Universal Knightmare Tower (by Juicy Beast Studio)

Discussion in 'iPhone and iPad Games' started by Sanuku, Jul 31, 2013.

  1. LookingForGames

    LookingForGames Well-Known Member

    Sep 13, 2011
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    Loving this game!
    It's so much fun an definitely worth trying out!

    Could someone tell me what I have to do to complete the objective where it says "survive for 25 seconds without dashing"? What does the dashing refer to? Not getting a combo?

    Edit: Nevermind. Figured it out.
     
  2. WCFields

    WCFields Well-Known Member

    Dec 6, 2009
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    #82 WCFields, Aug 1, 2013
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2013
    A fantastic game

    Like many others have posted this is just a GREAT GAME, worth picking up. On a side note what's everyone's top score for distance? Mine's 3828
     
  3. MasterChief3624

    MasterChief3624 Well-Known Member

    Oct 11, 2009
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    Hm... that worries me a little bit. So there's not much to unlock or bring you back for replay value? Just the core gameplay?

    Only games I have played where I enjoyed the tilt controls were Tilt to Live, Ridiculous Fishing, and.... well, if I enjoy this one, add it to that list as well! :D
     
  4. andsoitgoes

    andsoitgoes Well-Known Member

    This is a fantastic game, and I haven't been able to put it down. The main story is short, 3-4 hours is about right, but it's a fantastic time.

    There is an endless mode as well.

    Because flash is the native platform it came from. If it was just unity, maybe there wouldn't have been issues. Open GL may be what is using more ram.

    As it stands, the game uses around 130mb of ram. On the busier sequences with lots of stuff going on, it CAN get a bit laggy on an iPhone 5, but it's really when it's busy AND notifications come through and even then it's uncommon.

    For anyone who has spent a bit on this, you'll understand that, like borderlands, there is so much going behind the scenes that takes this from being just a "simple 2D game" and into something that is far more complex than just that.

    But beyond this assessment, we are all talking out of our rears. We would need to hear from the developers directly as to why this doesn't work on older hardware. It's all the memory, but the 4th touch has a very measly 256mb vs 512 on the iPhone 4. You pay dramatically less and get dramatically less. Hell, the 5th gen has half the memory of the iPhone 5.

    So when you want to defend 3 year old hardware, just realize, honestly, what you're working with. It's like hoping new releases work with the 1st gen iPad. At least the developers were honest about it. As for being rolling in the "money", even if you had a 3 year old phone with a reasonable amount of memory, you'd be able to run this. Sadly the iPod 4 isn't even that. It's why I will be very hesitant to buy an iPod for my kids.
     
  5. ImJPaul

    ImJPaul Well-Known Member

    May 23, 2012
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    This is my new addiction. Totally done with crack. IT HAS CURED ME!!!
     
  6. ScotDamn

    ScotDamn Well-Known Member
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    Jul 8, 2013
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    #86 ScotDamn, Aug 1, 2013
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2013
    Hey MasterChief, There is a survival mode I haven't unlocked yet that seems to add an infinite high score element to it and with it's super awesome radical gameplay, this is sure to add much to the already great amount of time spent with this lovely gem. I really can't say enough about this game.

    As far as tilt controls, the only ones I have enjoyed are Ridiculous Fishing and A Ride into the Mountains however I don't have a large pool to pull from since I generally stay away from them in general. This game is on par with RF but perhaps even better because of the fast paced action involved; the tilt is really intuitive in this and is a definite buy, no doubt, no question. :cool:

    I can't imagine this game without tilt controls honestly. It's what adds the skill to it which in turn also adds to the addictive game play.
     
  7. bluspacecow

    bluspacecow Well-Known Member

    May 3, 2012
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    I am not a programmer.

    But from searches on google I understand using Unity makes using Open GL ES easier to work with since Open GL ES operates at one of the lower levels of code abstraction and the further down you go the more code you need to write for the levels above it. From Documentation on Open GL ES it's integrated into Core Graphics which is fundamental for all graphics on your iOS device.

