Improving iOS Rage
Now that a lot of people have had an opportunity to play iOS Rage, let’s have a discussion about what we can do to improve on it. I’ll say up from that the game isn’t going to turn into a free-roamer. There are a lot of technical and design reasons for it, so if you really can’t stand the play style, we will have to do without your purchase. I would like to do a more open game, but this isn’t going to be the series for it.
We are planning a point release that will fix bugs (I am mortified about the crash with non-english language settings), localize to the major languages, add GameCenter support, make the external monitor support more playable by also drawing the buttons on the device, and possibly tweak a few more things. The real opportunity for changes would be on the next game. There is lots and lots more in the Rage world for us to explore, and the team is just hitting its stride for what to do in this play style. We might even be able to squeeze two more mobile games out before the big games hit store shelves next year.
We haven’t hit all the things that were mentioned in the previous “TCRs for iOS games” thread, and we will review the general comments there again. Bringing the time / battery status bar up on pause was a direct result of feedback from that thread.
The current restricted view angles can be expanded. We had them off and on through the development, but when you could look completely behind the movement path you often saw us cleaning up the bodies or bringing monsters in when we didn’t want you to. Future levels can be designed and scripted with that in mind, allowing us to take out the limits. Doing a 180 is awkward with both tilt (upside down) and touch (requires a quick retouch during the snap-back), but it is satisfying to grab an item that you almost missed like that.
We will probably try look-around gyro aiming control as another option in addition to tilt / touch.
So far, downloads of the HD version are crushing the SD version, so people don’t seem to care about downloading huge apps, which was a significant concern of mine. We might push this a little bit more in future releases. I heard that there was a 2GB app size limit enforced by the App Store, but it isn’t clear if that is compressed or installed size.
John Carmack
We are planning a point release that will fix bugs (I am mortified about the crash with non-english language settings), localize to the major languages, add GameCenter support, make the external monitor support more playable by also drawing the buttons on the device, and possibly tweak a few more things. The real opportunity for changes would be on the next game. There is lots and lots more in the Rage world for us to explore, and the team is just hitting its stride for what to do in this play style. We might even be able to squeeze two more mobile games out before the big games hit store shelves next year.
We haven’t hit all the things that were mentioned in the previous “TCRs for iOS games” thread, and we will review the general comments there again. Bringing the time / battery status bar up on pause was a direct result of feedback from that thread.
The current restricted view angles can be expanded. We had them off and on through the development, but when you could look completely behind the movement path you often saw us cleaning up the bodies or bringing monsters in when we didn’t want you to. Future levels can be designed and scripted with that in mind, allowing us to take out the limits. Doing a 180 is awkward with both tilt (upside down) and touch (requires a quick retouch during the snap-back), but it is satisfying to grab an item that you almost missed like that.
We will probably try look-around gyro aiming control as another option in addition to tilt / touch.
So far, downloads of the HD version are crushing the SD version, so people don’t seem to care about downloading huge apps, which was a significant concern of mine. We might push this a little bit more in future releases. I heard that there was a 2GB app size limit enforced by the App Store, but it isn’t clear if that is compressed or installed size.
John Carmack