Ha!!! I must admit this has happened to me on more than one occasion, as well as almost missing my stop for work :O I haven't played this in some time, gotta get back into it...
Thanks Stella! So, now that version 1.2 is in review at Apple, I'm starting to work on 1.3. The main new feature will be support for push notifications. As I said earlier, the idea would be to let members of a clan send notifications to all other members. To limit abuses, only people with a certain number of tiles and who have been in the clan for long enough will be able to send them. And they won't be able to send more than one per day. There will be a set of pre-written notifications to chose from and so far I have 3 ideas: a general cheer: "Go clan go!" a request to mine in a location: "Mine this area with me!" a request to attack a location: "Wipe those people that surround me!" (wording to be written) The last 2 would embed a location, so that people receiving them could jump straight to the action. What do you think? Do you have any other notification ideas that could be useful?
Wow. I just downloaded this. It's amazing. Like I don't know why but you just wanna keep playing. I had to stop myself so I could eat. lol Congrats and this. It's really neat. I still don't get what the tools are for, though.
I think that's a great idea. In one of the past releases, you included the ability to see where the last few wipers were used I think. With the notification and the change to prevent people from destroying your empire with wrong moves, would it be possible for you to get a notification if someone used a wiper on you that includes the name and the location? Welcome! The first tool is the "sonar" which lets you see the locations of all mines on the screen for a few seconds. The second is a "wiper" that lets you clear solved tiles from the board. Previously you could have gotten rid of other players' tiles by making a wrong move near their empire, but that has been changed. Now, you need to use the wiper in order to clear their tiles.
Ooooh, good idea! And we could also make attacks much more visible on the map so that you can easily follow (and fight back with your own Wipers) once you're back in the app.
Ok, I'm back with a new phone, and this game is really cool! I don't get how one could make Minesweeper so addicting, but this guy did it XD
Thank you! In other news, version 1.3 is in its final testing phase, with clan chat, notifications, and support for native iPhone 6 and 6 plus resolutions. I plan to submit it this week if everything goes well
I'm interested in why you limit your audience to iOS 7 and above? I don't want to update my old iPad 2 to ios7 but wish I could try it out. I assume it must a legitimate technical reason as you are indeed limiting your audience to some degree. I'll probably upgrade when the new iPads come out this year but I wanted to ask in any case. Thx
Just a word to let you know that version 1.3 was just released this morning! I've added: • clan chats, so that you can finally discuss with other members of your clan • notifications, that you receive when somebody attacks your empire, or that you can send to other members of your clan to coordinate an exploration or an attack • a new setting for registered users which lets you hide from new anonymous players so that they don't appear next to your far away island • a small change on where Wipers can be used so that people can't wipe in the middle of your empire anymore (they have to start from the border) And of course, this new version supports the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus screens, which removes the small blurriness of the previously upscaled version and increases the game and map area sizes. Enjoy!
