Dude, THANK YOU! I really appreciate you explaining all of this. Now I have a much better idea on how it all works. Very nice introduction into the game play. Now that I have a much better understanding of it, I can say this is right up my alley. I've always thought the tower defense genre had a lot of potential, but usually - even the more successful/polished ones - seem to lack real strategy and engagement. But this card system seems to address this missing strategy/engagement.
A good question indeed, because we've done that for our apps like Fingerzilla before. Short answer is: nothing any time soon, but it's certainly possible eventually (meaning a couple months out from here, or something). Also (for anyone) if you ever do buy a game from us, and then we go free soon after, please e-mail me at [email protected] and I can at least get you free copies of our other games, to make up for it. We never want to have people spend money, only to have it feel wasted a few days later.
I think the issue with combining cards that you need is one of our biggest remaining design bugs -- we *really* want to make that not happen for people! So .. for now, I can just be sympathetic, but hopefully when we get the game patched soon, we can have a better fix for that!
Ran into a bug I'm not sure if it's because I equipped two level 4 barracks which it let me do and when I try to start a level it keeps crashing out of the app. Tried again a few times with only one of the barracks but it keeps crashing out still. It's ok though no need to apologise I'm sure you'll get it sorted and I'm enjoying playing but struggling after that mistake with my combining so may just start a fresh file and be careful with combing but will feel like I'm missing out.
Thanks, ScotDamn! We've certainly enjoyed playing it, which is always a good sign. If we're making a game we don't feel like playing, something's going wrong. Now I just have to get that information up with some visual stuff, too, on a website, so that everyone can see it. I'll post a link as well once we get that online. Oh, also -- and to anyone else, of course -- if you ever do buy a game from us, and decide it's not your thing, then if you write to me at [email protected], I can at least get you some free copies of our other games, to make up for it. We want everyone to love everything we ever make, but we know that's not going to happen.
Ack, that's not good! And actually, the game will let you equip two towers (for the cases where you have, say, a Level 1 barracks that costs 150, and a Level 1 barracks that costs 200, but with better troops), and it's certainly not supposed to crash! If you do try that account again, let me know where it seems to crash (just going into a level, or any time you go into a deck editor, or whatever) .. I'll also check the crash logs Apple sends us so that we can try to track it down!
Those worried about price, it is well worth the 4.99. If it does go on sale, you still got a great game at a great price. 4.99 gets you everything and as I mentioned, I see no need for buying gems. I'll replay a level 2-3 times in a row before I move on because you get new cards and it's so fun trying those new cards out on the same level to see how awesome they do. I only dabbled in the level editor but I feel that could be an awesome feature if there is ever a way to upload them to a server and then people can browse them in the game. People could rate them to filter out the junk. As to the issue with people combining or selling so many cards that it breaks their game. I see 2 solutions. 1.) have the ability to always have a level 1&2 barracks and archer at a persons disposal but make them non sellable and non combinable. Or flag the starter cards as nosell/no combine. 2.) create 1 or 2 levels that have a set number of towers built in to them. So..even if you have no cards, you can play the level to get more cards and gems.
All three of those things are good -- we definitely want to get a server up so people can see and rate levels, and adding that directly into the editor makes sense. Same with the ways to get around any time when you accidentally combine cards that you need. In fact, if we put a "Do not combine" flag on any of the cards you originally get as rewards (but not the random ones you get while playing), then it can simply not let you combine them, and pop up a "Are you sure you want to sell your original [L1 Barracks]?" or whatever. Any other cards you get *won't* be marked that way, so as soon as you get an improved L1 barracks, you can get rid of your old one, etc.
So I am playing on the iPhone 4S and I have to say the screen size doesn't bother me at all sometimes I wonder why I can't pinch to zoom in/out but it works fine as it is with the mini map. I love the art style on the loading screen and at other various parts of the game, inside the game itself on levels it's a different kind of art but still good and improves with upgrades. I am enjoying the game regardless I have had a few crash bugs but still keep coming back, mainly I'd ask for more info on everything. Combining of corse as you can lose cards you needed as I learnt the hard way ((add are you sure request for final item of type?)) and you can create cards so powerful that they take up your whole deck at the start also! Finally in the card info when it says 90% ect I know when clicked on it gives more info but could be better explained also along with upgrades for eg once you reach barrack level 4 and buy the healer to upgrade the healer a second time it just says exactly the same for 2nd and 3rd I'd like to see text change to tell you exactly what it improves. Anyway as I said really enjoying the game especially the card aspect of the game none of what I said is me complaining as I just love to have loads of info on everything as for me it makes upgrades more enjoyable knowing exactly what my upgrade gives. I'd definitely recommend this game to anyone that's interested as I was hesitant at first but it really up there with some of the best TD games I've played.
