Congrats! That's quite an amazing score! I have to agree, that would be a nice feature. Also, someone else requested an update to show friend's high scores for individual levels. That would be cool too. I can't help but think that eventually all the ship parts will be able to be upgraded to level 4 like the health and side cannons did. That would be awesome. I've tried level 8 insane several times but have yet to even get to the boss. I still come back to this game more than any other one on my iPad. It just never gets old for me.
I want to like this game but I just can't. This game SUCKS. Its like the developer deliberately trying to make this a frustating experience. The problem I have is with control - Control needs to be smooth and responsive and not lag behind the player's finger. It also needs to be adjustable. In Sky Force 2014, if you use relative control (the only way to play SHMUP properly) it lags and I am on latest iPad Mini Retina. It takes several swipes to move across the screen and EVERY TIME it paused my game making it even more frustrating. So, do not pause the game if your control is laggy it breaks the continuity of the game if it takes several swipes to move across the screen and every single wipe stops the game. It seriously needs an option to adjust how fast your ship move.
I've taken 28th place now Well considering the number of cheaters I guess we are both actually within the top 25 Here are my current numbers, stage 8 is finally done now with no damage to get the 15x multiplier and the last medal, I almost thought I'd never make it. A few of the other stages I was able to improve slightly. 01: 1,261,500 02: 1,966,125 B1: 0,668,175 03: 3,241,500 04: 3,281,175 05: 4,005,750 06: 3,242,325 07: 4,151,550 08: 6,795,975 (this was with 100% killed, 100% humans and 99% stars; I will leave stage 08 at this because I don't see how I'd be able to either collect all stars or do all this with no damage; at least I am now able to do the stage 08 end boss at insane without any power ups) I'd like to know the stage scores from AdanSantos, he is currently at 29,905,425 and I guess he's not one of the cheaters, but I don't see where I could get another 1.3m points to my total score of 28,614,075!? Doing stage 08 with no damage and 100% stars gets another 150,000 plus some more for the few stars between 99% and 100% but that still leaves more than a million points difference!?
I find the controls to be absolutely perfect. What do you mean with "relative control"? The two control options only seem to have the difference that with one the ship is above your finger and with the other one it's under your finger. In any case it follows your finger directly and instantly to where you point (with the ship moving at it's max speed). I wouldn't change a bit about the controls. EDIT: I see what you mean now, the second control option is the "relative control", I had been playing with first option all the time, only tried the 2nd one once for a short time and thought the ship would fly directly below the finger - and wondered what the image means as it seemed strange and incorrect. Tried again now and now I get it, the ship doesn't move to a different location if u lift it off and put it someplace else, but instead it follows your movements that you make there. I also get the issues you have with that, the ship follows your movements 1:1, which is a big issue eg if you have the ship in the middle of the screen and your fingers at the bottom, it's impossible to move the ship to the bottom then as you'd have to move outside the screen with your fingers. I guess for this to work ok some sensitivity setting should be there, where you can adjust how much finger movement is necessary for the ship to move, eg set a 2:1 ration so the ship moves 2cm if you move your finger 1cm. As it is right now it's probably hard to play the game with the relative controls. Works perfect using the direct controls however IMHO.
The controls doesn't "lag". It's intentional that the ship doesn't move as fast as your finger. This isn't a bullethell game, it follows a proud tradition of old fashioned shmups, where the ships speed is one of the challenges. It's not slow at all, but it's not lightning speed instant movement, and the game would be way to easy if it was. Give it a bit of time, and you'll get used to it.
Cards enhance some properties of your ship. The normal cards are stackable, up to 3, the rare ones are not stackable. One of the most useful card is the health regeneration one (#19). See this link: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=3301660&postcount=804
Perhaps I use the wrong word, I meant what the previous poster crapple2011 was saying - the movement mapping needs to be 2:1 or even 3:1 so that when my finger move 1 cm the ship will move 3 cm. It's sort of like a 1:1 mapping on mouse - try it I guarantee you will be frustrated. Most of the time when you are using your mouse on your computer, you only move less than 3 cm and the mouse cursor can move across the whole screen without having to lift up the mouse and move again. This is basically the same idea - in Sky Force 2014, if I have to move across the screen, I need to move my finger, lift it up and move it again, lift it up and move it again for it to move across the screen. And every time I lift up my finger (because it runs out of the room as my finger hits the edge of my iPad screen) the whole game STOPS (auto-pause) - making it even more frustrating. Also, I don't like to play with absolute control (absolute mapping) where your finger is where the ship is - it just feels like cheating and not OLD SKOOL. The relative control is more akin to the old joystick control. When properly implemented, relative control is an absolute JOY to play and feels absolutely natural.
