Gratuitous Space Battles - (by Red Marble Games)

[spajdr]

RedMarbleGames : is Retina support planned for future patches?
Is 1GB RAM on Ipad 3rd generation enough to run all expansions you already released on PC?

[sakinnuso]

Man, I was REALLY surprised to see this on the Appstore considering I'd only just checked Cliffski's Blog the day before looking for updates on this game.

As soon as I'd read that it was released, I immediately told several message boards to get the hype train rolling.

The Bad:
I was pretty disappointed upon playing the game. Crashes on my iPAD 3 during the ship building phase was the first problem. I had to double-check various iPad games to make sure that I hadn't blown out my speakers, but no, the sample quality of the music and sound effects are HORRIBLE, which is in stark contrast to the actual game on my mac.

iPad retina? Forget about it. I'm not exaggerating when i say that this looks like a scaled up iPhone game. Ships are terribly blurry during combat - which is incredibly disappointing considering that the reward of the meticulous setup during your ship-building phase is watching the gorgeous details during GSB's epic battles. These are the things that one would imagine are perfectly suited to the screen of the iPad. To put it bluntly, this game looks terrible, especially in contrast with other recent sharply detailed hi-rez 2D games like amoebabattle or Tower Defense HD, and even older classics like Land Air Sea warfare.

More, this is a bare-bones release. Gone are the add-ons and Galactic Conquest mode, which is totally forgivable considering that I'd totally buy every expansion as IAP. That's fair. However, the BIG ball drop is the omission of Multiplayer. The reason that people still love GSB to this day is that the game is PERFECT for fantastic strategic online battles.

GSB is not a 'real time' multiplayer game. Essentially, it's a one-turn asynchronus multiplayer battle. Think ONE turn Words with Friends, Highborn HD, or Hero Academy. Players spend as long as they need setting up their ships, configuring specifics like what kind of thrusters, lasers, power sources, and other gadgets they need, then position their ships on an area of the screen. Once you hit FIGHT, the computer simulates the battle to its conclusion, and the winner is whoever made the smartest initial decisions in planning. One would imagine that this is IDEAL for the iOS platform. Instead, the developers have removed the feature entirely.

NOBODY plays GSB for the single-player campaign. The campaign is a fun way to teach you how to play the game and how to deal with the various fleets, but ultimately, GSB is a multiplayer game. Stripped of that experience, one begins to wonder about the point of it all.

The Good:
Considerable effort was put into making this game work with the iPAD interface, and GSB does a great job of it. Placing ships, upgrading components, speeding up the battle, quickly navigating through the enormous space-battles, all of it is done with ease and is an excellent showpiece for how complex RTS and strategy games CAN work on the iPAD. In this incredibly important area, Red Marble Games didn't drop the ball.

Parting Thoughts:
The 'core' of GSB is here intact. There's no denying that. I guess that I'm personally disappointed because I've been evangelizing the game for the better part of a year since I'd first started pestering Cliffski about it on the Positech Games message board. Hell, I even joined the Facebook page.

If ever there was a game that was begging for an iPAD port, this was it. Every element of it, from the hi-rez graphics, the interface, to the way that it handles PvP battles, is theoretically IDEAL for the iPad.

Cliffski was never really big on iPAD development to begin with. If one reads the blog, one gets the impression that he did it out of mild curiosity, and from the pressure of the fans. His interest was totally more toward GSB updates and the upcoming Gratuitous Tank Battles.

I paid 9.99 sight unseen because I knew that the game would be a slam dunk. I mean, how could it NOT? Sure, sacrifices in RAM have slightly gimped the AI such that battles that I had a really tough time with during the campaign on MAC really aren't so difficult here, but the failings of ANY iOS port always sparks two inevitable results:

1. When people see the high cost and Cliffski sees the low sales, the argument was that the port wasn't worth the effort anyway since he wasn't big on it from the beginning.

2. the mediocrity of the port makes people not only question if these games can (and should) be done on iOS, but makes the more hardcore gamers (i.e., those that aren't just in it for angry birds and cut the rope) think twice before recommending the app (thus pushing sales), but loose enthusiasm about a lot of hardcore-centric upcoming ports for the iPad medium.