I'm glad you're enjoying it, despite occasional weirdnesses! We tried the pinch-to-zoom stuff .. one thing we found is that while all of us (and our beta testers) kept wanting to zoom out (but keep playing without pause), we'd end up just playing at full zoomed-out mode all the time, and then we'd be annoyed when special abilities were off slightly, or whatever. It was ... one of those things that we all wanted, and then when we got it, it ended up making us less satisfied with the gameplay. So we kind of have that intermediate mode right now, where you zoom-but-pause. I'll definitely work at giving more info both on how things work (like the general combining behavior), along with more bonuses. Oh, one other thing that's not documented: if you're in the deck screen, and you tap a card to see the big version of it, if you tap the big card it'll flip over and show a list of the bonuses with a bit more explanation (like "110% attack speed: your units will attack 10% faster"). That's a good idea about changing the text as you upgrade a power. In some of them we tried to explain it at once (like, "Summon a knight to defend you; each additional point will add an extra knight.") but some are less-well defined. I'll try to go in and either make those more explanatory from the start, or more detailed notes as you add points.
Playing on iPhone 4S and I can't even start the second stage. It keeps crashing, sometimes when I open the defensive deck an others when I try to initiate the second mission. I thought this game was going to be good, but now I am super unhappy
Hi, Baelnor, That's definitely not good -- we did a lot of beta testing on both an iPhone 4 and 4S, and never had any problems. Crashing is (obviously) one of our least favorite things! If it would help at all, scan the App Store for "Inert Soap" and it should show you the various other games we make. I can guarantee they run fine on any phone. We have some that are arcade games (like Fingerzilla), and some that are more like puzzle or word games (like Befuddled). If any of them are interesting to you, let me know and I can send you a free copy for them. It won't make up for Man at Arms giving you trouble, but hopefully it'll at least not feel like you've wasted your money!
Played this a lot over the weekend and got to the Into The Deeps level. Awesome TD game in every aspect!
I'm playing on the 4s too just make sure you close everything in multitasking before playing and I've also run into a few weird crashes but they mainly seemed to happen in bunches and then just stop completely for a while so if you just carry on it may stop. Also back to the dev I know about the big cards flipping over to give a better explanation most of those are good and I understand them now but at first when it just said 90% power and 80% time with 90% gold I was like what it costs that much less? Was just hard to know with some as a noob. I did also notice the part about knights when you upgrade for horses and that's great and explains fully in one text but as you said also others don't, I know you don't need it as it's obvious it improves it but when cash is precious in a level you want to be sure your spending it efficiently. For eg for the healer each upgrade says adds a healer to your squad but you do only get one so should the others say improves healing by 10% ect? Along with the arrows that encase in crystal should those on further upgrade say increases chance to encase by % I know it's only small things but it's all the nice little touches that add up. It's great to see you so active here too by the way.
Wow, that was fast! Sounds like you're definitely one of the people we need to get extra levels out for, soon!
For crashing stuff: if anyone does get crashes, especially repeating, post here or e-mail me at [email protected] with any information you have, like your phone or iPod touch hardware, and anything that seems to trigger it. Figuring out the crash issues is going to be our top priority right now, to do anything we can to get the phone version solid. For the text stuff -- yeah, there's a bunch of better wording (or, better, showing stuff clearly with icons, to avoid spamming people) for things like powers and stuff. Hopefully we can go through and do a cleanup and polish pass for all that when things are a bit more stable!
This level (Into the Deeps) is causing me a lot of trouble atm, and there's always the hardest difficulty to tackle later on. New levels are always nice though!
I think the version that's live still has a few too many birds right at the start ... if you don't remember them (and I designed the level, and I still manage to forget about them), they sneak through and hit you for a few points, which can be critical later on. We've looked at lowering those initial group sizes by just 1 bird lower, so that as long as you have a barracks set up in each place, they won't do that.
Hehe yeah they are pretty annoying but I can get past without losing a heart, or just 1. I seem to get overrun a tiny bit later by mass pigs and bears though. Will have some more tries during commute tomorrow.
