Sigh... so beautiful. But no hope for my iPad 2. I want this so badly, I might just have to buy an iPad 4.
Well I didn't pick this up until just now and I've only players about 15mins (on my iphone5s) and wow this looks cool. For 69p it's worth it just to see how impressive it is that this is on a phone.
Positively drooling over this and downloading... If anyone finds the new Towers, landmarks and Waterfalls (or anything else of interest): Mind posting it here or on the Cartographers' Guild thread (http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=239356) ? I really want to make a guided tour for the new stuff at least. I have one planned out for weeks already, but never enough time on my hands to sit down and pour it into a cohesive format *sigh* If you feel like doing a tour yourself, be my guest
I found the Butterfly Tower already, and played around a bit with the new settings. The lighting and weather effects are gorgeous. For example I had one spot where everything turned really dark and foggy suddenly, turning bright ridges (lame pun, I know ) into quite the eerie place (forgot to make a screenshot, hmph) . A few things I noticed: - Jump height feels a bit too much. How high does it go, 3-4x body length at least? Looks great, though, so that evens it out for me. - Some of the new graphic options have odd effects. E.g. I noticed one where trees notably change in width and height and moved a bit to the right. Need to experiment and take screenshots when I have time. - The Butterfly animation feels a tad too hectic. I know they fly like that in real life, but a little slower animation speed would make it fit better into the calm Brightridge atmosphere I think. - There are a lot more Spirit View and Shapechange buttons now. Unless I miscounted, they won't all fill up. If I'm right, it would be better to hide those that do not have actual content (yet) . - When I am e.g. viewing the Worldmap, the Controls still show, which is not optimal. - I really would like to see a "multifunction" button on the main ingame screen. With all the extra goodies like Bow, Shapechanges, Spiritviews, Light that Robert gave us, moving through the menus frequently breaks immersion quite a bit. Maybe re-purpose the jump button to "multi-use"? E.g. tap&hold could open a radial menu going out from the button. And then you drag where you want to go: up for jump, down for Spiritview, right for Light on/off, left for Shapechange. Spiritview and Shapechange would open another radial menu with the available options.
The game looks amazing on the iPhone 5s with high res textures on. The only thing is that I'm only get an average of about 21-20fps and 18fps as the lowest, they should optimize to run metal to boost the FPS.
Go a few pages back in this thread, and you'll find quite lively discussion about Metal Problem is that the tree generation Robert uses in Unity has a serious bug (dropping framerate to low single digits) which Unity did not fix yet. So currently he chose not to upgrade to a later Unity version, meaning no Metal support at the moment. -- Brought to you by the Public Relations Commissar
Thanks Rich - I wanted to add a lot of game mechanics to help flesh out the world, my favorite thing I think is the jumping. BrightRidge is all about exploration and adding new ways to move helps you do that. Diving and fishing are coming in the next update and that will be that last one that adds new mechanics before I add in the Quests. Anyways I hope you enjoy the experience and if you have any feedback, good or bad, let me know
Thank you TheGreatEscaper. It's not officially supported on iPad 2, but it works on mine. Version 1.1 did too but sometimes you needed to close your other apps and restart the device. So if you want to take a chance, or can try it on a friends device give it a go
Thanks Sexy Pirate It's cool because the iPhone 5s is a really powerful machine. if you go into the options there are custom quality settings where you can increase the grass distance, density, turn on/off reflections and use it in high res (although that uses a lot of cpu). The phones are just getting so much faster with each year, so im trying to add as many quality control options so you can tailor the visuals to your system. I'm glad you checked it out and left your comments - ive always liked the idea of a World in your pocket. I'm working on update 1.3 now too so there will be more added to this world.