    So it could be the particular way in which they're using Unity / Open GL ES that could be inefficient.

    Can I ask what your using to measure the RAM ? Because it won't be the same as the amount of storage space used on the device.

    The disc space used on the device won't be the same as the amount of memory it uses. For example World of Warcraft takes up about 23 GB on disc but doesn't use nearly as much in terms of RAM since it dynamically loads and unloads resources depending on what you're doing in game (it's about 800 MB in use).

    As you can see from my previous twitter link on my iPod touch 5th generation KMT uses 126 MB-ish in terms of disc space. I have yet to find a utility that lets me track how much memory a process is using on a iPod (something in XCode maybe :p)

    I'm using a 5th gen iPod Touch btw.

    But I agree with your point. IIRC That's 256 MB in total , including any iOS system processes running or any other processes on your iOS device (eg other games). The maximum available size for a process will be a lot smaller so you it's more likely for you for processes to quit as they run out of memory to run in.
     
  8. bluspacecow

    bluspacecow Well-Known Member

    May 3, 2012
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    @andsoitgoes

    I'm sorry !

    I figured out how to do it with Xcode.

    In Xcode you can assign a iOS device as a development device. Once you've done so you can effectively do an Activity Monitor on in Instruments with certain parameters.

    Your absolutely right. It does use over 130 MB of real memory on iOS and over 75% of CPU time when playing. That is real , wired non virtual memory that doesn't appear to go down once the app is in the background (although CPU usage drops to zero).

    This could be why it's crashing on those older devices - it's getting too close to the maximum allowable amount of pages on those devices and the OS is doing a big NOPE! on that.

    I've seen other games that had similar memory problems get redesigned and recoded in order to be more efficient on those older devices. Maybe Juicy Beast could do the same thing here.

    Also where are the developers of this ? Do they post to Touch Arcade ? Are we posting somewhere they'll never see ?

    :(
     
  9. Qwertz555

    Qwertz555 Well-Known Member

    May 22, 2010
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    Finally beaten the boss. Omg, took me quite some tries. And now i unlocked Survival, yeah. With this mode, you get another 30 missions. Simply one of the best games i bought this year.
     
  10. Appletini

    Appletini Well-Known Member

    Jan 8, 2011
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    Ankh-Morpork
    I hung on until the end of last year to see what new devices were coming out before moving up from my 4th-gen iPod Touch, and was originally looking at the 5th-gen iPod Touch before adding the 4th-gen iPad into the equation on a whim.

    Between the large number of awesome iPad-exclusive games, vastly superior performance and appearance of universal titles on the larger device, and the hamfisted way some developers have been blocking 5th-gen iPods in an attempt to keep out 4th-gens as well, I've never had a single moment of buyer's remorse with the iPad. ^_^
     
  11. Dad

    Dad Member

    Aug 2, 2013
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    Thanks!

    Hi there, I'm the Juicy Beast's programmer, first I'd like to say thank you for the awesome feedback ;) warms the heart to see much good feedback, notably on the controls :D

    For those of you complaining about the lack of on screen controls, maybe, if there are enough feedback about this, we'll add it, but it is a game design decision we've made for three main reasons:

    1. (Most important point) Most of the monsters are on the bottom of the screen, when you must slide your thumb left to right to control your character, this thumb covers a lot of this most precious game space.

    2.I simply don't like the feel of my thumb sliding on the screen specially when it gets sweaty.

    3. We tried it with the flash version: giving the choice of the controls, some people assumed it was best suited for them to use the mouse rather than the keyboard (for which it was designed) and then began to complain about the controls, not beign aware anymore that you could change the controls. Sooo, I think it is better to not let the player choose because I'm almost sure everyone would switch to the on screen controls given how much the tilt is popular, and without knowing it significantly ruin the overall experience for reasons 1 and 2.


    Also, sorry for those of you experiencing regular crashes, I hope I'll be able to fix it soon enough, but with limited test material, it is quite difficult to reproduce every problem, we have an array of devices, one or a few samples of each, and the game have been completed on most of them without problem.
    Just trying to say that we're trying hard to make a game that meets everyone's expectations and that works for every device it is intended for, but with limited resources it is a challenge.


