iPad Disc Drivin' - Turn-based online multiplayer racing!

I'm up at 4:30 on a regular basis.... Darn baby keeps me up every so often so my sleep scedual is all screwy... Btw I'm in us in est.

And for those who are interested in a league... Well if u PM me on here, or in game (name is pawt on DD) and we can get enough peeps I can set one up.... So hit me up and I'll get you the site

 

Count me in, I'm always up for a game. ' Kevlar '

 

I just began trying this game. Seems to have a lot of potential, but for me there's still "something" missing to make it perfect...

Carcassonne has already been mentioned. That game is the absolute benchmark when it comes to asynchronous online multiplayer games such as Disc Drivin'. As someone said earlier, Carcassonne "feels" much more live than Disc Drivin'.

One thing in that regard is that in Carcassonne you always can tell whether each of your opponents is currently online or not. That way you know that you can stay in the app and wait for their turn and maybe chat with them while waiting. That's not really possible in Disc Drivin' right now since you can't tell whether your opponent is there or not, and for me therefore it feels kind of "dead"/slow since you simply make your turn and then you're more or less forced to quit and wait.

Another thing: Wouldn't it be possible to make chat messages appear in the main game view (and of course also as a log in the chat window) as in Carcassonne? Much better than just having a badge appear on the chat icon.

And very important for me: When returning to a game, you definitely absolutely need to automatically replay all turns that have been made since you last visited the game.

And generally, I think you very often can get "lost" in the map easily. A great improvement would be some kind of smooth transition from one player's place to the next one's, maybe shortly zooming out and then back in (has been mentioned before). And I think the current camera button for zooming out is kind of clumsy. Why do you have to hold it? And when you're holding it in order to keep the view zoomed out, you sometimes obscure some of the map area. And by the way, the players and objects on the zoomed-out maps are sometimes really hard to find, please make them more prominent in the map.

All I want to say is: Great game, but there are so many things you can do to make it really perfect! Again, you can learn from Carcassonne, which really is perfect!

 

Excellent post ! My written English is just bad, you said everything i wanted ! Please Devs correct these asap !

 

Thanks CharLee...

I'm playing several matches at the moment, and usually when I get a PN notifying me of my turn it's like this: I tap on that match in the list, then the map is shown. First questions: Where the hell am I? And how does the track continue after that first bend? Therefore, I tap on the map button (which I find really clumsy, e.g. it doesn't work while the list of players is expanded) and zoom out. Some of the time, even though it zooms out from my position, I need to find where I am. In that case, I sometimes even need to go back to check which color I was (why can't you set your own color once and for all?). Okay, check that, back into map. Alright, now I know where I am. But where's my opponent(s)? I need a magnifying glass to see them, too. Okay, found them. Wait, which direction does the track go again? Find those booster pads, because they indicated the direction, and no other element on the map does... Then go back. Wait, what did my opponent do in his last turn? Tap tap... Ah okay, now I'm finally informed enough in order to make my move.

You see? Maybe I exaggerated a bit in this description, but it shows how in my opinion these little things really distract me and reduce my overall playing experience. Please think about tweaking this overall experience into something much more smooth.

Maybe you could have an option to first show the overall map for a short time with bigger indicators of all elements and players on the map and the direction you need to go, then zoom in to the first player that made a move, show his move, zoom out, zoom in again to next player and so on... Would make much more sense for me.

 

Not that I wouldn't like to play this game "live" but I think the devs intended on this being a more casual game and by that I mean you can play whenever you like and don't have to always be locked in to enjoy the game. Play at your own pace.

There are many times that my phone is buzzing that it's my turn at work and I may not be able to get to it right away. That's what's kind of cool, you can play your turn when you have the time, which I try and keep up to date as often as possible.

I do not however enjoy playing with someone that is going to take 3 days or more to take their turn. Especially when I could be playing with folks I've come to know that take their turns atleast every hour. Now I can't start any new races because I have 20 (actually over 20 somehow) races in progress and half of them are days old. Kind of frustrating.

And a little tip on the 'zoom-out' feature. You can touch and hold the camera button and slide your finger all around the screen and it will hold the zoomed out view, so you can unobstruct your view, although it is still kind of hard to see because everything is so small.

 

Did you ever play Carcassonne? The great thing about it is that you can either play "live" with all opponents online the whole time, or you can play it completely asynchronously with several days between each turn. But that "live" part just "feels" so much better than with Disc Drivin'. Don't know, can't describe it better. If you play Carcassonne regularly, you'll know what I mean.

And about the zoom button: I know that I can move my finger. Still, in my opinion it's kind of clumsy. Actually, I don't really know how to make it work better, but I think at the moment it's kind of suboptimal.

 

ask_me has lots of good suggestions there.

I'm up for a league, but I'm not sure how to PM anyone. The only thing I seem to be able to do is to start a game with up to 3 people. Am I missing something?

EDIT: for pawt: "This player is already at the maximum of 20 races." Darn.

 

If this league happens, or even just a few 4-person games, please add me if you need players. My username is smes3817.

Playing this game keeps me sane at work haha...

 

Needs smoother transition from current player to opponent after each turn, needs to be a way to skip time if it's in idle too long. I got stuck with 20 games going on at once but it was all 20 of my opponents turns. So I couldn't play anymore and hoped someone would move eventually. Still very fun!

 

Well, I won't be doing that too often, I was pretty much useless waking up today but enjoy watching some American sports from time to time, and with the time difference, I often end up fiddling with my iphone in the same time at these late hours, hehe.

A great game, but I have to agree with others here who point out that the online part needs tweaking. It's annoying and stressful the way you need to manually check each game you're playing, cause the updates/notifications works too slow and seem unstable as well. I think it would be a great idea to try and get a solution where you can choose yourself if you want to play it "live" or asynchronously. At least make the way it works now a bit more fluent and "automatic" with better overview.

But I'm really enjoying it, and it has a lot of potential.

 

You can resign in the slow ones. Since it's not really keeping stats (I don't think) there's currently no harm to you in doing so.

Yeah for the 4:30 AM Norwegian! Glad to see you aren't a lurker now.

EDIT: for the idea of choosing whether to play live or longer term... look at Samurai, however I'd make an improvement. In Samurai you can choose to have 5 minute turns, but aside from that not really being live, the other problem is that when you put up a game request like that, it usually stays up for a long time and by then you probably aren't really wanting to play a live-ish game. So... there should be a time limit for joining the game. If the game isn't full in the time limit, the game is canceled and pulled from the list of games.

 

Times Played

I have one suggestion to improve the game. I'd love to see a count of times you have played a player in the recent opponents list. Maybe be able to sort by that list number. What do people think?

 

I'm definitely in for that! Woohoo! Downloading now. Thanks!

 

Crunc,

The problem is you can only resign when it is your turn in order to quit a lagging match. So if I have 20 games running, my maximum games per app, and all my opponents are not playing, I can't resign or quit literally!

 

Don't forget... DD league forming now.... We're shooting for a valentines day start for season 1... If your interested in joining please shoot me a PM here (click on my name and hit send private message) and I'll give you the website.... Join now for fun and bragging rights

 

I can't play random games anymore! None of my damn games players are there. I can't resign out of turn and I'm stuck. This is just great, not even a force quit game option? Time length before forfeit? Hopefully someone will pick up their damn iPhone and turn on this app and kindly move so I cam resign!