hehe yeah no doubt bugs aside - I really love this game I just hope the stuttery movement animation is fixed as well. That's not really a bug, I'd assume.
Long winded analysis here, worthy of the "real" Commander Data Well, got done with my latest consulting job and I made it to the airport last night... was unable to purchase and play on the plane due to locked wifi that I refused to pay for at Chicago-Midway airport Picked it up when I got home and played through quite a bit. I'd been monitoring the progress of 100 Rogues for a while, and anticipating the arrival of a new roguelike that pushed some boundaries in graphics and design. Obviously I've got a vested interest in the category with Rogue Touch, and my upcoming game project, and wanted to see how someone else handled the leap! Anyway, I'm going to give two different impressions here- gamer, and developer: 1) Gamer: The graphics and animations are very nice! Music is a fun take on the 16-bit era of gaming. The touch a direction to move and tap character to bring up a "menu" are similar but not quite the same as Rogue Touch, but anyone who's played RT with classic touch controls should adapt easily. Movement in game seems to be a bit slow and "jumpy" and bounces back when you stop running at times. Not too annoying, but noticeable. The visibility/light circle is nice, and reminds me of Shiren's gameplay- you can only see monsters that are within the radius of your light. Would love to have the mini-map permanently overlaid like Shiren the Wanderer and RT. I see reasons why it can't, but those are for the dev section. Dungeon layouts I have seen are not bad, a bit small but they have nice twisty passages. The size may have been a conscious design plan to make the monster groups more concentrated and battles more dangerous, so its not a big deal. Plus the walking speed would make a much larger dungeon intolerable! Equipment and magic items seem to be a bit lacking right now, but it sounds like there's more planned in this area too. Right now, 100 Rogues reminds me of that cute girl that everyone wants a date with. She's very pretty and that causes you to try to overlook her various flaws. I need to spend some more time with her to see if she's all looks and no personality. Or maybe she's got the IQ of a thumbtack, but not as sharp. Time will tell! 2) Developer: Where to begin! Obviously many people are having issues here. The iPhone is a tough device to work with if you have an ambitious game design. This being a "Freshman" effort for the Dinofarm guys in app store, and a roguelike, I am compelled to study it closely. First let me say- I do believe there are some bugs in 100 Rogues that need to be ironed out, but not as many as you may think. Shields appear to be a red herring, not the main issue. I've played using a Heater shield that I equipped and it successfully animated when blocking attacks. No problems there. What I do see as the primary problem is an extreme lack of optimization. Let me explain. Warning, technical talk follows that may only be of interest to developers... I'm running the current state of the art (until June anyway), a 32GB iPhone 3GS, so plenty of RAM and horsepower. I also rebooted my phone prior to this test. Hooking up to Instruments on the iMac and starting a game of 100 Rogues was a shocking experience! The bad- * 70-95% CPU usage during gameplay on my 3GS. An unreal amount considering this is a 2D Tile based game without a lot going on. For reference, Sword of Fargoal uses 25-35% CPU, and my Mineko tech-demo uses a stingy 8-10% CPU right now (without AI active). I'd imagine 100 Rogues would feel like molasses on old hardware. That also explains why you have no mini-map overlay... can't afford to use more CPU time. * RAM consumption. 100 Rogues is the hungry hippo of roguelikes on the iPhone. This is likely the cause of 95% of the random crashes reported here. Let me quickly clarify the speed and memory rules and requirements for the uninitiated: A) 1st Gen iPod Touch: 333Mhz, 128MB RAM, 24MB dedicated texture memory B) 2G iPhone: 400Mhz, 128MB RAM, 24MB dedicated texture memory C) 2nd Gen iPod Touch: 533Mhz, 128MB RAM, 24MB dedicated texture memory D) 3G iPhone: 400Mhz, 128MB RAM, 24MB dedicated texture memory E) 3rd Gen iPod Touch: 600Mhz, 256MB RAM, shared texture memory with main RAM F) 3GS iPhone: 600Mhz, 256MB RAM, shared texture memory with main RAM iPhones generally have at least 5MB less RAM than an iPod Touch available even after a fresh reboot due to the Phone and SMS apps that have to run in the background at all times. For reference- A&C would have about 50-55 MB available for an app to run in after reboot, B&D would have roughly 45-50, E and F should have at least 100MB available without breaking a sweat. Note that Mail and Safari stay running in the background after starting them and can consume 20-25MB of RAM easily, which means less available for this or any other game/app. 100 Rogues RAM usage starts at approximately 49MB once fully into a new game. Not particularly horrible considering this is on my 3GS, it'd likely be between 25-35MB main RAM usage on any device prior to a 3GS or 3rd Gen Touch. The problem is it never stops growing! It peaked at 94MB after getting to level 2, where I died. 78MB remained in RAM after my crusader's death which caused the memory usage to climb to 108MB upon starting another new game. Then it hit 111MB after clearing one room!!! For reference, Sword of Fargoal uses about 49MB of RAM at all times on my 3GS, which would actually be about 25MB on a 2G/3G iPhone or 1st/2nd gen iPod Touch (due to them having 24MB dedicated texture RAM). The Mineko tech-demo uses a paltry 6MB of RAM, but that will rise as new textures are brought into play. Wes, Keith, if you need some help in getting stuff under control I'm sure that myself or perhaps even Madgarden could give you some assistance. Creating low memory/CPU usage code is kind of a specialty of mine since I'd started out learning with 1.5Mhz and 32Kb of RAM in the good old days (around 1983) For non-developers and the tl;dr crowd: * Reboot your device before playing. Exit the game after every floor and then re-open and resume if you want to avoid the possibility of crashing (This flushes out accumulated "junk" game data). * DO NOT start a new game from the menu after your death. Exit the app completely and re-open and start a new game. This should allow you to enjoy 100 Rogues virtually crash free until they can optimize memory usage a bit more. (Whew, this turned out to be a lot more than I'd planned to say on the subject! )
Agreed. I love this game. I am having more fun with this game than just about anything I have played in a long while. When everything is fixed, I can see this being in my top five. (Hell, it probably already is)
Devs, please get in touch with CommanderData about his offer to help with the low memory code, it sounds too good to pass up on.
