks to ensure each train reaches it’s proper destination, and avoid disastrous collisions! For more info check out our blog!
That looks pretty neat. How is the difficulty implemented? Do the trains get faster as the level progresses? Or do you just have to handle more trains? more tracks?
Thats quite a prediction but I like your confidence though Looks quite interesting. I assume by coming soon you mean it`s been already submitted
@Prab - We do all of the things you mention, and we add some interesting twists too. In the later levels (Cairns, Sydney and Melbourne) there are more tracks and trains, and the trains are faster and have more carriages, making them worth more points but also greater hazards to routing the trains. We have some great variations on the gameplay in Sydney and Melbourne (not to mention all of the graveyard shifts) that keep it fresh but also make it slightly more challenging for those that want it, but we need to hold onto those details just a touch longer. We will post them as soon as we can. @ImNoSuperMan - we're polishing the game further this week, and adding minor features. We will submit shortly after that.
This game looks really interesting. Hope it has leaderboards, an endless mode, and a mode with stages with increasing difficulty!
@sic, @drelbs - Yep, we're integrating Open Feint. We had previously integrated Agon into Dolphin Hero, but we feel Open Feint is now winning out on features. What do you think about Open Feint? @Chemist20 - Train Conductor has numerous gameplay modes; day shift, graveyard shift and high score mode. In both of the day and night shifts, the levels get progressively harder and we have some variations on play that keep it fresh... we'll show these soon.
Train Conductor will use OpenFeint, but we will look into Plus+ for future games. Plus+ does look good, but right now Plus+ does not have an open sdk, and we don't want to delay the release of Train Conductor because we have to jump through their hoops. I wonder if Plus+ will treat 3rd party games equally to ngmoco games?
Yep, there are a few Plus+ games (namely DJ Jones and Chase The Dot) which baffle me by their poor quality compared to the polish of Plus+. Anywho, I agree. Plus+ has a much tighter community, now that Eliminate is out and Skee-Ball is still topping the charts. OpenFeint is starting to die, unfortunately. I'd say look into Plus+ before you release what looks to be a very promising game as: a) it will be featured in front of millions of players in the Plus+ news feed, and b) profit!
Usability. Looking good! Except the big numbers. They look a bit ugly to me. Why not colour code the tracks and trains? e.g. Send the blue train to the blue track? I'd only keep the numbers for people with colour blindness. Also the stats for a level shouldn't be a separate menu option. You could just show the stats automatically when you select a level and let the player press "start" from there. Added bonus: One option instead of two! And who's going to bother looking at stats otherwise? Can you use two separate fingers at the same time to make two tracks simultaneously? That'd be cool. The score and stuff down the bottom... It gets covered by the player's fingers. If they were up the top they wouldn't. Just sayin' is all. I think that's all I can pick from the 1 min video All the best
One more thing The scores are too low. Who wants to finish with 194 points? You need to put at least one zero on the end of that. No, seriously. Ok that's at least 4 nit-picks. Good luck with it!
no its fine. we dont need another zero after that, it doesnt mean that yay im so good at this i got 1 million points yehey and that's a lot!!!
Some excellent suggestions there. We really appreciate everyone's input!! Bigger numbers are just cooler. We'll look into it. Also, there is another gameplay mode that I can't discuss yet that has different scoring... Coloured trains instead of numbers: We settled on numbers because they have order, whilst colours don't - its easier to immediately know whether to take the train up or down based on its number, rather than on its colour. For example, two is always more than 1. Another factor is that we are reserving colours for other things like feedback and different types of trains... Stats Button: Yeah this is something that we've had some heated discussion over and I can't give you a straight answer over this right now. You see the button is linked to a stats screens which automatically appears when you finish a level, however it doesn't appear in certain game modes that don't need stats, so it depends - for some of the game it won't be there. We are still making changes in this area. Multi-touch: Yes indeed you can! and... there are achievements for you doing so! HUD placement: That was our first thought too! Only after playing the game over the last couple months did we decide that the HUD is better down below. Your fingers and hands tend to cover games on iPhone more at the bottom of the screen, rather than at the top, and we prioroitise gameplay higher than the HUD. Basically it just plays better at the bottom. But definitely a good suggestion.
