If that vid is legit, then SOLD!~! Now this is worth the money imo. I might even buy some songs from Diefenbach. Oh, and nice icon! looks like these guys did everything right. Wonder if Albie's gonna chime in
The video was all shot from a 2g iPod. The parts where the iPod isn't moving are replays. The game stores your fastest race on each level and lets you watch it any time. You can also pause the replay and take control though we forgot to put any of that in the video.
First of all, AWESOME game... but the initial release has some things that annoy me. The race and vehicle selection needs more inertia. It'd be great to just flick my finger across the screen to be able to get the design or track at the opposite end of the circle. It feels kinda clunky right now. The Start/Finish pylons should have a different color light coming from them... I can't really tell which ones are checkpoint and which are the finish line. Green is Go, Yellow is Slow, right now they're opposite... green runs out when you stop and yellow runs out when you boost... they also don't correspond with the pedals. It's a bit unintuitive. Other than that, the gameplay is great and incredibly polished! The interface seems like an afterthought to me though, and despite my complaints, I still feel it's worth the money which says a LOT about the gameplay since a bad interface can ruin an otherwise good game for me.
I feel pretty much the same way. The general gameplay is excellent, the graphics are top-notch, but a bit more polish for the start and end of races would make a huge difference. As it is right now, you just sort of start, race, then eventually come (surprisingly) to a dead stop. Proper fanfare for both ends of the race (particularly when you come in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd) would make a big difference. I also agree that the interface is a bit perfunctory, but that isn't as big a deal. Don't get me wrong: I'm very impressed by the game.
Glenn - I played it a few times and I think its a great game that is really unique on the App store. The terrain especially, I don't think I've seen it done like that before. I could see in an update to possibly put weapons - I'm so used to playing Wipeout on the PS3 that it just seems like a natural fit to me. I also like the non frantic pace of the whole game - its rather mellow - which is refreshing. Not everyone likes to get hit over the head with things flashing in their face the whole time. The music seems to fit perfectly, and the controls are spot on. The unique Ekranoplan vehicles (WIG crafts) are certainly a good subject matter - I'm sure not a lot of people even know that they exist. If anyone hasn't checked them out before - they are real! Look up Airfish 8 on youtube to check out the real deal. Great job - will keep playing - and looking forward to whatever you add next. forgot to mention - how the hell did you get the file size down to 8mb! That is AMAZING!!!
Great game by the way. Had some lag at first but now I'm fine. This is really fast paced, I like it. Music is really good and the controls are very responsive. Don't like how the ships look, it's just kind of weird looking I guess but its fine. I'd prefer for it to look more like the ships in iSR Will have a review on itunes (5 stars)
The green and yellow bars were round the other way until a few weeks ago but it seemed that seeing the boost gauge was far more important (fast laps are all about timing the boost) so I moved the boost to the outside where it was less obscured by the player's thumb. I really hate games where the UI takes over so I tried to minimise it by keeping it simple, semi-transparent and in the corner of the screen. I possibly overdid this
oh man this game is awesome. I just unlocked the 2nd level and its SOOO much better than the first - plays great on the first gen iPod touch.
I really wanted to keep Ground Effect as a pure arcade racer. I personally don't like mixing racing with shooting, at almost always seems to mess up the racing. Ground Effect is you versus the terrain. That said, I do like the idea of doing a real shoot-em-up using similar tech and similar vehicles... There are a lot of boring technical reasons why it fits in 8mb. It's mostly because the levels are fractally generated, blended with a weird software-rendered spline thingy and lit at 'load' time. In fact the 'loading' message you see for a few seconds when you select a new level isn't really loading anything, it's doing the fractal/blending/lighting stuff. This means that the level files are tiny. This was done because of future plans for DLC and so we can easily add a few extra levels on any rev(s).
I'll be interested to see what you guys think of the fourth... Is anyone playing this on a 3GS? I'm not sure but I think it might run at 60FPS. I never actually got a chance to time it on a 3GS properly, I just know it looked noticeably smoother than the 2g iPod which runs at a solid 30.
I don't mind the positions so much, but the colors really confused me at first. I do think the bars could be moved up to the middle-top of the screen, and the colors changed to green for boost and red/yellow for stop. I'm not looking at the brake and boost pedals when I'm racing anyway, but rather at a point slightly in front of the vehicle so this would be a better position IMO since it is important info. Also, I'm playing it on a 3GS and it's beautiful, not even a frame drop when I explode
Level 4 is pretty much insane. Relaxing gameplay? Fuggedaboutit! On 3Gs too, by the way. My guess would be 60 FPS.
Can you explain the yellow and green bars? I didn't quite catch what you meant. Are there any differences in the different ships? Do you really start out dead last? I don't understand the starting positions of the ships. arn
In addition, it seems there’s no way to enter our names in high score or make a profile to race with. It makes hard to read results and all. A lack of a mini map showing opponents position makes it hard to understand what is going on in a race. Generally it feels more like a very polished demo.
