Great update. The game looks great on the iPad. Any way of syncing games across devices, to be able to pick up at home where i was on the road?
Thanks! I really wanted to do some kind of syncing, but unfortunately it would have meant rewriting the player data stuff from scratch (which I couldn't do without losing all the old player data). The only way to play the same puzzles on both devices is just to do the "unlock all puzzles" thing in options on one or both of the devices, which is far from ideal, but it's basically the only way to do that right now.
Amazing update. This is easily one of the best puzzle games in the App Store. It seems I will spend some quality time playing with trains again.
Hmm, great question. I've been meaning to write a blog post about this but never got around to it. There are no hard-and-fast rules, but here are some tips: I think my best tip is to have a plan or a concept *before* you start making the puzzle. Some sort of theme (ex "volcano" or "waterfall") or something you want the player to accomplish is best, like maybe you want to make a player have to merge two specific colours together. Once you've figured out the general "purpose" of your puzzle, don't overcomplicate it by adding in extraneous pieces. It's not very fun to solve puzzles where you don't know which pieces you're supposed to use or not. Along the same lines, once you solve the puzzle, don't just go back to the editor and add rocks on every square that you didn't use (I see a lot of people doing this). Yeah, it makes it harder, but it doesn't actually make it more fun. One of the best things in Trainyard is how flexible it is, and how there are thousands of ways of solving each puzzle. The moment you add rocks everywhere, it takes away some of that flexibility and forces players to solve the puzzle the exact same way that you did. That's about it for me. If anyone has any other tips (or if you want to share some links to your puzzles), I'd love to check them out!
Good points! I haven't done much in the way of designing yet, so that should help me get started. If you can think of other suggestions, I'd love to hear them!
Thanks for the tips! After finishing the main game I'd been wanting to get my hands dirty making some puzzles, and you're right--starting out with a concept in mind really helps. I admit to sometimes throwing down a couple of rocks after I figure out what I want to do (just to prevent things from getting too easy), but I usually leave some extra spaces and try creating a new solution from scratch afterwards, just to make sure it's not stifling These are mine, hopefully somebody thinks they're neat: http://www.trainyard.ca/users/853349 Would it be possible in a future update to search puzzles in-game by author? I'm finding a few people I like, but you can only view by author on the site AFAIK.
Incredible update. It's great to see the length of a game as awesome as this extended infinitely. I can't wait to give the level editor a go some time. This is in my all time favorite games on iOS. Hope you will be focusing on some neat new stuff and games now Electricgrandpa.
Electric Grandpa I have to say nice update with the universal. I was playing some on my ipad and it looks so clean bigger is better. Also the editor is great thank you sir for the update.
You can actually do that now, it's just a little bit hidden. If you go to the puzzle info for a puzzle, if you click on "Created by [username]" it'll let you search for all puzzles by that player.
Yeah I've been meaning to get around to that, hah, sorry. I'm away for next week but I'll probably do it when I get back.
Super long solutions issue First off, I absolutely LOVE the game. Great work! So, I recently started trying to make ridiculously long solutions that so many seem to enjoy. I don't want to just leave my ipod on for hours upon hours and if I try the 100x turbo mode, the app freezes then crashes and returns to the home screen after 20 minutes or so. I would really like to get these solutions online without having them be "unsolved" but I cant get them to finish in any time-practical way. What can I do? Thanks.
Hmm. Have you tried running in warp mode, but just with the speed slider set lower, like maybe 1/4 or 1/2 way across? I really don't see a reason why it would crash after a while on warp, but I can look into it. That definitely shouldn't happen but maybe your iPod is just freaking out for some reason.
Hi, Matt. I love the new update. If I could make one suggestion, it would be to let the players rate the difficulty of the custom-made puzzles, because a lot of the creator ratings don't seem to match the actual difficulty of the puzzles.
I think each player should be able to nudge the rating by 1 wrench, if something like this is implemented (to prevent possible ratings trolling).
I think that there should be an option to add a new rating to a puzzle if a user believes it is very inaccurate (more than +-3 of the desired number). The user may then enter their value and the mean value set as the new rating. This may be done as many times as necessary. In addition, a "flagging" system should be implemented for puzzles that are far too easy (require less than 5 pieces of track, are just following a route around the board etc.), or have an obscene name, description or picture made by the tracks. More than, say, 10 flags will result in the puzzle being withdrawn. The site has been flooded with really easy puzzles worth 30. I'm not sure how easy all this will be to code, or if it's even good at all - it's just my opinion. Thank you
