As primarily an iPad gamer, it is very frustrating to see discussions of great iPad apps buried in the many pages of apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch. Is there any way to add the ability to have discussions of universal apps show up in both places automatically? That way, they could be read when browsing either forum. If I can only check at the end of a long day or once in a weekend, the sheer number of threads in the iPhone forum is daunting. This kind of cross-posting would help, since the moderators generally push the iPad folks to the iPhone threads and then lock the one in the iPad forum. This seems like a solution that would avoid adding a new forum. To help manage the volume in the iPhone forums, it might actually be even better to add a new Universal app forum specifically for discussing this kind of game. I'm interested to hear comments on this from other people. I'm guessing I'm not the only person who is a bit frustrated at the volume here even while really loving the posts and site as a whole. Thanks, -Finandir
A separate forum for universal apps isnt really the best choice IMO. But showing the universal app threads in both the ipad and Iphone sections will be a good idea. In fact I've suggested it a couple of times already. Maybe it's not do-able in this version of vBulletin?
Yes! I find this problem as players and as a developer. As a player: I love play with my iPad (more than my iPhone) then i go to the iPad section but some games only was published in iPhone section. As a developer: When i have a game universal like Twistouch. What i have to do?
I agree that a separate forum is not necessarily the best choice. But, if we can't get cross-posts in both forums then it is much better than the current situations. Games can get a lot of discussion in the iPhone forum, but if you don't know it's universal and that universal games are only discussed there, you miss it all. At least a separate forum would eliminate this issue. The iPhone forum just gets way too much traffic to find the relatively few universal games mixed among the threads there. I'm hoping one of the site owners will comment on this. I'd love to know what the current thoughts are about this. Would that be Hodapp I'm hoping to see comment?
Yeah, I agree with this. I find myself having to check the iPhone forum frequently, even though I only use my iPad these days...
I don't have the patience to follow the posts harassment in iphone part (that's for kids with fresh blood and plenty of energy) so I end check sometimes when I'm bored of watching the sleepy immobile iPad section. But the result is I don't quote plenty universal stuff. I don't agree that cross post for universal threads would be the solution because iPad section would end monopolized by universal posts. But an universal section would be great.
I wish there was some way I could search through the iPhone game section to find all the Universal (or at least the ones marked in the title) titles. Searching the word universal in the search box yeilds too many results.
The 30 first posts will be most often Universal app so it will end in hiding somehow iPad only app. That's why I doubt cross will work.
Seeing as Apple is cracking down on developers releasing iPad versions (HD versions) of games that are the same as the iPhone/iPod versions without distinct content or gameplay, I suspect we will see many more universal apps than before. And as a developer I would love to see a better solution as well. or even just a consistant solution that everyone is aware of. Patti @ xmg
I'm guessing that the people who have the power to make changes like this either don't read this forum or don't comment on suggestions posted here. Hopefully someone with the authority to make some of these kinds of changes to the forums will comment, even if only to explain why such a change won't be implemented.
Arn does read this section but might be busy and might not have checked this thread yet. I'll try to bring it up to him if I get a chance. There are some other developments going on for TA (including the app) and I think once they are implemented, this will be easily doable without too much trouble. But I dont know for sure what exactly these enhancements are (I have some idea though) or when will these be implemented, but once they are up and running, your problem will be solved I think. For a temp solution, you can always do an advanced search and search "Universal" in the title of a thread only. That will give you a good enough result. Also you can limit the search result to iPhone and Ipod touch section only so you wont be getting results from other sections. And you can sort them acc to thread start date too, so you'll be able to find the latest universal app threads easily.
Is this true? If you have some proof, I'd love to see it. Very good and welcome news if so. I think the schism is Apple's doing, and to try to further split things in this forum would just be confusing. If there were a way to tag Universal or iPad titles in reviews or search results, I think that would be a better solution than trying to crosspost or segregate stuff. And if Universal apps become more standard, so much the better!
When the iPad first was released I proposed one unified game forum for all iOS releases, combined with a tagging system so instead of the stupid little images you see for post icons (like , , etc.) you selected which platforms the game was for which was then displayed in that same column. From there, you could click any of those tags to filter it out. The issue with this is I think that many universal games have specific issues to both the iPhone and the iPad, as quite a few universal games play substantially different on either device. For people without an iPad, these iPad-specific posts are just noise. For people without an iPhone, iPhone-specific posts are equally useless. So, it seems to make the most sense to keep everything separate. Please feel free to cross-post anything you'd like between the two forums, I don't really see anything wrong with a universal game having two threads provided there's something worth talking about in both.
Thanks for the reply, Hodapp. The cross-posting I was hoping for was to automatically have one thread appear in both the iPhone and iPad forums or to have a forum just for universal apps. Mirroring the thread across two forums has some of its own issues, as you point out, but it does allow for one continuing thread of discussion. Since the standard here is one topic per app, that keeps things working well that way even if some of the messages aren't specific to the device you have. Right now, everyone has to go to the iPhone forum to read about many games that they consider to be iPad games (actually universal). There is also the issue, as I mentioned, that the sheer number of threads, in the iPhone forum especially, can be tough to keep up with. Short of a complete reorganization of app discussions into forums based on game types, this isn't likely to change much. A separate forum for universal apps would help a little, though. At least the allowing of threads in both forums can help us folks who are primarily iPad fans (or only have an iPad) to not miss games designed to work well on the iPad. Even if it is mostly just an announcement of a game release being posted both places with a note to continue discussion in the iPhone section, it would make it easier to keep up with universal releases. Given the current setup, I think it would be great if people posting about new releases were officially encouraged to put the announcement in all appropriate forums - right now that would be either 1 or 2 forums.
