When we started on this project the aim of making a 3D world with 100 monsters roaming around it and a small file size seemed like an ambitious enough project. Terra Monsters was originally born as an MMO though and now we're happy enough that we've achieved an interesting 3D world for it we're looking at where we can go next with it
The first problem I've come across is the game lags badly on the iPad mini 2, to the point it's unplayable sadly
@eufeion have you tried lowering the resolution or the quality settings? This will make a big difference to the smoothness of the game on some devices
Thanks for letting us know, we've tried it on iPad Air 2 and one that predates the iPad mini 2 (but still late enough that it has a lightning connector), and it runs perfect on the Air 2 on max settings and runs ok on moderate settings / resolution on the earlier iPad. I'll try to get hold of an iPad mini 2 and see if there's any optimizing I can do. I would guess that it has an excellent little screen with high pixel density and not a super powerful chip behind it so reducing the resolution in game should solve it.
Just started and some quick impressions before I get into it further. It would be nice if you could speed up/progress dialogue by tapping anywhere on the screen (instead of the tiny arrow in the corner). You know, the standard one tap for all text to appear and stop scrolling, a second tap to dialogue. The crystals aren't explained very well. How do you get new ones? How do you know what kind of monster you are fighting? The is no info on the ballet screen of what element you are fighting against. The battles themselves lack strategy. It would be nice if the is a turn bar so you know which monster is going to attack next. Right now it is a mystery who gets a turn. As for capturing monsters, you want to lower their health but currently, it seems you have to go through a whole turn of monster moves and can't use a crystal in between their moves (say you np have three monsters and you want to do 2 attacks and use crystal before third monster). This often means you kill the monster instead. Currently there is no way to explore the mini map either making knowing where you are difficult. It doesn't lend to exploring very well, which is important in these types of games. Graphics are nice and the ideas are nice like caves but a lot more polish to the game would be useful. And btw, thank you for promo code.
Hey Tonk Montana, thank you for playing our game and for taking the time to give us your thoughts! Good suggestion (tapping dialogue) I'll see if we can work this in. That's the first time someone has brought up acquiring crystals.. and I guess you're right I'm not sure if it is very clear where to obtain crystals. (You get them in the card packs) and also from the crystal seller once you reach the main town. Again I agree it's not too clear what type the opposing monster is other than looking into the terrapedia after battle and learning about the Terra Monsters - right now I'm not too sure how much we want to spoon feed the user.. whether we should leave it somewhat trial and error early on or give all the information on a plate. The move order is decided by the move speed and the Terra Monsters speed stat if the combined score of those two stats is the highest on the battle field that move will go first - so it is kind of a mystery because you don't know what move your opponent will pick. I agree that can be somewhat annoying - the way the game is designed right now, using a crystal uses up an entire turn for your team. Right now if the opposing monster gets weak you could consider using a non damaging (stat buff or debuff) move on the wild terra monster. Please let me know how that plays for you as you continue in the game. Agreed, when making this game we made the decision to make the file size as small as possible, therefore we cut a proper world view map however we may review this decision in future. Thank you, I hope overall you are enjoying the game and if there is any specific things you can point out to add polish that would be very much appreciated! Thanks again for the great response!
Thank you devs. I appreciate your involvement in this thread. It's that type of commitment that will keep us glued to your game.
So I've played for a bit today and can confirm the lagging - until you lower the resolution. I'm on an iPad Air 1 with latest iOS. I would stick the resolution to the middle and if someone wants to increase it with a better device then they can in options. Or have it auto select for each device. First I'll say I'm kinda surprised with the lack of polish revolving around the flow of talking to NPCs, laggy initial gameplay, and how the ranch takes you away from where you were without warning. It could be just me but I find it difficult to tell what element the enemies are. And if I want to see what element my own are, I have to look at the stat screen at the ranch? I also entered a cave and the perspective changed completely. With the change the camera went crazy, going into the walls. It feels like the beta period (if there was one) should have been a little longer maybe? It's very difficult to say this as you can imagine since you were kind enough to give me a promo code. I very much appreciate it! I just wanted to be completely honest. Despite what I said above, I do believe you have some really good things going for you in this game. It feels like a more proper, PC/console type game with the apparent size and scope of gameplay. I like the 3D graphics here also. The grass blows in the wind and trees and creatures casting their own detailed shadows. It felt like the lighting even changed depending on what time a day, for instance noon looks different than 9am, is this so or am I imagining it? Either way if you smooth out the rough edges, it feels like there could be a real nice game here.
