Yeah, the cover art is good.. And definitely the new sprites compared to the Kingturn series are a big step up. Like you said, it's just the portraits that are off. Admittedly they dont affect the gameplay in any way but it does break my immersion during dialogue scenes just because they seem so off with the rest of the game art. Thanks for explaining. (Can we have the option to just use the sprites as the dialogue portraits - similar to what you did on the Kingturn series at the latter iterations?)
+1 to that option. I would leave the default as the current portraits, but I do share the sentiment. Every time there is a dialog pop up, the portraits take me out of the experience. They are not that very pleasing to look at, so I usually avoid looking at them. I wonder if the sprites will be better in that aspect, but they'll certainly be more pleasing to look at. I feel that, more than whether or not they're aesthetically pleasing or not, it's just that they do not resemble the actual sprites at all, so you don't benefit from the connection to the characters. That being said, I know it is not a clear cut subject, and I commend you for your choices there
The sprites are quite small compared to the portrait size, so just scaling them up might not do the trick (too blurry). But I get your point, and I will check all available options for solving the immersion-breaking-portrait-issue. I'll keep you up to date.
Portraits Alright. Scaling up the upper part of the character sprites as portrait replacement didn't work out very well. It gets far too blurry. What I can do with little effort, however, is using the originally sized character sprites instead. Without having done any fine tuning, yet, you can see below how this would look like. I assume this an improvement, but I would like to hear your opinions.
It is an improvement for me No disrespect for whoever did the character portraits, but the style/execution is not complimentary with the rest of the game. Usually the hand drawn portraits are there to fuel the imagination regarding the pixellated in-game characters, but the effect is somehow reversed with this one
Wow, I'm glad I spoke up about the portraits then - and that others did share my opinion on the portraits. The new sprite-based implementation is definitely better sir niebau! I do notice some slight "pinching"/"squeezed" effect on the sprite, but as you said it's just a draft that you wanted to show us. Still, really appreciate the very fast response!
I think most of us didn´t want to talk about bad portraits when the game is so great...but as soon as someone else talked and you were very polite too
Tactics Maiden (by Mangobile) Yes, it definitely is! I agree, it's not meant to disrespect anyone - by all means, it is great to have someone come forward and volunteer to do something out of love for the series, and it's excellent that you supported him equally You may consider have a background square area with a neutral color (or just white with an alpha transparency as to make it a soft grey), since the black on black is slightly tricky, and since the characters have black outlines, you would probably benefit from having some contrast between those. But as it is, it's already an excellent improvement. If we can have that as an option, it would definitely be a great improvement. I have one question here, if I may. Is the cross-save in Dropbox also cross-platform? Meaning, will a save game from iOS be able to be restored in Android and vice versa? I bought this on Android since that's where I have the 3 Kingturns, but I was thinking that it would also be nice to have it for my iPad, so I'm considering double dipping. If the saves are cross platform, then that actually makes my indecision a lot easier Cheers. P.S. - a small niggle: any chance that we can get the zoom level not to revert to the default during story sequences?
Yes, that's no problem. I'm regularly syncing game saves between iOS and Android for testing purposes. The default configuration on iOS is iCloud. So you'll have to go to the Settings menu, switch from 'iCloud' to 'Dropbox', go back to the main menu, and finally restart the game (a real restart, not just sending the game to the background via the Home button). Then you are ready to go. Just to make sure we are talking about the same thing... What happens right now is: a) The camera is zoomed to a distance determined by the player (let's call it z0) b) A dialogue starts and the camera zooms in and centers on the talking units c) The dialogue ends and the camera snaps back to position z0 If I understand you correctly, you are not happy about step b)? This is mainly done for two reasons: - Especially on small devices it can be difficult to see who is talking, if the camera is completely zoomed out - In some scenarios the player is not supposed to see larger parts of the battlefield during a dialogue. For instance, if the units talk about a 'sudden attack' during an initial dialogue. Would be a little awkward, if the player can see all the enemies close by the whole time.
