iPhone Problems

These aren't really bugs, but I hope you could change the way the following items work in a patch or something:

1. Please let us lock the orientation! BoD is an intense game and the way too finicky accelerometer loves to switch the screen when I make the tiniest move!

2. Please give us the option to make the restart button a double tap. I have often accidentally restarted just when switching my grip.

3. If we move the buttons around, the grid they "snap to" is different from the default button grid, making them look off-center.

4. Please stop music and level playback when the menu is open (you can't see the level anyways), as the menu performance suffers for it (slow scrolling).

5. When in landscape orientation, the layout of custom colors (for bike/shirts/etc) covers up the actual color display. Portrait orientation shows the color display as well as the bike.

6. Please add the option for displaying battery power, as BoD seems to suck up more than the usual amount for games.

7. You spelled additionally "additionaly" in the help (i) under settings, for the zoom portion. Not a big deal but figure you can squeeze that in a patch.

20 comments

Xuzz

First post from an iBiker!

PMD

And a well thought out, helpful post at that. There is even a spelling correction in it.

Pickle, there is a lesson to be learned here.

Welcome Tinsel!

Ibanez

Mostly good ideas - I wouldn't want double-tap restart, I get a quick restart with a sliding thumb flick over the button. If it gets accidently touched then reposition it out of the way.
Yes - and welcome to the iPhone generation...

Tinsel

Thanks =P

I don't know if I'm technically an iBiker since I did play BoD a while back on my Treo. I have no idea what my profile was though it's been that long ago...

I thought the game wouldn't work on the iPhone with the controls (coming from the Palm version) but I warmed up to them pretty quickly!

thank you for the list - it's great to receive such precise feedback!

as for 4. the playback is already stopped (at least this was my intention... tell me if you know a way to trigger incorrect behavior). but stopping the music... such interruptions would sound bad (i guess). anyway, i'm going to test if this would really improve performance.

Kristopher

I wonder if you can save some battery life by calling some Sleep function to save CPU? With the OpenGL display, the CPU shouldn't be used much.

OpenGL chip also drains battery

of course it uses much less power than CPU performing the equivalent operations. on the other hand, CPU can use a specialized algorithm, carefully optimized for just one goal, e.g. rendering the level area in Palm was a quite simple operation that can be compared to drawing just one huge polygon (except for 3D edges in v2.0) and all data was preprocessed for optimal performance. OpenGL chip can only draw triangles so it has much more work to do, plus it repeats most of this work on each frame (which is compensated by the fact it can do it very quickly). as a result, the overall performance is quite similar

however, this comparison is not fair, because OpenGL produces better quality graphics (thanks to texture filtering) and also my current OpenGL rendering routines are not as well written as the CPU rendering, that's the first version, after all.

Tinsel

Sz: Any thoughts on the other suggestions?

Fixing the orientation should be pretty easy to add?

all your other suggestions are so great that i started implementing them already

6. (battery indicator) will be probably implemented by restoring the usual status bar while in menu, which may be not what you meant

yes, fixing the orientation is easy, but i don't know if there is a reliable way to force switching to a given orientation after the application is started. this means i can't make "lock orientation" remember the old orientation on quit and restore it next time the game is started. instead, "lock" will actually mean "lock the initial orientation", but this should not be a problem because the initial orientation will be landscape so it will work as expected.

Neca

Is there an autorestart function? I didn't find it...

Ibanez

All good, except please don't force a double-tab to restart.

Tinsel

Thanks Sz I can't wait for the next version!

Also, I am positive you can lock an orientation based on some other apps that do this. They force the screen to landscape regardless of the orientation of the device. Having BoD do that based on an option setting should be easy, once you have that code.

Some examples of game apps that do this (free apps): Live Poker, Trace, Jelly Car, and Lux Touch. These are all in the iPhone app store.

Tinsel

shaunnortho

I'm beginning to think this is a bug but maybe it's not...
Sometimes it seems that I accelerate at the start of a level a fraction sooner than other times, no matter how quickly I press GO after restarting. I use an iPhone and I do what Xuzz mentioned where you slide your finger from restart to GO and it is reeeally fast. Then I'll try pressing GO slightly slower and end up with a faster/slower/same it doesn't really seem to matter to a degree. I can tell this pretty well relative to my ghost time. Maybe there is someone else who notices something is up?

Xuzz

THIS HAPPENS TO ME TOO

!

When it happens:

Press restart while you are still alive
When it doesn't:

Press restart after you died.

Start playing the level from a different one.

Restart after dying.

Sometimes it actually helps at the beginning though (such as in the level Bottle in Supernatural)

shaunnortho

oooo somebody good has backed me up

Thus proving that I'm not crazy!
So you're saying it only happens when you restart and are still alive? I think if you restart when you die it still might happen when you press the designated restart button to restart. Though, if you press the 'STOP'/try again button to restart then I think it starts normal, or does it start funny sometimes for you regardless of the restart button you use?
Strange

mike flips

Happens to me too

Spence

usually happens to me when im holding the acceleration button and then press restart. It doesn't work after you die because pressing up is now restart.

shaunnortho

What do you mean pressing up? I may sound stupid but there is an up button? Oh maybe it's something in the new version.. I haven't got the new version yet.

Spence

oh sorry, the default acceleration button on the palm is up on the 5-way navigator. I forgot it wasn't the same on the iPhone.