Maybe reconsider you should! - And maybe these aren't the droids you are looking for... ...Move along! May the Boost be with you! Abbeylution - ante237
The high score I got today was with max boost and max handling and no speed. What I think I should emphasize here is the way your game is currently set up, when it comes to scores at least, all that matters is how much metallic melodium you collect once you get deep. Nothing else has as significant of an effect on score, or even comes close really. Once a player realizes this, if he's after a highscore that is, which we can assume he is, he's going to abandon all attempts at getting a handle on higher speeds. I think games should reward the development of skills with a high score, and not necessarily the patience to inch along. To answer your other question, I did play on heavy, but what I think is important here is what I could have done if I'd played on light with no speed. I think the point stands that someone with the patience to creep along at low speeds would get higher scores than the person who works hard to handle higher speeds, whether playing on light or heavy. So, along with my idea of separate leaderboards, I think it would be ideal to cut back on how much metallic melodium is worth, or at least make it appear less frequently, and to make speed have a greater impact on score. Again, this particular method would reward skill more so than patience while the way it currently is rewards patience, assuming the person already has a grasp on the controls. What I really like about this game is the feeling of constantly improving everytime I play. Now, I feel to improve, using score to measure my level, that what's going to determine how well I do is how long I'll inch. I feel it would be better if I could constantly work to improve how fast I fly. Although, I do understand that this is considered a simulator/exploration thing more so than a game, so if you like it this way, I would certainly understand leaving it the way it is. What I think you did really well with this game is tilt controls. To make a game without tilt controls seems to defeat your original purpose, which I think was to prove that tilt was a legitimate way to play a game. And to make another flying game would be really pointless unless this game gets really popular, and you're just looking for a cash grab. That is assuming you don't change anything about the game mechanics, which I really hope you would, but two weeks doesn't really give you much time for anything, so you can't blame me for assuming the worst of you. I really don't have a problem with another flying game as long as it's something original and not just a copy of this game with a different look. I would think is the best use of a game engine like this would be something creative that uses tilt controls well. The skiing thing sounds interesting, but I really don't know how one would implement tilt controls for skiing, but I'm not designer, so if you can make that work, power to you. As for the math comment, I'm actually finishing up my math undergraduate degree and consider myself quite competent in that department, so if you want to pm me, maybe I could be of some help with something like that (keeping in mind that I don't have any experience programiming, but am an adequate problem solver). While I agree with you completely that freemium games are taking a turn for the worst and are getting worse and worse, I don't think we can make the claim "...a lot of gamers are getting tired of the commercialism in the appstore." While I think there is a portion of the market that wants high quality games, I think the vast majority of the market are average joes who probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a premium and a freeium game in terms of quality, and would only notice one costs money to play and the other is free. This is the part of the market companies like EA are going after with freemium games, and they've been quite successful to be honest. While I may be being a bit of a cynic, the point stands that freemium is what the market currently heading towards (or so it seems). While there will probably always be tiny indie developers who raise the bar, and who get the attention of game journalists, getting the attention of game journalists is a hard thing to do consistently. Bigger companies are always going to do what they think has the best probability of doing well, and I think freemium games are a safer bet, for the general public at least. It doesn't necessarily need to be vegetation that you use. I just think having some sort of visual indicator of depth is a neat idea. I suppose part of the thrill after I die is seeing how deep I got, and not knowing really is suspenseful. Maybe you shouldn't add anything. I suppose keeping it as is would provide a more "pure" design that would probably fit the theme of your game better. This is a great minimalistic game that you would probably do better adding less visually than more. So, actually, I changed my mind. Don't add anything unless you really think it adds something visually to what you have. Knowing how deep you are as you're playing really doesn't add anything to gameplay, and if anything, would just make you more nervous going forward.