When Battlehearts came out, I totally gifted like TEN copies to people around my office. That's how passionate I was about convincing people that the iPAD is awesome when people make stellar apps for it. Now while I wouldn't have gifted ten copies of GSB (I don't have deep pockets), I would've done everything in my power to ensure that the word gets out on such an awesome experience -- had the ducks lined up.

My sincere hope is that Red Marble Games works on some real updates for this uniquely amazing game. Fixing these graphics and initiating some type of multiplayer is a HUGE start. There are several other 4X strategy games that have working multiplayer on iOS. There's just no reason that GSB couldn't take the time to polish this, especially since this was a stealth launch that nobody expected.

Anyway...reluctantly....recommended.

For anybody that bought the game based on my other posts on other boards, I'm REALLY sorry about that. The gaming experience that this SHOULD'VE been on iOS is easily worth 9.99.

[DaviddesJ]

Originally Posted by sakinnuso

NOBODY plays GSB for the single-player campaign.

Really not true. A problem with forums like this is, you have a huge overrepresentation of people who play multiplayer games, and they lose touch with what the average customer is like.

[Fimb]

This.
Just give me a nice not buggy version of the game with decent AI and a little campaign and I'm happy. I never play MP on iOS.

[sakinnuso]

Originally Posted by Fimb

This.
Just give me a nice not buggy version of the game with decent AI and a little campaign and I'm happy. I never play MP on iOS.

The biggest mode of the game is the Galactic Conquest Mode. You fight other user created ships/fleets in a huge galaxy wide battle. Just saying.

[Fimb]

I know. We'll see it when the game won't crash a lot.
Looking forward to the fix and the add-ons. Gonna buy the crap out of them if the game is stable.

[Werechihuahua]

Bringing PC/Mac titles to ios is not child's play. Multi-mega million corporations can't do it right. EA doesn't even try to bring games to mobile. They make "mobile versions" with the same name on it.

No retina graphics at release... Apple didn't even confirm the specs, much less update the dav kits until the big press event. You really expect programs that were in development before then to be instantly upgraded? Only a select few developers got a head start, like Chair.

Buggy initial release. How many iOS titles have you developed and released that we're bulletproof and airtight in ver. 1.0? This ain't Angry Birds or Doodle jumping army. I have a little more patience than a 3 year old. I am pleased that Red Marble has reacted so quickly to the worst of the bugs, and confident that they will get this sorted out.

Multiplayer is another matter entirely. Trying to shoehorn the Galactic Battles DLC into an iPad may well be impossible. Or at least prohibitively expensive in time and labor. People are already having kittens about the price tag.

Would we rather have full on big great games like this on iOS and deal with the learning curve or just play Smurf Village? After all, there isn't one developer on Earth who has more than 24 months experience making games for iPad. It didn't exist.

[MunkieSuthorn]

Originally Posted by sakinnuso

NOBODY plays GSB for the single-player campaign.

Wrong.... Just saying I will take Campaign > Multiplayer, thanks.

NOBODY is a pretty broad word... try words such as most, 84%, or any other made statistic that you quoting as the gospel.

Munkie!

[athros]

Originally Posted by MunkieSuthorn

Wrong.... Just saying I will take Campaign > Multiplayer, thanks.

NOBODY is a pretty broad word... try words such as most, 84%, or any other made statistic that you quoting as the gospel.

Munkie!

84% of the statistics on the internet are made up. Be more realistic

[Defard]

For me, the main advantage of IOS over PC / Mac / Console gaming is how titles develop over time (via upgrades). Upgrades can change a game considerably, at worst simple bug fixes and at best new content, refined mechanics and a new breath of life.

GSB could remain a simple port but if the devs get behind it, it could become the definitive version that everyone craves. The important thing to remember is that if they don't sell enough copies it will probably be seen as a waste of time to take it to the next step.

Where I personally wouldn't consider getting behind Combat Mission on the iPad (an incredibly poor product), I will with this. Even though the IOS version isn't a patch on the PC / Mac version that we love, (bugs aside) it isn't a million miles away.