Tactics Maiden (by Mangobile) I see. I imagined it'd be some reason like that, but I thought I'd be good to bring up the possibility of not zooming out in step b). I can understand that in small devices that makes a lot of sense for framing, but since I mostly play on an iPad, or on my Nexus 5 phone, my default zoom is definitely more zoomed out than the default. No big deal though. I'm now a happy double-dipping camper - which does not shock me at all for the quality and length of the game. Cheers! P.S. there's a minor typo when loading a save game, saying that we'll lose the game "progess". Cheers!
Beware the spiders... Right now iOS spiders are even meaner than Android spiders (Patch 1.8.5 is still waiting for review on iOS, so Unstoppable doesn't protect you from Web Snare's movement debuff at the moment). Which reminds me... I'll have to be careful with incompatible patch versions in the future. iOS patches and Android patches have to be released at the same time then. Yikes. No problem with the current patch, though.
So I have a question about summoned creatures.. The unit performing the summon gets exp for the summon. However anything the summoned creature does only nets exp for the summoned creature, when disappears when it disappears and does not net any exp for the summoner correct?
Precisely so. Since summoners still take part in the battle after summoning a unit, they can continue earning experience on themselves. Would be quite a disadvantage for non-summoners otherwise. Imagine 3 summoned spiders transferring all their XP to the summoning unit. I understand, of course, what you are getting at. So yeah, in terms of overall XP gain, you are better off if you don't exaggerate with summoning units. The obvious solution to this problem would be to not count summoned units against Max allies (e.g. allowing only 1 minion per summoner). This on the other hand is quite problematic in terms of scenario balancing, especially if there is more than 1 summoner -> Effectively a Max Ally increase.
That all sounds as it should be. Is there any randomness to the summoned creature type? so far I only summon spiders.. Which are fine, very useful. I can summon them to the opposite side of obstacles for example. I have also found that using a spider to use envenom on a powerful enemy unit will cause it to camp out on an outpost.. depending on the situation, it will both keep it out of the fight and also prevent that outpost being used to spawn more enemies. Often it is more useful to leave envenomed enemy units alive. Then at some point you can clean out most of the map in a single turn. So I guess.. will I ever get anything other than a spider?
Druids only summon spiders. Brown ones normally, and black ones which are slightly more powerful if Summoning is maxed out. Random minions sound like a nice twist from an RPG point of view. Strategy-wise it's better to know what you will get. That's always the problem with a hybrid game like Tactics Maiden. RPG features and strategy features are sometimes contradictory. Nice exploit . I think I should prevent this strategy. In general it makes sense if a heavily wounded unit temporarily retreats in order to recover from its wounds. In case of poisoned units there's not much chance of recovering, though. So they should attack instead.
Similar situation in the first scenario, where enemies will try to constantly take the magic pillar even though it gives him no other advantage. I'm sad about not getting the android patches beforehand now, should have thought this through! Could you just do that when there are clear incompatibilities and things that would break, rather than as a default?
This situation is slightly different, though. Especially on higher difficulties the chance for recovering HP can make quite a difference. Of course it depends also on the fact whether it's a ranged or close combat unit, and where the player units are positioned. In general I will try to apply patches as soon as possible, so I won't always wait until the iOS version is approved. And I know quite a few players already who have both iOS and Android versions of the game. It's just that I've realized now that I have to be more thoughtful with the timing of patches in the future.
Character Portraits Patch 1.8.6 will comprise the following change: Battlefield sprites are used as replacement for character portraits as a default (can be reset to previous character portraits via Game Settings) I don't want to cancel patch 1.8.5 which should be reviewed by Apple within the next days. So it will take roughly two weeks until the new version will be live on iOS. Not sure about the Android version, yet. There are also a few other minor things I want to add to patch 1.8.6.
Excellent Niebau! that was quite fast now we wait for the slow road of the applestore (and i think it was a good idea to make it optional, so to each one what he/she likes) ... thanks! great game and great support as usual
