A redesign of the sequencer is absolutely on my to do list, as it is extremely plundersome on the iphone, even the ipad is not optimal. Any changes will not make it the next update, but hopefully the next after that. I am working with several musicians to create soundpacks as IAP. Hope to have many soundpacks in the future and hopefully it will fund the project so Melodive could go free. I would really love that, as a lot of people doesn't have access to credit cards in the AppStore and besides this is something everybody should have on their iDevice, imho!
Did I say yesterday? I meant of course today, i just have to edit and upload! Stay tuned. In the meantime check out this guy: http://phonecats.com/games/melodive-ipad-game-review. Especially the video! It's not a gameplay-guide, but it's real funny!
I'm uploading now, but my uplink slow and I need to go to bed. The video will be available on YouTube in two-three hours. Should be searchable under "Melodive video-tutorial". I will post the link tomorrow!
Just dropped by to tell you guys that I really like this game. However, what bothers me is that I have different GC-accounts on my phone and iPad, since my wife mostly use the iPad. I find the game easier on iPad which means "she" is ahead of me on the leaderboard... 2,4 mil versus 1,6 mil on the phone. But I guess that's not your fault... Now back to trying to beat myself! //Pedroapan
Thank you so much for posting your impressions, I love feedback, esp the good kind! Melodive was from the start an iPad-only game, but I was convinced to make it universal by people on TA. But to make it work I had to adjust the perspective on the iPhone. iPhone5 is better because of the wide screen, but not as good as the iPad. I will consider giving the iphone-players a score multiplier in the update I am making, but it's hard to find a figure. Any suggestions? Somewhere around 50-100% more perhaps. Anyhow, those scores are really good! See the video-tutorial over for some pro tips, including "the screwdriver" and how to score big! But you should be ok if you score in the millions already! The trick is simple: Pick up metallic melodium when you're deep, the deeper the better.
The game is fantastic when you get the flow. It sure takes some time but when you get familiar with the control it's a blast! Can you explain something about how scoring is calculated? Does increased speed give you more points or is it just the gravity-setting? Should I aim to collect as much melodium as possible or focus on getting really deep? From my personal point of view, my score got a boost when lowering speed, so now I go with almost no speed and maxed boost. Lots of melodium to spare. Pedroapan
Update on the update. First of all TA got it wrong: IAP is not coming in the next update (1.1), it will come in 1.2 hopefully, but work has already started on the soundpacks. I have four diffrent musicians working on this, so hopefully the soundpacks will be varied and high quality. I am working on the next update now, but I am mainly working on making the game more accessible (better help and more scalable difficulty). So this is what's coming at the moment: 1) Gravity will get its own slider, so you can gravity from zero to heavier than heavy. This will enable players to gradually adapt to heavy gravity. Also zero gravity is a nice begginers mode and it also means that you can hang out in places you find nice (watch out for the winds though!). 2) A beginners-"helmet" will be enabled at first run. This protects you from the rocks but also halves your scores. It will make it easier for beginners just to cruise around, but it must be turned off if you hope to score in the millions. 3) A higher mutation -> more color variation 4) Localized help. There help will be contextualized a bit more (split ut and refined). I already have help to translate to japanese, mandarin, french and italian. But I need more translators, so if you're a fan with some language skills and would like to help, please contact me! I am especially looking for these translations:Russian, Korean, Spanish, German, Arabic. All languages are of interest. It's easy to put in. I can supply the text in english and with a google translated version, and then i just need somebody to proof-read. If there is any other suggestions to the 1.1. update I am all ears. Hope to submit very soon (within 48 hours), but it's depending a bit on the translations.
