OK. So it seems there is no in-game mechanism for inviting a friend to a game. From what I can tell, you create a challenge and put a password on it. Then you tell your friend that you've posted the game along with the password. With that info, your friend can manually look through the list of games and find the challenge you created. From there, they accept the challenge and supply the password. It's a little roundabout, but I guess it works. If there's another way to do this, can someone please let me know? Thanks! It's somewhat active between friends - perhaps 30-40 games going on right now - but I haven't seen too many public matches. I think I may have seen 2 yesterday, and none as of a few minutes ago. This is probably why the match system between friends works...you don't have to scroll terribly far to find the person you were searching for. --DotComCTO
I wonder why none of the major iOS review sites are writing about this game. Except for TouchGen it has been pretty much ignored. I'm sure the exposure would help sales. Maybe the devs should put more effort in contacting sites such as Touch Arcade. It's a quality release after all and they have reviewed other war games in the past.
I was thinking the same thing. The only thing that came to mind is that maybe these sites look at Battle Academy as a niche title that doesn't appeal to the masses? --DotComCTO
That might be so but they did cover games such as Great Little War Game and Battle for Wesnoth in the past. These are also turn based strategy games. It might be either lack of a PR push from the devs or that the price did indeed convince them that it would be too niche for the masses. I tend to think it was a bit of both. In any case, it's a shame.
A review of Battle Academy has been posted on Slide To Play, hopefully Touch Arcade will get round to reviewing this great game soon. http://www.slidetoplay.com/story/battle-academy-ipad-review
I have to say this isn't the best of reviews, it pretty much has "niche" written all over it. And I think people would expect a solid 4/4 review for a $20 game.
OT: Panzer Corp == Panzer General, ahh, pass... The price tag sure is a bit forbidding but I think it is not that hardcore, it needs a "story" to drive player into the journey. Not everyone is a WWII geek, I suppose.
Well I think I have grown up and go beyond after playing PG 1 and 2. Yes and I don't mind playing Steel Panthers instead. OT: Wait, a operation level of Battle of Bulge for iOS is in works...
We're looking in to the invitation system at the moment. It's actually designed to do a lot more than just let you set up a game with a friend and its cross platform so a little involved but hopefully soon! There are about 2000 MP games going at any one time. The lobby looks a bit bare because every time an open challenge is posted it is taken in minutes. People prefer to accept challenges than issue them so there is a real shortage. Try issuing one and you'll have a game very very soon!
Just looked at the Slide to Play review which is pretty good but they missed multiplayer. Its one of the best things about the game. Also why they think we're an unproven developer seems odd to me. We've got a catalogue of over 100 high quality strategy games on pretty much every format there is! The team worked on Red Alert, Dune 2000, Dune Emperor, Sim Isle and much more. Not sure what you need to do to be a proven developer!
We were actually all from Intelligent Games. I was the team leader on those projects, Phil technical director at IG and Richard the creative director. Westwood outsourced all these games to IG about 15 years ago. Went to Westwood's offices many times though! I left after Dune 2000 as I was fried from a year of crunch and joined Eidos briefly before starting Slitherine 12 years ago. Phil & Richard joined about 2005 when IG went in to administration. Sad for them but a big win for me!
Quite a history! Thanks for sharing, very interesting. Iain, will some of the technical aspects of the Battle Academy be addressed as the jitters? I saw on your forums that Panzer Corps is planned to be released at Q3, I was quite disappointed not to see Close Combat on the iOS list. I always felt these were the most realistic (and fun!) real time strategy games out there. Maybe next year...?
We have seen the odd jitter on iPad but not seen a repeatable case so if anyone has any way they can make it happen it would help as we don't know what causes it. If there are any other issues that are problem please report them - ideally to our forums where they wont get missed. The next update is looking to add various new features such as a force selection in multiplayer but still work in progress without an ETA to submit right now. The next generation of the Close Combat engine will be Unity based, which makes moving to other platforms far easier. Nothing to announce yet but the door is wide open
Oh wow. That would just be fantastic. I think you had mentioned somewhere that the current Close Combat series wasn't in a state where it was easily portable to iOS due to the age of the codebase. Did I recall that correctly? That would explain why it'll be a little while before we see a new release. Really glad to see Slitherine give us the iOS love! --DotComCTO
Yes only 5 iOS games with over a million downloads so I guess we are pretty new On Pz Corps pricing the only thing I can say is it will be a premium game at a premium price. Details TBD. On Close Combat yes the current engine is not really iOS friendly.
Ummm...yeah...I knew that. Yeah. That's the ticket. I expected as much. As a long time CTO in the marketing world, I'm just curious to see how you plan to balance all of this. It could be like BA in that the price is the same regardless of platform because it is the same game (and you also don't want to make the non-iOS community feel disenfranchised). It could be a slimmed down version of Pz Corps with the same price point as BA (and maybe more DLC to bring it up to the same level as the computer). Or, Slitherine could do something entirely different. I guess my concern is two-fold: 1 - Can Slitherine drive enough people to pay $30 for an iOS game to make the ROI worth it? 2 - If $30 is indeed the price point, then there are 7 expansions at $5 each to consider. Will people other than die hard grognards (like myself) go beyond the initial investment and get as much DLC as possible? Regardless, I'm very excited about Slitherine's support, and I hope us consumers can buy enough to make it profitable for you to keep up the support! I do have to say that having Battle Academy on the iPad is fantastic. Rather than holing up in my home office in the evening (and having my family complain), I can hang out with my iPad in the family room and play causally while we're all together. It makes everyone very happy! Happy wife, happy life, right? Thanks again for bringing great games to iOS! --DotComCTO
