IPhone beta

[JemDaddyO]

Why don't you just use the "Next Unit" button in the upper right corner? Saves on tapping and doesn't misfire on the End Turn option. Alternately, since there's a button for End Turn also, why have that menu option at all? I would prefer if there was a button to end that unit's movements so that as you cycle through with Next Unit, it won't show that unit again. I really wished for that on a the initial scenario of LoW. CivRev has something similar which I find very useful with lots of units.

I was very impressed by the way with the better speed and I had no crashes for the whole first scenario. YAY. I did have a crash later that did something really weird, it exited the game and launched a different game on my iPhone. How does THAT happen? I don't think I touched the screen or home button accidentally, but I guess it was possible. I'll see if it ever happens again.

One little bug I noticed was when selecting the Menu, I sometimes got some random text appear in the top left above the Menu list. Once it was the name of a weapon and later it was a character name. Might be a bug, but certainly not a high priority one.

The scrolling works better with a unit selected so I wasn't nearly as frustrated moving my units around but I still find myself really wishing for a zoom out ability and scroll coasting when you swipe. Kyle, can you tell us are these even possible with the way the game is built? Would they be something in the next major rev after the game goes to the App Store? Also, how about saving progress in real time? I got a phone call yesterday while playing and had to reload from the beginning of that whole turn and o all my moves again. That would get very frustrating to do if it happened often enough. Plus the game still takes quite a while to load up a saved game initially. At least it's not crashing like it was before.

Does anybody have any favorite campaign on the iPhone yet? I keep thinking this platform is best suited for smaller armies, and smaller maps, but maybe a long horizontal map would work pretty well. Someone should work on a campaign customized for the iPhone screen format. Maybe shorter scenarios for the casual gamer and typical handheld playstyle.

Finally, and not much you can probably do about this, it's by nature a graphics and processing intensive game, but, the battery life gets drained rapidly. I highly recommend playing while plugged in. I predict Wesnoth play will increase sales of those battery pack extension devices. I play in my car while waiting for kids and stuff so I can plug in there, but for just sitting on the couch and playing, I'll need a longer cable, dangit. LOL Here's a tip for some of you though, turn down the brightness on you device. It's set pretty high by default but I find it still quite clear at around 30%. I turned off the background music and idle animations as well, not sure if those will make a difference tho.

[nazgul42]

I have found that on an iPod touch 2G, it still crashes in multiplayer mode: in the lobby, or creating a game.

[Thorgalix]

Hi all,
Thank you Kyle for this Beta 2 version.
Finally, I can play local campaign without crashing several times a turn.
For information, I own an iPhone 3G running iPhone OS 3.0.1 (and I'm french so I apologize in advance for my bad English).
What I've noticed with this version compare to the beta 1.
Loading first menu is faster.
Loading game and saved game is just a little faster.
It crashes less often. In the "Heir to the throne" campaign, I can even achieve 1 scenario without a crash.
scrolling is better but not very easy. Some of us requested a zoom in/out feature, I agree.
Skirmish games are ok.

I haven't tested the multiplayer network game yet.

But once again, very great job Kyle.

[jayce]

Hi Kyle,

The beta2 is really well playable. So now, I can detect some bugs...

The first bug for this beta2 is for the install. As you specify on the download page, we should have to delete the app for the update to apply. In my case, I deleted it on iTunes before installing the beta2, but after synchronizing, the app on the iPhone wasn't updated. I needed to delete the app on the iPhone (and my saves) to have it updated. You should display the version number of the app in the start menu of the app. With this, we will know if update is OK or not.

The app still crash sometimes, but I can't isolate why... It's still playable as I have only 3 or 4 crashes in 3 days...

A more annoying bug : the distance that the units can traverse is sometimes badly calculated. Sometimes a unit can only advance 3 case even if it has 6 moves available. Sometimes a unit can't go on water when another similar unit can traverse water without problem.
Saving and loading the game sometimes solve the problem, but not everytimes.

A small display bug : bats seems to have a transparent reflexion at the bottom.

The interface is not always reactive.

Now feature requests :
- In the recall dialog : seeing only 2 units in the list is not really easy when we have a lot of units to recall.
- In the recall dialog : the scroll bar is too much near to the dismiss button.
- A button to say "don't move" (as the space bar in the computer version) will be welcome.
- A zoom-out function will be welcomed too. Even if it is just to move the map and not to play.
- A auto-save function will be welcome too. Yesterday, I had a phone call just before I save my game at the end of a turn where I had some hard victories.... And all was lost.
- It could be really cool to have an option to disable energy saver/locking settings when playing to wesnoth. When looking at enemies moves for example, the time without touching the iphone could be longer than the lock-screen setting.

I think I haven't forgotten anything.

Just a conclusion : What a good job !

[JemDaddyO]

I haven't tried multiplayer yet but I have seen a few crashes on the new beta. Nothing like compared to the earlier version. This version is quite playable. I get a crash maybe once in 8 or 9 turns and usually I think it's been during the AI moves, so I've gotten in the habit of saving my game before I end my turn.

I am still really bothered by the slow loading time. It takes minutes sometimes. I think that would bother a lot of users out there so I'm not sure if it's ready for prime time. Is there something, ANYTHING you can do to speed that up? I think that's higher on my list than zoomable maps or scroll coasting for sure.

[Sangel]

Excellent - I've had a chance to install and play the new version, and I haven't had a single crash so far; I played through the first and second tutorial scenarios with no issues. I'm going to keep playing and report any bugs and crashes as I encounter them.

Incidentally, is there going to be a way to see unit traits (intelligent, strong, etc) included? They're not in the statistics box on the side as they would usually be.

[KylePoole]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, it really helps to make a better game!

