Most games I play use words rather than stars to indicate the difficulty. I'm sure players would understand something like Novice, Relaxed, Medium, Hard, Expert as the difficulty levels, perhaps along with some text description. You could still leave dynamic difficulty on by default, and just make it an option to turn it off. Or do it like Reckless Racing 3. It has auto adjusting difficulty on by default, but when you turn it off, it gives you a horizontal slider control to adjust the difficulty from 5% to 100%.
Hi! Back to playing this game after so long, after finally getting my iPad Mini. So finally caught the Striker and the coin tripler. Imo though, the newest Flare ship didn't quite catch on. To me, it felt more like just a Phoenix loaded with a bit of extras. The power up attraction was quite useful, but didn't quite use the Overdrive. Does anyone know a good strategy on how to properly use the Overdrive? It's kinda hard to use when it drains HP and is only usable without a power up in inventory. Also, few additional bugs I found. The Sound FX seems to be malfunctioning on my iPad Mini 2 on iOS 8. No sounds during the game at all, just music. It seems that only when the game ends and when the result screen loads I suddenly hear a random brief sound (Usually that of my ship going ka-boom! ) Also, it seems apparent that I am unable to upload my scores when I'm using mobile data. Wifi seems OK, though.
I've gotten very comfortable having less than 50% health... But I usually start a game with extra health/extra power ups, then blast away. I'll usually use the overdrive on EVERY boss/large enemy, and about half the medium enemies. They drop enough health to keep it goin over and over again. I blow through pickups so I can use overdrive every other wave as well... It's very active... I've tried going back and playing with the other ships but the power ups just don't get to ya quick enough and everything just drags on... It's gonna take me a while to get back into the other ships again after this. =oP
The pacing of the Flare can become quite addictive indeed, especially in the early stages when being low health is not such a big risk @FBI_Light_Rock: Great to see you're back for a bout of Phoenix HD With regards to the audio, have you tried turning it off and on again in the Phoenix HD settings? I'm playing on the same device and it works fine here, so any additional information would be awesome. We have gotten no other reports on this, so I hope it's just a freak incident :X I've had it happen to me during development once (on another device), it indeed plays all sounds, or whatever is in the buffer (?), at once when it kicks back in. Be sure to joggle the volume up and down both in- and outside the app. The network problem is super interesting to us. We spend a lot of time optimising this, to improve connectivity worldwide. Especially countries like China are a challenge, with the firewall and all. Are you sure you have Phoenix HD allowed to use cellular data in your settings? (device settings -> cellular -> scroll down to Phoenix HD). Please let me know. You can always contact us directly by using the 'Contact Us' button in Phoenix HD settings.
I had this same problem happen to me yesterday, when playing with the Flare. I started playing, and then realized I was only hearing the music, but no shooting sounds. It stayed that way until I died. I started another run, and the sound effects were back. I did not exit the game between runs even or fiddle with the volume, just started another run with the same ship. I was playing on an iPad 4 running iOS 8.1.2, not jailbroken, and using a Mad Catz CTRLi controller.
Seems like the Sound FX stops working after one game. Although turning it on and off works, it would certainly better to have it just work all the time without breaking down. Also, if I remember correctly, the Sound FX will continue working if there are no boosts activated. I'll investigate again. Ahh thanks Selachii. Didn't know why I disabled cellular data for Phoenix HD. Working great now!
I still cant play this game coz the controls as smooth anymore and lost the 1:1 swipe ratio. Im using an ipad air 128GB on 8.1.1. Seems like im the only one experiencing this?
Sound FX still breaks down sometimes, but restores after starting just a pure game with any ship (no boosts from the Armory). Can you fix it permanently though, Selachii? Quite frustrating once I decide to start a full game with boosts. I'm a bit unsure how uploading to the leaderboards work though. It seems like for me, it somehow only uploads to Country leaderboards and above. Most of my records for Provinces and Cities are all outdated or just don't even exist. Are there not enough players in my city and province?
