Hi Excal,

although I'm tempted by the idea of a collaboration, I have a ridiculous amount of projects to get through at the moment (I was just five chapters away from finishing a novel, when I decided to start making a computer game instead!). I might be able to help out in a limited capacity, though.

well done in cutting your project size by 2mb. How big is it in total at the moment? It might be worth trying out some of the larger art assets in different file formats to see if that makes a difference (such as turning anything from png32 to png8, or jpg; you can do this from the sprite editing screen)- I managed to trim about 5mb off my project that way (though you can lose a little quality, that's probably better than having players give up before playing the game due excessive load time).

When I get the chance I'll give the game a test on my wife's ipod touch (which is the closest thing I have to an iphone) and report my results back to you.

Anyway, keep up the good work.

harrio

thanks for the kind words, and all the ideas. I'm still hoping to have the hero move automatically when there's only one hero out, if I get time to include the feature.

I've encountered a few weird browser issues (such as bits of art not loading in, or the music playing over itself again and again) which only occassionally happens, but hopefully once I've got a proper pre-loader for all the art and sounds in there in might solve the issue.

I thought I'd gotten rid of all the game breaking bugs over the weekend, but discovered a new one a few seconds after I uploaded; if you die on the first square of one of the boards (the one I like to call 'Butterfly'), and then immediately roll a six and come out again, the hero forgets to turn the corner and goes off the board! If I can't figure out what's causing the issue, I may have to cheat and make the board one square longer before the corner (so the hero has more time to mirror, signal and manoeuvre).

Also, on rare occassions the a.i. seems to freeze up for no apparent reason, which is a tricky problem to figure out.

Once I've finished updating the tutorial, destroying the bugs and adding in a few 'helper' items for people who are playing for the first time and can't be bothered to read the rules (i.e, everyone), I will see if I have time to optimise for mobile (even if that just extends to being able to click the heroes Portrait picture to get them to move, as that's a larger Touch area than the heroes themselves). Though board games are much better suited to larger touch screen devices.

Anyway, the plan is to upload on Friday afternoon (so there's still time to make changes if the Newgrounds community encounter any issues) and then go straight to pub for a celebratory pint!

If anyone notices any more bugs, or has minor improvement suggestions then please let me know (and if anyone can see how it looks on iphone, that'd be hugely appreciated)

Hullo again!

Right, I have my latest update now playable on the front page. I still have a day or so of free time left for refinements, but next Friday ill be uploading Board Horde to the Newgrounds site for their competition.

Here's the change list:

1. Better text objects to draw attention to potions, traps etc.

2. More attack animations.

3. A menu theme tune from the marvellous Olivia Egbunike (https://soundcloud.com/olivia-egbunike)

4. Better functioning A.i. That's less prone to crashing.

5. Far less bugs! (Still enough to keep me busy)

Anyway, once the competition is over I will get down to all the features that I'd hoped to add, such as scoreboard, advanced a.i., special skills and more boards.

All suggestions for improvements are hugely welcomed, as always.

Cheers!

Hi Excal,

Just tested the game on my ipad 3. It took about two minutes to load, which might put a few less patient players off. Then again, its always a pity to have to sacrifice graphically quality. It's looking good, and plays smoothly. I did find the controls a bit awkward to start with, but once I got a bit more used to them they started to feel quite intuitive. Hopefully I'll be able to do a bit more testing soon, though I'm still trying to finish up my own game for the competition (I'm at the 'polishing and trying to hunt down game breaking bugs' stage).

Best of luck with it - it looks like a promising contender.

Hullo chaps!

There's a new version of the Board Horde game on the front page. Here's the change list:

1. A.i. can now get three heroes out at the same time.

2. Dice changes colour to indicate whose go it is (based on a forum suggestion)

3. Status effects now display above the heroes heads. If clicked on, they give a bit of info on what the effect does (also a forum suggestion)

4. A few more attack animations, and instant death anim added.

And here's the marvellous bug list! yaaaaaay!

