Ah - I missed that the rotate isn't 'standard' the first time round - yes, this is how I've been doing it - two fingers rotating. This, as you say, is the usual way it's implemented. Jamie.
It works fine with 2 fingers rotating, but I find it also zooms a little if you do that and I prefer to use one finger stationary as for me it gives more control. Just a personal preference. It's an issue of having so many controls available in such a complex game. If you see any issues let us know as it should follow the usual standards. We dont want to reinvent the wheel.
Well, I made the mistake of downloading the demo onto my iMac. Why a mistake? Well, as good as the iPad graphics are, the Mac visuals are great! If Slitherine goes Retina for the iPad 3 and sharpens and shadows things up so they look the same as on the iMac, I'll buy the Mac version too just to say Thank You. Resizing and compressing the images mutes some of the differences, but the shadows alone would make for a large improvement on the iPad... The improved detail and sharpness becomes more apparent when at max zoom...
Found some fantastic info over on the Slitherine forums! Answers to many questions here, and some good tips too... Reaction Fire * Units that are hidden will not shoot and reveal their position unless they have a significant chance to hurt the enemy, or when they feel its time to shoot or die. * Units that are hunting are harder to detect and your men may not notice them. * Units always get a bonus shot in the opponents turn for opportunity fire. If they did not shoot in their turn they also get their base 2 shots. If they are elite they can get an additional bonus shot. * Units that are visible will fire all but their last shot at anything they detect. Their last shot will be saved for something they think they can hurt, or when they feel its time to shoot or die. * Units that are close to be suppressed will fire their last shot as there is a good chance that waiting for the enemy to shoot will mean you're suppressed and never get the chance to fire back. * The criteria for damaging the enemy reduces as they get closer. E.g. at long range you might need a 25% chance to use your last shot or fire from cover. When adjacent you always shoot, even with a 0% chance to hurt them. * Vehicles have variable detection rates. They are best in the forward 90 degrees. Weaker in the side and poor to the rear. Closed top tanks are worse and tanks without turrets even worse. Some tanks were notorious for having poor visibility and these are also heavily penalised on detection. * Retreating tanks are usually good targets to shoot at as you often get rear/side armour shots. If you missed you were just unlucky. A 35% chance to miss means you should hit 1 in 3 times. There is a ~1 in 8 chance you would shoot 5 times in a row and miss. 1 in 8 is a pretty common occurrence. There is a ~1 in 60 chance you'd shoot and miss 10 times in a row. ---- Map Scale quote: ORIGINAL: Iain McNeil The scale is abstracted. 1 tile range is intended to represent 50-100m. 2 tiles about 200m, up to 8 tiles at about 2km. This may sounds strange but it allows us to get the more subtle differentiations at shorter range without having to make ranges so high you cant see what you're shooting at on screen. This makes it very hard to give you a real ground scale. Maps can be 64x64 tiles at present but there is not really a technical reason they can't be bigger as far as I know but we didn't want to make missions like that. ---- Range Say you have a Sherman and a Tiger. At 2 squares apart, they are close range. Their shots are more accurate and the chance of kill is good. At 6 squares, the accuracy falls and the armour value and type of gun/ammo determines the chance of a kill. At 8 squares the Sherman is out of range and the Tiger can still get a shot but with a low chance of a kill. Instead of needing 20 squares to represent 1000m, you only need 8-10. Like tree rings where the center ones are large and the outer ones are thin. ---- Penetration The penetration works like this (something you don't see, but can read the values in the squadCSV data file) ; APAttack[0] and APAttack[1] values are the base penetration values. The game will randomly select a number within those two values to generate a base penetration value. Example ... Sherman ; APAttack[0] = 76 APAttack[1] = 169 APEffective[0]-[4] values are the percentage multiplier at the given range. The [0]-[4] is the range(tiles), as follows ; Range 1 = APEffective[0] Range 2 = APEffective[1] Range 3 and 4 = APEffective[2] Range 5 and 6 = APEffective[3] Range 7+ = APEffective[4] Example ... Sherman APEffective[0]-[4] ; APEffective[0] = 83 ... 