*sigh*

[lesp]

I recently downloaded WI for the iPhone. I love RTS. I can't get enough. My favorite games are StarCraft and WC III, so you get the picture.

Unfortunately, I was sorely disappointed with WI.

1) The graphics are a direct port from the Windows Mobile version (I am assuming) and look like crap. They are something I would expect from a GBA, not an iPhone.

2) AI is. . . not smart.

3) Controls aren't that great either. Why is there no attack+move command? I don't feel like having to babysit my units as they move in case they get attacked because they are too stupid to defend themselves. Also, if my units are idle, and there are enemy buildings in range, why are they not shooting them without me having to tell them to? That's a pretty obvious flaw. If there's anything that belongs to the enemy within range, you should be shooting it instead of shooting the breeze.

I discussed the problems in more detail in my full review of the game, which can be found by clicking the link below, if you are interested. Don't get me wrong, my sole purpose isn't to bash this game. As I state in my review I think it could go from a 6/10 to an 8+ with a couple of basic flaw fixes. I just want this game to live up to its potential.

http://www.ipwngames.com/iphone/warfare-incorporated-review

[hitch]

I like the units not attacking buildings and just sitting there. Many missions you have no hope of beating unless you take out the power generators and leave everything else. If your units randomly start destroying the buildings you may find the towers start up or units start being built again. It is a strategy game, use what the developers gave you and learn to win / loose with the options you have. When the multiplayer option becomes available for your i phone, perhaps the WM team vs the iphone team would be fun.

[luminousnerd]

You're being way too harsh. This is essentially a fully featured RTS on a phone. It's pretty amazing if you ask me.

I for one like the graphics. They are reminiscent of StarCraft. While they could be better, and I hope they will improve some time, I don't have a problem with them. Also, if better graphics would cause more lag, I'll take worse graphics over lag any day.

Anyway, your opinions are valid, but no one will ever take you seriously when you are such a douchebag about it. Instead of "Your game SUCKS! Here's why!" you need to take an attitude of "This is a cool game, but it could be even better with..." Because truth be told, I don't think you would have gone to the trouble of creating an account and posting here if you didn't actually like the game a lot.

[Verdagon]

hitch and luminousnerd are right. On top of that, don't compare the game to starcraft and warcraft 3, because warfare is way better on the cost-to-awesomeness ratio.

Here's my question: what iphone games are you comparing this iphone game to? What are you basing your expectations off of?

[KingCorran]

I agree with the last three posters in theory. However, a few good points *were* made by lesp:

* Move+Attack would be a nice option, and could be implemented in many ways.
* It doesn't seem that it would be too hard to create a way for moving units to defend themselves, whether they stopped moving to do so, or continued moving (but returned fire as they did). This is a very good idea
* A complaint about the AI difficulty is also a legitimate question to raise.

Perhaps some of these things could be addressed in a future update. I also think lesp was trying to point out that his overall perspective was that WI is a very good game with potential, so I am inclined to take his criticism as constructive in nature. I really don't think he's just sitting here saying that the game sucks, so let's not treat him as if that were the case.

[Zandog]

Lesp, your suggestion have been taken into account. The other posters have a good point. Being diplomatic will better get your point across and be more effective to the developer. Much appreciated for the review. Can't wait to get your review after the revamp of the game.

[lesp]

Just came back to check this and glad it got some response. I'll try and answer stuff in the order it came in.

@hitch: Good strategic idea. But, I tend to go for the kill the turrets then rape the base angle. I can see how you could leverage the power plants to your advantage, but then it comes back to an AI issue for me. If you tried to employ that strategy then they should rebuild the power plants, and if you have such an extreme advantage that they can't defend themselves while building new ones then you should just be able to finish the match as it stands.

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@luminousnerd: Thanks. Hadn't been called a douchebag in almost a week. I was wondering if I was slipping in my douchebaggery.

I would also prefer less lag over better graphics (my favorite game is Galcon, and those graphics are crap, so don't think I'm a graphics thumper), but considering there are fully 3-D games running with no lag, I think the graphics could ramp up without too much difficulty.

Also, with the approach I was taking, KingCorran hit it perfectly when he said:

[Kris Slegers]

I agree with lesp, although this is a good game it is lacking in the control department. It may be fine on Windows Mobile but the iPhone is a different device and things that work on Windows Mobile do not always translate nicely to the iPhone. Here are a few suggestions to make this a great game.

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The biggest problem with controlling the game is that you don't control the iPhone with a stylus but with your fingers. Those are less accurate of course, so you need bigger 'targets' to tap. By targets I mean almost all of the in-game buttons (the 'menu' button but also those below a selected building). Another target is the minimap. It is nearly impossible to tap it and end up at the location you intended.

