Thank you for wanting to help improving this, I just thought you were a bit sour about it, that's all. It's after all a non-crippled fully 3d game for $1. Yes, you are right about honesty and critism, and almost didn't release it because I wanted to improve and improve on it. But I needed the feedback and the support from a community like this, so that's why I think you should be a bit more careful with your allegations. A lot of long time lurkers, first time posters stepped up and posted their impressions after the inital response on TA was "meh. tilt controls?". This has been something posive for the whole of the TA-community, as this has brought more voices to the discussion. But I agree that it's no use in debating this any further, I just wanted to tell you how I feel about it. You are of course entitled to your own opinion, I just think you should have evidence of foul play before announcing it, especially since this was a very sensitive release. It could have gone either way in my view, but I think it's a big win for iOS-gaming in general that this has generated some positive buzz. Maybe we'll see more games that push the medium a bit in the future? I think we all would like that... Anyways, I appreaciate that you want to help making Melodive better and look forward to you PM!
...or kill it. Just sayin'. It's the fact nothing really happens that made this enjoyable for me, turn it into too much of a game and suddenly it's not quite so relaxing. I play Melodive with my headphones pugged into my PC and my album of choice pumping through them, all I really want is to go into autopilot and get some deep thinking done. Just be careful not to remove the Mellow from Melodive. If you've got tons of ideas that radically change things, you're essentially talking about a new app.
Thank you for your response. I should start off by saying the game isn't going to be satisfying for me to play until the sounds are improved. I wont take the time to learn how to fly with those sounds. Certainly, I can listen to my own music while playing, but then I won't take advantage of the sound reactive environment. If the sounds of the sound reactive environment were improved, I think I could enjoy it more. Also, adding more variety to the foliage wouldn't necessary take away from its minimalism. I'm not suggesting adding more sprites on the screen at a time, just more variety of foliage as you go deeper. Density doesn't have to increase, variety does. I keep hearing, "there are people that like it as-is" being repeated. So what? Certainly there will be people to like it as-is. But if you want to reach more people, if you want to reach a wider audience, I think these things will help and wont take away from its character or soul.
So you said with the gravity slider that maxing the slider will yield gravity heavier than heavy, so at what point does the score double, or does the multiplier just increase with heavier gravity? Will this make maxing gravity the most effective way for high scores or is max gravity really extreme? I guess I should just wait and decide for myself. When I play, usually I play for extended periods of time, so I'm doing one run after another. Timing each one would be a pain I think, so I don't know how long each is taking really. In fact, once I get in the zone, I sort of lose all sense of time, so I don't even think I could really give you a decent estimate. Sorry. How long does abbey take with his runs? Also, just to clarify, when I say I can't get very high scores when the speed isn't zeroed, I mean high as in record breaking high. I can still get relatively high scores without zeroed speed, and I do use boost very generously when playing with zeroed speed in case you were wondering whether I take a super long time to get my scores. I feel I keep a decent pace, but zeroed speed helps for when I get to an area that's really congested. It goes relatively slow without boosting which makes finding new openings easier.