Ok, i assumed you played at light-gravity. You should test your theory about light being the best way to get high-scores. It could be, but I have tried hard to balance it. The score is calculated like this (melodium x mean speed x depth)/10000, and heavy yields double melodium. Also I like that there is more ways than one to get a high score, but I doubt that it would be easy to beat your score on light, because the speed will keep on increasing up to 500 %, while in heavy it stops on 100 %. It would be great if you could test it out before I do any changes! I would prefer to tweek the scores rather having seperate leaderboards, but I'm not decided yet. I think it will be hard to adjust the worth of melodium as you have this great score now, but I'm thinking about opening up the terrain a tiny bit more on heavy (it's tweaked a bit already, because of the higher speeds). So that is also a way I try to balance it. Ha, that is so great! The problem for me is reading all the math in papers about algorithms, so I had to think out everything in the game in very simple terms. Would love to include some more complex stuff, like ski-physics, or other terrain-touching. It's problem-solving alright, very nice work, but hard to do without math skills. I will pm you. I will focus on Melodive for now and make it as good as possible so it can get a long life on the appstore. I am not against freemium per se, and I think there is a lot of models to explore. But I do think timers and cosumeables are an unethical business-practice for the most part that hooks players like a drug and I would like to explore other options. But the game should of course be free and then people would pay for extra content/options/vanity items. Or maybe even bitcoins or something like that in the future. The reason Melodive is not free is that I want people to commit a dollar. If it's free it's easier to discard at once I feel, but I might be wrong. I also didn't have time for no IAP-developent at needed to release or I would have to shut it down for three months. I am glad I released! I always try to add more things, but like you said it's very hard. Most stuff doesn't stick and get removed after a while. What is now is there to serve a function, and I like the idea of something appearing at a great depth and then taking over the vegetation, but it must be something brilliant
Well, 4th leaderboard horseman, reporting in (you inspired my first post on touch arcade!). Just wanting to say that it is, indeed, a really beautiful game. The way I feel when I'm playing this is truly unique, here's how I describe it to my friends: At first, the weirdest of game, with its alien graphisms, hardcore gyro control, hippie music, and total lack of tuto. Then, little by little, you understand the mechanics, you get that you 've found yourself a psychedelic version of Flower, then you discover its "Rez in free-roaming" side, and finally you realize it's actually a 3D super Hexagon. Thank you and congrats for this wonderful experience, M. Jestland. (And enjoy your temporary advance, podium guys!) PS: Oh, and as I see you're taking suggestions > many of my friends (and even in this forum, some people) took the "tuning" menu for simple options, and didn't get its "RPG" nature (earning points and spending them to improve your stats). This would deserve a clearer mention in the score screen, as this system brings a cool sense of progression to the experience! PPS: The Millenium Falcon metaphor really fits. I thought about beggar's canyon more than once, myself.
Thank you for joining, I appreaciate you checking in with your opinions! I'm sorry to say, I knocked you down to 5th. I'm honored by that description! I will fix this in the next release. I will work on the game this week and hopefully post an update to apple this weekend. I would like to make it more accessible. Any ideas in that department?
Checking in to say I am really enjoying this game. I am terrible at it, but am having a blast trying to get better. I am still trying to figure out what the tuning is all about. All I know so far is that I am really terrible on heavy so far!
Well, I'm a bit torn on this point, because part of what made the experience thrilling for me, as I described, was slowly discovering the *cough* depth *cough* of the game, by experimenting. And I now just realised every rules I got where actually described in a sub-section of the "help menu"...... But it's much too hidden. So, even if it taints the experience, I would really think about adding a contextual in-game tuto during the player first session. - Start pop-up: General goal of the game. - First crystallic melodium touched: Explanation of what it is and boost system. - First Metallic Melodium touched: Explanation of what it is and upgrade system. - First game over: Explanation of how to reach the best score. Just these few hints would make a tremendous difference in the comprehension of the game, and transform a lot of weired-out players in actual fan of the game, keen to spread a good word about it.
I think this is excellent advice and easy to do. I should probably get to work then! Hopefully I will have something ready for the weekend.
Yes, i will try to clear this up in the next release. Tuning is options, suit the game to how you want to play, but higher speed and boost needs to be unlocked by collecting melodium. Start of with light gravity, low speed and upgrade boost as much as you can. It's like riding a bike, you need a little speed to have control! Good luck, it's nice to hear that you enjoy even if you're terrible! Actually you're lucky, because then you get excellent replay-value as you will have a long progression. I promise everybody can be a Melodive Master!
