It will be interesting to see what happens with that. I hadn't counted on having to compete with Touchgrind 2, but competition can't be too bad for you guys.
The game looks great Luke really looking forward to it. I don't know if this has been suggested ,but what I would like to see is deck customization through photos on our phones or touch. That way we could have whatever we like on our board.
While you could come up with new boards that had different effects, I would MUCH rather see additions to the park, a larger area or different parks, things that really expand the game. I fell in love with Skate when it came out on the PS3, and this is very similar to me, in terms of realism, which I love. Realism aside, it would be fun to have an insane park that has crazy jumps/gaps/views.. I'm very glad that you plan on supporting this with updates as it goes along.
A new True Skate video while we all wait. This one cycles through some different cameras modes and shows off a couple cameras which have a lens distortion effect. It is pretty cool, as well as being as making the board nice and big on the screen while still letting you see where you are going, but it does have the side effect of making things a little blurry. Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel
This looks very, very good. Looks like you guys nailed the looks and the gameplay. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like there's much "game" content in it, like Tony Hawk and Skate. That's the weakness Touchgrind 2 will probably be attacking.
There are a few missions to get through, and a high score table, and some achievements, otherwise it is mostly a toy at the moment, hens why we are only charging $1.99. I think the mission system needs a little more refining, then hopefully we can start adding a heap more missions and more gamey stuff in updates. With the way the app stor works, I think it is better to release something early, then update, rather then keep working on something forever. Made that mistake a bit with Jet Car Stunts 2 I think. I wish we had of just kept updating JCS1 instead.
I didn't think under flips really fit into the control system very well. Perhaps swiping sideways across the middle of the board when all wheels are on the ground might work... but I didn't want to make such an obscure trick so easy to do... hmm... I guess one possibility would be to make it need a really strong swipe, and not give as much height as an Ollie... I might keep thinking about that one. I just don't want to encourage new users to start doing under flips all the time, because kick flips are so much more fun to do.
One thing that would be AMAZING to add in an update down the line (which you've probably already thought of) is the ability to record a particularly good run and upload it to youtube. Maybe even throw in some basic editing tools. That was by far my favorite part of the Skate series. Especially with this game's focus on realistic physics, I think some kind of skate vid creating option would be absolutely killer...
I agree about the replays. One of my favorite parts about Touchgrind is, after finally landing a trick you've been trying over and over, you can watch a replay and slo-mo it. I always thought it would be cool if there was a way in-game to see your friends replays and share yours with them. I know this would probably be a lot of work, but it would be amazing.
This is something that I was working on in True Skate, but all the server stuff was just taking too long, and I decided to just drop it all out to get the game out. We have got a lot of other things to do like finishing of JCS2 now, but I really hope we can find the time and resources to go back and finish adding these features to True Skate before too long.
So I thought of an interesting idea for a game mechanic in True Skate. There could be an optional slider (either in-game or in the pause menu) that controls time, similar to the game Osmos. All the way to the right is normal speed and all the way to the left is super slowed down. This would help if you are trying to perfect a line and can't get the timing of the flips right. It would affect scoring, too; normal speed tricks get normal points, half speed tricks get half the points, etc. Not only would this be a great practice tool and help beginners, it would be just plain fun to mess around with since it could feel like playing a slow-mo skate vid. Just something to think about for a future update someday : ) Yay Thursday!
Actually, there is a slow mode hack in the dev version of True Skate, which I added to help debug the trick detection system. As a side effect, it looks really cool so I've been considering a few different ways that could be added in an update. Since it is very cool, and is not too hard to implement, it is probably something we would consider adding sooner rather then later to an update. Although, I have a few different ideas about how to implement it. Anyway, that isn't something I want to talk about too much just yet.