I have seen things you people wouldn´t belive... Hi Luke! Wow, I´ve been having some intense moments with my iPad... The first hi-sore of 111.000.000 happend by accident, I have been restraining myself since we got the GameCenter going. But the other night, just before I was going to bed. I decided to just take a last flight through the Tuniverse on the "Hight-score setting" (HEAVY/highHANDLING/noSPEED/lots of BOOST). When i suddenly found myself in the best song so far... It was so good I never wanted it to end...and the colours were all red and powerful. The baseline was pounding so intense and I just let go... I felt like Bowman, expolring depths nobody has seen before. And when I finally chrashed, I snapped out of it. And the first thing I thought about was that I ruined everything for everyone, but now when I see the effect it had, I´m glad I got lost in the Tuniverse. I am really looking forward to more competition in the GC, it´s so fun. And just now, as I was warming up to record a session on the GameCapturer I accidently took another Hi-score...128m... I will always record when I play in the future... About my gamingtactics. I like fast, but if you want hi-score you have to be fast and skillful in picking up Melodium, but that is also the difficult part of it. I get so greedy on the Melodium sometimes, that I turn and go back up to get them when I am deep down, this is highly risky and it takes a Melodive Master to do it. And you crash harder in the deep regions of the Tuniverse... My recorded top speed on this iPad is 433km/h but during the game it was only 235km/h but alot of that delicious Melodium...can´t have enough of it! I´m probably the first Melodium junkie in the Tuniverse! But as I like to say: Use the Boost Luke! The Boost will be with You...always! Abbeylution
Melodive has evolved over several years and a lot of stuff has been in there at one time of the other. Everything that didn't work would get removed after a while. There was a lot that didn't work! So everything that is in Melodive now is there to enhance the core experience, which is zipping past stuff in high speeds. Everything has it's function. Of course I would like to add more variation as you get deeper, but I will not add anything to Melodive before testing it thouroughly on people that already love the game. So the changes I am doing now is just to make it more accessible and also better for mellowing out like you requested. I think you will love the new zero-gravity mode, as you can just hang around more. It's much more mellow when gravity isn't pulling you! Also the "helmet" is also there on your rquest actually (i think). It's the first step to a more casual gameplay. I will try to include more of your suggestions in future releases as I like your take on your things, and gotten request from VJ's for the same thing. Will also try to make the beat of Melodive match up with iTunes playing when you mute the in-game music. This will be a new mode, a VJ-mode, useful also for performances and trance parties and what not. I already tried autopilot, but couldn't get it to run smoothly. It's on my wish list though.
If there is anything I have, it is vision, I also happen to be very meticulous. I would not dare kill it. I suspect there is a quality control process in place anyway. I am not suggesting anything radical. Only ideas on how to improve the experience, on how to really capture divers into the game\experience.
I understand this and won't try to convince you otherwise since I do believe the sounds are the weakest part of this game. Ironic that this is classified as a music game if you ask me. Adding foliage to the environment will make the game a bit more interesting to look, and back when it was suggested I more or less said I would be fine it. When I said it was already suggested, I meant you're not really adding anything to the table with that comment and it's already being worked on from what I understand (at least that's what the dev seemed to imply). I suppose that wasn't obvious from I said, but yeah foliage is fine. What I don't think would look good is little creatures, but I'm not much of an artist, so I don't have much of an imagination for these things. I wouldn't know how to make it look good, but I suppose it could done well, so I'm not going to say straight up "I don't think this should be done" but I will say I'm skeptical of it. What I think we need to consider is adding little things like this probably won't have a whole lot of effect on people's opinion of the game. Most people when they see screenshots and gameplay videos can already decide for themselves whether the game is something they want, and a bit of foliage probably isn't going to really swag them one way or the other, so from a business standpoint, there probably isn't much incentive for the dev to even add anything since so many people like how it is now. So you are right here. What's important here in this game, or what I would call the heart and soul, is flying. As long as the flying stays intact, I would be happy with whatever honestly, but as I said above, I just can't see any of these trivial changes having an impact on attracting a wider audience. I think what the dev is doing with this update is making the game much more accesible. This is going to attract a wider audience. Once that update's out, I can't imagine any other features are going to have much of an effect on sales at all.
No, the 2X multiplier will be linked to not wearing a helmet! Thought that was a bit funny. But of course heavier gravity will yield more speed = higher scores. Score and depth can be though of as a bonus multiplier to melodium. I might add a negative bonus to having less than "heavy"-gravity if it turns out that there is possible to go real slow with no gravity and collect a bucketload of melodium. The trick is just to tune the score a bit so this becomes a meaningless task. Like you said one way of doing it is having a mulitplier tied to the gravity as well with 1 = heavy graviy. But I don't think this will be a problem, since you can achieve so much higher speeds with heavier gravity. I did make the sliders so that you would never have them at max, but I must have underestimated my audience. I will consider increasing the boost and handling by 10-20%, so that it will be harder to max out! Haha, that's why I am asking, everybody has it the same way, I think! I will have to check one of the youtube-videos.