Thank for the redeem code. This allowed me to try out the game despite my concerns. After playing it for a while, I was glad I did not buy it. I am an artist of many mediums so I could appreciate your attempt to promote the game focusing on its visual and audio qualities, but I still could not really get into the game. I got bored with it rather quickly and found the controls very frustrating and confusing. I also did not enjoy the audio, which makes it very unplayable for me. I am an audiophile so this is very important to me. I have some ideas on what sounds would make this more enjoyable. It would be nice if you added the option for users to choose an audio theme, each of course would by dynamic and reactive to the environment. I also think it would be better if perhaps there were more to explore. Like the deeper you go, you could discover new kinds of foliage, plants, or maybe even floating creatures. Think of the "abyss" movie. Because this is basically an abyss. It just needs more variety, more incentive to dive deeper and deeper. I want to discover new things. Right now, it is just rocks, mushrooms, sparkles, and changing colors. I don't think it would be that hard to implement more variety. As of now, I feel the game is just a start. Thank you for giving me the oppprtunity to try it. I will try again if and when you make these improvements.
Yes, you start of slow with max or close to max boost and get as deep as possible as fast as possible, don't take detours to pick up melodium. Focus only on the metallic melodium you can reach. Each blob of metallic melodium yields it's own depth divided by 10 when converted to normal melodium, so focus on the deepst ones. If you're down on 30,000 meters, each blob will be worth 3000 so the scoring will go through the roof! The score is calculated as this: (Melodium x Depth x Mean speed) / 10000 So try to get all this variables as high as possible, but because it's easier to get a lot of metallic melodium than going extremelty deep. Also here is another pro-tip. Every time you pick up a piece of crystallic melodium the flow of time will speed up a notch, so try no to overcharge your boost. You could in theory with a high gravity just fall and be real sparse with the boost and try to avoid all crystallic melodium. This would be hard to do, but it might have a big effect on the depth you wil be able to achieve as the time will not speed up that much. It's a bit complicated and I have no idea if it will work, but it's worth a try.
So I've been keeping up with the all the changes you've been mentioning here and haven't had a problem with any of them so far and actually think IAP for more sounds is a great idea. I'm a bit curious what the sounds will be like, but I know that they'll be well done and that's all that's really important to me. This change I'm a bit concerned about, and I can't say I agree with: I used an iphone 5 to achieve all my high scores and I've also played on my mom's ipad. I would say neither is necessarily harder than the other, just different. Having a bigger screen is certainly nice, but I think you'll probably get the best scores from whatever device you've played the game with more. I played a lot with the iphone and a very little with the ipad, so I find the iphone easier to maneuver around. I suppose you could say the ipad has more potential for high scores. This I can't really say anything about. If you really think the ipad has more potential leading to an advantage of sorts, I suppose I wouldn't get mad about adding some kind of multiplier, but I think 50-100% is way too much. Perhaps 20-45% or something if you do go with it (I find myself leaning more towards 20% than 45%, maybe even lower than 20% would be sufficient). If Abbey's still here, what was your speed on your high score run? I felt like my last good run, I should've beat your score with as deep as I got. Since I didn't, I can only assume your average speed was higher than mine. And since I'm here, I think I'll go ahead and say to anyone who is looking at this thread and undecided about picking this game up, just do it. You won't regret it.
Thanks for the tips! Are there any way to control the environment? Does collecting lots of melodium or metallics make the "cliffs" smaller och bigger? It would also be nice to have a depth-meter so you know how deep you are. Perhaps melodium forming the numbers for every 1000 meters when you go deeper. //Pedroapan //Pedroapan
Hi, thank you for posting your impressions. I think you have some points and I happy to tell you that I am working on all of the above mentioned stuff. Sound packs are coming. I would love to hear your suggestion regarding the audio, I am no musician myself. Feel free to pm me. Also I am working with an artist to bring more variaty to this world, including plants and creatures. But Melodive 1.0. IS just the start, but people are enjoying this as it is. Some are actually loving it. I hope to build a community around Melodive, so it can evolve, and more eloborate games can be made. This is as bottom-up as you get it. I have no prior knowledge or experience with the gaming industry, I am a film maker in my day job. I just made my dream game over the course of four years. Too bad you can't enjoy it even a little, or be a little happy on my behalf. Also: you did thow out allegations of foul play in this thread (several times) and I think you should go back on this now as can you see what kind of respons this is getting, also in the AppStore. Or do you still think I am writing this thread all by myself?