@FBI: Be sure to check if Phoenix HD is allowed to use the Location Services on your device (device Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services). If it fails to determine your location through GPS etc we'll use IP-lookup, but that is usually restricted to Country. Maybe that's the cause of your problem The sound problem is quite annoying and we are looking into it. It's quite complex so I don't have more detailed information at this time. @Crabman: Yes, it will be in the next update. We intend to submit it this week, no promises though
Right, version 2.4.1 rolled out earlier this week with some fixes. It introduced a bug though, which is fixed in 2.4.2, which is available now The update also introduces notifications, a feature generally dreaded. However, we think it's convenient for those who want to take advantage of the Test flights. The only notification that is sent by Phoenix HD is about the availability of a new Test flight and which ship this concerns. If you have all ships unlocked you won't receive anything
Seems like there's quite a big problem with the recent update. Battery drain is much more significant than before. I checked my battery usage (since iOS 8 introduced this feature and Phoenix HD took up MUCH more battery than any other app, including other games) Recently, in the last 7 days, Phoenix HD took up a whooping 94% of my iPad Mini battery. At first I thought it could had been an iPad battery problem (I never really trusted Apple devices for their batteries), but when I looked at the battery usage I was shocked. Operating on latest 2.4.2 Phoenix HD, iPad Mini Retina, iOS 8.0.2. Hopefully a fix will come real soon; I want to play more in peace without straining my new iPad's battery!
Hmm, interesting! This is the first time we hear this so we'll look into it asap. Your impression is that Phoenix HD takes more power-per-time-played than other games, correct? We'll have a look, thanks for indicating this. In other news we're going to GDC San Fransisco in March, yay! We're prepping some other new stuff to show which is going to be amazing. Let me know if anyone is there and wants to meet update: while I was writing this post my colleague, the other half of Firi Games, quickly checked battery usage. Initial impression is that the GPU is simply at max performance for the 60fps retina resolution, so that might be a difference with other games. Those are just initial impressions though, we'll look into it some more using the same device and software version etc.
I've spent a lot of time playing Phoenix HD, and I've never noticed it making my iPad get extra hot or my battery run down extra fast compared to other action games. Of course if you look at the individual app battery usage stats that Apple shows, and Phoenix is the only graphically intensive app you've played recently, or the one you've spent the most time in, then it's going to show the highest percentage of battery usage. I've recently been playing a bit of Phoenix HD, as well as several racing games: Asphalt 8, Ridge Racer Slipstream, and Reckless Racing 3. My battery stats show the racing games all using more battery than Phoenix. Of course if I really wanted to make an accurate comparison I'd need to play each game for the same amount of time, and make sure I spent about the same amount of time in each game actually playing the game as opposed to navigating menus, which presumably uses less battery power. But my impression is that Phoenix doesn't run my battery down any faster than other games. I'm using an iPad 4 by the way.
Hey guys, back from GDC As you may have seen on the frontpage, we're working on Phoenix 2! We showed a very early alpha build, so a lot will change before this game is done. In the mean time we're finishing up Pocket Quest first and we're also still updating Phoenix HD. Phoenix 2 will not be a direct sequel to Phoenix HD, more like another game 'in the series'. It will definitely feel familiar, but he whole level/ships/scoring structure will be different. Phoenix HD will continue to receive support and content as long as you guys enjoy it I don't want to convert this to a Phoenix 2 thread, so if any of you wants to talk about it more extensively this should be done in an 'upcoming games' thread.
This thread is showing some weird behavior due to the banned/muted users I guess? The page and post count don't match or something. Anyway, I hope people can read this, we're releasing a new update this thursday! We updated Phoenix HD to use all the latest technologies of our in-house developed Flare engine. As a result nearly all visual effects have been redone to use new particle effects. The audio engine has also been redone which means all know audio issues are fixed and everything sounds even better! The pause screen also had some love with an added 'share screenshot' button, which generates a nice screenshot from the current game visuals (minus pause window) to an iOS share sheet. Be sure to share your most awesome shots, we're always watching on twitter or here on the forums! Phoenix HD will continue to get cool updates in the future, next to our other exciting projects