With this I totally disagree, the ship going exactly were I want it to go using direct control is the main reason I love this game so much. Yes in the old days it was different, but IMHO this way of input is vastly superior. In the old days 99% of the time I died I didn't die because I moved the ship to the wrong place but because I wasn't able to move the ship to where I wanted it to be due to the f..... up D-PAD controls. I don't think the main focus of a SHMUP should be how skilled you are in handling the awkward and limited D-PAD controls to make the ship go where you want it to go.
Okay, I misunderstood your post, however, the same issue would arise: if the movement of the ship was changed to 2:1 or 3:1, it would effectively mean an increase in speed. I use only relative controls, with my finger a cm below the ship, unless I play stage 5, where I keep it at least 3cm below the ship to be able to see the EMP and bullets on the screen. The only time I need to lift my finger, is if I move all the way to the bottom of the screen, which is unavoidable unless a joypad was implemented, and that would be an awful control method on a touchscreen in a game like this. In my opinion, the controls could not be improved upon, with the possible exception of icade support. (Please). # Edit: I forgot to mention that I play on an iPad. In my experience and with my aging eyes, the game is close to unplayable on the small screen of the iPhone. That goes for all games of this genre for me.
Not necessarily. With the direct method if you move your finger faster than the ship can move then the ship drags behind. I don't see why this wouldn't work if the movement was changed to 2:1 or 3:1 for the relative input - if you moved your finger 5cm at 2:1 the ship should move 10cm, but of course only at the speed it can go, which is already also happening for the direct control method. I also play it on an iPad btw and don't see how it can be played well on an iPhone, but that's rather the nature of such games, I certainly wouldn't dumb the game down for that.
I understand what you're suggesting, but I wouldn't like that as much. I do think it could work, but every other shmup on iOS that I've played uses a 1:1 mapping between finger movement and ship movement, so it would be pretty tough to get used to this one working differently. I would like MFi controller support, and that would really give the old school feel that you're looking for. But if I'm going to use touch controls, I'd much rather 1:1 mapping. There's a reason virtually every shmup on iOS has chosen 1:1 movement mapping, because I think that's what most people find intuitive, so I don't think you can reasonably accuse Sky Force of "sucking" for doing the same. As for needing to do several swipes to get from one side of the screen to another, I haven't found that at all, so I have to assume the game either runs strangely on your device, or there is something about your technique that's making you need to do that. I use the relative input method, and usually keep my finger about 1/2 an inch below the ship. The only time I would need to re-position my finger is if I want to get closer than 1/2" from the bottom of the screen, but I find that's pretty rare.
What about adding some power ups in the vein of the Raiden games? Not weapon upgrades but legitimate power ups like the ones in The Raiden games.
Trying Reflector in test mode to record a video where I might miss stars on stage 7 of course I made 100% run (with rather low score), so I thought I put it on Youtube (shows trial, I bought the license right after the recording as it works fine, only that you don't have audio on the iPad when it's on, but I guess this is rather an iPad limitation than a Reflector limitation). Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel
Wow! Awesome skills, especially taking down the boss tank at the end after you'd run out of powerups.
It's mostly learning where the next tower and the next wave appears, hitting them as early as possible is the most important thing, and learning their shooting patterns (for example for the 2 very last "windmills" of the end boss of stage 8 at insane level actually you barely have to move the ship at all to evade them.) Also learning the most effective way to kill them all. It took me some time until I found the solution for the big wave of large planes in the middle of the stage with the 2 shields and the 2 lasers. I guess the direct control and playing on the larger iPad screen also helps a lot. The stage 7 end boss is easy btw after you have taken out the main gun, but I need 1 shield and 1 laser to do it. I guess there are people who could take it out with no damage without power ups but I can't do that.
@kakkaduan What's your current scores as you have overtaken me, would like to see my potentials, here's mine currently: 01 : 1.273.500 02 : 1.983.375 B1 : 668.175 03 : 3.241.500 04 : 3.281.175 05 : 4.005.750 06 : 3.242.325 07 : 4.178.550 08 : 6.795.975 Total: 28.670.325
