I think the IAP has mislead some people. They think they're not getting a complete game because it has IAP. There is a huge amount of content and most players don't buy DLC and we don't expect them to, but if they want to continue playing then we give them the option. The free user content and PBEM multiplayer give almost endless replay value but we like to support the single player community as well with as much content as they can devour!
This is absolutely true, there is way too much content for $19.99. The IAP is more like expansion packs from the old days of pc gaming. At $19.99 you will have more game then you could really ever play as it is.
The iap is the same as the PC expansions, which aren't free either. Wargames are a different breed, new campaigns are almost never added for free. Some wargames have dozens of expansions which you can choose to buy or not. The flipside is a game like Battle of the Bulge; often the engines used for strategic (or is it operational?...argh my memory stinks) wargames are reused in new games which cover a different battle...and are sold as new games. Usually, if you want everything for one price, you have to wait several years until a "gold box" style version is released.
I just wanted to add one last thing...wargames don't follow the same pricing models as PC games in other genres. A typical PC game might drop in price 20 dollars or more after a year; wargames often stay at the same price as long as they are actively published.
Hey Slitherine dudes, what are the chances of adding shadows to the graphics engine on iPad? The game ran fine as it is on my iPad 1, and looks and runs even better on my Mini. Even if it meant a performance hit, the option to turn on more eye candy would be great. It would be a great way to future proof the game too, I'll be buying more iPads in the future and Battle Academy is on my list of games that I will never uninstall. Those guys worrying about IAP? You don't buy bags of gems so you can ignore a timer to move your Panthers again. These are huge chunks of new gaming content that provide hours of extra gaming. It's like the old days when an expansion would be released, and you'd go to the shop to buy a box containing a disk (or four) with the Secret Missions for Wing Commander or something. I've been playing dozens of hours of Battle Academy and because that's been mostly the multiplayer I haven't even finished the base game let alone the IAP campaigns. Dollar for dollar, this game is one of the greatest bargains on the App Store.
I don't think so. I know other, similar games have done it but when you see this game played on ipad or pc, you will see that putting I on a small screen will only cause problems. It would be impossible to touch the square you want to move to, or if you stayed zoomed in super close the majority of your play time would be scrolling around the map. It would not be a fun experience either way. If you really want to play their games, and I must say, all their games are awesome you need to invest in an ipad or pc.
iPad version outsells PC 5 to 1 ^ One for all the people on here that continual repeat that iOS gamers are cheap.
And hopefully this will stop (certain) people demanding this goes on sale. This is conclusive proof that a proper game can sell for a proper price on this platform.
This is pretty much the case. It is something that we have bubbling away in our minds, but I think it would need to look very different (e.g. perhaps be top down only with somewhat easier to see visuals). Cheers Pip
Shadows as an option for the iPad 3+ is on my task list, but there are some iPad specific performance characteristics which make it pretty expensive, and even if it is an option, I am wary of making the responsiveness of the game take too much of a hit. It would definitely make the game look even better! Cheers Pip
Pip, I'd really like to play BA on my thinkpad tablet 2 (TPT2). This is a win8 tablet with an intel atom z2760 processor. Atom procs are not known for their computing power. However, they can run many older games fine. The TPT2 will run the BA demo, but at an abysmally low rate (10fps or lower when there is a lot on screen). BA is much, much smoother on my Mini. This is interesting because in theory, the Atom z2760 has considerably more graphical power. What kind of graphical tweaks/optimizations that Slith implement to get BA running at a reasonable frame rate on the ipad 2/Mini? Any possibility of those tweaks getting ported over as options in the PC version?
What resolution are you running at? I would try cutting the resolution and downgrading or disabling shadows to see if that helps. Atom CPUs are focused on power saving rather than speed, and the CPU in the mini (in my mini anyway) is pretty high end, so that could affect performance too. Especially as the majority of the graphical processing is done on the CPU. Pretty much all the optimisations from the iOS version were folded back into the desktop versions - really the only major difference on iOS is no shadows, and we hide a very small number of the tiny-yet-poly-filled ground details (grass stems etc). Sorry I can't be of more help. I would definitely be interested to hear if you got it running satisfactorily though. Cheers Pip
I've tried your suggestions. Below are some benchmarks of the z2760. http://www.anandtech.com/show/6529/busting-the-x86-power-myth-indepth-clover-trail-power-analysis/4 http://www.anandtech.com/show/6522/the-clover-trail-atom-z2760-review-acers-w510-tested/4
I'll take a look and see if it is low enough risk. It would be good to know what the bottleneck is on the tablet - I've seen BA running fine on machines with far lower effective specs than what you describe. Cheers Pip
It runs but barely. The demo/tut mission starts out around 12 fps. If I change the view to top-down, it hovers around 16. If I then zoom way out to include some of the surrounding buildings, the fps drops to 8fps. Explosions and other effects cause lots of stuttering. This is with shadows off at 1366x768, 32bit color.
