In the last 4 months after acquiring an ipod touch, I have encountered few things in apps and games (nearly 400 games - about 150 purchased) and there are some things which annoy me as an end user. I am not sure whether this is the most appropriate thread to post this rant and more likely than not, will get flamed. 1) Long introduction pages I understand some large games will take a while to start up, but this is not my complaint. It's the introduction pages of the engine drivers, developers and so on. Why do they take so long to start up? The worst case was one game (about 20MB) which had three developer screens (at most 3 words on each screen), each taking 3 seconds each before reaching the menu. Could all this be placed in one page and be done with it? (Or is it in your contract when developing a product). Or better still - all of this enclosed in the "about" page? 2) Help / Instructions would be nice I have encountered some games with no instructions or access to help. The game assumes you know the instructions or that it is a remake of an old PC/console game. Often - these games are deleted fairly promptly. Worse still, some help pages are terse and so short - you are guessing what the controls are (Is it tapping the screem, tilt or virtual D-stick?) I appreciate the pressure to get a game out to market, but spending that bit of effort writing up a 1-2 pages of instructions would help immensely. 3) Promo codes - valid only in the US Are there any promo codes valid in - say - Australia? Or the UK? I have queried 3-4 developers (by email or PM) on Touch Arcade over the last 2 weeks. I have not received any responses. Perhaps someone located in Australia is not worth the effort... <sniffle> 4) No connectivity to the intarweb... options please?! I use my ipod touch as a standalone device. No wifi, no BT, nada, zip internet. Is it possible to have an option (with the sound and control settings) to disable completely any form of connectivity and to grey out or remove "submit my high score to/thru OpenFeint"? 5) Oh yeah - you need connectivity ... after you buy the game! (itune app page) Similar to point 2 - the description of games on itunes often omit simple things like "you need an internet connection via wifi, gprs etc to do stuff". 6) A comparison between free/lite versus paid version on itunes app page Many games and apps on the itunes website do NOT make it obvious what is the benefit of the paid version. Even a simple list like: * Free and timed/challenge gameplay * 100 levels (10 levels on lite) * 10 characters available (2 on lite) More often than not, I am alternating between the free/lite page and paid apps to see what the difference is ... and sometimes, that isn't obvious enough.
That is something which is not in the sphere of influence of the developers - unfortunately, it's not obvious to the rest of the world.
I am fine with this for games which I would play for 5 mins plus, but when I just want to do some long jumping on Jelly Car 2, I do find this annoying. I haven't seemed to find this problem, but it would be annoying They are US only, but think how much harder it would be to manage them for every country, because the gift cards are all country specific, they work in similar ways, it would just get confusing for apple, you would have to request certain country codes, that would be too much. that requires extra coding... to remove features, no dev would do that, it is annoying when it pops up and asks every time, but its fine when it's just an option, I assume this means the game is only usable when connected, I find they always tell you (and they are required to?), do you have any examples? Again I find all apps do this, and if they don't they're not worth getting Quit complainin' I jest
Wow, those are just a bunch of little complaints that u are overreacting to. Why would you even post that? It not that big of a deal to post a rant about those things. (maybe promo codes) but still. Just deal with it.
Again this one also isnt devs fault. AFAIK Apple restricts them from comparing Lite and full versions.
Oh my God a piece of dust landed on my laptop screen! Anyways regarding the promos in US only, there's an incredibly simple solution to that. MAKE A US ACCOUNT. It takes about..oh idk..not as long as it took you type out this "rant"
as i was a big fan of the NES back in the day, i have to say that i LIKE long introductions. They're nice and comfy and maybe even a little nostalgic.
