customizable controlls For me the biggest pet peeve I have would have to be the lack of customizable controls. If you want to add some preset control schemes in for good measure more power to ya but I hate the fact I'm not able to tweak up which button I use to jump with or to fire or change weapons ect. I'd like to see a touch this button/arrow or what have you, then select the function you'd like that button to perform if that makes sence. This way everyone can jump right into a quick play game, but as you develop a better feel for the actual game play you can make it your own and by extension prolong the enjoyment level for the product it self. Just my two pennies. Thank you.
Hello John, I'm a HUGE fan and admirer of all you've done for videogaming and I think it's great that you're likely going to do for mobile gaming what you've done for the PC. A lot of what I would have said has been iterated in some of the earlier posts so I won't repeat them except for one or two: 1. Multiple Control Options (with customizable sensitivity). I'm a huge FPS fan and though your library will likely include other genres I'm speaking specifically of FPS controls. If there was some way to improve upon what I consider the best adaptation of console analog controls currently used by by NOVA, Modern Combat and Archetype I would welcome it immensely--but I think the option to have more than one control set INCLUDING some version of the aforementioned control set would be ideal. 2. More games for the hardcore gamer. Yes I do enjoy the quick 2 to 3 minute casual gaming session every now and then, but I also find myself wanting to get lost in a game when I get back from work and am too lazy to get out of bed, or when I'm on the road on business. There's no shortage of casual games on the Appstore but it's seriously in need of a hardcore wakeup call--titles to take the iDevice beyond casual enjoyment into the realm of bonafide gaming lore. What you showed us at Quakecon (and what Epic has demonstrated) can and will do this. 3. Multiplayer over wi-fi, LAN and bluetooth. This should be a given imo. 4. Larger filesizes and support for advanced hardware features, even if it means supporting only the more capable devices. Why? It's the only way the medium will advance by not allowing itself to be hamstrung by aged technology. It would be preferable if the game could degrade gracefully for older systems though. And although smaller filesizes are better, I would gladly pay/put up with a longer download to get a console-quality title. Believe me when I say I'm honored if any of my suggestions are even remotely a consideration of yours. Stay blessed.
Please do not develop just with these old devices in mind either please. Add some significant scalability but please give us owners of newer devices something to swoon over that makes it worthwhile to play on a more advanced device. I'm tired of most of my games looking like Dreamcast rejects when 3gs/4/iPad are capable of far more advanced graphics.
On Pausing Check out this game Meteor Blitz - it's a very well regarded dual-stick shooter but the best thing about the game to me is the way they handle pausing the game. The entire game is played with two thumbs and it is a very frenetic game so the instant the game detects the absence of touch from the screen it pauses. It's an amazing design detail that is so obvious I smacked myself in the forehead the first time I saw it. If I need to scratch my ear or something while playing I don't want to have to go hunt down a pause button and risk missing a powerup or getting killed. Not sure if the games you are working on could benefit this, but it's the best example of design for the device you are targeting I have seen. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/meteor-blitz/id328194605?mt=8
Game save syncing between devices (likely via some 'cloud' service) Provide proper resolution graphics for the iPhone 4 Game Center and/or Open Feint support. (I prefer unified leaderboards instead of everyone's custom leaderboard / service). Also a point about editions. I'm not a fan of the current trend of Lite-iPhone-iPad editions. Instead offer: Universal Lite/Free edition iPhone edition iPad "HD" edition (optional) Universal edition I don't mind paying more for Universal apps. What I hate is having 2 copies of every app: one for iPhone, one for iPad. It clutters iTunes and makes updates and management more complicated. Just give me a Universal version please!
