What IOS games have you been playing? ARCHIVE

It got long. Jump to the end for a quick summary.

Let me first say thanks for the support! The second is, that iOS is a pain to code for. The major problem that I have run into is that Apple does not like, not one bit, old (anything other than current) hardware, or old OS's.

And to show you how much they don't like it, they will change stuff on new releases that WILL.NOT.WORK. with the old stuff. They seem to like to force upgrades. That's one of the biggest issues is that the iOS is a moving target.

Enough ranting on my end. The crashes I am ALWAYS trying to get rid of. As a workaround until I nail each and every crash reason, I'm going to make the game save after each series of dice.

The biggest crashing problems have been found to be on the 3g with iOS 4. I believe it is a memory issue (my fault for not handling it all as well as it should be). I continuously put effort into the memory use. I will continue fixes until it no longer crashes, but the autosave feature will alleviate the catastrophe of it.

The dice are 6 sided. There is one "common" die with march 1 and 2, rest, fatigue, injury and provision use. This is actually the first "set" of dice.

I won't get into the percent chances of each type of die. The 'very rare' set (series 30), DID have 6 sides, but I removed one because it was dumb. hahaha. So, there actually SHOULD be 30 faces (5-6 sided dice worth), but one exploded. I was thinking of filling that blank spot with "Animal Lamed". Take that. Ha! That would make horses (and donkeys) more of a commodity - though the latest version they do disappear when the crew eats them.

In truth, I'm also thinking of writing up some rules and creating dice to make a physical version of the game (for fun). If I do that, I'll let everyone here know, cuz that would be pretty cool. In fact, I have little wooden cubes with the original drawn images for march, provision use, etc on them. Maybe I'll take a photo of the poor ugly things. lol.

Source of the Nile I didn't learn about until about half-way through development, and I did incorporate some ideas from there, mainly the version of hunting and provision use that is in E:BTW. However, Source of the Nile has had a MASSIVE impact on one of the features I'd LOVE to put in - an open exploration mode.

Pelagoria is actually where the ideas came to fruition (crew-creation), that along with my desire for a MUD (yeah... lol) that represented a long travel culminated in what Expedition:BTW is now. My initial game document gave the player the ability to craft stuff, which is why you'll find "leather" and a few other odd items in the loot. Though I think I took out all of the "tools" type loot. Most of those results should have been turned into trophies and artifacts.

Another source is my beloved Arkham Horror, and a very old poem I wrote that actually created the entire world that Expedition takes place in. The use of artifacts in combat (I won't say which combats or which artifacts) gives a nod to HP Lovecraft in it's essence, though not directly.

This has been in development by me for well over a year, so, I could write at ridiculous length about the influences many games, stories, artwork and fantastical daydreams --- yeah. I've already written a ridiculous amount.

So, to sum up:
Dice are 6 sided, except that weird 5-sided very rare die
The % chances for a specific type of die is hidden... you could figure it out with pen and paper and a lot of note taking
The crashes are always being worked on - some sessions I can play all maps with narry a crash. Sometimes... not. Autosave will help alleviate the trauma of it.
Awesome new stuff is coming for the 'destination tasks'.
Pelagoria, Source of the Nile, Arkham Horror, my own twisted imaginings, HP Lovecraft, Heart of Darkness, these are some of the influences on E:BTW.

If you put in an open exploration mode, it would be the first since, what, Seven Cities of Gold? Think about it: Avalon Hill, Dan Bunten, and you.

I'd kill for this. Seriously. Is there anyone you need gone? Anyone at all?

lol. Nah, I don't need anyone off'ed. Yet. Though I'll keep you in mind if things change!

Ok, the only problem is that I don't know how well it would work within the scope E:BTW as it currently is. Currently, I use specific dice to enact movement as well as events.

Turning it into hex-based (I've actually got the map generation code worked out - at least the algorithms) might be a problem. If you currently have E:BTW and can think of a way that meshes well with the existing game play mode, I'm all ears.

I do have a writeup of a completely separate game, called Explorers of Zarsoon that is very similar to Source of the Nile. I'd rather put a new game play in the existing product I have though.

Thoughts are terribly welcome.