83% of APAttack at range 1. APEffective[1] = 83 ... 83% of APAttack at range 2. APEffective[2] = 67 ... 67% of APAttack at ranges 3 and 4. APEffective[3] = 53 ... 53% of APAttack at ranges 5 and 6. APEffective[4] = 42 ... 42% of APAttack at ranges 7 and greater. Summary Example ... Sherman penetration at ranges below ; Range 1 and 2 ... (76-169) * 83% = 63-140 Range 3 and 4 ... (76-169) * 67% = 50-113 Range 5 and 6 ... (76-169) * 53% = 40-89 Range 7+ .......... (76-169) * 42% = 31-70 Now, compare that value above with the Armour[0]-[3] vales for the Panther ; Front ... Armour[0] = 140 Side .... Armour[1] = 60 Rear ... Armour[2] = 60 Top .... Armour[3] = 30 Note that the Sherman cannot penetrate the Panther front armour, however, it can penetrate the Panthers side armour 100% of the time, at ranges 1 or 2. At longer ranges, you can see that it can penetrate the side armor, but not 100% of the time. I hope that helps !!!! -Merr ---- Thanks to Merr for the following explanation of Elite bonus Elite Shot ... (extra shot). Elite AP ... (25% extra action points). Elite Hunter ... (Tanks Sneak faster). Elite Recon ... (Sneak for Free, Automatically turns on Sneak/Hunt mode by default). Elite Assault ... (Assault Cost reduced by 50%). Elite Overrun ... (Tanks can Overrun Infantry in Open)... (Silver and Gold). There's an "Elite Medic" ability but I don't see it being used (maybe Revive Bonus replaced this?). (Picture of Elite Chevrons and Action Buttons with details) http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s300/raabmraah/elite_status3.jpg
Downloaded this today. Played the tutorial and first mission for western desert campaign...I am having some issue selecting the next unit. At this point I am double tapping in a space the unit selected can no longer move to, if I can't select the next unit. Is there a trick to deselecting a unit? Or selecting the next unit, that I am missing?
To deselect a unit, tap on their portrait in the lower left corner. Or alternatively Enable Automatic Deselect in the options.
If anyone has an iPad3 they will be very happy very soon. Phil just got Battle Academy working on the Retina display He's also improved the rotating and fixed a bug in user scenarios. If all goes well we'll have this update in submission with Apple at the end of this week.
I think I'll grab the Mac version demo. There's a demo, right? I don't have any idea at all if this game will appeal to me, so I need a demo for sure. I'd rather the demo were on the iPad, but I guess this will do.
Can't seem to find any info about specials (either on the side a la artillery strikes or unit actions). Would like to know what difference sniper shot...hunter etc make.
Just resolution changes for the iPad 3 or some graphical enhancements? With all my games, it's rather iPad 2 resolution but the 4x gpu used for better graphics
So far the iPad 3 improvements are limited to supporting the higher resolution. It looks incredibly crisp. We actually use the same graphics as the PC in the game already - we felt that the iPad warranted the higher resolution images, and so now on the iPad 3 they really shine, and the file size won't get any larger (I think the current download is about 200Mb). The next update also includes some tweaks to the rotation and UI to solve the small issues people were seeing, some of which only showed up on the faster iPad 3. We will definitely be looking into what cool additions we could make on the iPad 3, now we have one in hand! Cheers Pip
Why did you had to turn off the ground effects for Ipad2? Is it downgrading the performance a lot ? Maybe as an setup option within the game?
We found that the iPad was generally limited by its vertex processing, and the ground effects have a lot of faces for the size they are onscreen. I guess we could make it an option, but I think keeping the game running as smoothly as possible is more important. As I say, we are looking at how we can add in new features for the iPad 3, although I think adding anything to the iPad 2 will negate it's smoother performance over the original iPad . Cheers Pip
Just wanted to say that the response/rapport here is excellent, and goes a long way towards me being certain this was $20 well-spent. Geo