Oh wow! Let me start by saying you're a huge software development hero of mine and I've bought every one of your PC games since Commander Keen and the original Doom is probably the game I go back to play the most. It's great to see you come directly to the community for feedback, I don't think you'd see that from too many of the big names these days. On the OT though, I agree with many of the above and they've been covered well, so I won't go over them again, but I don't think the following has been touched on enough: controls, controls, controls and customizing controls. This is going to be a pretty long as this has bothered me a long time and I’ve thought about it a lot. Controls are especially an issue in FPS games on iOS devices. I think the first mistake that many iOS devs make is attempting to emulate traditional controllers on the touchscreen with visual representations of buttons and sticks. These simply do not work well. On a buttonless device such as the iPhone it becomes necessary to some degree for things such as firing a weapon, but many of the common control methods are fundamentally flawed do to the lack of tactile feedback. The chief among those that should be avoided are virtual D-Pads, statically placed virtual joysticks, and delta pads for movement. The reasons for these are as follows. When using virtual D-Pads and grouped virtual buttons it can be difficult to hit the correct button as you can neither feel nor see what you are about to press if anything. This is exacerbated by the often hectic nature of FPS games causing the player avatar to do an incorrect action or possibly nothing as the player missed the hotspot hidden behind their thumbs. Staticly placed virtual analog sticks and delta spots have the same issue. The virtual sticks are fairly self explanatory and the present simply a problem of being hidden from site and awkward graphics representation if the player did not hit them directly center. Also, it can be difficult to place them on the UI as it needs to be far enough from the edges the thumb has adequate movement room but is not too far over the active scene. Delta padsintroduce another layer of difficulties. A delta pad is a hybrid virtual D-pad and analog stick and is generally represented by a circle. The player touches this circle and movement direction and speed are determined by the distance from the center of the circle to the thumb. This represents the worst of the movement systems as it compounds the issues of the D-pad by increasing the number chance of not moving the correct direction but also requires more screen real estate. See Duke Nukem and Prey for how terrible these are. The second control issue is view and turn, most notably once again using a virtual stick, delta pads, rotation discs, and sliders. Each shares the issues of their movement counterpart with the addition of not being very accurate for precise aiming. Rotation discs and sliders have the added bonus of just being awkward for turning. All of the options also have the issue of not being able to aim and fire simultaneously So if none of those offer a good interface, what should be done? I can think of a couple setups. First, the best implemented solution so far, that I’ve seen, belongs to Gameloft’s NOVA, but I think I can do one better. One of NOVA’s control options is that the screen is split into halves. Place your finger anywhere on the left side of the screen a analog stick will appear under it, centered. Move the finger in the direction you want to move. Simple, elegant, functions as expected, the dev doesn't have to worry about ti being to close to the edge, and it doesn’t get in the way of the visuals unless the player put their finger there themselves. The right half of the screen acts as a trackpad for turning and looking up and down. They solved the issue of being able to aim and fire simultaneously by including the fire button as part of the trackpad so that once you place your finger on it you can move your finger around to aim while firing. That has been the best setup I’ve come across so far, but it also requires a decent amount of aim assist, as anyone who’s tried to play FPS games on a laptop can tell you. The remedy for this could be support for the accelerometer or gyroscope for precise aiming. Hybridizing the NOVA control system with the tilt to aim mechanic of Doom: Resurrection could offer the best balance of turning speed to aim precision. Using the touch pad to make turns and large aim adjustments while slightly correcting with the tilt. This obviously would probably be too complicated for less skilled players so the aim assist without tilt should still be an option. The second good control method I can think of fully depends on the player's thoughts on accelerometer controls. It would use the same movement controls as the above method but reverse the look/aim control inputs. That way the player would steer the avatar using the device similar to a steering wheel and tilt the device to look up and down. I’ve seen this control mechanism in flight sims and think it could be applied to FPS games with decent results. If done this way, precise aiming could be done one of two ways. The right half the screen could be used as a low speed trackpad for moving the aim around the screen and tapping anywhere to shoot at the cross-hair, similar to how aiming and firing is done in Metal Gear Solid Touch. Alternatively, simple tap to shoot at a specific point could be used, but I don’t like this as the thumb moves into the scene. The other important topic is customization of the controls. The part everyone seems to get right about this is the ability to put any given controls pretty much anywhere, and that’s a good start. The part most devs seem to forget however is the ability to adjust the sensitivity for all movement controls axes independently from each other so that one can change vertical sensitivity separate from horizontal for example. Also, most the above options should be offered for each input type. Even if tilt is better for turning and looking the user should be able to map it to move and strafe if they wish. Or maybe they prefer using a virtual stick to a touch bad for turning and looking for reasons that are beyond me. That should be an option. All that being said I’m looking forward to Rage on both my iPod Touch as well as my PC and can’t wait to get my hands on them. Hope this very long post helps! Lastly, could you please update Doom to support either tilt to turn or virtual trackpad turning like NOVA’s? I love the game but am forced to play without strafing because the right hand turn options and tilt to strafe don’t mesh well for me. Thanks!
I do hate when apps don't let me put in "$" to name my character or something similar. I really like apps that give me more characters for the keyboard.
Graphics: Listen, we see that the iPhone is going in a great direction with Epic Citadel and the like, and to be fair that sort of technology makes this point moot. However, it's a shame to see more games move into 3D which (usually) ends up looking sub par to other consoles. Games made for the iPhone should look beautiful, and with retina graphics we could see vectorized art really take front stage for a bit. Could you imagine a game like paper mario, or a similar cartoon feel done on a device with the iPhone's screen? Screen Cram: Games that try to work the iPhone's UI like a console are going to come up flat. Developers need to accept the fact that the iPhone has a small screen, and design their game around displaying information in a direct manner. Tilt to Live is a great example of a game I would say makes great use of the screen's size. Same with Helsing's Fire. Buttons should be big and friendly on a menu, and should hidden or obscured while playing. However, people really need to take radical new approaches to even the more common UI elements. We can't really have inventory grids or the like. Gesture based commands can get results when done well. Polish: This one's simple, a -lot- of games just don't show as much polish as console counterparts. This is slowly changing, but come on. Compare Jim and Frank to Professor Layton. Compare World of Tunes to Elite Beat Agents. Not to insult the iPhone counterparts (they're both quite good), but the games are just not on the same scale.
