Crazy Horses iOS

[NiceRich]

Originally Posted by dclose

Yes. I finally restarted it cold (home and on buttons, not just on-slide to close), and when it came back up I was able to run the game. However, it crashed again when trying to access the ? from the pause menu.

Sorry you're still having issues dclose. We did test Crazy Horses on iPod Touch with iOS 5.1 prior to release with no problems. We see if we can find out what the problem is and fix it in an update.

The ? button takes you to the How To Play tutorial screen. Just for you, here's the texture you would've seen:

[LordGek]

Originally Posted by NiceRich

Thanks for your questions.

Crazy Horses has two game modes for every level - Race the Clock and Endless. Apple has a limit of 25 Game Center leaderboards per-title, so we couldn't have leaderboards for every level and still use Game Center. What we do is track the total $ you have earned in each mode and have leaderboards just for those totals.

The money is just used as your score - no buying in-game upgrades. You have to get a certain dollar-score in a level to move on to the next one. We have talked about adding a shop and letting you buy upgrades and bonuses. There's a possibility this will appear in a future update...

While that does sound more than reasonable for GC with the hard limit of 25, any chance you track each level's top scores locally?

Also, when you speak of the combined totals, is that the top score of each level in that mode combined or simply all games played score combined (like if I were only to keep replaying the first level 1,000x with a top score of $350, would my combined total of the 1 level be $350 or $350,000?)?

[NiceRich]

Originally Posted by LordGek

While that does sound more than reasonable for GC with the hard limit of 25, any chance you track each level's top scores locally?

Also, when you speak of the combined totals, is that the top score of each level in that mode combined or simply all games played score combined (like if I were only to keep replaying the first level 1,000x with a top score of $350, would my combined total of the 1 level be $350 or $350,000?)?

If you played level 1 over and over like you describe your combined score would be $350,000. But you'd be mad to do that! You be missing out on the awesome later levels!

Showing the highest global score for each level is something we really wanted to do. We had it implemented at one point so it showed World's Best Score on the info screen for each level. Then we ran into the 25 leaderboard limit! We decided to pull the feature so it didn't delay launch. We are discussing ways we can bring the feature back, but no promises

We do already track your personal highscores on every level and mode. It's displayed on the info screen before each level (along with your bronze/silver/gold ranking) and it's also displayed after each level if you replay it. Check out the image:

[LordGek]

Originally Posted by NiceRich

If you played level 1 over and over like you describe your combined score would be $350,000. But you'd be mad to do that! You be missing out on the awesome later levels!

Showing the highest global score for each level is something we really wanted to do. We had it implemented at one point so it showed World's Best Score on the info screen for each level. Then we ran into the 25 leaderboard limit! We decided to pull the feature so it didn't delay launch. We are discussing ways we can bring the feature back, but no promises

We do already track your personal highscores on every level and mode. It's displayed on the info screen before each level (along with your bronze/silver/gold ranking) and it's also displayed after each level if you replay it. Check out the image:

Oh cool! This means so much more to me than the GC stats, as long as I can see MY top scores for each level I'm good!

[LordGek]

Originally Posted by NiceRich

Sorry you're still having issues dclose. We did test Crazy Horses on iPod Touch with iOS 5.1 prior to release with no problems. We see if we can find out what the problem is and fix it in an update.

The ? button takes you to the How To Play tutorial screen. Just for you, here's the texture you would've seen:

Did you test on an iPod Touch 4G specifically? Assuming this is a retina display game there are often memory issues since the iPod Touch 4G is doing a retina display with only 256M of RAM. This isn't an issue with any of the other retina devices or the older iPod Touches (even though previous iPod Touches have much less RAM, aren't doing the retina display).

[NiceRich]

Originally Posted by LordGek

Did you test on an iPod Touch 4G specifically? Assuming this is a retina display game there are often memory issues since the iPod Touch 4G is doing a retina display with only 256M of RAM. This isn't an issue with any of the other retina devices or the older iPod Touches (even though previous iPod Touches have much less RAM, aren't doing the retina display).

We definitely tested the Touch 4G. It's possible we introduced an issue after testing on that device as compatibility testing happened late in development, but not right at the end.

Rest assured - we will re-test and release an update to fix any issues that are reported to us. Probably with some extra levels too

[dclose]

If it would help you to have my crash logs, I'd be happy to PM them to you. Just let me know where. From the looks of 'em, I'd say it's the typical/dreaded "low memory" issue, but maybe looking at them might help you figure out what's going on?

[NiceRich]

Originally Posted by dclose

If it would help you to have my crash logs, I'd be happy to PM them to you. Just let me know where. From the looks of 'em, I'd say it's the typical/dreaded "low memory" issue, but maybe looking at them might help you figure out what's going on?

If you email the crash log and any other relevant info to technicalsupport@nicetouchgames.com it will go directly to the right person. Much appreciated!

[LordGek]

Just played around with it briefly and, at least the first level, is running fine for me on my iPod Touch 4G iOS 5.1. Just to be safe I did not just a standard reboot but one of those deep down (holding both the power and home key until it starts rebooting). I too once had games crashing on my iPod Touch 4G when nobody else did and, at least in my case, it was clearly related to just having too many apps at the time. Everything was in folder and I still could have had more apps (only some 32G on my 64G device), but I think there is some chunk of RAM dedicated to indexing or maintaining all of those apps since, after clearing out some 75% of my games I consistently had more free RAM (at least on startup).

I'm enjoying how it really combines herding, lassoing, tapping, and line drawing all into one game!

While each level's layout is unchanged from each replay of the level, how the horses come onto the screen seems a bit randomized so each run can feel a little different.

I like how the game has you making a lot of tough calls in the Race the Clock mode. You have very limited time to run the horses in their corral but, for the biggest points and even some extra time you'll really want to wait for as large a herd as possible (up to 5 horses of the same color) to form before sending them off (once the group is lassoed, you can redirect them all you want but no new members can be added). Not only does it cost you valuable time waiting for enough guys to come on screen to form a big group, these horses are...well crazy, and are bound to find ways to injure themselves if you don't rope them into a herd ASAP. Also, just to make things a little more hands on intensive, the horses need constant slaps on their behinds to get a move on or else they'll do a lot of lallygagging on their way to where you've directed them.

This is all just from the first level when there is only one kind of horse and a river to keep them away from, I'm scared to think how crazy things will get once multiple horse types, tornadoes, and electric fences come into the mix!

Question for NiceRich:
How do I unlock the Endless mode of a given level? Do I first need to get a Gold medal in Race the Clock for that level or is the whole mode unlocked after I've medaled in Race the Clock for a few more levels?

[LordGek]

Originally Posted by LordGek

Question for NiceRich:
How do I unlock the Endless mode of a given level? Do I first need to get a Gold medal in Race the Clock for that level or is the whole mode unlocked after I've medaled in Race the Clock for a few more levels?

Do you mind if I take this one, NiceRich?

Each level's Endless mode is unlocked once you acheive a Gold Medal on that level's Race the Clock (i.e. achieve at least a gold medal worthy score on that level).

I like how even though you'll be doing the same basic lassoing/path drawing in either mode, you'll soon notice you'll need to play the two modes a bit differently. In Race the Clock time is of the essence and, while it is never a good idea to let any of the horses get killed (man does this game, although not gory, have all sorts of fatal hazards for your poor ponies), there isn't really any danger in letting your horses get killed. On the other hand, in Endless, you can take as long as you want to corral your horses but once 3 are killed the game will end. So in the Endless mode it is much more about being precise and careful. I guess it is as simple as Race the Clock is about SPEED and Endless is all about ACCURACY.