Slitherine

Dear Slitherine, Thanks for introducing absolutely the best WWII strat game to the iPad. WOW! The animation, gameplay and multiplayer are best in class. But I'm suffering one repeating glitch. Sometimes after I move my units, the iPad fails to save the game to your server. After multiple attempts, the screen shows all of my units as they were at the beginning of my turn (effectively losing my turn), except that everything is now locked (as if it was the end of my turn). The only option that seems to be available, is to press the flag to save again. If I save, will I lose my turn? (normally, I wouldn't mind too much, but this time I've just come out 3-0 in a 3 vs 3 tank battle, and if I just skip a turn he's going to kick my butt). Can you update the app so that it saves the last game in memory until it has had a chance to correctly upload? Losing turns is v frustrating!! What would you advise me to do? Quit the app, restart, replay the round, and hope I'm as lucky as last time?

It should upload the turn correctly, even though the map might not show the units in their end positions. I'm not sure why you would be having upload troubles. Do you have a particularly slow connection?

Cheers

Pip

Thanks Pip, it's happened 3 or 4 times since I bought the game two weeks ago. sometimes it's when the network is probably being pushed too hard (eg. when i move too far from a router, or when i'm using my regular phone as a 3g hotspot for a wifi-only ipad... battle academy is just too addictive, just one more move, right! . but sometimes the network speeds look fine and the game tries to save a turn, runs the counter timer trying to upload, gets above 100 and gives up. it seems to try twice and then suggests "retiring" (wasn't sure what that meant, so clicked the x for no). at that point, the screen reverts to the way it looked before i played my turn, but with all of the units locked. the only option is to press the flag to end the turn, or to reset the app and start again. i've just clicked the flag to send the "missed turn" to see what happens. will let you know. would be great to have (i) the game save each turn into the ipad's memory somewhere, until it has been confirmed correctly received by your server and (ii) clearer instructions on what to do when there's a failure. Otherwise battle academy is awesome... when's the sequel? do you plan on including naval units anytime soon?

Well, Sealion has a few naval units - although no naval combat. We've actually been chatting about naval recently, but we're not sure that there are enough interesting decisions for the player at the level of detail that the engine could support. Perhaps we can find some naval combat experts who have some ideas on how we could do it .

Thanks for the info on your issue. I will look into it to make sure it is all working as intended. Local saving is on our task list, but we want to ensure that we don't run into problems where (e.g.) you fail to upload, so go do the turn on your PC, then when you come back the iPAd tries to upload your prior turn, and everything gets very confused!

Cheers

Pip

Hi Pip, I can confirm that after my opponent played his turn, my next turn started correctly, ie. with the consequences of all of my moves showing the way that they were supposed to. So the save engine works, it's just a little bit confusing when BA shows the screen before I'd taken my moves when it asked me to click end turn. Naval... oh yes! Actually, you've got a perfect game engine for this already. How about trying Pearl Harbour and Midway, just for fun? Unit graphics stay at one square each, to keep it simple. Battleships would look larger (eg. think King Tiger icon; I have no idea how you make it look so big but still fit it on one square), cruisers and destroyers look smaller. Battleships have longer range than cruisers which have longer range than destroyers (similar to your various types of tank ranges). Submarines are like infantry (ie. they're invisible to everything except destroyers, which have to be within 2 squares to see them). Aircraft carriers (or airfields for Pearl and Midway) act like Bren carriers, but carrying up to 4 units (squadrons of fighters, torpedo bombers, or dive bombers). Obviously aircraft have much longer visibility. So a theoretical Pearl or Midway scenario would begin with players using aircraft to seek out the enemy across fairly large maps, moving ships to avoid detection, evolving into a slog between battleships, with players hoping that they've brought their aircraft carriers close enough to get dive/torpedo bombers to where their needed in time to make a difference. Bombers with adjacent fighters enjoy less vulnerability to other fighters... Just an idea. Happy to flesh it out more if you think it's worth having a go? =)

PS. Sorry to be so demanding. Just you absolutely have the best strat/war game on the iPad by a loooooooong way! Have a great weekend...

PPS. And on your stone vs paper vs scissors engine, eg. cruisers could have very strong AA to knock fighters/bombers out of the sky. So to win, you'd need mixed fleets of carriers (to launch bomber attacks and defensive fighters), battleships (for long range pot shots on cruisers and destroyers, when you can see them), cruisers (mostly for extra AA fire but great versus destroyers), destroyers (to find and kill subs), and subs (for cheeky shots at anything except destroyers)... Like, I said, just an idea. But like BA, you'd be leaps ahead of the competition. Because it's Pearl and Midway, it would really appeal to American mass market (big wallets). And, hey, I'd buy it! =)

If you can script, then maybe you can do it before we manage to get to it?

As I say, it's something we are talking about. It's all (as with many things) in the details.

Cheers

Pip

I just got this occurring on my ipad with one particular multiplayer game.

The way it shows your unmoved units after an upload failure is distracting but after reading Gottaloves posts i'll keep persisting. My connection seems fine, its just this one map 'street fighting' that is being a bitch. I'll try upload it tomorrow.

*update* It was my ISP. Massive packet losses internationally finally fixed.

Glad you are up and running again. Thanks for letting us know the issue.

Cheers

Pip