It was just some bad copy-paste of the username code: I added the bookmark at the last minute for 1.0.2 as the map was beginning to be too big. I should definitively allow more characters for them. Thanks for the feedback! But your post gave me an idea: I should probably just display the coordinates below each bookmarks. This way you won't have to write them yourself, and you can use a fully descriptive name while still having an idea of where it is on the map... What do you think?
Oh, and apparently the game was submitted to the Game Of the Week poll thanks to max-o and mr_bez: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=235529 If you also like the game (and if you like it more than the other submissions ), please say it loud in the poll and comments!
That would be perfect. Knowing where the bookmark was was the driving reason for the naming system. I came up with one more suggestion: would it be possible for you to track the total amount of tiles a person has uncovered, including tiles that had been wiped destroyed? The leadboards should still be goverend by your empire total, but it would be nice to have some sort of statistic of progression that can't be ruined by other players.
Well it would be possible for new players, but I didn't store that information and won't be able to do it for old empires (so old players would start with their current amount) But it could be an interesting idea, so I'll start tracking this just in case, thanks!
Any news for an update? Just curious, I've still been playing from time to time and it's still fun. Also just another minor thing I noticed, but it seems that the afewbillion.com web site doesn't find users that have a space in their name. I tried my own "Sgt Pepper" and it didn't work, but tried a few others in the leader board that had a space in the name and they didn't work either. Also, any chance of seeing another little GIF of the progress of the world?
Sure, I should be done mid-week. Here's what I have so far: the map can be hidden on iPhone iPad can be used in portrait double-tapping an empty tiles simulates a tap on all adjacent hidden tiles (to be used cautiously!) you can cancel a press by moving your finger before lifting it (some will be very happy about that!) griefers who only destroy other players' empires without playing themselves see the delay of their game over animation increase, which should hopefully annoy them enough to make them stop bookmark coordinates are now displayed below their names other player's mistakes are shown live in the mini-map you can tweet your location I've also added an in-app purchase to disable ads and, in a less fun category, an interstitial ads which pops up from time to time when you dismiss the game over screen Now I have a few layout and localisation tweaks to do, and I need to live on it for a few days before submitting to Apple. Hopefully I'll submit by thursday or friday, for a release mid next week. Oops, indeed! I just fixed it, and I'll deploy the fix the next time I have to restart the server. Sure, here's one I made yesterday. This one shows the raw data without treatments, which means that you can see people empires! (or a blend of empires, since every pixel represents 32*32 tiles)
It would be amazing if users could generate that gif in-game. In fact, toggles to generate a gif of just a user's empire or a clan's empire would be seriously cool!
I'm not sure how I could do that but I'll think about it. My plan (when I have free time!) is to enable some sort of time machine on the website. I'm saving the state everyday, and it would be really easy to go back in time. I "just" need to make a nice UI for that (which will take some time given my html and javascript skills )
Was going to download, but it's Ios7 only Any particular reason for that? Guess it isn't a huge deal though, as I'll hopefully be upgrading my device soon
Part of the reasons I started the project was to get my hands on SpriteKit which is iOS 7 only, sorry.
Is it one that you drew or one that you found while playing? If the former, where is it on the map, share it with us! (Send the browser link to you be email from the bookmarks manager, then paste the link in the thread!)
Ok it's now fixed, thanks for the heads up! I think I also fixed a long standing bug which would cause random freezes of the network. It was not a huge deal since the UI was still responsive and the taps and presses were queued, but it was a bit annoying nonetheless. In any case, I think I found the cause yesterday and I haven't seen the freeze occur a single time since I updated the server a few hours ago
Love the game but i feel like it not really taking advantage of the multiplayer aspect part of the game. It could be more competitive perhaps with a few tweaks where when you fail instead of destroying all the blocks around it it only destroy yours not another players preventing trollers, but in it place when you create a block you destroy maybe a few block of the other player adjacent to the block you created making it harder to troll but more competitive. Also perhaps add a new item like a force field that protects your tiles and maybe it can only be destroyed with another item? The price of these item would have to be balanced so it not easy to troll but I can see making clan battles a bit more interesting since your constantly battling the other clan. Last thing would be to add chat for more coordinated attack and building a community within the game which is currently lacking.
So this will be taken care of in the next update It might be a bit hard to explain and I try to keep things as simple as possible, but it's a really interesting concept, I'll think about it! Yes that's definitively something planned if the game takes off! Yep that's more or less planned too as it's one of the big requests. To do that I also need some sort of friend system though...
Enjoying the minesweeper part of this. Definitely wishing there were more, though. In the spirit of brainstorming some very vague ideas on adding more depth to the gameplay (I come from an RPG background so many of these ideas are slanted that way): * Some sort of personal advancement, i.e. leveling. Just something to provide a milestone to be working towards at all times. People love milestones. No idea what the rewards could be, though. Maybe access to more items for purchase, or lower prices, or access to colors (of a wider variety as you level up) to customize your empire to. Maybe an item which protects you from an error, preventing the resulting explosion (but consumed by it). Maybe you can purchase signs that are basically a tile people can click on and get a customizable message popup (e.g. "Welcome to Syro's Empire!", or "Here be dragons!"). I'm sure lots of people have ideas on items. * Daily challenge "dungeons". You can play the dungeon once per day, it is single-player (each player gets their own instance), finite size (e.g. 30x30), has hard-core rules (if you hit a mine you have lost and are out for that day), and an aggressive time-limit. Winning the dungeon gives you ... something ?? Another leaderboard (daily dungeon wins) or related achievements. Maybe badges on your profile. Maybe bonus XP if you go with a leveling system. Maybe there are tiers of dungeon difficulty that you gain access to by beating enough of the lower tiers, higher ones giving out more desirable badges/rewards. * Clan dungeons. Same as above, but sized larger and with aggressive time limits that require multiple people working together to beat. This would support the multiplayer aspect of the system and encourage clan growth. Could definitely go wild on the tiers and difficulty here, I'm sure the player base would grow to the challenge. * Discoverable items that provide instant, limited time benefits. For example if you uncover the "shield" you get 30 seconds of invulnerability to errors. Or an "orb of seeing" that reveals a random nearby tile every few taps for 30 seconds. Or every time you tag a yellow it gives you another nearby yellow for free, for 30 seconds. Stuff that isn't game-breaking, but just spices up the gameplay. Maybe some mild negative effects too. Blindness would make all tiles the same color for 30 seconds. I don't know. I enjoy the basic gameplay enough to load this up and play occasionally. Definitely the game doesn't require any of this. Just some ideas on things that could push this up from what is pretty vanilla minesweeper (imo) to a new level, if you're interested. The clan dungeon was the only idea that really caters to the multiplayer aspect that I came up with.
Here it is! Was gong to do a mini Link next to it, but kinda gave up. I used an 8x8 pixel size for the invader and it's 8x8 so it'll only take up 4 pixels on that world map. Location is around -1870 -2500 My next project is going to be a little more.... Expansive.
As amazing as this is, would it be possible to optimise it's data usage? Within an hour of downloading and playing in the same place with no players in my immediate area, I had used 30MB on my phone plan. This might not sound like much, but to me it is Other than this, 5 stars!