1. A.i. Occasionally rolls the dice four times when he has no heroes out, and stops the game working (just press back for now, if this happens)

2. A.i.s turn sometimes ends before he can move, or he rolls a six and forgets to move, or he gets a hero out when there's already one stood on the entrance square.

3. If a hero is killed on the entrance square, his HUD picture sometimes still displays as 'out' which causes collision issues with monsters.

4. Sometimes when a blue barbarian dies, he spreads blood all over the bally shop (this is not a feature), and occasionally changes direction mid flight.

5. Sometimes the computer a.i. beats me (clearly a bug, and nothing to do with my playing ability).

6. If the warrior dies when he has a weakened status effect, he sometimes still has the effect present when he's next on the board.

There are more bugs which I mean to fix over the next few days, but if you spot anything I haven't mentioned, or think of any brilliant ways to improve things then please let me know. So far everyone has been hugely helpful, and its been most appreciated (you beautiful marvellous people, you!)

So, as there's two weeks left to the deadline most of my time will be spent refining what I've got, finding and destroying oh so many bugs, and attempting to optimise for mobile phone (which will be the biggest challenge, as the game is best played on a larger touch screen device).

Chin chin, and whatnot.

rocky10529

Blimey! Over 3,500 views and masses of 5 star ratings, and that's only on your first day of launch.

very well done; it's nice to see the Newgrounds community are a bit more welcoming and receptive of thoughtful puzzle games than some communities that are out there.

I look forward to the sequel, and seeing how this one does in the competition (the options button works absolutely fine on desktop using IE9, by the way).

TheStoepsel2001

I've just gone through a bit of the text to find the spelling errors, so here's a list:

In the tutorial:

'The screen consit' - should be 'consists'

'zombies are weak and vulnurable' should be 'vulnerable'.

'shooting zombies will earn you expirience' should be 'experience'

'regular cars' should be 'cards'

then in the gym: 'increase damage dealed' should be 'dealt'.

Considering english isn't your first language, you did remarkably well (better than a lot of english people). I'm sure I'll be drawn back into playing your game again soon, so if I notice any more spelling mistakes I'll be sure to let you know.

It'll probably be a few more weeks before my own game's ready for submission, though you can follow its development in the Construct2 forum (it's called Board Horde). The trickiest part is going to be optimising the game for mobile phones, since board games are best played on larger screen devices like ipads.

good luck, and I look forward to viewing any other game you create in the future.

Testing on ipad 3 using safari:

I find that if I use a finger from each hand on either side of the screen, it registers two touches and runs really smoothly, but if I use a finger and thumb from just the one hand to pinch with it flickers around between zoomed in and zoomed out (even when I'm not pinching) and can't quite work out if I'm touching the device with two or three fingers.

transient

I hope you do get back into it, as this looks insanely brilliant. Kind of like the Yellow Submarine of video games.

Eye poppingly marvellous artwork, and great music. Keep up the good work.

Just been playing the game a bit more (got as far as level 12 now. hurrah!) and there's a few things I've noticed. It does experience the occasional bit of slowdown though is doesn't effect the gameplay too much. Also the cog on the right top corner doesn't seem to do anything when I click it (I expect this is some sort of settings button?). I'll test it again in Chrome, and maybe on PC to see whether its a browser or device issue.

rocky10529

The four months of work that you put into making this game really shows. Excellent presentation (except for the flashing boxes during the loading screen, which melted my brain a little), fantastic retro style music, and a really fun puzzle game. Once I figured out what I was supposed to do I found it very addictive, and although I only got as far as level 6 I will definitely be back for more (I was playing on Safari on an Ipad3, in case you're interested).

A serious contender in the competition, and good luck with it. Even if it doesn't win, it's well worth pushing it onto mobile devices.

Kongregate Test 3:

Just had another go in Hard mode, on Internet Explorer and I discovered a bug (which may be related to IE, but I thought I'd better mention it).

I was several minutes into the game, flying around and shooting asteroids, then after a moment the controls stopped functioning properly; the ship started to spin round and round on its own and I had to hold two keys down at once just so I could get it to fly in one direction.

further tests will follow at some point.