5501

Hey Dave - thanks for the support … it means a lot to us. We’re still working out of Ian’s attic, but hopefully things will change soon and we can finally get a proper office! (his folks have been pretty cool though about us eating their food, sleeping in their house and basically being there everyday to work). Ravenmark has done decent enough that we have started looking for another programmer and artist (we plan campaigns so far ahead that the entire world / storyline is actually complete. we assume it’ll take another … 3 or so campaigns to finish the storyline). Plus I wish I could tell you about the new factions and where the story is headed, but I’m pretty sure Brian and Ian will both kill me! (maybe in due time).

Like I said, multiplayer is something we definitely want to do. But I doubt people would want to keep a 700-800mb package on their phone for multiplayer, hence the decision to create a separate app (and hopefully use a new game engine!). The goal is to ensure that multiplayer is solid, complete and most of all … enjoyable! (the funny thing that Ian doesnt really tell people is that Ravenmark was conceived as a board game … and we have the actual paper/cardboard prototype 80% done with units! we even got a group of our friends to play test it to ensure the rules were sound). Well, hopefully we can buy some time with skirmish mode (I do have a somewhat working copy of it on my phone, but its too raw to be released anytime soon)

Thanks Boojum! You can expect to see me here pretty much almost everyday! I think the 3 of us enjoy interacting with people too much to ever want to give it up (or leave it to someone else). The only way to make better games is to hear from the people who are actually playing it!

Also - feel free to ask me any questions and I’ll certainly do my best not to disappoint. I do have some interesting sketches I’ll be posting up this friday on our dev blog. I’ll see if I can mirror the images here (the first time I saw the concept, I nearly fell off my seat)

Cheers all - and thanks for the warm welcome! I already feel right at home :)

-Kev

5502

Glad to hear it. I played a couple more missions today and am still really liking it. At this point, all my suggestions are for relatively minor, peripheral issues, but I’ll pass them along to you anyway:

-There’s never really a great breaking point. Often, when I finish a mission, I’m ready to put down the iPad and move on to something else, but the game immediately rolls on into the next one. I know I can quit out and the progress will be remembered, but then when I pick it up again the story setup for the battle isn’t fresh in my mind. It would be a simple fix to just add a “Proceed to next mission / Back to main menu” choice to the mission complete screen.

-I’d like to be able to have an option to see unit stats in a little popup box in the corner of the screen rather than having to click through to their full writeup every time I want to check something. I’m guessing this would be less viable on the standard phone version where screen space is at more of a premium.

-It’s not clear what the restrictions are for wheeling (Is it always clockwise/counterclockwise? Does one unit always act as the pivot?)

-It’s not obvious how to cancel a mistaken order. I eventually realized that just giving an order to stand ground will do it and free up the CP again, but it took some experimenting.

-Similarly, I often think “What does that commander do again?”, select his unit, click through to the codex entry, and then realize there’s no way to get to the commander info from there so I have to go back out to the list of units in the current scenario to find him. I’m not sure if there’s an easy way to do this with the way the codex is structured, though.

-I’ve noticed several spelling, grammar, and wording issues throughout the text. It’s better than most iOS games in this respect, but I’d love to see it even more polished with another thorough round of proofreading , especially for a game where the story and worldbuilding are such big parts of the experience.

Are these rules written down? The game does a good job of teaching you the basics of how to play, but I’m still a bit in the dark about the underlying math and die rolls of how combat plays out, how skill and armor are factored in, and how much of a difference an advantage on the weapon quadrangle really makes.

5503

There are also icons that briefly appear above my units during play that aren’t explained. (Perhaps they are explained in the Codex, but I haven’t looked there yet.)

5504

Hey Boojum -

alright (i love my job btw) - let me address all your points 1 by 1:

“Proceed to next mission / Back to main menu” (i like this suggestion ALOT … it makes logical sense … I’m definitely going to try and sneak this one onto the board … ha ha!)

“stats in a little popup box” - I think Ian designed the UI so that it would not be too cluttered. I can understand where you’re coming from wanting to see stats in-game, but this may be only suitable for the iPad version (like you said). I normally just hit the codex button on the right hand side of the unit’s name (after you tap on the unit) to see the stats. i know it feels like an additional step, but the sheer amount of stats might block too much of the screen …

wheeling - should depend on your pivot (but yes, 1 unit always acts as the pivot.it’ll also allow you to choose facing after wheeling)

order cancellation - tap any unit on the right hand side and you’ll see a ‘cancel orders’ button. that should do it.

commander codex - this is on our to-do list to be honest. it hasn’t made its way onto the board because we were focused on other features. it should be simple enough to implement though. I’ll have to talk to Ian about this.

