Quick survey for my game studio

[Meteo Xavier]

This is just the kind of ridiculous crap I could use after a day like mine.

Let he who is without shin cast the first bone!

[BardicKnowledge]

Alright, my thoughts on Iris after playing it a few times. I figured that since I got it for free (thanks!) the least I could do was write a few paragraphs.

First, I'm the Hard mode global leader!

Second, I wish that the instructions would go into more depth on how points are scored. I still don't know the mechanics of what combos are worth what points (though clearing your whole board seems to be worth a ton). Similarly, what are the exact points of death? I know that getting more blocks = bad, and that more height = bad, but don't know the exact parameters.

I was too involved with managing pieces last game -- does the music pick up in tempo as you get more and more blocks?

Finally, the game really used the touch interface well, though maybe there should be a limit on how fast you can scroll to prevent "diving" (scrolling really fast in the hopes of wedging a falling block into an impossible space). You guys have done well in making Columns / Dr. Mario color matching into a unique iPod/phone experience.

What's the next big thing going to be?

Edit: One big criticism I forgot to mention is that eventually there were two shades of green that were very difficult to tell apart quickly. Please consider fixing that in upcoming versions / games.

[prophetik music]

i'll pass that along.

[Johannes_von_Luck]

I'll try to address some of the things in here since quite a bit of people have replied.

pro-tip for future success:

stop making "apps". start making games.

Actually I get the idea of what you're saying, but it still isn't as "dry cut" as what you're saying... There is a lot more to making games than making them not "apps". The platform that you're on still has limitations and expectations that are different than that of console or desktop.

Although lets not argue technicalities - I know what you're getting at and agree with you.

That pie shit PISSED ME OFF.

But I did the survey.

Really? I'm really sorry that you thought we had actually invented digital pie and punch... I mean, wasn't it already obvious that it was a joke considering that it had "*smirk*" italicized next to it?

(You saw the small print disclaimer too, right? )

Oh well can't please everybody. Thanks for helping though man.

Alright, my thoughts on Iris after playing it a few times. I figured that since I got it for free (thanks!) the least I could do was write a few paragraphs.

Congrats on grabbing the code and thanks for the reply man!

First, I'm the Hard mode global leader!

Nobody freakin plays on hard . Kudos.

Second, I wish that the instructions would go into more depth on how points are scored. I still don't know the mechanics of what combos are worth what points (though clearing your whole board seems to be worth a ton). Similarly, what are the exact points of death? I know that getting more blocks = bad, and that more height = bad, but don't know the exact parameters.

I want to answer the idea behind this below, but just to summarize: You have to get 4 blocks of the same color next to each other in any zig-zaged form (diagonally, horizontally, etc.). Depending on difficulty, blocks are worth different amounts (easy: 50pts, normal: 75 pts, hard: 100 pts). If you reduce blocks that are stacked on top, they count for 2x that amount (in addition to the base blocks). The best way to get the maximum amount of points is to stack them around in a circular pattern and then take out the base. If you remove all blocks off the base, you get another 2x on top.

If you get too much "mass" on the screen, then it's game over.

Now that I think about that, damn, that is too complex. Aww well more on that in a sec...

I was too involved with managing pieces last game -- does the music pick up in tempo as you get more and more blocks?

Yes and no. Yes, we are telling OpenAL to adjust the pitch as the mass bar fills to try and adjust the tempo (well... pitch...), but No, Apple's implementation of OpenAL does not behave correctly and doesn't do what we told it. I've tried playing with it for quite a while, with no avail.

Finally, the game really used the touch interface well, though maybe there should be a limit on how fast you can scroll to prevent "diving" (scrolling really fast in the hopes of wedging a falling block into an impossible space).

I don't have a lot of knowledge of signal processing, so we managed the best we could with this one. I could essentially add in a max filter, but, I really don't think the time to fix is warranted. Again, I want to comment about this below in more detail.

You guys have done well in making Columns / Dr. Mario color matching into a unique iPod/phone experience.

Thanks man! I really appreciate that. We tried our best we knew how.

What's the next big thing going to be?

That's a secret. But more about our process below.

Edit: One big criticism I forgot to mention is that eventually there were two shades of green that were very difficult to tell apart quickly. Please consider fixing that in upcoming versions / games.

