I signed up
Please include me
I like the concept, and think it has potential. It’s a fun twist on the game.
But it needs a bit more.
-
It’s susceptible to the “left-and-down” strategy. There’s no reason to tilt the iPad to the other side. (Though this did make the game crash after a while, I think because some circles managed to escape the screen and the build-up eventually used up all the memory.). There’s an article somewhere by the guys who wrote Threes about how they worked hard to avoid this strategy (something that the 2048 lot didn’t bother about).
-
Being able to make circles disappear doesn’t work. When the screen gets a bit full then I can just tap all the 3s to get rid of them and get back to a reasonable position. So I’d do away with this feature.
-
I’ve not yet worked out which circles get affected when I tap on one to combine it with others. Is there some simple rule?
-
The fact that several circles are affected means that it violates “conservation of number”. If I combine two 3s into a 6, several other nearby 3s are also promoted to 6. This makes it easier to get a large score than I think it should.
-
This also makes it easy to get large combinations because if I have enough 3s, I tap on one and all becomes 6s (losing one in the process), then I tap on one of those 6s and they all become 12s, and so on until I’ve run out.
Not sure if it’s a bug or is inetentional, but if you have a lot of 3s next to eachother and you tap on one of them, they all turn into 6s. If it’s intentional, I feel it should be removed.
My only other main problem is the buttons. The text keeps on spinning and it can be hard to see what it says. Maybe make it go back and forth, rather than spinning all the way around?
A small little thing that bugs me is the splash screen-it’s a bit blurry in some spots, and has a weird black edge around it.
@Saturn031000, the next build will come out when I have addressed most of the concerns listed above. Also, I chose to twolivesleft site because it contains more info about Codea.
@Coder, I will add you when I send out the next build
1) I'm not quite sure how to combat the left-and-down strategy. As numbers get larger, you can't just stack them up though.
3) The rule is any circle with the same number, within 1.5 * the size of a circle
@SkyTheCoder, would you like the buttons to not spin at all? Also, that is weird, I see no such things when I look at the image on my computer. I don’t have a retina iPad to test.
@ Everyone. It seems many of you dislike the fact that a ball disappears if you tap it, no matter what. I will change it so they only disappear if they have changed another ball.
Some of you also seem to dislike that a ball can affect multiple other balls. I will probably leave this in, for two reasons.
-
It makes the most sense to me since two balls could be equidistant from the tapped one, and it wouldn’t seem right if just one changed, and
-
It is a little thing that differentiates 30 Balls from games like 2048.
Having said that, I could decrease the range of balls, if you all would prefer.
Combining with other balls is fine, and adds a bit to the unpredictability of the game. What I’d like to see, though, is some conservation of quantity. I shouldn’t be able to turn all the nearby 3s into 6s without some cost. Maybe all the nearby balls should coalesce into one who’s total is that of all of them (this would get us more possibilities of numbers, though, so maybe if there are four nearby 3s they become 12 and if there are eight nearby 3s they become 24, but seven nearby 3s become one 12 and three stay as 3s).
High score: 190806
Another reason I don’t like the disappearing ones is that sometimes I’ll tap as one ball goes past, hoping that it’s in range. If it isn’t, the one I tapped disappears. That makes me less likely to take risks and so decreases my enjoyment of the game.
@LoopSpace, I took out the balls disappearing in the new build coming later today. That coalesce idea is interesting, but I feel it might be a bit more confusing to understand the rules of when something would change.
Side note: no more balls disappearing seems to limit the effectiveness of the corner strategy.
I look forward to the new build.
By the way, I do really like the idea. The 2048 game just got boring and all the variants based on simply other ways of combining numbers didn’t add anything particularly new. I like this one because the non-grid makes it a lot more random and so just fun to play (as in, I don’t have to think particularly about strategies).
One thing I’d like is the ability to shake the iPad to stir up the balls a bit. Sometimes there are two that are almost close enough and if I could just shake them up a bit I could get them close.
Oh, and the yellow colours (I think it’s 48 and 96) are hard to distinguish.
