Universal Nimian Legends : BrightRidge HD (by Robert Kabwe)

Discussion in 'iPhone and iPad Games' started by redribbon, Jul 22, 2014.

  1. Protopop

    Protopop Well-Known Member
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    Jul 21, 2014
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    Thanks so much:)

    I like speaking with people about the game whenever I can because it really helps me. Its just likemthe stuff I said about making use of the help around you - the feedback encourages me and the criticism helps me identify areas where i can improve things. I'm kind of an introvert in some ways, but i think ultimately working together you can often accomplis more than alone.

    DoonPillar will be separate, as well as Residi Bay and GoldenWood. Ive already written the stories for them and they're the result of splitting up the original game which was called Nimian Hunter : Mentipede but it was too big to finish.

    That brings up what i think is some good advice, if something is too big, break it down into smaller easier to manage pieces - it's worked really well for me in game design, i feel less overwhelmed AND it gives me a sharper focus.

    BTW I am trying to build my project so that, ultimately, i might be able to create a GOLD version that contains all 4 worlds linked together - we'll see if that happens, but im spending a lot of time making sure the project structure is built that way:)
     
  2. jaysraptors_to

    jaysraptors_to Well-Known Member

    Apr 27, 2014
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    I will be looking forward to what you make next :D

    Thank you for your advice.
     
  3. bigjack66

    bigjack66 Well-Known Member

    Aug 5, 2013
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    Updates finally here. Looking forward to see what it brings.
     
  4. Dannyz2000

    Dannyz2000 Well-Known Member

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    Is this optimized for iphone 6?
     
  5. Nullzone

    Nullzone 👮 Spam Police 🚓

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    #565 Nullzone, Oct 22, 2014
    Last edited: Oct 22, 2014
    @Protopop: I never played Warhammer Fantasy or 40k either, but - just like you - I really like the settings. And some of the fanfiction is way better than any of the official books I read (yeahyeah, the Ultrasmurfs are the bestest Spess Mehrines ever, I get ... *puke* :p ) .
    If I don't forget, I'll put together some links to good reading. Same goes for creating a mockup for the radial menu. I got a lot of stuff on my plate currently and a work deadline tomorrow, so it might take a few days.

    The WH40k genre is appropriately named Grimdark, after itself. Specifically after the famous(?) quote "in the grim dark future there is only war..."
    My personal guess is because "Militaristic, Xenophobic, Racist (or rather, "Speciest") SciFi craphole universe, taken to the Extreme(TM)" is too long of a genre descriptor ;)
     
  6. Protopop

    Protopop Well-Known Member
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    Cool bigjack:) Please let me know if it works on the A5 - ive tested the update on my end (i had to disable a the quality options and weather) but as you know with A5 it seems to work or not work for people. I hope you can enjoy the experience and your feedback is always very welcome:)
     
  7. Protopop

    Protopop Well-Known Member
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    That's a great question Dannyz2000.

    It's not specifically optimized for iPhone 6 yet. Unfortunately I can't upgrade my copy of Unity because Unity 4.3 and higher contain a terrain tree bug, so im not able to use newer Unity features like iPhone 6 detection or Metal. I'm looking for a workaround though and in the next update should be able to offer at least 1920x1080 resolution for the iPhone 6+ and native resolution for the 6.

    In the meantime BrightRidge still works great on the iPhone 6 and 6+, smooth and with full detail - and you can still increase the resolution and use all of the other options in the options section. Because the new iPhone are quite powerful you can set all the quality settings to MAX if you like and get a good frame rate.
     
  8. Protopop

    Protopop Well-Known Member
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    BTW i noticed you tag says you use an iPhone 4S. It isnt officially supported on A5 devices, but it works (i a lower detail mode) for a lot of A5 users (ipad 2, iphone 4s, ipad mini...) out of the box, and for the users where it crashes it's often fixed by closing other apps and restarting the device. I think this is beacause its really the amount of memory that makes it work smoothly on A6 devices and up (which have 1gb memory or more) and trying to cram all the textures into the 512mb ram on A5 can cause a crash, but the closing and restart frees up that extra memory. Anyways just a note in case you are thinking of using it on the 4S:)
     
  9. Dannyz2000

    Dannyz2000 Well-Known Member

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    Ah ok thanks for the info. Ill give this game a try when it is optimized. Btw do you know how do i change the tag? Evidently its outdated :)
     
  10. Protopop

    Protopop Well-Known Member
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    lol - yup, at the top right-ish of the page click your username. This takes you to your account screen. Find and click on the ABOUT ME tab, inside down the list you should see a "Primary Device" drop down (or a little pencil icon to click to edit) where you can change your device.