I hope it all goes smoothly Woodrith. If you have any comments, questions or suggestions - good or bad - please don't hesitate to leave them here. Every bit helps
As usual you have really helpful feedback Nullzone - thank you. A lot of what you said has gone into this new version (as well as your name for that statue on the hill Jumping: i think there is room for more jumping options. For example low, medium or high jumping that you unlock, and a double jump. These are some of the options that are coming in the next update, and will be part of the quest reward structure. I'm also working on a "hulk jump" power - when you run though these dots, you temporarily get the ability to do a 100 meter or more super jump. Tree jerk - i think thats because when i start and stop the wind effect i go from 100 to 0 - i need gradually bring the value down so that it doesnt jump from swaying trees to static ones. This was something i noticed in the weather too - eraly weather started and stopped on a dime and it really broke the immersion - somethings need to be taken nice and slow Fast Butterfly: thanks, maybe two kinds of butterflies with different motions, or as an option yeah, those other spiritviews and shapechanges are for the dolphin, wolf and 2 more secret ones coming in 1.3 I REALLY like the idea of the radial menu multi option thing - i have to figure out the best way to do it. If i do like you mention, will a persons finger rest on the jump button and open the menu by accident? Or i am thinking that tapping the option buttin in the top left opens a radial of fast options, one of which opens the "deeper" options you have in the current options section now (like camera, quality etc) and the rest quick change to light, bow, staff...or load up your favorite shapechange into it, or maybe thre blank options that you can assign any option to... I think its really an essential thing so im gonna give it some real research OK all of your great advice has gone into my 1.3 to do list so look for it in the next update. BTW 1.3 will be the last update introducing new mechanics - then i am ready to add the quests which i have been working on. There's likely going to be 9 quests total (so not a sprawling adventure but a good size for my bite-sized world) following the 3 paths of Spirit, Speed or Strength. For example, you can complete one spirit quest by living the life of an animal (pollinating a field of flowers as a butterfly, running alongside another deer while a deer yourself until love blossoms....)
Thanks Mhunt190 - yeah, Nullzone is right in the next post. Until Unity fixes this bug i can't even upgrade from Unity 4.2, which is a huge problem because IOS apps are going to have to be 64bit starting in February, so if they don't fix it in a few months I might have to stop development of the game altogether, which is really breaking my heart because i want to make a living from this. Anyways we will see - if i do get to upgrade to Unity 5, Metal will be used for sure BTW you could turn off reflections - that gives you a pretty good speed boost and you dont notice it unless you are by the water.
Thanks for the flowers But nah, I just read a lot of Warhammer40k fanfiction. And I absolutely love a well-written Commissar. Thought for the day:Towards a bright and ridger future. (finally came up with one I like ).
Thanks for making this fantastic world Mr.Protopop! I have always loved open world games on iOS, mainly for the exploration rather than the actual quests. I love how you created a fantastic world like this for the main purpose of exploration. I have only explored this masterpiece for around 20 minutes but what I have seen so far is fantastic! I really hope that the Unity bug gets fixed because you are a great developer and I think this world has great potential for the future. I am currently in a coding class in high school and I can barely make a pacman game and you can made this all by yourself really makes me appreciate your work! Thank you so much for making this world!
Those are really encouraging words and the reason I'm making worlds - thanks jaysraptors_to. That's so cool that you can take coding in high school. I used to do that too. You know, it's mostly about having a passion and interest in what you want to do. Then the specifics about it will follow. Maybe you can't program pacman now (i couldn't either) but if games are what you want to make you can absolutely learn whatever is needed, or get help form your peers to do what you want to do. Honestly im only a so-so programmer but i have a great tool, Unity, and the asset store, and the internet where every single day i learn something new that helps me with my game. I may technically be one person but in reality i am benefiting from the help and advice of thousands of people i may never meet but who took the time to contribute advice. All of that information and help is there for you too when you're ready to take it. yeah, im a big fan of Open World games too - they are usually my favorite. I can't wait for the Next Gen version of GTAV to come out (next month i think) - not for the guns but for the shopping and mountain biking and cruising in the car and just exploring in general. Thats the kind of experience I want to put in peoples pockets. I really hope the Unity Bug gets fixed too! I would like to really flesh out this world. It's something Ive been worrying about more and more, but i am just going to keep using Unity 4.2 until it doesn't upload to the App Store anymore and then try and deal with issue when the time comes. In the meantime - positivity as much as possible I'm working on one more update, 1.3 - then there will be nature based quests added (then im done for BrightRidge and I can release DoonPillar, set in a windswept desert of huge scale with many secrets And it's all based on the map at http://nimianlegends.com, which i'm also updating. Anyways I hope you'll keep checking things out,and spread the word about BrightRidge if you know anyone whose interested. Every sale helps fund the world design and encourages me mentally too. Hopefully i'll be able to get to a place where i could work on Nimian legends full time and really, truly put out the ideas and worlds the best way possible.
Bright Ridgers!! I never played 40,000, but i have been in love with Warhammer's Fantasy universe since I was a kid I think that and 40,000 share that chunky art style and grim setting that felt so real in so many ways, even though its scifi (or do we call it 'speculative fiction' now?) and fantasy.
I really appreciate the reply I have read the whole thread so far and I really like the fact that your posts are very detailed. I will certainly recommend this to my friends at school and I hope that more and more people will buy it. Games like this deserve to be very successful. Also I have a question: Will DoonPillar be a seperate app?
