jetcitywoman

As I mentioned I'm a business analyst, so this is my thing. Apple needs to hire a few of me to work on their App Store team because clearly they don't have any. They targeted one user interface for a mashup of different use cases. You can't do a one size fits all solution to serve two completely, and I would go so far as to say contradictory requirements. If I was a developer I would love the top charts for doing competitive analyses and keep an eye on what the market is doing. But as a game buyer, I need to see categories of game types like hidden object, first person shooter, rpg, etc. it would also be great to have age and violence categories so that I don't have to wade through baby games unless I have a toddler or wade through GTA clones to find Avernum. And it would be nice if the new releases list showed more than just ten or whatever games. When a game shows up on that list for a few hours and then disappears while other games stay on the list for a week, you know something shady is going on.

Count me in the disappointed. My iPad has become my game machine because I can play anywhere. Going back to spending hours in my home office playing on my Mac is going to suck a bit. I already spend too much time in here doing bookkeeping and webmastering stuff for my nonprofit. But that's all my problem. I can totally empathize with Jeff's frustration. And he's right that the app store is a steaming pile of shite. It's impossible to casually browse for good games there because of the avalanche of crap that you have to dig through. The only way I've been finding good games is by reading forums like Touch Arcade. I'm an IT Business Analyst by trade, and it blows my mind that Apple designed the app store UI to serve the developers instead of the buyers. I mean look at the Top Charts page. The categories are free apps, paid apps, and top grossing apps. As a buyer, are those the primary categories that help me in my buying decision? No they are not. I don't give a rats butthole what games are top grossing. Only the developers care about that. I'm not saying that Apple should take those categories away, but why not add some tailored more for purchasers to help in their buying decisions? Duh, duh and duh! Sorry, I've been gritting my teeth about that for years so it finally had to be typed. I'm buying my Avernum 2 for Macintosh now. It's inconvenient to play on the Mac but it won't stop me from buying games from my number one favorite game developer! Jeff, you keep on trucking!

One thing that bugs me that I haven't seen anyone else mention is the centering on the active character during battles. I'm constantly fighting with the screen because I center it where I want it, usually showing most of my party and the enemy, and it keeps recentering itself on each of my players. Besides being generally annoying, it's a problem that it only centers on my players but not on the enemies. So in a big battle with a mob, things happen off screen. I think a simple solution would be if the "center map on player" config setting worked for battles also. I turned it off so that I could manually move the map, but it still auto centers during battles.

Ah, thanks! that's a handy skill; I'll keep using it.

I'm a bit confused about this weapon that my sorceress is currently using. In addition to fire damage on the enemy, it says it has 10% healing. Does that mean my sorceress gains 10% health when she strikes an enemy? Or does it mean I have to strike one of my allies to heal them 10%?

ahhhh, I'm a happy camper! Even though the page says Feb 28th, I checked the app store the evening of the 27th, and.... It was there!!! I did a happy dance while it downloaded. And am happily once again in Avadon exploring, meeting new hands and finding my place in the world. I keep wanting to post a review saying how Spiderweb games are an instabuy for me, but I know sounding like too much of a fanboi can make the review sound like a fake bot posting. Ugh... Jeff, if you lurk here, ignore all the naysayers and crybabies because your games rock. I said so!

Somehow I missed that. Thanks! Now I can stop whining and start my happy dance.

I guess I'm not supposed to ask this, but I've been waiting sooooo long! I'm definitely in whine mode here. Does Jeff not do any "teaser" coming soon posts anywhere?

Indeed it was a good pun. Just wanted to rant because it's sooo hard to find games up to the Spiderweb par, and I need to play SOMETHING in between SW game releases. This one has alot of brilliance, but then they kill it with something soooo basic. Isn't there a book on game design that these studios can read? (Or by this point in history, I would expect maybe five thousand books...)

I'm going to log a proper complaint on that game studios forum, but thought I'd share my rant here with you guys, and contrast it with someone who knows what he's doing - of course, I mean Jeff. I downloaded a cool new game from the app store called Dark Meadow. It uses the unreal engine, so as you can imagine its super cool to play. The problem is the designers got such hardons from the Unreal engine, that they forgot one of the basics... How to save your progress. People who play on the iPad platform can be assumed to be, you know, mobile. Which means they likely get interrupted alot. I searched on their forum for other complaints about the inability to save/load your progress, and this is what their response is: things you've collected are saved, but each time you come into the game you start in the start location. It's actually a game objective to wake up 31 times. So they actually DESIGNED it this way, forcing you to watch the opening sequence and re-explore rooms at least 31 times in a row. Unbelievable.

