Hey everyone, Just a quick note. With the completion of our new UI authoring tool today, we are in the process of uploading version 1.06 of TouchSports Tennis '09 to the App Store. (I expect it to be approved Weds/Thurs ) In addition to much needed upgrade to the help system, we also made some modifications to Easy mode, making it easier once again. The new Application, I guess it needs a name, enables us to quickly and painlessly create menus, in game ui, etc. - taking these mundane tasks off the desks of the programmers, who are currently celebrating in the halls, and pushes it down to the designers. I guess that's one of my jobs.. LOL I had a blast today, creating help icons in Freehand - yeah I'm old school - exporting it as 32-bit PNG's with Alpha Transparency and placing it - along with built in - and custom typefaces on the iPhone into the 5 help pages. What does this mean? I guess all those layouts that were created for a season mode can finally be put into place. Hopefully this mode should be out in a couple of weeks. Thx everyone! HHG
Progress... Never quite understood the complaints that EASY mode was too hard... Anyway, what about: 1. Adding actual variable ball physics to the different court surfaces. 2. Greater user ball control. #28 in the app store for the past few days..congrats. Too bad, you can't deal with some of those early vicious ratings that linger in the star average...
Hopefully with the new help system, you might better understand how to control it. LOL. But seriously, we happen to have some additional animations completed and waiting in the que - what would deliver the additional ball control you just might be asking for. Thx! HHG
It's been playable on the 1st Gen touches since day #1! Version 1.02 provided an auto-detection system that automatically adjusts the level of detail, based on the device it's running on - from the 1st Gen touch to the 2G touch. This greatly increased the speed on the older devices as the changes in hardware were undocumented. Thx! HHG
Specifically, being able to lob the ball, or add backspin. The AI is still able to lob the ball when the player is at the net. This is an unfair advantage, and is the only reason why I am not able to kick the advanced AI's butt all the time. That said, none of the Ais play an aggressive net game, so having an ability to lob is somewhat muted...
Completely agree with these. Can't see the point of different surfaces if it doesn't have any effect on ball bounce and speed. You have added an animation for the player to lob? Then I also hope you have made the opponent actually approach the net from time to time so the lob will be effective. It is something we have been asking for since the games release. So you are adding a Season mode too? Great! This is something to (finally!!!!) look forward to.
IF this ever does happen, I really hope the other issues are covered first, including adding the Season mode. You may or may not know, an earlier post (started by yours truly) had a poll which asked what customers would prefer to come next- career mode or local multiplayer (which HHG suggested they were looking into). As you can see from the poll, it was 44 to 1 in favour of career.
Read the 1st post... It's the next feature on the list! On the networking side.. Tech is almost ready for development in a lot of fronts! Thx! Hhg
I know you mentioned season mode is coming- that's great news. Looking forward to seeing this game develop into a game with longevity as well as good gameplay. The poll on this game in that earlier thread prompted me to be sure to have a career mode in the first version of my game when it's released. By the way, I also agree with an earlier post that I never saw the early difficulty being too hard- even when I first played it.
I personally agree with you on the difficulty setting.... However something you might learn from young Jedi: Easy/beginner gameplay that is too difficult to play for casual gamers is a source of 1star reviews. One must always consider consumer demographics and make sure the player is hooked in the 1st 30 seconds of play. Perhaps a non visual help mode was why tst 09 is considered hard. We will see with next release. Thx! HHG
Hehe! Should I be calling you Obi-Wan? Thanks for the tip. My career mode will start of easy, but hopefully end up being a bit of a challenge. However, with the scope of the game being quite small, the learning curve going from easy to hard will have to be a little steeper than I'd ideally like. Can't be helped until I do a bigger game though. However, a quick play mode will be in there too, which will just take you straight to the action and not bother you with all the strategies of the career mode- and this mode will allow the player to set the statistics to however they like.
Yeah, I guess you can make a video tutorial for instructions, but I'm sure there will still be some who find it difficult... FYI: TST'09 jumped to #19 in the US app store. Better get those updates out soon and add some momentum to the waves...
This is the christmas release video. [hqyoutube]VKdOl0OB-nA[/hqyoutube] AND... Here is the Launch video [hqyoutube]m3-Imj5f7tI[/hqyoutube] Thx! HHG