Great game so far! One thing I noticed is that the yellow "main objective" messages kinda pass by too fast. I know what to do generally but I'm still reading the dialogue every time they appear and they disappear by the time I look up. Also I feel like the "tap here to continue" should be clickable. It took me a while to figure out that only the smaller arrow can be clicked. On smaller screens it needs some precise tapping. Or if you want to make the interface cleaner, just remove the "tap here to continue" and maybe have it appear after 10-15 seconds of no tapping. Additionally it seems like the frame rate isn't that smooth when traveling the map. I'll give it a try on lower res. Is there a save indicator anywhere? I noticed sometimes I would go back to the main screen and then load up my save to find I was further back. Hopefully this doesn't become a problem when catching monsters! Aside from these looks good so far. I really love the designs of the starter monsters
Hey Scott, Thanks for the detailed response. I totally understand why you feel like there is a major lack of polish. The fact is we're a small team (I know this is the worst excuse in the book and I hate to use it, just giving you an idea where we and the game is at) and at some point we've just got to bite the bullet and get a reasonable amount of people playing the game and giving us feedback on a bigger scale. Are you able to give me a more detailed response as to the lack of polish around the talking to NPCs (you can PM if you feel uncomfortable not pulling any punches ), I understand the ranch stuff may not be that clear especially if you're new to the series and we may have taken that for granted.. we will review this and try and make more sense of it for the user. It's not just you with the elements of the Terra Monsters - right now you do have to have a general idea of the Terra Monsters by looking into the terrapedia or ranch. Maybe we can make this a lot more user friendly by having it in battle or at least having the option of the user clicking on a monster in battle to bring up their stats / elements etc. This is also an issue that is brought up a lot. When you move to an 'interior' map the camera switches from top downish perspective to third person which changes how you control the avatar somewhat, at first it feels really funky but after a short learning curve it should be fine.. but it is something it seems like we need to review and work on. I'm glad you had the balls to be honest with us, it's not good for us people getting free codes and being all "this is great" if they honestly dont think it is. there can be a better experience to be made for everyone, with constructive feedback - and we'll be more successful in the long run. Thanks, that really means a lot to us. We put a lot into this game, and learnt a lot. The lightning does change depending on the time of day it is, there are day night cycles - some monsters only come out in the day some only at night Thanks again for the invaluable feedback
Hey L.Lawliet, thank you so much. Thank you for reporting that the quest alerts flash by too quickly, as I made the game I can be blinded by a lot of things I take for granted! So feedback like that is very beneficial. This will be fixed for the next version I believe - it was intended to be more clickable in the launch version but it was something that got overlooked in the final test! Sorry you're not experiencing a smooth frame rate, can you let me know what device you're running and what the resolution is when you experience lag? Right now there is no indication of when the game saves (the game saves if a quest completes/ battle completes or you change map) At the start of each play you will be spawned at where your ranch is set up. (Which is a little unclear right now) Thank you again for taking the interest, playing the game then taking time out to give us amazing feedback - really means a lot to us.
No worries! You guys are one of the most notable monster catching apps on iOS so I definitely want you guys to succeed. Pokemon GO is fun but it's no replacement for a capture/battle game I use an iPhone 6 on the medium and high quality settings. But they both seem to keep the framerate similar.
Is it feasible or even possible (depending on what iOS 9.1+ features, if any, are implemented here) to reduce the iOS version requirement to the lowest version that will run the game? I want very much to play but am not updating until some of my other favorite games are playable on the latest iOS version.
I think either being able to bring up the monster pedia during battle would be nice or another alternative would be to put a little symbol next to each creature (or ring or some graphical indicator) showing what type of monster they are (lightning bolt, water drop etc.). I understand you don't want to spoon feed people. However, Players should want to explore the pedia, not be forced to. Not sure if that would put people off. More impressions soon.
Wow thanks for the quick reply! Really appreciate your response and how active you are on the forums here at touch.
Just because you devs seem nice are giving feedback and looking for opinions ect plus the game looks good so I've just hit the download button
So based on feedback from here I've just uploaded 14.1 for testing on iOS, The main changes being: You can't now break the assign moves tutorial, you could break it before by going into ranch and buying a card pack in ranch, assigning a move without the texts telling you to. Supporting iOS 8.0 onwards. There's either an issue with Unity or some other reason that it's pretty strict on supporting iOS 9.1 as a minimum, however in XCode now I've told it to support iOS 8.0 and it's still built ok and now will be tested properly before being released. When selecting your starter monster, the camera is now angled in such a way that you can see the monsters you're selecting from. Other issues that are concerning and we're still deciding how to deal with: Indoor controls sensitivity - I admit this does have a slight learning curve to it, after about 30 seconds of figuring it out though I still maintain it's intuitive, but those first 30 seconds is enough to put some people off. Comparing the ease of control to that of other games like the Tomb Raider 2 port thats available on iOS, I feel like our solution is ok. Ideally for the indoor movement I'd like one stick for forward and backwards and one stick for left and right, but: - fitting this all in with the other UI needed for the RPG parts of the game will be cumbersome - Would be too much of a departure from the controls needed for the outdoor areas and make the game feel disjointed. So this is something I know we can do better as players shouldn't have to go through any learning curves for controlling the game and should be 100% intuitive from the beginning, but a solution is not as straightforward as it might seem it should be. Ranch Confusion Players get teleported when they use their ranch because there has to be some penalty for using it and therefore incentive to carry around and use healing items in the game. I can totally see peoples points that it is confusing in the way the ranch updates it's location and that you are given a ranch at all straight after the games start when it seems like you should have nothing. Probably here a change in wording in certain areas will make things a lot clearer to people. To use a Pokemon parallel, they're basically Poke Centers which automatically change location based on where you are on a map and you can teleport to at any point. So far all we've changed is having a little "respawn marker" added to the world where the current ranch location is. Anyways I will be testing the game out as much as possible on iOS 8.0 now, please keep the feedback coming, it's nice to be able to make such rapid changes based on all your responses. Edit: Another addition is that tapping pretty much anywhere on the screen when "Tap to continue" is shown in the bottom right, now continues the game.