    And now, for the geeks out there, I'll present you some privileged infos that might educate you in the making of Knightmare Tower and why "Infinity Blade runs on my phone and not Knightmare Tower"

    1. The Gyroscope: old devices don't have a gyroscope, only accelerometers. Gyroscope (along with a home made algorithm) is the reason the controls are so responsive.

    2. Memory: in fact, it is the real main reason, we use about 130MB, which is only allowed on devices with 512MB and more.

    "But oncle Dad, why does Knightmare Tower takes so much RAM?"

    Simple, in 3d games, many textures are optimized and compressed with no alpha, which makes them light weighted, but a 2d game uses sprites with alpha and sometimes, when not compressed, those textures are up to 10 times heavier (3d geometry is really light compared to this), sure we could compress the textures (some very fast appearing/disappearing textures are), but the result would be ugly.

    With the variety of monsters and assets we have to present without interruption (also no slow down for unloading), it is difficult to make it fit inside 70-80MB (amount allowed on 256MB devices).

    So here it is, I hope I helped you figure out the why's of the two most controversed subjects on Knightmare Tower to date, and hope to hear more of you guys, because your support is awesome!

    (Just keep in mind, what I'm writing there are personal opinions, the other members of Juicy Beast are even unaware of this reply, but I suspect soon they'll know about it ;) )
     
  12. TheFrost

    TheFrost Well-Known Member

    Nov 18, 2010
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    Welcome to the forums Dad! Thanks for all the info, and I hope your gem does well on the AppStore. :)
     
  13. Dad

    Dad Member

    Aug 2, 2013
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    Thanks TheFrost :) I hope too ;)
     
  14. bluspacecow

    bluspacecow Well-Known Member

    May 3, 2012
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    @Dad

    Did you see this post of mine about your imposter :

    http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?p=2919717#post2919717

    I was doing Xcode instrument tests and while their knock off version is a crappier version of your product they seem to use much less resources. But their versions much slower - where on KMT the gate shuts and open instantly they present a loading bar. And the action runs a lot slower.

    Do you think this could be a factor ?

    I find it particularly arrogant of them that the process name of their knock off game is "NewKnightmare" IIRC
     
  15. TheFrost

    TheFrost Well-Known Member

    Nov 18, 2010
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    #95 TheFrost, Aug 2, 2013
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2013
    Edit: Already figured out :D
     
  16. WCFields

    WCFields Well-Known Member

    Dec 6, 2009
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    steel worker
    How do I unlock the survive 25 seconds without dashing in a single launch?
     
  17. Dad

    Dad Member

    Aug 2, 2013
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    Yeah we've seen it, the game's not any good, period.

    I admit, I don't do much memory management with textures/spritesheets, tried once but the framework we use for sprite management (Toolkit 2D, which is a fantastic, fantastic tool) does not seem to be able to unload some unused textures (I'm mainly talking about off game interface) the way it is used by us, at the point where we were in the making of the game when we discovered this, re-doing the whole game engine was out of question, still we try and hope to find a way to fix this, but don't expect it to be compatible with 256MB devices, the gain would be of the order of 40MB or so (just above the 256MB bar). Enough to fix some crashing issues I guess.

    On the upper hand, this is why the loading screens take so little time, there is not much to load :D
     
  18. TheFrost

    TheFrost Well-Known Member

    Nov 18, 2010
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    You have to slice them without tapping the screen, the knight just fall down on its own (very slowly) hitting enemies on the ground, for 25 seconds. Took me some other missions to be completed first to realize it :)
     
  19. Dad

    Dad Member

    Aug 2, 2013
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    What we mean by dashing is the action of thrusting downward with your sword, I let you figure out what to do with this info ;) All the princesses are rescued, only one thing left to do: Kill the enemy behind the locked floor! (hint: look closely at your completed missions meter ;) )
     
  20. TheFrost

    TheFrost Well-Known Member

    Nov 18, 2010
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    Ok thanks, better explained than me :p
     

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