To solve the issue of the minimap, I'll reiterate an idea posted somewhere else on this forum. You could make it so that a single tap on the minimap enlarges the minimap to e.g. 3x its original size. Tapping the enlarged minimap navigates to that location and minimizes the minimap again. So two taps would allow you precision navigation. When dragging your finger over the enlarged minimap, the main screen would follow in real time, but upon releasing your finger, the minimap is minimized again.

Something similar can be done for issuing commands: tapping the status bar at the bottom of the screen would enlarge it to take the lower third of the screen. In this area you could easily fit big nice clear graphical buttons to issue commands: move, attack, move & attack, hold, ... The button would remain highlighted until you tap on the map to indicate the target of that command. At that time the status bar would shrink again. There is also plenty of room left to show the type of unit (it's hard to distinguish guards from troopers) and its health.

The status would contain all the building-related command when one or more buildings are selected: build, repair, sell, set rally point, attack (for towers), ... It would even be easy to issue the same command to several buildings at once (e.g. repair) if you allow selection more than one building. It already works well for issuing attack commands to multiple towers, so why not expand on that.

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Then there is the fact that a single tap does completely different things depending on where you tap. Tapping a unit selects it, tapping on the map moves the selected units there. When I have two armies and I want to move one to the other I select one army and tap near the second army. More often than not, I end up tapping on a unit, thus selecting it. This can be very annoying.

Desktop RTS games solve this by using the left mouse button for selecting and the right mouse button for actions. There is no obvious replacement for right-clicking of course, but a double-tap seems more appropriate. The two-finger selection rectangle is also rather clumsy, especially considering that two-finger gestures are more commonly used for navigating. I propose the following gestures.

Single finger gestures:

- Tap: select a unit or building
- Drag: select all units or buldings in the selected rectangle, prefer units
- Double-tap on a unit: select all units of that type
- Double-tap somewhere else: perform the default action for that location (move, attack, ...). Can also be used to set the rally point when a building is selected.

You could even allow selecting enemy units and buildings this way, but again your own units should be preferred if there is a conflict.

Two-finger gestures:

- Swipe/flick: navigate around the map
- Pinch: zoom in and out.

Zooming may require serious changes to the game engine so it might not be practical to implement, but all the other things are.

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Then onto graphics. They are not as crisp as they could be. Seems to me like they were scaled up from the Windows Mobile version, and the result is less than optimal. The original graphics look like they were pretty good quality, but not so on the iPhone. Look at games like Fieldrunners to see what is possible on the iPhone in the graphics department. Deployment size is less of an issue on the iPhone since it has at least 8 gigs of memory. It could easily triple in size.

A second (and much smaller) issue I have with the graphics is the difference in style between the game map and the characters. The game map uses a realistic style while the characters are cartoonish. Could they be made more uniform? I like both styles, but not in a single game.

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Finally I have some suggestions, some of which I've taken from other threads in this forum. The ones I list here are my personal favorites among those, ordered from most important to less important:

1. An on-screen 'shift' button to be able to add or remove units from a selection, but also for giving multiple commands to a unit or building. As long as you have a finger on the 'shift' button, commands are queued. I suggest the lower-left part of the screen since you can easily hold your thumb on it (if you are right-handed of course).

2. Turn off terrain on the minimap, or perhaps show the terrain at 50% brightness. I have a mild form of color blindness and I have trouble seeing the red dots on the green grass. I've been surprised several times by enemy units I didn't see coming.

3. Better messaging. Spoken messages should appear as text on screen for a few seconds (e.g. on the top-right of the window as most games do it). Furthermore an indication should appear on the minimap during the time the message is shown, giving a sense of context for the message. Tapping the message should navigate to the corresponding location on the map.

4. Group units and buildings. Someone suggested 4 numbered buttons, but colored buttons would work just as well. Make them darker if there is no group assigned to that button. Hold a button to assign a selection to it, tap the button to select. If the messaging and shift button are added, the upper-left part of the screen is the only remaining place for this.

5. Soften sounds depending on the distance to the part of the map you're looking at, but never fully mute them. Together with the indication on the minimap, this would further put things in context.

6. Add inertia to the panning gesture. This way you can flick to an area several screens away more easily, instead of having to do several drags to get there.

7. Make it more like an iPhone app, e.g. use scrollable lists instead of More... buttons, use the standard iPhone font, ...

I'm sure Zandog will filter the new ideas out of this list.

That's it. Just to make sure, I really like this game. Everything I've written here is my attempt to make it even better.

[Area_51_official]

These are all great ideas and I think each one of them can be implemented, and would really make this game even better!

[hobbes]

i didn't see this page earlier because it was too far down the list, but i opened a discussion of my own with some suggestions. I hope to get a thumbs up or down (and why) from you guys on those suggestion.

http://www.warfareincorporated.com/xyzzy/viewtopic.php?t=2810

There's a couple of neat things that can be done without making it to hard to control or require too much coding...at least i think.


And to the poster. What gateway do you play on? screen name?