Yes, there is a ritual to go through which seems to work reliably, but that it’s necessary at all is ridiculous. However, I’m sure fixing it is definitely at the top of Asmodee’s list, given their recent record on top-quality MP. Terraforming Mars is just one exemplar of continuous improvement. I’m sure Playdek, to pick one minnow dev, are taking notes on how to do it. Yes, no reason not to have complete confidence in Asmodee Digital.
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Meanwhile, Ascension is way behind on expansions; Ticket to Ride is missing a dozen maps; multiplayer barely works in any of their games …
… but, sure, let’s put Small World on the phone.
Mental giants, the lot of them.
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I think the most telling was when they released Takenoko, Gang of Four, and that house building game that I’ve forgotten the name of all on the same day with no notice and they are all broken messes. Take IMO is unplayable and there hasn’t been a single patch. By the way they were shoved out the door, I’m not expecting one.
My wife and I just got done binge watching all of The Office. I’m pretty sure Creed is working QA over at Asmodee now…
I wouldn’t rule out the idea, that they are trying to bring their games to Apple Watch as well. It would be awesome to play Small World on my wrist.
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Just imagining what that would be like to play gave me a headache.
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Hey, the font size they’re using on the phone right now would definitely fit on the Apple Watch!
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No clue.
From the Smallword 2 TestFlight notes:
- The game now runs on iPhone. That said, it is not yet adapted to the iPhones ratio and the notches. We are working on this. This version is more about the overall app.*
Presumably that means nothing has been done for the UI incl. the text size. So…work in progress.
As it stands now it’s basically useless on our phones at that text size but hopefully size update incoming soon.
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Anybody else in the Wingspan Beta? It’s supposed to come out on the 22nd and I’d love to get a game or two in (I think it will have async? I’m actually not sure, but I think so).
I am but have never played a single game of it. Always up for learning something new though!
I don’t think I am in the beta but I downloaded the demo.
This is easily my most played game ever in cardboard
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I love the game. Love it! Hopefully the app does it justice.
Have you got European Expansion?
My wife and I play probably 6 games a week most weeks, whenever we sit to play she insists we play three and gets cranky if I sweep her.
I think we have a slight house rule on the bird feeder, but it works for us.
Can’t wait for the Oceanic expansion, really looking forward to the Australian birds
I do have it but I haven’t played it yet, which doesn’t make any sense…
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Such a good expansion, really makes the strategies more broad.
Our game scores lowered heaps when we first added it, but now they are back up there. The goals that they added give so much more variety on the final round “lay eggs x 5”.
Just a quick glance at Wingspan since I have to work soon. It doesn’t look like online is async. I’m also not sure how the invites work anyway, as you can invite a friend but I didn’t find a way to actually find a friend.
And the beta’s only open until May 25. So a 3-day beta.
Oh well, I’ll get some single-player stuff done over the weekend and we’ll see how it shakes out.
Hmm, should be no reason not to be a sync. Only very rare interactions, especially on the first set.
There are plenty of games that should have asynchronous but don’t. I honestly don’t know enough about app development to know why; perhaps there is additional cost? I know they’ve been beta testing it for Evolution since December and still can’t get the bugs worked out, so maybe it is technically difficult as well?
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There are many games that don’t get async right because they don’t build their rules engine to properly support it. It needs to be part of the architecture from the beginning, but the easy and less expensive route is to build for offline first and release a single player game. Then go back and reengineer the whole thing to get online working and release a real-time online component. And then go back and reengineer the whole thing a second time to get async working. That seems like the best path when you’re just trying to get a product out the door, but it never works out better in the long run.
It’s no secret that Evolution took a long time in development. I’ve seen comments from one of their developers that they had to try 3 or 4 different approaches to online before they got it working right. It wouldn’t surprise me if the same thing is now happening with async play.
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Thanks for the insight.