Haha, I knew I would provoke an answer! I will not make any sudden moves on this. I will take a vote from council, i am sure we can reach an agreement! Congrats on your >100 million score! Answer me this: 1) What what your speed setting and 2) Do like that t the figure "1" melts into the "e" of "hi-score" on the screen, or should I remove the "-"? I think it's a bit cool to leave it as is. 100 million breaks the display, haha!
1) Since I got my first high score, I've been focusing a lot on improving my speed. This is the most fun way to play in my opinion. zipping through the environment at max speed is very satisfying. Despite this, I still can't get very high scores unless my speed is zeroed out. So my handling is maxed, my boost is maxed and my speed is zero. I know you said earlier that less than max boost gives better control and I have tried that, but I just like how max boost feels. 2) I did think that was funny. I though about taking a screenshot and posting it here, but I figured you already knew about it with abbey's score. I do like that it makes me feel I've broke the game, but I feel the privelage of breaking the game should be reserved to a score of 1,000,000,000 which I think is quite doable with how exponential scores rise. In fact, I think once this game gets to be about a year old, we'll probably see quite a few 100,000,000 scores, but probably not so many billion scores. I would want to make this something only the best players get to enjoy, but that's just me. Also, getting a billion would make two letters overlap if you left it like this, which is a bit clunky. So I would change it. I also want to thank you for including my suggestion in the update. I can't say any dev has ever actually done anything I've suggested before, and it feels good to be heard. If this game takes off like it should, I'll almost be a little sad that you won't be able to answer each of us like you do now, but I suppose it can't be helped.
That is good to hear. I hope it comes around because I would give it another shot as I believe it does have potential. I will PM you on sound design. Well don't be down just because I am not as fond of it as some others. It is the critics like me that you can take advantage of to improve it. Critics can be a valuable resource when they bring something to the table. Those who just praise it and say it's great as-is are not going to help you improve it. You will have plenty of people that will be happy on your behalf, I'd say. probably even too many. I'd rather just be honest, that worry about each others feelings. The kind of response this is getting has no bearing on whether foul play was committed here in this thread. I did not want to revisit this because I cannot prove it. But the signs are there and I still have my suspicions due to certain details that aren't worth going into. Because even if it is so, I know you are very proud of your game and want to promote it and for it to be a success, and I don't think those intentions and feeling are too ill to drag out and debate.
I'm thinking of increasing the boost a bit. Also the gravity slider will enable a bit higher gravity = higher speeds. The speed-slider will go away, since it has lost it's meaning and be replaced with the gravity-slider. Hopes this will make the start of the game quicker, while enabling even higher speeds = higher scores. Melodive should be fun all the way, but of course >30km runs are going to be a long ride. Have you clocked any of your high-scores? Well, let's see what happens first! This is not a mainstream-product, but it might have some mainstream-appeal. I do think it will always be a niche-product, but that the niche can be expanded with apps like Melodive. It 's great to hear that people that never played a flight sim, can get the hang of Melodive and love it! Also, I am serious about this being a community effort and everybody who loves Melodive should have a say in it, it's not just my app anymore, it belongs to the world! (or at least the >3500 people who bought it).
I feel like you may have missed what I think it was the dev was trying to accomplish with this game. While I can agree with you that the audio is average at best, I don't know that your other improvements are really improvements as much as reasonable opinions. I know quite a few people have said that they liked the minimalist feel to the graphics, and I know I think adding too many things to the environment would ruin that minimalist effect. It has been already suggested in this thread to add foliage. What I feel you missed is what the game is trying to emphasize, which is the flight or rather the process of learning to fly. You say that the controls frustrated you and I can understand that. They're really hard to use and take a lot of getting used to, but you shouldn't be so quick to dismiss them. So many people in this thread like the game for a reason. What I would suggest to you is to play the game more. When I first played the game, I didn't really like how the controls felt either. I only kept playing because I'm the type of person who feels the need to achieve a relatively high score before dropping a game, but I'm so glad I stuck with it. I suppose what I'm trying to say here is what make this game isn't the visuals or audio, but the gameplay and controls. Getting to the point where the game is really fun to play will take time and practice and I would certainly understand not wanting to have to go through that to just to play a game, but I can tell you if you do take the time to master the controls, the game is so satisfying to play, it's insane.
