Ipod 4g I have one lying around..not tested yet. But Framerate has dropped substantially in the last weeks. with the addition of the audio, and increase in map size and such (still 60+ fps on current gen devices, probably cap it at 30 on ipad 2 gen, ) I think ipod5 will be fine, pretty sure actually. but the 4 is a pretty tired little device, by modern standards.. But I'm using a whole bunch of fancy effects I can turn off, (realtime shadows, Post FX bloom, 32 bits colors). Plus the resolution is a lot lower.. So i'll test it, just might be playable.. I'll let you know
Just do what MCPE does to help old devices, add toggles... A boat load of toggles... Trust me, the extra effort to include old devices will make the game alot more successful.
Forgot about that one,, It's an out-take off the voice acting recordings that was just to funny not to fool around with,.
That one was fun You should include it and anything similar you have in the game; like the extras on a movie DVD.
I really like your artstyle On the middle of the 3 pictures, the UI elements for the creatures actually feel detrimental to the overall atmosphere. They take up a lot of screen estate, and draw attention even more than the creatures themselves: They are about the same size, I think even bigger than the creatures. The large circle and the smaller elements below it all vie for attention, plus there are three sets of them. You really don't know where to look/focus first, and I don't see anything that serves as primary focal point for visual attention. Which is never a good thing. The other two pictures are much better: In the first, the hill/spire on the right is an immediate visual focus, due to size and brighter color. But naturally, our eyes tend to start in the topleft corner, where the lighting effects pull your eyes, away from the hill. In the third, you have the 3 creatures, with the dragon as center and first focus, and then the brambles on the left as secondary. That's judging from stills, though. Might give a different impression during actual gameplay. Would be interesting to see a heatmap of where people's eyes go. But I don't think you have an eyetracker readily available?
nope no eyetracker,, no funds for that.. but here's the thing in motion,,bit of gameplay I grabbed this afternoon, not a proper level, so no balancing or proper progresion.. Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel
Gorgeous, thanks for that! I was expecting the dragon to trail wisps of shadow any second. Would be a great effect for all creatures, but not that easy to realise I imagine. I like your touch with the small details, like the orb shattering when you summon(?) a new creature. But I still felt quite distracted by the creature UI elements, just like I wrote in the post before. Also, I found the voice acting a bit too frequent in occurence, made we want to switch it off already, after only that short video, 1:20 minutes I think? Flavor idea: the dragon shouldn't really talk, but give off some dark bass rumble, almost subsonic. It should give a hint that it talks/communicates, but not in a way humans can perceive; different species, after all. Could be done by slowing down his voice extremely, if I remember my little knowledge of audio stuff right.
Thanks,, yeh the unit stats, It remains troubling,, will have to a redesign at some point.. I've got some ideas.. Whispy smoke,, I got it.. but way to heavy for nearly all (but a few) devices.. And yes it looked very epic.. Voice acting timing, indeed , less is more
Sorry for hijacking the thread a bit. I can move it to its own, if you prefer to keep this one solely for the game. Some info on the eyetracker, cause I got curious (yes, I really like digging into arcane subjects like this, broadens my horizon). Google's first results including sponsored links are all Mirametrix, so I assume that is *the* name in the field, e.g. like Cisco for network equipment. Price is hefty, starting at 5000$. Here: http://mirametrix.com/products/eye-tracker/ To show the extreme end of the spectrum, I present: http://www.arringtonresearch.com/prices.html A modular system that can go way beyond 100k € , judging from a first glance. The list is several screens long, and average minimum price is the 5000€ of the Mirametrix system above. But I definitely remember seeing good quality solutions for way less than 1000€. Just need to dig that up again... I have an idea/proposition for that: I vaguely remember reading something recently about some Dutch game developers association, composed mostly of folks like you, without any big studios in there. Are you by chance familiar with it? If enough people are interested in a collective effort, I would be willing to add some funds, provided I can use it as well when my - limited - need arises.
Yeh, I'm a DGA member. But the dutch scene is quite fragmented, so there's no shared resource really going on. At the office we've done eyetracking at a dutch user testing firm called Vals-Plat. But that's paid for by our clients. So we have no direct need, and as I'm doing this off-work, I have no acces to it. If you are interested in a more engaged community of dutch devs, I can point you towards the dutch game garden in Utrecht, which is sort of an Indie Incubator. They might even have some eyetracking equipment shared.
