Neither PSP Minis, nor XBLIG support this feature. I’ve used Game Center to provide Achievement and Leaderboard features. (Oh, and Unity developers, I highly recommend the Prime 31 GameCenter plugin)

There are 4 leaderboards that players can post scores on – 3 in Skirmish mode, and 1 in the campaign. The Skirmish mode leaderboards track the number of single-player skirmish wins; one for each difficulty (Easy, Standard and Hard). So, the more skirmish battles you win, the higher up the leaderboard you go.

In Campaign mode, the leaderboard tracks the time taken to beat the campaign. The less time you spend making moves, the higher up the leaderboard you’ll go!

There are 13 achievements to unlock, for such this as winning battles, completing the campaign, reaching quantities of kills in ship-to-alien melee combat, and other stuff.

There is plenty of scope to add more achievements to future updates, too!

L8r, Paul

However I can say for certain that it’s now very close to being ready to submit to Apple for approval. At the moment, I’m expecting to have it ready for submission next week. All going well, the game will be available on the AppStore in mid-November. Cool!

L8r, Paul

There are 568 games this year. Wow! Good luck to all of the contestants.

I previously put out a call for beta testers and got a decent number of responses – which is awesome. I plan to release the game to testers in stages – as I get feedback, make changes and fix any issues, I’ll release to more testers until a finished product is reached. I’m hopeful that will be in mid-October.

There is still time to sign-up, if you fancy trying out the game before it hits the AppStore.

L8r, Paul

It pays to work with professionals

Most of the functionality is now up and running. The main battles are completely playable, with all of the intended features working. The various modes : single player campaign, skirmish vs AI and 2-player skirmish are implemented and working.

Main things to get working still : tutorial, achievements and leaderboards via Game Center, AI tweaks, and a few other bits and pieces.

Here are some things I learned.

Watch Out For Assumptions

It turns out, when designing the game rules I made a lot of assumptions about what players do or don’t know about games in general. Whether it’s a conscious decision or not, i think my misspent youth playing paper-based role-playing games and tabletop wargames comes through in the game rules in Star Hammer Tactics.

An important concept in Star Hammer Tactics is ‘action points’. Each ship that the player controls has an allotment of points that are spent doing moves. Watching people play, it became clear that the way this system was implemented didn’t make sense to everybody, and causes some confusion. What was completely obvious to me (because of my experience with paper-based games), was not obvious to others with difference experiences. I made an assumption, and it was not correct. Lesson learnt!

Interface

The previous versions of Star Hammer came out on the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation consoles. Both used buttons and direction pads to control everything in the game. The iPad has a touch screen, and no buttons. Hmmm.

After watching people play the game, I think there are a few areas where the transition from buttons to touch screen can still use some improvement. Two notable areas are selecting a target for your missiles, and when adjusting the attack/defence ratings of your ships.

Photos

Take photos at these types of events. They make the blog post more interested. Doh!

Overall, I’m pleased to say the response to Star Hammer Tactics was positive. Every feedback form I received ticked ‘Yes’ to the question ‘Do the overall production values match your expectations for a professionally produced iPad game’. I received a number of comments saying the game looked great, so that was awesome. Based on the areas I perceive need improvements, I have a plan I think will immeasurable improve the overall play experience, and make it far more accessible to far more people – and that’s a good thing.

Thanks to my awesome wife Joanne for helping with the showcase, and also to the crew at Lets Make Games for yet another successful event. I can’t wait to show the completed version of Star Hammer Tactics on iPad at the Christmas party!

L8r, Paul

I’ll be there showcasing the most up-to-date alpha build of the iPad version of Star Hammer Tactics. I’m hoping to get some feedback about whether the new touch-based interface is good, and also see generally how players react to the game in it’s current state. I think it’s going really well, and is shaping up to be the best version yet, but some other views would be really helpful.

I hope you can make it! Details on the flying above.

L8r, Paul

Most of the time and effort over the last week or two has gone into redesigning the user interface to make use of the touch screen. When the game was originally developed, it was made for devices with buttons. However I think that a strategy game and a touch screen are a perfect fit, and the new interface is coming along very nicely. I’ve found that designing a *good* touch interface is a little more involved that is appears. Iteration is the key though, so I’ll be interested to see how it goes when more people play it.

Almost all of the gameplay has been implemented.

For the iPad version, I’m planning to use 3D models instead of sprites for ships, missiles, etc. A large part of the reason for this is that it’s being developed in Unity3D and so using 3D models is incredibly easy – compared to say the PSP SDK. I’ll hopefully be able to post some screenshot soon.

L8r, Paul