@LoopSpace, how does shake-to-stir differ from tilt to move? Can’t you currently shake it and they will move?
The new build is out!
What’s new?
- Game Center
- Ads (only on the menu screen)
- Tapping a ball won’t make it disappear unless it affected others
- Added more powerup info to tutorial
- Tutorial only shows on first run
- Buttons slightly rock, don’t turn all the way
- New launch image
- Changed 96 color to make it more distinguishable from 48
To match the new launch image, I also drew up an icon concept, what do you guys think? Like the new one, prefer the old one? Let me know!
@JakAttak maybe you could combine the two icons? Like with that background, the four balls, and that font? Or maybe just a circle around the 30 in the icon above. Anyway, the second build is great! It makes the game more challenging. Maybe this is because it hasn’t released yet, but Game Center is acting weird. It doesn’t login to my account and an error comes. It works fine on other games, however. So that is something to fix. Also, consider an in-app purchase, maybe in the help menu, for removing ads.
Hey JakAttak i was wondering in the question mark we could have a beta testers button 
The ads appear when playing the game and cover the lower part of the screen (with the ball count).
By “shake” I mean that I should be able to give it a short sharp drop downwards and all the balls fly upwards.
If a + ball is pressed and is in range of another + ball, then the second one becomes a . and doesn’t seem to do anything after that.
I still find the ‘left-and-down’ strategy very effective.
I also still find that I can quickly get rid of a screen full of 3s simply by tapping them all to 6s then to 12s and so on.
I’d add a bit of randomness to the balls. When they’re all lined up and one lower down disappears, they just fall straight down and stay in a straight line. That seems somewhat unrealistic.
1690746
New initial strategy: let the screen fill with 3s and then tap like mad.
@Saturn031000, did you enter into sandbox mode?
@LoopSpace, weird. The ads shouldn’t show up in game. I’ll look into it. The . is just an intermediate step that needs to be used to make a ++. I may take it out, it seems a bit confusing.
What if some other numbers fell from the sky? That might help make it harder to just stack up like numbers.
@JakAttak i really like your game. However i do have some suggestions
If you have an IOS7ish icon and loading image then you should probably have the iOS7 theme throughout as plain colors look a little boring(maybe selectable themes in settings). Also about the app icon, as it’s the first thing that potential users will see it needs to represent what 30balls is (a game puzzle numbers etc.) Apple have this to say on app icons:
Create an abstract interpretation of your app’s main idea. It rarely works well to use a photo or screenshot in an app icon because photographic details can be very hard to see at small sizes. Typically, it’s better to interpret reality in an artistic way, because doing so lets you emphasize the aspects of the subject that you want users to notice.
Also some buttons are covered in the ? section(perhaps rename about) by iAds.
Edit: when the game is paused you should make it more obvious-dim the screen or have a pop up
Also what about dynamic backgrounds in the game:
Shadows, gradient, shapes/particles
Or some kind of effect when balls are merged
@Coder, yes i’m implementing gradients for all the balls and buttons.
I’ve added a dim on the screen and the word paused when you pause the game
the ads showing up everywhere is something i’m looking into
@JakAttak the ads everywhere is a problem. Also, what exactly is ‘sandbox mode’? I agree with @LoopSpace, the balls should have some randomness. And @Dantheman2001, a beta testers section would be nice.
EDIT : hang on, now it says 'Welcome back, ——— SANDBOX
EDIT 2: By the way, who is “DevInHiding”?
In the ? section on iPod and iPhone some text (especially the TLL web address) is too small to read
Edit: strategy:tilt to the side and stack up balls
What about a penalty for balls filling up the screen to the top or balls overflowing over the top of the sceen edges
Hello all - I’ve addressed your latest batch of suggestions.
What’s new in 0.8.7?
-
Ads should not appear outside of menu (if they do, let me know, my Obj-C knowledge isn’t great)
-
Took out the
.powerball, updated tutorial accordingly -
?button changed toAbout -
Updated look of game - gradients all around
-
Particle screen in background of game
-
Added Beta Testers section in About
-
All text in About section is larger
-
Changed launch image