I'm playing on the iPad and just reached level 30,31 (depending on my chars). Now when I level up, it announces that and does sparkly effect over the char portrait, but doesn't give me points to assign. Is that a bug or by design?

Cool. I did have my tank near the pylons but he still died. Maybe he wasn't right up next to it, though. I'll try again, thanks.

Hey guys, I need a hint for dealing with the adze haakai. Im playing on the iPad. The part that's driving me nuts are the death curses. Can you give me a hint about how to get uncursed while in combat in that room? Does it have to do with the orange pylons?

Hmm, it's not fuzzy on my iPad 1

What are you calling original? I have the iPad 1, the one without a camera. The game works fine so far, although I'm still in ft avernum.

Originally Posted By: Jerakeen Try sliding your finger off. Ah, that works, thanks.

Originally Posted By: nikki. Holding your finger on people/creatures should display their name above their head/head analogue. Ah, it does, thanks. However, is that the only option? It also initiates a conversation with the person when I lift my finger. I'm used to pressing tab when approaching a group to see who they are and deciding which one to talk to. If I have to touch each character then I'm committed to talking to him right there. This is a minor quibble, though. If its the way the game is on iPad, I can get used to it and adapt my play strategy. I just knew spiderweb games would lend themselves well to a touch interface, and it's proving true. I'm loving it very much.

Jeff talked about the challenges of app store pricing in a blog last year. Regardless of the playtime and quality, app store purchasers are now so used to 1.99 app prices that it's a very hard sell to get them to pay more for a game. He found that 9.99 was the highest he could charge, and there are still people who complain about that being too much. Personally, I've always felt that the 25$ Mac platform price was a huge steal given the higher than average quality and months (for me) of playtime. Compared to paying upwards of 50$ for games like Halo that I finished in two weeks, I just shake my head when I hear complaints of spiderweb games costing too much. With the apparent success of the iPad platform, steam and now humble bundle, I hope Jeff makes it up on volume. Thats always a huge risk, though.

I'm so happy! The touchpad interface is fine. One question, though, that I couldn't figure out and didn't see in the help screens: what is the equivalent of the tab key on Macintosh, that showed the names of things and people around you?

I just had another thought to help balance out the "can't wait" angst. While waiting for the iPad version, I've been playing a couple of other games. One of which has great potential, but shows every sign of not having any qa. They keep releasing version after version with huge bugs. I don't mean subjective things like game balance, I mean like losing pets, losing gold, that kind of game killer stuff. Let's all thank Jeff for doing his due diligence and giving us QUALITY games!

The site says that the windows version will be out in April, but the iPad will be out in "spring". Does that mean windows will be first and Jeff considers Spring to be the may-june timeframe? Anybody know if the release of the new iPad will delay the games launch while Jeff does more testing?

How about a wild idea: amazon seems to have the best selection, so why not order there and have the books shipped to wherever you mom will be staying?

I'm curious how that works. Does he issue some special app that lets you take screenshots? Or is there a Shift-D cheat code for it?

Originally Posted By: GingerGlaahk I agree with the logic of it, but if I were a huge bigass dragon, slightly bloodthirsty, I would have made myself a pylon, connected it to the main pipeline using my amazing dragon magic, and used it to expand my influence and get more minions. Now that's megalomaniac, which of course, all dragons are, and is standard behaviour for your average dragon. or to provide a steady food supply. The thing that bothered me about the pylons wasn't whether they were there or not but that the screen listing them seemed incomplete which made me think I'd missed many. Is there a blank between a couple in the left-hand list, and the right hand side of the window is completely blank? I know that's way outside of role-playing, but since you had to use the window to work the pylons anyway, it was a concern. Originally Posted By: GingerGlaahk X is in his own world - too lazy to move an inch(probably gets someone to bring him food). He is actually one of my all time favourites, and also one must credit him for the xian items (hope they get remade, funnier still) Now that you mention it, the area north of the Tower of Magi where X was supposed to do testing (in the later Avernum games) was completely unused in this game which I found odd. It looked like an interesting place and I fully expected X to give me a quest there. But... nothing.

I also wonder if Jeff's wife moderates some of the character portraits. She seems to stay behind the scenes, but we know she works in the business end of things. And I also get the sense from the Story of the Baby/Toddler series that she's a strong, sensible woman. Even if it's not an official thing I wouldn't be surprise to learn that she occasionally sees a character portrait and thumps him on the head to tone it down. :-) When I was beta testing, I sent him a compliment about having avernum populated about equally with nearly nude men and women. I don't mind sexism, as long as its equal opportunity! Anybody here have a sense of the demographic breakdown of the customer base?