Over 9000 combinations, easily Just want to give you more bang for your bucks QS =D P.S. I'm having a mental breakdown trying to cram all of this stuff in. Send cookies!
Still looking good. And, I agree with JCho and your cousins about the green rocket. It's the top part that's the problem. Anyhoo, have you considered making it portrait mode for iPhone? I'm mostly saying that because of my preference, but you could either go Game Boy style with text and stuff popping up over or under the game screen, or maybe the screen could shift back and forth based on which side of the screen you're on? I'm trying to think of an example other than a zoomed in pinball game, but that's all that comes to mind. Keep up the good work!
You and your portrait mode fetish! In all seriousness I'm sorry to say that this is not, and will likely never be, a portrait game. Sorry! There are good (I think!) reasons though, and I'm happy to elaborate further if the following aren't enough! Reasons from the Sheep: The game is designed to be a horizontal game, and always has been. Thus, everything revolves around that simple premise. From being able to see the whole screen at once, to player movement and controls to enemies and powerups appearing and even to level design, it's all been made with a horizontal screen in mind. Changing the orientation sounds simple to do, right? You can imagine it. It takes a sentence to say it. How hard could it be? But unless a game has been specifically designed to play like that, or in both orientations, then it's hard to do well, if at all For example: If I tried your first suggestion (GameBoy style), everything would just be too small, especially on an iPhone. You'd lose detail in the graphics to the point that you wouldn't be able to make out stuff like what powerups where what, and where the air was etc. "Make the graphics bigger!" you might reply! Sure. Except now the screen is more cluttered, there's less free 'space' to move around in, you have less situational awareness (seriously, I can often tell how good a game is by how large the main character is - crazy, right?). Additionally, part of the difficulty increase is making the aliens smaller, thus harder to avoid (if they're moving fast) and harder to shoot. If these alien are already pretty small, they'd be even smaller on a portrait orientation. And that would just make the game unfair and frustrating I feel. Then there's the practical consideration of having the controls bunched up close together. I've always found these kind of awkward to use. I'm sure there are some great examples of it done right, but in general, and in my experience, it's just not as good (which is why I like portrait games with just one button, or with auto-fire and relative touch. It can be done, but it depends on the game!). If you made the screen scroll (as per your second suggestion) then it would impact gameplay greatly, to the point that I'd have to drastically change the whole game to make it play fair and fun. For instance, there would have to be indicators on the screen for everything. Aliens, pickups, UFOs, all enemy types. It'd get pretty cluttered! If you were being shot at by a UFO and it wasn't on the part of the screen you were on, and you died because of it, it wouldn't seem very fair I think. If you were low on air but couldn't see there was an air pickup two screens over, you might die. Being able to see the whole screen is crucial in a game like this - especially an Air Supply game, where you have to know where the next Air pickup is. Seeing the whole screen, getting all the info you need at once, allows you to make instant decisions. There's a million things to consider when designing a game, alas. They're all intertwined too, so changing one thing can have massive repercussions. Or it might help! You never know for sure. But you can make educated guesses! There's been an article doing the rounds lately which I think really helps explain what the process is like with game design, and how every decision is important and impacts everything else. You might find it interesting - I certainly did! http://www.lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/ I'm trying to! Thanks for the suggestion! I don't dismiss these ideas out of hand, In fact, I'm very open to hearing what people think as their ideas are often better than my own! And sometimes you miss the obvious because you're so used to how the game plays. So a fresh perspective is always welcome and sometimes very much needed! Oh look! I appear to have written an essay again! Sorry! But you care enough to comment and suggest things, so I wanted to explain the reasoning from my end, as opposed to just brushing you off with a 'No, it's a horizontal game and that's that.' Which would just be rude! QS =D
I was about 99.9999999% sure it wouldn't be doable (mostly for the reasons you elaborated on), but I figured I'd say it anyway. Despite having nothing in landscape mode since early March, I promise to break my rule for you. For how long though, I cannot say...
I appreciate you breaking your rule for me - that's lovely - thank you! And just to show I *am* listening, I have a small game in mind (based off something in SOS) that I'm already thinking about expanding on. The current thinking (and it is just thinking right now!) is that I will *try* and make this other game multi-orientation. It'd certainly be an interesting thing to try! But first I have to get back to SOS and finish that! To everyone else: Apologies that this is taking so long! Cheers, QS =)
Haha! That door article was fantastic And btw, if you want a great example of a multi-orientation game, take a gander at "Duet Game."
