App is very straightforward ....tutorial is nice and easy to understand for a no so avid stratego gamer like myself.. I like the preset formations and look forward to polishing my skills with this ....it had all the straight forward needs for a awesome online turnbased game! Very well done so far! Lookin forward trying out these special ships and items...!
Man I remember playing Somthing like this years ago as soon as my opponent made his first move it all came back to me, the multiplayer is really smooth if the person your playing against is active you'll see their move right away after you've made yours soooooooo sick! Everybody post your sandbox name and let's do this!
My sandbox ID is Vander4S. For the dev: are you getting the crash logs through the testflight sdk? Im assuming so sonce its got the testflight feedback, but wanted to double check. Ive had a number of crashes, so I can send the logs otherwise. Im also on ios6 so that could be part of the problem. The game is a lot of fun so far. Been WAY too long since ive played stratego, so gotta figure out what im doing again...
Yes I'm getting the crash logs - and the biggest 2 crash reasons I'm seeing are: 1. There's an issue with the way I'm suspending and resuming animations when the app is put to background and resumed. I think I have a solution for and it will be fixed in the next beta build. I'm just doing a bit more testing tonight before I upload it. 2. iOS 6 beta has a few issues with the way I'm authenticating to game center.
Beta participation has been awesome so far First of all - I'm having lot's of fun playing you guys. Most of you are quite good at Stratego it appears. I'm pondering a large change in the game play mechanic though. Let me know your thoughts on this idea: Currently once I show you an enemy ship number as a result of a battle, it will re-hide itself as soon as you take your next move. I show you a replay of the last 5 moves and reveal any units in combat during those 5 moves to help you remember what's going on in that match. I thought this would work well, but It appears not to be enough. It could be because I'm playing 10+ matches at a given time so I can't remember where all pieces I've seen so far, but have been re-hidden, are now located. In classic stratego remembering where revealed, but now hidden, pieces are located is part of the skill, but in an asynchronous turn based setting this is not really practical if the player is playing many matches. Therefore I think once I reveal an enemy ship to you as a result of combat, it will remain visible for the rest of the match. Are you for/against this idea?
I'm on the fence here, but leaning towards against the idea. It seems like it takes out an important part of classic stratego.
I think playing a lot of matches at once will make it harder to remember where things are I also think that maybe a pass and play option might be good so two friends can play if you can't fint find any games online
I was totally against the idea as I wrote the app. But now that I play it I don't like giving a strategic advantage to people that play few matches. What do others think?
Are pass and play options something users really want? I've never used a pass and play feature myself.
I think the tutorials are hard for me to understand and play the game, first off, I was never good at these type of games. I have 1 win, so I guess I will use that as my entry?
Honestly I never considered it before but think in a game where you have to rely on having an opponent to play against it might help just in case there's no one to battle
There should always be opponents That's a good point. Fortunately Apple has done a pretty good job designing their asynchronous turn-based API. It would be almost impossible to run into a situation where there is no-one to play. Depending on how popular the game is you might have to wait a bit for your opponent to take their turn, but as long as 2 people want to play, the auto-matching will match them together.
What about sound effects? Explosions or some noise when you move a ship or even some background music
Sound Effects I have completely neglected sound effects. For two reasons really - I play almost all of my iOS games on silent. Either I'm between meetings at work, or I'm around other people watching tv, etc. Also, I have no audio skills, and I don't have the budget to hire someone to do it for me. It is a gap in my skill-set that I'm looking to close so I might do some research and look into getting some sound effects in an update. Any other developers out there willing to recommend an approach for an indy dev to get some decent sound effects into their game? Maybe there are some good community sites out there I can hire a free lance sound effects artist. I've taken that approach with the graphics and it's worked well for me. Or perhaps it's affordable to buy sound effects ala-cart from a sound effects store? I'm open to suggestions.
If you get online and look around you can find royalty-free sound effects you could use. No idea what you'll find or how good they'll be, but it's an option for now. Found this with a quick google search. Just have to look at the terms etc to make sure you find ones that are allowed for commercial use.
If you're looking for soundFX, It's not free but it's very reasonably priced and we've alway been happy with it. http://www.soundsnap.com/
Glad someone was able to help with the music the only guy I know of does soundtracks and I don't think he's free
Awesome. Thanks for the suggestion. I signed up for an account there and in less than a day was able to find all the effects I needed. I've got them implemented into the game along with a global sound toggle option. Now - I think they are pretty cool sound effects. But no one ever notices when their own baby is ugly. So beta testers let me know what you think. I just uploaded the build. Also - I could use some fresh testers. If anyone still wants to jump in the beta I've opened the sign-up link back up. Click here to sign up via testflight.app.
Loving the sounds you put in. A game like this doesn't need crazy effects just a few basic sounds and you got them right. But maybe I'm like an Uncle here cause I was the one that mentioned it hmmmmmm Would an uncle say your kid was ugly? Well I like it
