Universal Super Mole Escape - (by adult swim and Grumpyface)

Discussion in 'iPhone and iPad Games' started by Echoseven, Aug 8, 2012.

  1. visionwebs

    visionwebs Well-Known Member

    Jan 24, 2012
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    #61 visionwebs, Aug 9, 2012
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2012
    Already got an endless runner today but this looks fresh and different!
    Totally impulse bought haha!

    Ok so after a quick game I think it looks fun, tilt controls are good but I have a suggestion to make.

    Could you please add a tap and hold control to the game as a toggle option?
    So I can hold the phone flat but the mole follows the tip of my finger if I keep it on the screen.

    If you know what I'm trying to say. It would help a lot as an option :)

    I don't want to take anything away from this though on the short first impressions it is well made!
     
  2. strivemind

    strivemind Well-Known Member

    It's already there: the relative touch controls available in the options. The mole follows your finger, like playing a shmup.
     
  3. GrumpyfaceChris

    GrumpyfaceChris Well-Known Member

    #63 GrumpyfaceChris, Aug 9, 2012
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2012
    Thanks for the kind words everyone!

    Regarding crashes for non-English regions: I thought I should clarify a bit on what's going on, for the people unfortunately affected by this. I believed last night that a combination of changing regions / airplane mode should fix it, but it appears that doing all of the above still doesn't prevent the problem from appearing. The quick/short update is that a fix is coming today. But here is the whole story:

    When reports started coming in, our first assumption was some sort of flukey memory issues or performance problem (it's hard releasing a game to so many people at once... no matter how much you test on however many devices, someone somewhere out there will always have a weird 0.1% chance issue) But, we did some investigating and discovered it was two things causing the crash:

    The first of which was fairly simple. For the In App Purchases, we have a font that contains a group of international currency symbols (dollar sign, yen, british pound, etc) and we had things set up in a way where we believed that any missing symbols would just show up blank. Well, simply put... that catchall aspect is failing, so any country with a different currency symbol crashes during that check. It's frustrating, because we did check a few countries when testing.. but we've now realized that the way iTunest accounts are set up and work with apps, you still have the country of your account represented with In App Purchases, even if you change your region settings. (which now explains why the fix we suggested last night didn't work, unfortunately)

    The second part of the problem blew us away with its left-fieldedness.. there are some countries that wouldn't be experiencing the problem described above, such as Germany (because we included that symbol), but a different problem reared its ugly head: some countries use a '.' in place of a ',' in large numbers. So, for example, "2,000" becomes "2.000". Now, perhaps we weren't worldy enough, but this is completely new to us, and unfortunately it's also something that freaked out our game code and causes a crash. (And somehow it had never caused a problem before in our previous games..) Well, you learn something new every day :(

    Once we found out about the problem yesterday and put 2 and 2 together (took a little awhile!) we worked around the clock to get fixes in place. The fixes have more than one check and protection in place to resolve the issue, and should fix all crash issues for all countries. Should there still be issues, however, we will not stop working until they are solved. The fix has been submitted and we are working with Apple to get it expedited, so I'm hoping it's available by the middle of the day.

    PHEW that was a lot of info, but I thought you guys should hear the exact details of what happened here. (plus... maybe reading that will give you something to do while waiting for the fix! ;) )

    Thank you endlessly for your patience. Trust me when I say this is the type of thing we lose sleep over. After pouring all our blood, sweat, tears, and other juices (ew) into this game, the last thing we want to see is for people to be unable to play it!

    I will be posting an update here the moment the update goes live

    Edit: I will also be posting that update to our Twitter Feed, if that's easier for anyone to get an alert from
     
  4. visionwebs

    visionwebs Well-Known Member

    Jan 24, 2012
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    #64 visionwebs, Aug 9, 2012
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2012
    Ok sorry my mistake I apologise, how embarrassing is that lol!

    But thank you for pointing that out for me, I would never have gone looking for it. I like the game so much I just hit play and go!

    Grumpy face keep up the hard work, I will be looking out for more of your developments. This game is a gem.
     
  5. Drakeer Melkhor

    Drakeer Melkhor Well-Known Member

    Aug 28, 2010
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    Freelance
    Spain
    The game is playable in airplane mode only in my country. Waiting the update... :rolleyes:
     
  6. app-inured

    app-inured Well-Known Member

    Jan 28, 2009
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    The game is stuffed with score-boosting iap, guys (think Jetpack Joyride). There's a shopping cart atop most screens! Wouldn't have bought it in retrospect.
     
  7. syntheticvoid

    syntheticvoid Well-Known Member

    Jun 20, 2010
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    Musician & factory worker.
    a[V-O-I-D]
    #67 syntheticvoid, Aug 9, 2012
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2012
    They aren't required to score-chase. I haven't purchased any IAPs (though I'm thinking about it, just to support the devs) - and I'm sitting at #14 on the boards right now...