    The 4S was my first phone and a great device and design. It's also the phone I began developing the game on. I miss mine:)
     
  11. Protopop

    Protopop Well-Known Member
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    #571 Protopop, Oct 22, 2014
    Last edited: Oct 23, 2014
    New IOS Apps AND Updates will need to be 64bit starting February 2015

    As some of you may know, Unity 4.3 and higher has a regression that makes IOS Trees unworkable due to a low framerate. I'm using Unity 4.2 and have been following this bug for a year and asking Unity for a fix.

    I just received confirmation that App Updates will need to be 64bit starting February 2015. I'm trying to find out if Unity can already build 64bit IOS Apps or if Unity 4.2 will be able to do it. It's kind of freaked me out because I have solid plans for BrightRidge and the remaining games. But it looks like there's 3 potential outcomes here:

    1. Unity fixes the IOS Terrain Tree Bug, I upgrade, build 64bit and all's well
    2. Unity doesn't fix the bug, i stick with Unity 4.2, it does build 64bit and i continue to use it as long as possible
    3. Unity doesnt fix the bug (preventing upgrade) and I will no longer be able to update the app
    4. Unity doesnt fix the bug, I update anyways buy due to the bug have to drop support for anything lower than the A7 chip

    If #4 comes to pass, what i am thinking to mitigate it is that i would make the previous version of BrightRidge free so A5 and A6 devices would have something to play, and then just focus on A7 and up and hope there isn't another feature regression in unity like this one.

    The other option im looking into is to replace my terrain trees with a custom system of billboards and occlusion to handle trees as objects. (maybe that should actually be option #5 :)

    I guess I just wanted to put this out here because so many people on this forum have been so helpful, and being able to share this worry i think soothes me somewhat.

    My official outlook is that Unity will come through and fix the bug before February. In any case I am just going to continue to work on BrightRidge and hope for the best. But I'm kind of scared that all the money and time I've put into this might come to an end.

    I'll definitely keep people posted - im sure this news affects other developers as well.
    And who knows, the say in Chinese the word for Crisis is the same for Opportunity. I don't know if that's true, but its a great piece of advice, and no matter what happens I'll approach it as openly as possible. Maybe it will even lead to a new opportunity or path (HTML5 only games?, Android and PC only versions)


    Thank you to the forum for listening and all you great support and feedback - it has meant a lot to me and helped a lot:)
     
  12. Woodrith

    Woodrith Well-Known Member

    Oct 4, 2014
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    Hooaah
    Outerbounds
    Wow

    As always blown away by the support you show on here! Loving the new update, the jumping is crazy high, but so useful for climbing. Also, for the UI, would there be a way for the users to move sliding actions or buttons around?

    Curious what unitys position, if any is on fixing the bug. Objects may be the best route, would you lose a lot of functionality doing so?

    Will continue supporting, can only see this becoming better and bigger over time! Oh, also played around on your website, love the mini web adventure rpg, great way to introduce your mythos and legends. Keep it up! Though more so cause I'm greedy and want to see what you create next:D!
     
  13. Protopop

    Protopop Well-Known Member
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    I'm really happy to hear that Woodrith:)

    I always thought Super Mario had the best jumping and i wondered why games like GTA has such lackluster jumps. After working ion it i know - it's hard:) I read a really great book Game Feel by Steve Swink and it helped a lot to simulate the feeling of a jump o a touch device. Its a work in progress but i wanted to make it high because i think its less realistic but more fun, more exaggerated, and i think even though BrightRidge has a kind of realistic leaning art direction, there's this element of exaggeration in everything I do.