The first public release has been submitted to Apple already, so approval should be in 2-3 weeks. By that time, the next major release should be ready to submit.

Planned updates in the next release:
- faster gameplay and loading times
- better and more responsive map scrolling
- auto-save if interrupted (eg: phone call)
- new campaign: "Invasion of the Unknown"

Map zooming is a tough one... I really can't implement it yet because the framerate would be too low. But as more optimizations are done, we'll get there eventually...

[JemDaddyO]

Planned updates in the next release:
- faster gameplay and loading times
- better and more responsive map scrolling
- auto-save if interrupted (eg: phone call)
- new campaign: "Invasion of the Unknown"

Map zooming is a tough one... I really can't implement it yet because the framerate would be too low. But as more optimizations are done, we'll get there eventually...

That's great news, looking better to faster times. Good to know about zooming. Even if it's a future goal, that's great. Is a resolution or map size custom setting easier than actual zooming? I would be happy to just have a constant view provide a few more hexes on the vertical axis of the map.

Great to hear about the interrupt save. That will be a boon to iPhone owners.

I was also missing the unit traits. I know it shows on certain screens, like when recalling units and you can sort of tell by their movement rate, XP goal, etc. what they have. I also believe you cut out the battle statistics that shows probability of battle outcome right? I miss it sometimes, but can do without it. The biggest cut that I miss now and then, but new users might really want to see is the Unit description help screens. I know that adds a LOT of size to the app, but maybe a link to the website from somewhere if that doesn't exist already. Maybe a button from the menu, but warn the user that the game will be exited and the web browser launched. Or just tell them where to go to find the unit descriptions and help. I saw it mentioned on one of the tip screens, but only once so far in the whole time I've been playing.

Any chance of adding a unit menu item that ends that unit's turn?

Just a side note, but man I saw some slooooow AI responses in LoW in the Treasury scenario. It took several minutes for the AI to decide how to attack me. If I didn't know what the game was actually doing, I would have thought that the game had frozen and locked up. Not sure what can be done about it though.

[Sangel]

Map zooming is a tough one... I really can't implement it yet because the framerate would be too low. But as more optimizations are done, we'll get there eventually...

Perhaps processor power could be conserved by disabling animations while zoomed out? At that point the units would be so small that it would scarcely matter.

[jayce]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, it really helps to make a better game!
Planned updates in the next release:
- faster gameplay and loading times
- better and more responsive map scrolling
- auto-save if interrupted (eg: phone call)
- new campaign: "Invasion of the Unknown"

Really good. I hope that some bugs will be solved too (the distance a unit can follow is the more annoying one for me).

Map zooming is a tough one... I really can't implement it yet because the framerate would be too low. But as more optimizations are done, we'll get there eventually...

Another idea : instead of the zoom, a bigger "minimap" when clicking on the minimap ? Now, the minimap is nearly useless due to its really too small size. When clicking on the minimap, a "big minimap" could be displayed and allow us to click where we want to go...

[JemDaddyO]

Another idea : instead of the zoom, a bigger "minimap" when clicking on the minimap ? Now, the minimap is nearly useless due to its really too small size. When clicking on the minimap, a "big minimap" could be displayed and allow us to click where we want to go...

That's a good idea. Here's another one just to toss out there. What if you utilized the accelerometer feature and if the device gets turned vertical, switch to the minimap full screen.

Here's another tweak that maybe would help. I see more crashes DURING the AI moves which happen before the auto-save happens. Maybe the auto-save should save the game right before the AI turns rather than after. AI turns can happen again easily enough, but when I lose my turn of moving 20+ units around doing battle, my brains screams a little more each time.

[jayce]

Now the game is playable, I lost a lot more time playing wesnoth...

But more play, more bugs...

First, I insist on the bug on the distance allowed for units that sometimes is far less than normal.
I also see (rarely) that the day time is not always well used for units. For example a Mage in the middle of the day have no bonus.

I also tested skirmish mode and saw some specifics bugs :
- There is a big problem with load/save of skirmish games. A skirmish saved game can only be loaded from the skirmish menu. When trying to load a skirmish saved game from the main menu of from the "game" menu (even during a skirmish game), the app goes in a special state where nothing goes...
- When loading a skirmish replay, a alert shows up saying that "the scenario has no ID" and nothing is loaded.
- When finishing a skirmish game, autosave are not deleted.
-There is a lot more crashs in skirmish mode than in campaign mode. I can finish a campain scenario without a crash, but in my skirmish test (the first 2P map in the list), I have a crash every 2 or 3 turns.
- When creating a skirmish game, by default, all players are in the same team.

That's all for now...

[Zerovirus]

Heey guys, your local Iphone Inept is back!

I don't know how to install. Again. I'm stupid. Just a question, is the mobileprovision supposed to be saved as a .xml file, not an Apple Provisioning Profile or whatever those are called? Because Beta 1 worked and it was saved as an apple provisioning file thingy, while Beta 2 insists on being saved as a .xml file.

Why is it that I always figure it out after I say these kinds of things? I still find all the buttons a bit small. Like, if the "end turn" button was twice as large on the y axis that'd help a lot. Good god the inertia scrolling is jumpy. Is there an option to disable inertia scroll?

[JemDaddyO]

I didn't even think he had enabled inertia scrolling but I agree. I swipe to the target spot lift my finger, pause, the screen shifts to my chosen spot, I press the destination spot. Then as I'm selecting the target spot again, the screen shifts again slightly and my last tap somehow deselects the unit I'm moving. So, then I have to scroll back over to my unit, select it and start the whole process over again. Very un-smooth. I have to force myself to wait that extra bit for the screen to jump again before I press the destination.

[jayce]

First, I insist on the bug on the distance allowed for units that sometimes is far less than normal.

I think the problem appears only after loading a saved game.

Hope this helps.