I can understand your reluctance to change the scoring system and add a leaderboard to the game. I came to the conclusion that lower speeds equate to higher scores through my experience with heavy. When I first started playing the game, I spent quite a while in light getting a feel for the controls. Ive never played a flight sim before, so the control scheme confused me a bit at first and I found it be disorienting, but after a got a handle on it, I assumed to get higher scores, I needed to go faster in heavy. So I practiced that a lot and got pretty decent scores that way. When I found the toucharcade thread and heard how HWest described how he played and how the scoring system worked, I decided Id try to go slower and focus on collecting as much metallic melodium as possible. Once I did that, it didnt take me very long to get my highscore. What Im trying to say here is there was a huge jump in my score after I slowed down, so I assumed that slowing down even more would yield even higher scores (I will test this when I play next to see if I can confirm my suspicions). That disappointed me a little, but after thinking a bit more about it, I realized what the game is really about is mastering flying, and highscores come from controlled flying. When I look at it this way, it really doesnt seem like too much of a problem if thats what you were going for. So after mastering flight on low speeds, greater scores can be achieved by slowly creeping up the speed, but one has to be able to control flight very well at whatever speed is chosen to get highscores. This seems fine to me, and changing things will probably be unnecessary. The one change that I hope you do consider is adding more terrain colors. If you do this, Ill be happy. By the way, I saw your new score. Good work. Im guessing from the distance and score that you played on heavy, but what was your speed? Is it weird that I thought about the Millenium Falcon as I was playing this game too? I would very much like to hear about wormholes. Were they a failed game mechanic?
First let me just say that it makes me very happy that you haven't played any flight sims before and still took to this game. This was one of my stated goals and this gives me hope that other people could warm to this as well. Regarding the high-scores: I played on low speed with semi-high boost on heavy. Tried first on light, got very low scores, then tried on heavy. I haven't played since release and it was very nice playing again and I didn't spend more than a few minutes reaching 27000m i think. At least it fealt that way, I was going pretty fast all the time, not worrying too much about melodium. Actually I think you have a little better control with less than full boost. So I think I will have to add another digit to the highscore, because I think the 100 million barrier is possible to break. I would prefer not to touch the leaderboards or the scoring too much since the leaderboard already is there. I could however make a seperate leaderboard, like a hardcore-leaderboard with specials conditions to qualify, or maybe a melodive master-leaderboard. I've been tuning this back and forth. Would you like more colors onscreen at the same time or that the colors change faster? Or both? Like three/four bars. It's probably best to start lowest possible in speed to go deepest, so you have a good point, but that's where that custom leaderboard fits in! I think a lot of diffrent people have a lot of very similar notions about this game, and that may be a little odd, but I don't think it's weird! Have a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfcXdr0h9EQ And yes I didn't get it to work very good, they would keep spitting you out infront of a wall!
I know I'm not the one who requested this, but in my humble opinion it might be nice to have more colors per dive, but not necessarily on screen at the same time. It might get a bit circus like. I do like that there are blue levels and green levels etc...
Here's my high score so far. I'm getting better! The feeling you get when you ride a current with a swarm of mellodium is thrilling! I am also enjoying the Game Center integration for high scores. If anyone wants to compete with me my ID is TheCurrentGamer. I am still on the light version but I'm definety making progress. I am very impressed with the tilt controls. They are effective even at high speeds, and the framerate on my 4s is flawless. I can certainly recommend this to anyone who likes games with the feeling of flight, or even endless runner fans. The controls have a learning curve, but this is a rare case in tilt control where the learning curve is beneficial, and not due to poor programming or shoddy implementation of the tech. Instead, the learning curve is nuanced, and based largely on learned skill. This is one of those rare games where your own personal advancement is more important than any in game earned and spent experience. You don't just buy a better ship over time, instead you become a much better pilot. This game is a real Gem.
Here you have found the essence of this game. You really learn to fly! Have fun it's a lot more to learn, i will start posting more gameplay-videos soon, and also some instructional videoes. One tip is to try to turn coordinated, it's a twisting turn. Also if you hold your rolling, you can adjust your heading by tilting up and down. All you need to know is in this thread but half the fun is experimenting and finding your own way of playing. Speed will come naturally I think with practice, but remember that boosting is essential to keep your heading.
I really need to compliment you guys (the dev) on the sound design as well. It's a whole new experience with headphones, and the sounds from interacting with the mellodium are great. It is almost as if the mellodium is communicating with you in tune you as you interact with it in space. Really well done!