Oh i know, i know. I WILL believe me. Right now mostly i have to hold off cause of finances till i get more itunes credit. This would wipe me out so by waiting another week or so, i'll have more and by then this will be fixed hopefully.
Does anyone else think the game needs a new icon? The current one is very bland and boring, and I can see it putting off a lot of people. If I saw it in the newest apps section and didn't know what the game is, I'd probably just assume it was another one of those cheap, crappy, ugly little games that Apple loves to approve. That's not to say that the actual art on the icon (by which I mean the sack) is ugly, but the smaller version seen in the App Store just doesn't look good.
Interesting post CommanderData. I'm no dev so *whoosh* there goes the technical stuff over my head but what you're saying sounds right to me and, given your experience with Rogue Touch and your input with iNetHack, I hope the guys at Dinofarm accept your offer of help. Having played a bit more, I'm lucky to not have yet encountered a bug (I'm on a 3G Touch) and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Animations are nice and, given the static look of many roguelikes, they really add a lot though, as CommanderData points out, can slow things down (not a major issue given the size of the levels) and jump sometimes. I'd love if the game just felt a little smoother. I agree that having an on-screen map at all times would be a huge help. The more I play, though, the less comfortable I'm becoming with the controls. It usually happens the other way around! I'm finding the character menu coming up at times when I don't want it to and I'm not sure if there's a way of being sure when I'm going to attack or when I'm going to move as the fairy. It seems to sort of pick for me, though I imagine I just haven't found the knack. I know many have mentioned Fargoal but one major benefit to the Fargoal controls is that your thumb can be anywhere. With 100 Rogues, as with some other games, the control requires that you cross over your viewing area. Ideally, I'd love a way of controlling the character that means the main play area is rarely obscured. But I'm enjoying this. It's quirky and certainly a challenge (I've already died a few times). Importantly, it feels different. That's a good thing.
So CommanderData, would you say those issues just popped up in the last week or so, and it worked fine before? =)
See, that's what we need here - a critical approach! Makes me feel all warm inside.. and that's extra warm-inside-juice to power my Positive Vibes. (I reaaaaaally need to reconsider my phrasing.) Anways, sensible description of crashes seems like a constructive approach no? Helps dem devs make a great game player friendly. Getting some interesting items popping up every now and then. What's this? A dagger that does magical damage? Will maybe help me stay on top of wizard high scores? Come on, let me enjoy the moment
well, what CommanderData says - means that bugs won't be really fixed soon. Optimization usually takes a lot of time.
I'll beat him to it. Yes, he's right, yes, I'm eager to accept his help, and yes, this game has been in need of optimization for a long time. That said, my experience testing on devices old and new hadn't shown me large enough problems to merit delaying the game again.
Just a quick note to all, Wes Paugh and I have made some initial contact via PM already, and will be chatting more directly about the game as soon as I can get caught up in the office here. Hopefully I can provide some insight and improve the situation! Just wanted to let everyone know that they are very interested in making every one of you (including me, as a purchaser of the game) happy Finally let me say a quick thanks for everyone that's been a supporter of myself (if you don't know who I am, check the sig! ) and other roguelikes like 100 Rogues, Sword of Fargoal, and Cavern in the store. Your fanatical love of games like this means that we'll keep making them, and making them better! Edit- Ha, you beat me to the punch Wes. We'll talk very soon
Why does this matter? Why do you constantly want to attack these debs? They've apologized, they're fixing it, and they're COMMUNICATING with us. Keep treating them like crap and they, and other devs, will give up that service to us. They admit they have a problem with their game; isn't that enough?
some people are just going to act this way... I hope the devs don't take things like this personally. they'd have to be blind to not notice the supportive fanbase they've got in under 24 hours.
Nope, I absolutely love the icon they chose. It's very flush, yet simple(not doing to much). @CommanderData Thanks for your post...every little bit helps. Still loving 100 Rogues despite the bugs. It's very addicting. Other than it's great rogue-like qualities, the game also gives me a pokemon mystery dungeon feel. Love it. @IpodLady it is worth getting now despite whats being reported. Highly addictive...even as is.
At the moment I won't bother buying the game until the bugs are sorted but I'd be happy to pay full price when everything ticks over nicely. I'll be keeping my eye on this one for sure.