Spelling issues - just use the feedback button or let me know here :) (though do remember that the three of us were brought up using UK English … so it tends to wind up in a lot of our work …)

Without giving too much away, I shall quote Ian (because he has been asked this same question before):
“I think to put it simply, combat is rolled on d100 against a DC (Difficulty Check, a la D&D) which is modified by Armour, Skill and various other modifiers like Morale. As is the bonus roll.”

We basically tried to avoid going too much into detail about bonuses and rolls because we wanted to avoid over complicating the experience (we wanted players to enjoy the world and leave the number crunching to us)

Hey Dave - could be the aura. if you tap on calius, you’ll see he has 2 auras. (you can tap them for more info). when you move a unit with an aura, those who are out of range lose the aura (and I assume that’s what you’re probably asking)

If I wasn’t clear on any of my explanations … let me know … will be more than happy to elaborate in some other way (unfortunately, after a year of looking at this game, I tend to oversimplify things myself too … now … if I could just get a holiday … ha ha) :D

cheers!
-Kev

5505

Our first iPhone game, Hero Academy (mentioned a bit upthread) is out in North America now (and lots of other places too I believe).

It’s free, so check it out!

5506

Grats Xemu!

5507

@Boojum … and done! Commander’s name will now be linked directly to the codex entry! All you have to do is tap it to go directly to his entry :D

@Xemu - it looks fun … downloaded! Will try tonight when I get a chance :)

-Kev

5508

Excellent! Thanks for the fast fix, and for the rest of your responses.

I’m not talking about the UK spelling – the main things I’m seeing have to do with grammar, sentence structure, and word choice. I grabbed a few random examples below.

-“He loathes Vasik for squander-ing his chance” Errant hyphen even though the word isn’t split across two lines.

-“Livia’s sharp, stubborn tongue is rivaled only by her combat talents as a Thaumaturge, and despises anyone who does not know their place.” Grammatically, this says that her tongue is doing the despising. Should be “…Thaumaturge, and she despises…” or “…Thaumaturge; she despises…”

-“For every killing blow struck by the parent Element, it gains 5 to Ranged Skill, capped at a maximum gain of 20 on top of their existing Ranged Skill.” Pronoun disagreement – ‘Element’ is singular, so ‘their’ is incorrect.

-"…the mantle of Ravenhood, of nobility and all the trappings he knows not how to handle, irrevocably altered the course…" Tense inconsistency – the rest of the event summaries are written in present tense, so they shouldn’t suddenly switch to past tense here.

I edit text all day for a living, so I probably won’t continue to write these up in my limited gaming time (though if you ever decided you want a full proofreading pass I’d give you a major discount because I like the game and want it to succeed).

As I said, the text is in better shape than quite a few games, and it’s an issue of polish rather than obscured meaning.

Oh, and I’m downloading Hero Academy. Looks intriguing, but is there a universal update in the works? Edit: Hmm, no single-player at all. I’m registered on there as Boojum, and up for challenges if anyone else is interested in trying it out.

5509

Looks great Xemu, I’ll be sure to grab it when I get home from work!

I tried out the lite version of silversword and I don’t think I’ll be picking this one up. My fat fingers just can’t handle that ui. Ah well, otherwise it seems pretty solid Bards Tale clone.

5510

Ok, so Hero Academy looks great. It’s a turn-based asynchronous game, what more can one ask? Actually there is one thing, challengers! The random opponents I’ve started games with so far are all incredibly slow at making more than one move, so I lay down the gauntlet here. Send me a game invite (krayzkrok). I honestly have no idea what I’m doing yet, but it seems the only way to learn is to play…

5511

Free is nice, but I hate creating new game accounts and using my email. Any chance it will have a skirmish mode to just try out the gameplay?

5512

Yeah, Xemu, congrats for getting it out the door! I downloaded it and I am going to try to figure out what I am doing while pretending to work.

Can’t promise how quickly I will get to it, but shoot me a game invite, too: Tyjenks. I’ll send some out once I do get the hang of it.

5513

So, paying the $.99 for the Dark Elves team will eliminate the ads?

5514

Will send a couple of challenges out to those that left their usernames. Mine is fumanstu on HA, will happily play anyone who fancies a game. Game looks really fun, looking forward to playing, congratulations Xemu. :)

5515

I’m in on HA as well: Congestion.

5516

Yes.5

5517

Review of Hero Academy at BGG’s iOS blog

Darn, I was really hoping this would have a single-player component.

5518

Aww hell, i’m in on Hero Academy.

Name: Jagg

5519

I just picked up HA too, it seems incredible! I wish it had single player myself, though this might be more fun in its own way, as well.

I’m under FelixKrowe I believe. Jagg, I’ll send you a game invite.

5520

MP-only was a question of focus, really. We wanted to make the best damn “beat up your friends in tactical battle” game we could.