Here's a few of my opinions. I've just played both hero academy and hero mages side by side and I find hero academy boring because one of the main things I like about hero mages is the dice roll animation, for me this really makes the feeling of it being a board game type experience throw in the random spell cards and it's win all the way While I personally prefer to play live online games or skirmish against the AI, I can see how Async will be a good feature for those times you can't find a live game. One thing I kept thinking while playing hero academy was "damn I wish this was blood bowl" lol seems a shame that I've played blood bowl on Nintendo ds and psp but no iOS version to be found :-( Well the main thing I'm waiting for is some new characters to play with (the summoner looks cool) so roll on the updates
It doesn't do anything special in Hero Academy. It just shows exactly the same endgame screen that you would get if your opponent resigned or was defeated according to the regular victory conditions. Note, you don't "claim victory" if your opponent takes too long---it just forfeits him automatically after a certain time.
Part 2 of "How to Create an Asynchronous Multiplayer Game" is now live: http://www.indieflashblog.com/how-to-create-async-part2.html Progress is looking really good guys.
I have no idea what all that programing stuff is explaining lol. But I'm sure that will come in real handy for someone who needs it, you really explain it all. Glad the updates looking cool. After playing a few Async games this past week ascension/hero academy etc I'm starting to see the apeal.
Really enjoying the game and I am glad to see all the updates for it. I bought the expansions via your website, so as to support the game even more. Asynchronous is going to be huge for me to be able to play more games. I love the idea that you can go into live mode automatically and then it will switch back to asynchronous. One thing I really liked in another asynchronous war game was the ability to set the turn time limit when you created a game. I believe it was uniwar that allowed this, and I'm sure others do as well. They had settings anywhere from about a minute up to a week or so. The game would show you the turn time limit in the list of created games. I liked this as if you wanted to play something near live, you could create or choose one with a lower time limit. Although, I will say having just a one size fits all makes for easier game matching, too many options starts to get confusing.
@ooooomonkey - Blood Bowl for iOS, oh hell yes, I've been wanting this for as long as I've had the phone, got the pc version and love it! To be honest I'd get any Warhammer game, come on Games Workshop show us some love.
I've considered implementing a turn-time limit, but in the interest of getting the feature out there, the intial offering will work as follows: You can start a game realtime or async. If you start realtime, you can set a turn time. If all players decide to leave the game and finish later, the game will become async. At this point, turn-time is disabled (you have unlimited time to figure out your next move). However, any player in the game may "drop" another player if that player has not completed their turn in 72 hours.
This is quite a compliment! Thank you for the feedback! I'm glad to hear that time spent on these features is being noticed
Gamesworkshop should hire me to port their games. I would LOVE to remake any of their games for iOS! These are the games that inspired me to create Hero Mages
Adobe Developer Connection has featured my postmortem article for Hero Mages on their homepage! I thought you all would appreciate this indepth look at what the development process was like for Hero Mages. Here's the direct link to the article: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/games/postmortems/articles/hero-mages.html
That sounds great to me, probably even better than the other method. Thanks for the support, looking forward to the update!
Wow - great article! I love reading game postmortems, and yours was just exceptional. People many times don't realize the enormous effort that people put into making games for a living, with all the demands in their professional and personal lives. Keep it coming, and thanks!
I just discovered this awesome video review of Hero Mages by the folks at Electronic Playground. Kinda makes me feel like a "developer celebrity". http://www.elecplay.com/all/spotlight/hero-mages-ios-video-review/ I'll be sharing a video of my own very soon showing off the status of the async gameplay.
Here's a video preview of the upcoming asynchronous multiplayer feature for Hero Mages as featured in Part 3 of my article series "How to Create an Asynchronous Multiplayer Game" Read about how I made this here: http://www.indieflashblog.com/how-to-create-async-part3.html
This is looking great! Any non-bindable expectations as to when this will be available to the public, what we can expect in the update and if it will be the same on all platforms?
Async is coming along really great! Any estimated (not binding!!!) timeframe? Before or after the Summer?
There are two major components still necessary to be complete the asynchronous multiplayer feature: 1) Matchmaking 2) Push Notifications. I'm aiming to have these integrated before the end of June. I'm considering running a beta test using the browser-based version to ensure all systems are in order and that games are saving/restoring as expected. Version 1.8.0 will hopefully launch sometime in July and will include the async multiplayer, In-App purchases, and numerous bug fixes and UI improvements based on everyone's suggestions. All versions of Hero Mages will receive this update. For systems that don't have Push Notifications, players will have the option to use email notification for their turns.
Wow, July is going to be awesome! First Dungeon Twister on PSN and now this! Where is my time machine? June needs to be gone, lol.
