Mixing cards Hi, Based Xatu! Is that like, "any form of mixing cards is bad," or like, "Don't mix every card you have!"
Card explanations I can try to give the Cliff's Notes version of card stuff, at least. So, there are 4 basic types of cards: Towers (brown wood), Monsters (grey stone), Abiities/Powers (blue magic), and permanent effects (red gems). You initially collect the tower cards into your active deck -- whichever cards you have, you can build during the game. You also start getting the blue ability cards -- things like "Summon Reinforcements" or "Wall of Fire" -- that have timers, and you can use ever 10 seconds, or whatever. You also collect the red effect cards -- when those are in your deck, they do basic adjustment to your other cards. They're things like "Archers fire twice as fast," or "Killing monsters gets you 25% more gold," or "All pig monsters only have 50% of normal hitpoints." So that's how the cards are when you collect them -- you can add them to your defensive deck to make yourself more powerful. After that, each card can also start getting magically boosted. So a card might start out as "Get 10% extra cash from monsters," but as you get a better version, it'll move up to 25% extra, or 40% extra, or whatever. Cards can have more than one boost. So you might have a card that summons 2 "redshirts" to defend you. You could get a more powerful version of the card that gives them +50% hitpoints, 25% faster attack speed, and a reduced timer of only 12 seconds instead of 16. The more magical boosts are on a card, the more expensive it is to keep active in your deck .. simple redshirts might take 50 points to keep active, while that boosted version might take 200 points. So you have to decide if you want the awesome card (which will have a different colored border on it), or if you'd rather have 2 or 3 less powerful cards. Ack, this has gotten long, huh? I'm totally happy to explain more about them, but I should probably move it to another thread if desired, so that I don't swamp everyone here!
You totally got it! Oh my god, you totally got it! I mean, I know *we* can use the level editor, but you figured out the roads, and paths, and waves of monsters, and it totally works! You've made me very happy. Now we just need to set up a public web page so you guys can share these easily, if you want.
Do you guys have a website? Anyway, here are some of my 'slight' concerns: 1. If the tower is near the edges or corner, if I want to upgrade it, it can be covered by other elements. It DOES NOT make it impossible to click on the options, but it does make it irritating to not be able to properly see the options/upgrade. 2. If I am not mistaken, it is impossible to sell towers right? I'm still unsure if this is a good or bad thing. 3. On the deck builder, how I wish the cards have a small icon on the lower right like LI or LII, or just I, II, III. That way it is easier to see what level that tower is. If I am not mistaken, upper left is GOLD, how much it cost, upper right is, for a lack of a better term, DECK COST, to know how much space it will take on your deck. Thats it for now, great great game. I hope it gets the attention it deserves, and thank you for your time answering our queries.
A web page would be awesome. Also, I may not be very experienced with this level editor, but I am very experienced in another game called Geometry Dash, which I am the top editor. I enjoy editors in general. Thanks for the compliment! It only took a bit of fiddling around to find what I was doing. The most tedious part is the balancing of the waves
If anyone wants to add me on Game Center to do the battleground thingy, whatever it is, go ahead. Darnoc703
Quick responses Hey there! We don't have a good website set up yet for Man at Arms, but we'll try to get that done soon. I'll let everyone know once it's up. For your questions: 1. You're totally right about having towers too near the edge of the screen. In the main levels, we tried to move the plots away from edges, but we might have missed some. If you do see that happening, let us know the level and we'll tweak the positioning. 2. You're right that you can't see towers. During beta-testing, we found that people wanted to do it only very infrequently, but that it complexified the UI for all the rest of the time. So we opted to skip it ... but that's another decision we might change our minds on, if people want it. 3. The idea of having a "Level" icon for your building cards show up is an excellent one! We can grab a little tower icon, or something, and put that down at the bottom where it'll show up even when the cards are condensed together. Thanks -- great idea!
Well, you certainly mastered it quickly! As a side note, the way the "waves editor" behaves is originally how we had the player-versus-player mode set. We were going to have you build up a specific deck, with all your waves ... it was going to give you a lot of control, but it got incredibly tedious and tiring to keep doing! So we swapped that out for the mode where you just throw your favorite monsters and spells into your offensive deck, and then the game tries to intelligently play them on whatever level they're assaulting.
Glad you like it despite the trouble! We've gone back and forth about a thousand times trying to figure out the right way to warn players if something might get lost ("Are you sure you want to combine your only Level 2 Barracks?") without making it feel like the game is popping up a window every 10 seconds.
Multiplayer note By the way, there's a bug we discovered in version 1.2 on the iPad, where it will sometimes only show you one Game Center friend, even if you've added a bunch. It's fixed in the current 1.0 version on the iPhone, and it'll be fixed in the 1.3 patch for the iPad that we're working on now.
Oh, also -- even without adding anyone directly on Game Center, if you tap a level and then tap the "Defend Online" button, it'll pick a random other player who has an offensive deck, and attack you with their deck. Right now there are ... lemme check ... about 110 offensive decks active, where maybe 2/3 of those are probably valid to attack a given level. So that's something to try, for anyone who doesn't want to muck with the more specific Game Center options.
Is it ok for me to make a tutorial for the level editor and post it on Youtube? I figure it is, just want to make sure, you never know.
A website is going to be great. You can probably add guides there for mixing cards, a more detailed tutorial on how to make levels, even probably a list of all the cards, as well as a place to download custom levels. So much possibility with the game. For now, I'm still trying to finish all the levels. Then will focus on level editor and making an offensive deck. I have encountered a few, probably 2-3 maps that overlaps with tower options. Sadly, I do not know which maps are those. If ever I see a new one, will definitely let you know. Another small thing. Maybe the icon can be changed. LOL. Right now it is looking weird for me, it's like a medieval beer game. Anyway, for what its worth, out of my pages of TD games on my iPad, Man at Arms is already sitting on the front page beside KR and KRF.