    **edit**

    should also mention... I got my high score on my 2nd game, before I upgraded any of my mole's stats (speed, strength, acceleration...) - and did not use any special items you can purchase with gems... so... =oP
     
  8. Donovan1209

    Donovan1209 Well-Known Member

    Jan 28, 2010
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    Thank you sir, for making fantastic games, I really appreciate it ;)
     
  9. GrumpyfaceChris

    GrumpyfaceChris Well-Known Member

    Just as some quick clarification, the shopping cart icon is a button for the ENTIRE upgrade store, which consists of upgrades you buy with gems that are earned from regular gameplay. The 'get more gems' section is the only "In-App Purchase" section in the game, and the only thing you can buy with real money is more gems.

    The upgrade shop and the act of upgrading your characters is part of our game design, and it would have existed regardless of IAP. We think that "leveling up" and working towards getting stronger and unlocking new things is fun. (a lot of inspiration for that came from the 100% free game Burrito Bison)

    In other words, it was important to us to make sure that all IAP was 100% optional, which it is :) Hope you give the game another shot, but I understand if this setup is not for you.
     
  10. W4TSON

    W4TSON Member

    May 9, 2012
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    Customer Service
    Aloha, Or.
    That's right, Sanuku ftw!
     
  11. Hey, thanks for the detailed explanation! It was very interesting to read, and it really makes you realize how hard it is to safeguard against every small thing.

    But because of your post, you have made a sale! I'm going to buy this no matter what now cause I like the fact that you are a cool developer and cares about your product. So thanks for keeping us in the loop. Normally I would watch youtube reviews or read reviews on itunes, but your explanation has me sold!
     
  12. GrumpyfaceChris

    GrumpyfaceChris Well-Known Member

    Thanks so much for the kind words, Connector. It really does mean a lot.

    Our humble little community has been awesome for as long as we've been doing this (which hasn't been long, ha!) and it's a great motivator to know you guys dig (no pun intended) what we're doing :)
     
  13. visionwebs

    visionwebs Well-Known Member

    Jan 24, 2012
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    #73 visionwebs, Aug 9, 2012
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2012
    What distances have you all made so far? I'm on 2505 :)
    With starter mole and only one upgrade (on iPad)

    The more I play this game, the more I want to play it again... not from an addiction point of view but one of pure enjoyment.

    This will stay off the shelf and in my hands for a very long time. It's not too hard and not too easy, the balance is just right. "get off that rock" I shout to the mole when he gets stuck lol!
     
  14. drloony

    drloony Well-Known Member

    Jul 19, 2012
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    Happy I picked this game up. Sanuku gameplay vid clinched it for me. Something about the digging element is very engaging to me. I mean ya it's another endless runner type, but it is very well done.
    I wouldn't have bought it didn't have touch controls, to which I thank the devs.
    Controls do seem a bit off when trying to use thumb on iPad, I wonder if this can be optimized somehow? I'm probably being too picky and it's how the games supposed to play. Regardless this is a good game
     
  15. syntheticvoid

    syntheticvoid Well-Known Member

    Jun 20, 2010
    14,504
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    Musician & factory worker.
    a[V-O-I-D]
    I felt the same way when playing with the touch controls on the iPad, but it got a LOT better after I put the sensitivity up in the options menu.
     
  16. atopix

    atopix Well-Known Member

    Jun 8, 2011
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    Purchased!
     
  17. GrumpyfaceChris

    GrumpyfaceChris Well-Known Member

    Wanted to give a quick update on that non-english region error... The fix is "In Review" with Apple, meaning the update should be live in the next few hours. Thanks so much for your patience, everyone!
     
  18. Exact-Psience

    Exact-Psience Well-Known Member

    Jan 12, 2012
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    The Work-At-Home Guy
    Philippines
    Awesome! I was starting to get jealous with those who have played the game already. hahaha!
     
  19. TheFrost

    TheFrost Well-Known Member

    Nov 18, 2010
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    Thank you for caring so much and doing all things possible to fix this... now I will refresh iTunes every five minutes
     
  20. Ryoma

    Ryoma Well-Known Member

    Feb 23, 2009
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    #80 Ryoma, Aug 9, 2012
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2012
    Sorry to intrude, long time lurker in here, but I'm having the same crash issue on my iphone 4 its not jailbroken and its update to the latest stable firmware. I tried doing soft reset, and cleaning the running apps in background, freed up to 2Gb of space and some times i've been able to play up to the lava stage, then it crashes.

    If it helps the other only "decent app" that's given me a similar issue even after reinstalling was whale trail just did a settings reset but didn't work now it crashes at the logo. everytime I thought it might be a gamecenter issue so disabled that. Still that didn't work either

    Just loved the little I managed to play

    Monster ate my condo works flawlessly in case that helps.
     

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