This might be good: www.rive-fantasy.com/necronomicon-website/index.html

Believe it or not, MEDICI is the main thing I'm playing right now. It's really good. The initial release was pretty buggy, but they've fixed it. It's one of the good Knizia games, but it's also one I'd MUCH rather spend ten minutes playing a full game of on the phone than 45-60 in RL. AI is pretty good, there's all these different Renaissance personalities and they have different behaviors.

I actually like almost all of the Knizia games on the iPhone...I just got KINGDOMS too, it's decent too. May get HIGH SOCIETY next.

Got a question on Expedition: Beyond the Walls

Anyone else having issues with game crashing and if so, how to fix?

Thanks,
Zev

ZMan wrote:

Got a question on Expedition: Beyond the Walls

Anyone else having issues with game crashing and if so, how to fix?

Thanks,
Zev

Yeah, Barnes and I had mentioned that above. Racingspider said he's working on it, but in the meantime will be putting in an auto-save after each turn.

Thanks!

Grudunza wrote:

This might be good: www.rive-fantasy.com/necronomicon-website/index.html

That does look promising. Kind of a blatant rip off of Arkham Horror, but since FFG won't do one, somebody has gotta do it.

metalface13 wrote:

Grudunza wrote:

This might be good: www.rive-fantasy.com/necronomicon-website/index.html

That does look promising. Kind of a blatant rip off of Arkham Horror, but since FFG won't do one, somebody has gotta do it.

Yeah, exactly. It seems like it's trying to be a combination of Arkham Horror and Call of Cthulhu. The graphics look great and the concept sounds intriguing. We'll see...

As far as E:BTW goes, I found what I believe to be the offending code and will be submitting a new build tonight. Avoid "sickness" at all costs. It seems there is a bug in the code on that one that got through somehow. You all have my apologies. The new build will have a few sounds, as well as autosave and what I hope will fix the crashiness.

I can't wait for the necronomicon one! Looks like it has potential! I think they've submitted it and now it's just down to waiting for the approval.

iFighter - Classic shoot'em up fun. I mainly play it when standing in lines as the relentless combat is a good distraction.

Dungeon Solitaire: Played it a lot for a few days, but I kept feeling like I wanted more out of it... and I don't mean more cards. As it is, it's barely a step up from the old Patience solitaire card game; a lot of times you're at the mercy of how the cards come out and there's nothing you can do to win (or to lose). In some games, there are a few decisions that matter, but a lot of times it plays itself. Not bad, but not great.

Sword & Poker: Can be pretty random depending on the cards you draw, but there are a lot of times when you have to stop and think about what to play. Clever concept.

Doodle Jump: Dumb fun. I kind of wish it went somewhere, though, with levels to complete. You just keep jumping as high as you can and then you miss and whoops, it's over.

Angry Birds Halloween: So far Angry Birds is the quintessential mobile game app for me, and more Angry Birds is a good thing.

7 Cities: A pretty decent tower defense game.

iShred Guitar: Not a game, of course, but as a guitarist I'm loving this app. It's lots of fun to figure out what songs you can play with it, and the wah-wah actually works really well by flipping the device back and forth. Too cool.

I'm waiting eagerly to check out the Necronomicon Horror game... Looks like it might be a really great one. Here's the video promo:

Boardz - Chess, Checkers, Go, Shogi (Japanese Chess), and Xiang Qi (Chinese Chess) in one app.

All with AI.

Async Online Play(with push notifications).

Shogi and Xiang Qi with both traditional and westernized pieces.

Built in Chat.

Full iPad and iPhone support.

$1.99

Hard to beat that.

If you pick it up, especially if you play Xiang Qi, send me a game request, my handle is robartin.

I'm upgrading my comments on Sword & Poker. Played a lot yesterday and beyond being a "clever concept" it really has a good amount of depth to it, for a seemingly simple card game. There are quite a lot of choices there, like when to pass, especially close to the end of a round when you want the other player to set you up; what weapons/spells to choose against different monsters; when to spend your charge coins or go for it with the strength you have; when to use your special power each round; what position to place your cards to try to set yourself up for something big later; when to use your wild card; etc. Honestly, someone should publish this or make a print-and-play version. I think it would make a great 2p card game. I should note that I'm playing Sword & Poker 2.