Being primarily a PC gamer and having donated a large portion of my early 20’s to an infectious game known as Quake (=P) some features that I think should be standard are: Graphics Options Some games have this and it allows for playability across the array of “Gen” devices out there. The ability for 2G users to turn off the shiny stuff, but still be allowed to experience the game, would expand the marketability of the app. The converse of this is it would still allow the latest “Gen” users to experience the app in all its glory. Control Options A large selection of control options will go a long way toward the mass appeal of an app. One of the main questions I see here on the forums when a new game is released is “how are the controls?”. With so many people having different preferences, including many control options would allow people to find the “perfect” one for them. Difficulty Options Some people find joy in “arsepain”, some find joy in an easy pickup and play experience. Including the “hurt me plenty” style levels of difficulty would once again appeal to a larger demographic. Sometimes I fire up the itouch and wanna buckle down and throw down, other times I just want to blow stuff up! Save System As stated before, ability to quick save on calls or home button. Also settings must save. Many games have game saves but the setting default every time the application closes. Release Quake on Apple handheld devices! Pleaaassseeee! Rangerlump
I'd like to see an app that has you doing different things with the 3D objects in the environment besides launching projectiles at them or bashing them. No wrapping them in rope, pushing them down the stairs, launching them across the arena with gravity devices. No strategic projection of movable entryways or exits, and no sliding block puzzles that open doors. Also, no more key and ammo hunts, and the app should *always* ask the users permission before attempting to close itself and launch safari after an ad or website button is pressed. Off-rails gameplay would be great too, if it's not too much to ask.
ahhh how about not. Here is what i want, i want a completely legit FPS. The ways to do that: [*]high frame rate [*]work on character detail [*]work on the the weapons' appearance [*]BE ABLE TO CUSTIMIZE. Custimization is like crack for gamers. If you bring legit custimization to iDevices then you will controll the app store [*]Don't have the enimies just be mindless drones that just stand in one place and shoot [/LIST] FOLLOW THE FPS COMMANDMENTS!
Most of the reason for the poor graphics (though there has been a lot of improvement) is the need/desire to support the iPhone 2g/3g and iTouch 1g/2g. There is more than enough power in the 3gs/iPad and iPhone 4 to give us next gen graphics like Epic Citadel. Like I was saying though, scalability is where it is at. I don't want my fellow gamers with the old devices to be completely left out in the cold, but at the same time, now that I have tasted what the new devices can do, I cannot stand to see so much potential wasted whenever I play a 3d game that looks like it has Dreamcast graphics (or worse) and doesn't even have retina support.
I read through 8 pages and haven't seen anyone mentioned this yet, so forgive me if someone already said it. John, if you're gonna make your games multilingual, make sure the players can choose which language they want to use. I know a lot of people would appreciate localized versions(it really helps the sales) and from what I understand the iOS SDK provides a great framework for localizing your apps, however there are still a lot of people like me that prefer English(or U.S. English in some cases) even though it's not their native language. Please make sure we have the choice over which language we want to play in, thank you.
Rage is mostly FPS with some racing right? FPS: Then check out what the top boys in the Appstore like Gameloft have done. Gameloft has pretty much set the standard for Appstore FPS controls w.r.t. control scheme, sensitivity and customization. Their single stick, swipe to look is the 1st standard and dual stick is 2nd, with players having the ability to move around virtual buttons to their satisfaction, even for left handed players (see NOVA, the upcoming Modern Combat 2). Racing: Please, keep the horizon stable when tilting to turn. It's a silly problem that most Appstore racers have fixed but there are still a few that come out that don't have horizon stabalization. Also: - Don't bury difficulty options, customization options etc deep in submenus - few games can get away with that without annoying with casuals - Make sure the game auto-saves when you exit the app - Ignore anyone who tells you not to focus on virtual button control schemes. They were scorned back in 2008 but are now splendidly standardized in 2010. Even if you've magically come up with some brand new control scheme, make sure and include those virtual controls schemes Gameloft made popular - there's no need for 40 sec splash screens with unskippable logos. It's annoying on consoles and even more annoying on mobile devices. I've already bought the game, no need for me to sit through an extensive logo promotion everytime I want a quick 10 minute game. Just have a quick splash screen. - handle orientation changes
The big thing I have yet to see anybody mention is proper testing for old devices. I have played to many games (and unfortunately Doom 2 RPG is one of them) that fail to account for the smaller amount of available system memory, and crash after playing for a while (usually about an hour or so). I don't know if there are memory leaks, or just an underzealous garbage collector, but it is a problem. it especially shows up in newer (and larger) games.
I just remembered one very important thing: If the game is not compatible with all devices that must be the first line of text in the description. No exceptions.
I'm not sure this is something you could deal with on your end unless saves are handled though the servers, but when i go from my iphone 3gs to iphone 4 or whatever, I would like my saves to be transfered as well. Even i take a game off my iphone and put it back on later, I loose everything!
In my opinion I want costume settings too I have an iPhone 4 and I want to have the best graphics on it sooo i don't want the game to get slown down on graphics just to support let's say 1st gen devices! Second thing is usually the story line it needs a good with good voice acting and sound environments. And the last is the controls with although I rarely had problems with controls when I had it was awful. Well all the other medium problems are the same with pc graphics,music,gameplay.