That was only in hard mode right? Yeah, I noticed that a bit myself, and, really it didn't seem like it was a complete deal breaker at the time (and I was running out of time) so we just put it in and went with it. Rarely anybody ever plays it on hard mode anyways, but I do know the particular aspect you're referring to.

And finally, I wanted to talk a bit about the process involved in this game, since it is relevant to answering the story behind the story of why some of the things you see are the way they are.

First, I should probably mention that we're not going to proactively do many updates on this simply because it isn't worth the time to put into it. Not so much in terms of not supporting customer interest, but because the customer base is really small and has not generated enough real monetary interest to justify the business decision to further work on it. However, I'll pass it along to Sam, and see if he wants to take up any of those things as a side project (never know).

But of course, a lot of the issues you expressed were not so much "as designed" but rather an issue of "mis-design". You see, we did a game that we all liked and thought sounded cool on paper, but there in lied the problem: We built a game that we, a professional software engineer, a professional artist, and a professional musician, thought was interesting. We did not do enough prototyping of the concept to begin with (to figure out the gameplay was interesting but potentially too difficult). We did not pair it with consumer interests, or for that matter really try to figure out what the market wanted.

Of course, there are a few people who have done things that way and have been met with success.... Seriously, there has been a lot of people who have done their best to try and make something they themselves like, and have made bank, simply because their interests overlap with the markets.

It is actually a running debate between myself and our main artist whenever or not we should be continuing that flow of logic, because its a trade off mechanism: If we do what we personally enjoy, we will put every ounce of effort into it and force it to have the best amount of polish possible. But, the trade off is that if we make something that is for the market, there is more potential to nail a product people other than us want to buy - what we like does not mean the market likes it too. You can't really have it both ways, but you have to find a way to compromise and make something you are going to enjoy making and thus put the utmost amount of effort in, while at the same time making something that is going to work in the market. It really is a both-and world in this case.

On the flip side, we have really learned a lot from this entire experience. We have already actually heard your exact same criticisms (obviously not in the same verbiage, but same content), and it's good to know that we're on the right track... We've taken a lot of hints from feedback and have spent a huge amount of effort to work on a lot more things in pre-production, including completely revamping the design process and nailing it down on our wiki in an established and methodical way (even prophet here has commented several times on how pumped he is to do our next title ). This basically bottoms into an issue of ensuring that the work effort we're putting out is going to make the cut in the end, because, well, if we spent more time prototyping, testing, drawing up more concept artwork, and just basically really getting to know the game exactly before writing a line of code or a single note or a single art asset, maybe we would have a better chance at really nailing something fun.

I really appreciate the input we've received thus far from everybody (126 replies as of this writing), because what we plan on doing is matching up our designs and doing an actual product analysis, part of which is taking our design and standing it next to our survey responses... I mean, obviously there may be some form of error involved (say others who did not take the survey had a different idea than the survey said were actually in the majority (which is statistically less likely as number of respondents grows, but never know - we could just wind up targeting a specific "internet gamer" market by accident)), but we are worried about people we can actually market directly to telling us what to make anyways.

Other aspect of course is just an issue with correctly iterating through a design, modifying it to better fit different aspects at work, exploring different gameplay avenues, etc., but that's another post entirely.

Okay, sorry for the wall of text.

I hope that is a good reply to your input though, and thanks so much for coming back and writing what you thought.

[prophetik music]

so wolf is known for these ridiculously long piles of text that he emails us constantly and calls 'updates'.

[BardicKnowledge]

so wolf is known for these ridiculously long piles of text that he emails us constantly and calls 'updates'.

haha. It was a nice read for me, and awesome to have the developers actually respond to your comments.

[prophetik music]

his last email to the team was supposed to be a quick response to one question and it was six thousand characters.

[BardicKnowledge]

his last email to the team was supposed to be a quick response to one question and it was six thousand characters.

Better than a quick response to a six thousand character question?

[prophetik music]

neither are preferable, honestly.

[Johannes_von_Luck]

so wolf is known for these ridiculously long piles of text that he emails us constantly and calls 'updates'.

Not always.

[Johannes_von_Luck]

neither are preferable, honestly.

I'm just used to reading books that span several hundred pages. I tend to want to express myself as best I can. Lets not mention the 70,000 lines of code in egw.

But I've worked on cutting it down.