08-16-2012, 05:43 AM
7F4C5B47634C475A4C47290 wrote:
Midnight Mansion fails on almost all counts. It's not positioned well to be a top-seller on iPad / iPhone. Yet Rob, I can tell you that the iPhone version actually DOES work pretty darn well -- better than you'd expect, and is actually more fun (imo) than the iPad version, because holding the iPad in a way that lets you control it with D-pad style controls is more awkward.
Part of this is that I added a lot to the iPhone version to make it work well on that device. The screen actually scrolls so that Jack is never under a D-pad button. It's pretty smooth and intuitive, so you almost don't even notice it.
Huh.. well, I'll take your word for it, and I'll be very interested to try it out then. I have both iPhone and iPad, so I look forward to comparing and contrasting the versions. You're actually playing it on the iPhone and not the simulator? I don't think we ever talked about this before, but I did wonder how someone might approach a game for the iPhone and iPad. I mean, in some respects they're different platforms. It's almost as though you'd have to tailor an experience to each. Kind of a bummer to the independent developer who is trying to get as much mileage from portability as he can.
As for the iPhone, I was thinking you'd have to go one of two ways with it: shrink the rooms down, losing many details and making it hard to avoid some obstacles, or keep the viewable area large, but limit the viewport. This would turn the handheld version into a sort of scrolling game where you might only view the part of the room that Jack happens to be standing in. I can see how that might actually ramp up the difficulty of some mansions, and make them seem even larger than they are.
I was wondering if the iPhone version would be something of an adaption rather than a straight port. Thanks for the info! Looking forward to continuing to support an independent game developer, even if it's only a sideline for you at present.