It's rather good isn't it? I've been meaning to get that, so will do once I finish SOS and get onto the new game. The plan is that the new game will be based off something in SOS. It'll be in the same 'universe', but it won't be an Air Supply game. IF I ever manage to finish SOS of course! QS =D
Hey all, some interesting stuff about Air Supply - Infinite. I just found out that Apple has featured it in the US on the front page of iTunes (I think!). There it is on the right of this pic! How lovely! Apple has been very kind to me of late, and I think it's partly to do with the review I got on Touch Arcade. Thank you Touch Arcade! More importantly though, TA would have missed the game completely if it hadn't been for you lot. Yes you. Hey! Stop looking behind you! I mean YOU! You guys are keeping me going, and giving me small victories on the way! THANK YOU (edited to add sheepyhugs - *sheepyhugs* There, that's better!) Back to SOS - I will not be able to work on it this weekend due to some commitments I have, but I'm making some nice progress. Thanks again, you lot - you're lovely! QS =D
How many total sales does infinite have now? I remember at one point it was only about 150, but that was months ago. Hopefully that feature does something for it
About bloody time they recognised your genius! Congrats, dude! Really well deserved!!! It's an amazing game that I always felt was unfairly overlooked. This gives me hope EDIT: And yup, right on the front of the games section here in NZ
Hey all, thanks for the kind words and hope you're enjoying the weekend! (and May the 4th be with you, etc!) It's been a rough weekend for the sheepy, not been able to do any SOS stuff really apart from: 1. Getting some interesting suggestions from my friend Jake about menu stuff on SOS 2. Playing SOS on a big tv via Jake's Apple TV (I really want an Apple TV now just to play my games on! ) We also spent a little time thinking about/preparing an Air Supply card game - here's the very first look at us making up a prototype Infinite being featured by Apple has made a WORLD of difference. I'm not instantly making thousands of dollars, but more people are definitely giving the game a chance, for which I am very, very grateful! I do need to update the game soon to fix the crashing bug, and will do so as soon as SOS is done. Back to work tomorrow I think on SOS. Lots to do, but feeling good about it. Will update soon, and thanks again everyone *sheepyhugs* QS =D
Glad to see infinite is finally getting *some* downloads! And WHAAAAAT? A card game? Consider me intrigued! Hmmm whenever I try to tap the gamecenter button in the top left of the AS-I home screen nothing happens
Yeah, same, I have to access GameCenter from the app itself. EDIT: Actually, just playing... Don't think it's meant to be a button, just an indicator, as it disappears when you turn GC off in the options.
Hello! It was 'meant' to be both! It shows that GC is on, but was also supposed to send GC scores when touched. Such a simple thing should be, well, 'simple', but GC was (and still is) giving the game some hassle It's one of the things on my list that needs looking at when I update the game though! Thanks - like I said, it's not that much, and big companies would laugh if I mentioned the numbers. But it sort of solidifies the idea that if you're not a freemium game and are trying to reach any decent amount of people's eyeballs, an Apple feature really helps! Of course with increased numbers you get a greater diversity in feedback - and some has been less kind than others. But it's all useful! Apart from, maybe, the review from South Korea which gave the game 3 stars and just one word: 'Jump'. Also, my favourite thing, and I only noticed this the other day, is this: Basically, someone liking the game so much they 'gift' it to a friend. That's really, really lovely! I love that I used to play CCGs (collectable card games) in my youth, and have more recently been able to regularly play card and board games with some friends (we formed a club! ) It's very exciting (and tough!) though to try and capture the essence of an endless runner in a card game! I'm intrigued as to where it'll go too! Thanks all, hope you're enjoying the Bank Holiday (if you're in the UK!). QS =D
TBH, I have released paid and free games... the paid ones have been far more successful. It really comes down to exposure. Even my free version of Get Gravel only had a few thousand downloads before it disappeared off the face of the earth... certainly not enough to make any money from the ads included (around $5 all up), nor would it have made much with IAP. Conversely, the paid version did okay and still sells pretty well on Google Play (this could be because we released a demo, which has had 70k downloads so far). There's no rhyme or reason to the App Store! lol. Anyway, congrats again on the feature!!! And yeah, fixing GC would be neat as I have a much higher score on my device than on GC and I wanna move up the ladder! Haha!
Glad to see Infinte getting some love. If you need to update it first because of exposure, we will totally understand. Or, if you could put both out at the same time, with some sort of simple, non-repeating ad popping up in Infinite for SOS, that might be really helpful for customer retention. Because I'm an expert at that stuff (not true in the least; definitely talking from inexperience). And, in case anyone has no life and is following my portrait only saga, I think Wayward Souls is going to break me. It looks soooo good. Ugh. I was saving so much money by ignoring Landscape games.
@Jerutix You certainly talk a lot of sense, sir. I'm considering my options at the mo'! In the meantime, here's something new: Also - I thought of a new thing today. I tried it out. Worked first time. Yay! It is pretty awesome, and you'll get it towards the end of the game. But it'll be a nice surprise for those that get it I'm sure. I think the key word here is 'surprise'. There's not enough (good) surprises in games. I really want people to play this game for a long time, so I'm trying to cram in as much as I can, and I'm trying to 'sell it' to people based on as little as I can. To preserve the surprises! Then, perhaps, the sheep can rest... QS =D