Lif I want to give you my appreciation for making this app it is wonderfully crafted and is very addictive ! I have a few suggestions for the next update . 1- you should add a global chat so you can communicate and meet new people , 2- you should have the last time played for all the clan members when you look at the clan member list so you know when everyone is on ok thx
Hi Popcan, thank you! Idea 2 is great and will be very easy to do. I’ll definitively add it in the next version (well, “next" next version, as a minor bug fix update is currently in review at Apple). Idea 1 is technically easy, but I’m concerned about the UI as I believe there are already too many things on screen. If it looks like too much work it might not be worth the time. A Few Billion Square Tiles started as a joke ("can we make an MMO of anything?"), but ended up being my most ambitious project so far (well, since I left that fruity company ). Unfortunately, even though it was really fun to make and even though people who tried the game really loved it, I’m pretty far from making any profit with it. Right now I have on average 15 downloads a day, and those new users make up for the ones leaving to maintain a stable pool of about 200 regular players. At this rate it will take me 4 or 5 years to make up for the 6 months I spent working on the game. Therefore, even though I would love to I can’t really afford to spend too much time on it unless there’s a sudden and unexpected influx of new players I’m still open to new ideas or suggestions to improve the game or build on the concept though. For example, I could reuse lots of the code to make an infinite MMO planetary conquest game in the style of Galcon. It’s really tempting, even though I doubt it would be more successful than the minesweeper
Hi guys, I just wanted to show you what I've been working on during the last couple days: Yes, the biggest Minesweeper ever now runs on the smallest device! Or at least I hope it does: it runs great in the simulator, we'll have to wait a month to know how well it really runs on the Apple Watch The image speaks for itself, but it's worth a few comments... For now, WatchKit is super limited, and not really meant for games: • it doesn't let you differentiate between a short tap and a long press • it doesn't support swipe gestures • it doesn't support animating the views Hence, for now, and until the SDK improves: • you move around by tapping on the sides of the screen • you tap on the "Blue" and "Yellow" buttons to guess whether the center tile is a normal tile or a mine Here's a quick video: YouTube: A Few Billion Square Tiles in Apple Watch Simulator The watch has one advantage over the phone though: it's much faster too load since the visible area is so small. It's pretty much instantaneous in the simulator, while it takes about 6 seconds on my phone on the same network (and even longer on my iPad). -> I see it being useful to keep up in the hourly race when you can only play for very short sessions, but for now it's more a proof of concept than anything In any case, while the current SDK is a bit limited, I'm pretty curious to see how things are going to evolve! Also, for those who like numbers: we're currently at 173 million blocs found, and the game now tracks 476 million blocs when we include those on the borders that have been generated but not guessed yet! When I named the game "a few billion square tiles", I never thought there would actually be a chance to get to a billion, and now it really sounds possible. But then again, I would never have dreamed that individual people would get to a million, let alone 3.5 million (the current top ranked player). Thank you all, and congrats to the Touch Arcade clan for keeping up in the top 3!
The new update with Apple Watch support was approved this morning, and has just made it to the App Store! App Store Link Here are a few screenshots of the final app: If you are one of the lucky few with early access to an Apple Watch, enjoy! Otherwise, now is a good time to start searching for the perfect spot to build your future empire Have fun!
Great game This game is amazing and addicting hopefully you continue to work on it to make it more interesting, I have 3 suggestions, one is to have a global chat, to be able to invite people to your clan, two, have an invite button on profiles so you can invite them directly to your clan, and lastly maybe add a soothing background music. Thanks for reading this thread and remember to have fun making the game I made a clan. It's called. The Leigon. No period and two words if anyone wants to play with me! Happy sweeping
Thanks! This game is now more in maintenance mode than active development, but I definitively continue to work on it. In fact I just ported it to the mac last month and it's currently in review at Apple (you can try the beta already). And thank you for the suggestions! The global chat is something I've wanted to do for a while but haven't found the time yet. An invite button directly on user profiles would be quite useful indeed. I'm less convinced by the soothing music: with the time spent in the game by the most active players, they would get bored of it very quickly! But you can listen to your own iTunes music while playing!
Ok, for those who also have a Mac, the Mac version was released this morning and will be free until tomorrow (and then switch to $3). Grab it while you can on the Mac App Store!
Clan I'm not sure if anyone uses this forum but I just wanted to say I made a clan called Yellow Miners So far we have 20k tiles and if anyone of any size wants to join it will be greatly appreciated Once a coupe of people join we will start a clan island where everyone works together and we try a create a huge structure So hopefully I'll see you In my clan Steelers0525
A good game. But I have problems about the Internet connection. It spent a lot of time when I entered the game in using the wifi in my company. And I have a question. It is about the introduction about the Wiper. From the introduction I think the Wiper is a tool to disturb the green area which was developed by other players, but it did not work when I took the Wiper in the green area. I used the Wiper once. It was only used in the area which is next to the green area. I wanted to have a try again but I do not have another Wiper. I will play the game again to know how the Wiper works. But the Internet made me sad.