Sounds great! I think it's important developers try to stick to their vision and create the game they want rather than trying to please everyone and ending up with something they're not happy with, but it's also great when you're open to ideas from fans. As long as you keep taking it in a direction you enjoy yourself, the quality will remain.
Yes, in a way, it should have been labeled as arcade/simulation. But of course, now the app is very visible in the music section, and I don't think people looking for a "music"-game will be disappointed in downloading this, as it does have a sound-reactive environment. But if it's possible, I would consider moving it to arcade. (if that's even possible). I wanted to see if people could be open for these kind of controls and this kind of flying. The terrain as it is to make the flying more fun, you're always close to crashing. So yes, the flying is the reason I built this in the first place. It's not a very advanced model, but's the 60 fps that sells the experience. So when people start to accept Melodive and it's controls I can make more flying games, some even a bit more commercial (blowing stuff up!). Everyday I check the leaderboard and see how many Melodive Master there are in the Wolrd. 60 masters in 12 days gives me hope that this could be a thing.
Was that cat for me? That was real nice ascii-cat I must say! This has become so much more enjoyable when people actually have opinions about it. The first reactions I got from people (a lot actually) was dumbfounded silence!
Haha, that's my signature. It doesn't appear when I post from the app. It's for all the great developers that interact with the gamers
I just wanted to check in and say that I'm not looking forward to facing lukepolo with an iphone multiplier advantage. Not sure if this is a good idea since a great player will be at an overall advantage on iphone. The idea that the same run would score differently on different devices doesn't seem right. The difference in difficulty between iphone and ipad is not something that can be quantified on an individual level. It is even possible that someone could be better on iphone. Yet any multiplier would be an exact unyielding thing unrelated to the individual in question. I would say this as an ipad user though.
Ok, let's put this to rest now. There will be no adjusting of the high-score system in v.1.1. Probably never, because the ramifications are so hard to predict. So let's get back to setting those >100 million scores. I see you are a bit behind, even though you're on the iPad!
That's how I feel too. I really enjoy just "sight seeing" in the cave system. I just kind of wander down slowly. I'm surprised nobody mentioned Brad in the TA plays video. . . . Not sure if he is cut out to be a Melodive Master The tutorial video Johan made is good. I hope after people watch TA plays, they will watch that one. I really enjoy the game as is. I'm looking forward to a gravity slider and more tunes tho. Incase any new players read this, it is tricky at first. Stick with it, and you'll have a lot of fun. A lot of this game is "leveling up" your skill set. I really stunk at this game at first, but, with practice it became one of my favorites.
Hey Johan, did you remove the videos of the older builds from YouTube? I saw them a while back and noticed some of the colour combinations seemed quite different. I think it would be cool if we could get a few of those back in. Actually, I've been thinking about what could be done with colour to make the "caves" seem a bit more psychedelic and alive. Picking up metallic melodium could make the walls cycle through the colour spectrum and end up back as they were, so it seems like the cave is reacting to your actions. I also really like the pulsing sky so I've been wondering if there's a good way of making it more prominent, or perhaps increase and decrease in intensity at certain points.
I think he can do it, but I am bit suprised that nobody seems to read the instructions! As long as they are enjoying themselves, everything is good! Melodive has been soaring on the charts for the last 24 hours so I think it did a lot of good. I should have made more chilled out-gameplay videoes, because the whole experience is a bit easier to read for newcommers, so it's good that these videoes are there. It a good hook into the real game, that TA hasn't understood yet, but it will come!
At the risk of sounding like one of those, "If you don't like it you don't understand it" guys... Oh my, does this post capture the seemingly uncapturable beauty of Melodive. Every so often I "play" a game that is a bit "bigger" than the usual fare, and this appears to be the latest. Frankly, I dig the music as-is, although I can imagine 20-30 albums off the top of my head that I would like to experience alongside Melodive. In short, I have no idea what I'm doing, it doesn't matter, it's going to be a VERY enjoyable learning experience, and it's only likely to get better as I get better at it. If I had one suggestion, whatever you do, do NOT let go of your original "mellow" vision. Melodive isn't like anything else, and in an App Store choked with shooting, driving, throwing, exploding, running, and coin-collecting, that is a very, VERY good thing. DBC