    I just heard Unity is working on the bug again, but ive heard that before and honestly it's out of my hands. I'm going to have to just accept what comes and deal with it as it happens. In life to be honest there are USUALLY work arounds to most problems - its the worrying and stress that's my only regret in this and thats something that i can control if i work on it, so... Que Sera Sera for now:)

    If i use objects instead of trees it could work if i can build a goo billboard system, so we'll see. It would also make climbing trees possible, which is a mechanic i would love to have. Anyways i'm going to use the same algorithm i use to grow unity trees to create similar patterns of trees as objects, pull out my iPod touch and see what the performance is like. Maybe this is all a wy of telling me to try new things:)

    Thanks so much for the support - this is one of those time i really need it and I appreciate you can feel the effort I'm putting into the world. I know I'm not an expert in any one thing, but i feel especially in the last two years that im focusiing on just a couple of games and that through iteration and feedback they're coalescing closer and closer into my vision, what i'm achieving is slowly coming closer to what i'd like to achieve - an engaging, though provoking mini world that eschews (but doesn't totally eliminate) violence in favor of adventure.
     
  14. Protopop

    Protopop Well-Known Member
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    Forgot to mention - Customizing the position of UI buttons is coming in the next update 1.3
     
  15. Nullzone

    Nullzone 👮 Spam Police 🚓

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    As always, if there is anything we can do to help you - with the tree problem in this case - holler and we'll try our best ;)

    Just remembered that vonknut mentioned to use terrain-4-mobile instead a while back, here: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=3355793&postcount=528
    Before you start building everything from scratch (e.g. if the bug does not get fixed) , maybe give that - or a similar solution - a shot?

    Some bad news: I just went through the changelogs for 4.5 and 4.6-betas and could not find anything that looks like the tree bug is fixed in any of the two.
    And no release date for Unity5 yet, looks like you are stuck with "hurry up and wait" :(
     
  16. stooney

    stooney Well-Known Member

    Hi,
    after reading some rave reviews and reading a couple of posts from the developer, I bought Nimian Legends and somehow just lost the last hour playing with it.

    I wasn't all that impressed at first until I discovered the quality settings. Everything to high, it looks great and still runs smooth on iPad Air.

    One thing thoug, which I consider "the mayor sin of iOS playing": please allow rotation of 180degrees, either automatically or per options.

    Due to the nature of my iPad cover, it's very comfortable to hold one way, but not the other way around.

    Please fix this, other than that, I'm quite impressed and can't wait to see what further development will bring.
     
  17. Protopop

    Protopop Well-Known Member
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    That's great advice - thank you stooney:) I put it on my to do list for the next update. there's a setting in Unity that allows you to specify this so I'll test it out.

    Im glad you got to use the quality settings. As more and more devices are released there's a larger fragmentation between the power and capabilities of devices. So the quality settings added in this update are going to become more and more essential. I want to keep expanding them so that you can really fine tune all the details to get the maximum visuals on your device.

    its good to hear about your case and how you hold it - thats the kind of thing thats hard for me to know in my own testing and sharing that with me gives me insight into what can do to make the game better in the real world. Its interesting because it's not just about the software and the device, but also how we interact with them - and your tip will make it easier for people with cases or other holding preferences to enjoy BrightRidge:)
     
  18. stooney

    stooney Well-Known Member

    Wow, thanks!
    And that is exactly the reason why I bought NL without hesitating, even after reading your post regarding Unity and updates.
    Not that it would have been a huge investment ;-)

    I really hope you will have great success with this and other games. It's rare that a developer really cares and is communicating openly like you.
    Thank you!
     
  19. Jenohart

    Jenohart Well-Known Member

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    A bit late, but I don't think it's been mentioned. Latest update will not run on my iPhone 4s, crashes on loading screen when trying to start the game. I was able to run version 1.1 previously. Yes, I did close apps/restart before trying to play.
     
  20. Protopop

    Protopop Well-Known Member
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    I'm really sorry to hear that Jenohart and thanks for bringing it to my attention.

    I am submitting a new update 1.2.1 to the app store Monday. It has a lot of optimized code and i find it runs somewhat faster on older devices. Hopefully this will fix the problem and let you play BrightRidge on your iPhone 4S again. The 4S was my first iPhone and i think it's a great device with a great look.

    I'm doing more frequent, smaller updates now, and the update after this includes even more code optimizations to speed up the games "main loop" by taking all the extra code out. I hope you'll keep a lookout for update 1.2.1 (hopefully approved soon) and updates after that.

    BTW see my next post for a few details about what else update 1.2.1 will have.
     

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