Call me thick if you like but that was on account of me thinking that Ravensword was pronounced Ravens Word... Glenn's been laughing at me for weeks... I may never live this down!
Haha, no worries...I still get confused when I see your name on a post...and then I realize it's pamx and not pharmx, lol. Thought I was cixelsyd for a moment.
um... not sure how to respond to that... to me it seems like the higher priced apps seem to last longer, but take more time getting into the top 100. If Glenn is lucky, he'll shoot right up there with the low priced app and some good reviews.
Thanks for pointing that out Der-Kleine It's a cool preview though. When I sent the version out I said was "think of it as a classic arcade racer" and left it at that. His reaction to level four is interesting. It's the first of the free roaming levels where the player gets the chance to pick his own route. This is something I always wanted the game to include and caused a lot of discussion several pages back in this thread. he said: "As with the best racing games, it takes time to learn the best routes inbetween each waypoint - something levels such as the devilish fourth really encourage. Unlike the others, it's non-linear. The twist is that the first time you attempt to make your way through the maze of islands, you'll likely to crash in a ball of flame into rock faces too tall for you to fly over. Of course, you could take the easy route and just fly around the islands, but ... you won't ever unlock the next level." It looks like he got into the idea though. He is wrong about not being able to get to the next level if you take the easy option though, we spent a long time making sure it was possible. Some of the free roaming parts of the game can be seen at 1:20 and 3.25 in the video: [hqyoutube]30UBj6vfshU[/hqyoutube] what did the testers think of the free roaming bits?
"Free" Free Roam Is there going to be a mode where you can just wander? I know you can, but without any worry of time or checkpoints? Take Wings 2, for example. Something like that, except with a Ground Effect vehicle.
Good question, glad you asked. I was going to put in a specific free roam mode but the way the game is structured, you can just head off in any direction to explore. Obviously you are unlikely to qualify and unlock the next level if you do this but it's very useful for exploring potential shortcuts or just checking out the landscape.
Yes, it's been submitted (at long last) & will hopefully be out very soon. Here's the icon - look out for it!
Ground Effect Level Editor Hi everyone. We're 8 days in to submission now so, according to all the stats I've read and if Apple don't find a reason to fail the app, Ground Effect should be out in a week or so. I've been thinking about what I might add for future revs of the game. We have a Windows version of Ground Effect with a built in Level Editor. This also runs fine on a mac of course using either Bootcamp or a VM. I had no plans to release this as it's currently very rough and ready but we will of course be using it some more ourselves any rev will definitely include more levels. I've been wondering though. If there was a free Windows version of Ground Effect that could be used to create content for the iPhone version, would you be interested enough to download it and check it out or would the fact that the editor had to be run on your computer put you off completely?
well I'd LOVE to create some levels on my computer! I'm sure it'd be alot easyer than doing that on the small screen of the iDevice.
My opinion is not going to be worth much here as I would not be able to run it on my Mac, but IF I had a pc or bootcamp/VM installed I would actually find it easier and better than an iDevice track editor. I have never made tracks for Slotz, and I would most certainly have done so if I had the possibility to do it on my Mac. I usually don't have time for very long sessions on my ipod touch, and it just take too long to build a track.
I really am not that much intruged by the idea of a level editor for a PC and would prefer an editor on my iDevice only! But that's probabally just my opinion as I'm not near a PC most of the time!
The problem is that a Ground Effect landscape has over half a million triangles. In game this isn't a problem because the graphic engine is built around a sneaky algorithm to get this down to iphone-managable numbers (More info here for bored geeks). To be editable you need the raw power to display those half a million triangles and drag them around in realtime.
As an alternative I could imagine a monthly contest for submitting new track designs (hand drawn or anything), the best one winning a promocode and being made available as DLC. Just an idea...
Tomorrow is bonfire night, and if you continue to talk like that you'll end up on the top of it! I guess you're right...
Der-Kleine, we'll almost certainly add a few tracks in each future rev without going to paid DLC. I notice you were talking about Track Mania Nations in the Jet Car Stunts thread. TMN was actually one of the inspirations for Ground Effect. It really shows what can be done with 'Ghosts' in a driving game. The number one thing I'd love to do with GE is make it possible to race against your friends' Ghosts. Unfortunately it seems that none of the social networking APIs support this just yet so I'm now considering the possibilty of a custom server. This will only happen though if GE is popular enough to make the work worthwhile. The custom server would open up huge possiblities though. One of these could be custom level downloads which is why I started asking about interest in the computer based editor.
