Review & Strategy Guide: the best game add-on this year (so far): Orions: Deckmasters - General Topics

Review & Strategy Guide: the best game add-on this year (so far): Orions: Deckmasters
The new add-on, Orions: Deckmasters, for probably the best (native) Windows Mobile game of all times, Orions, has just been released. It not only adds 45 (!) brand new cards, but also implements most of the custom features I’ve asked for in my previous Orions articles.
I’ve been playing it for more than three weeks and, now, I feel I’m able to write a very thorough guide and tips. Please consult my two, related articles HERE and HERE for more info on what the game is all about, how it should be played; in this article, I only elaborate on the new cards and new modes.
In addition to the new cards, there’re brand new duel modes:
A "Custom Decks" feature, which allows to build your own deck and use it for fighting in duels. You can put any cards (at most, 24 and, at most, 5 for each element) on these decks. There are some 10 individual decks you can use.
By using these customized decks and utilizing my favorite cards (more on them later, in the Appendix), it was only in about 2% of cases that the CPU was able to defeat me in regular duel games played in Hard mode. Just a comparison: in the standard mode, the same figure is about an order of magnitude higher.
There’s also a new "Draft" mode, where players pick cards out of randomly generated "pool" before each game, and then use these cards as their fighting decks. This also makes the game less random (and you also know, before starting to playing, what cards the enemy has if you pay attention to watching him selecting the cards), while it still isn’t so restricted as with the before-explained custom deck mode.
Note that there’s an unofficial PDF manual downloadable HERE; the PMG folks don’t plan to publish a similar, updated one for the new game. Also note that the developers promise a touchscreen-less MS Smartphone (AT LAST!) and a BlackBerry(!) version of the game. Incidentally, BlackBerry means Java MIDlet. Java MIDlets mean out-of-the-box (or, at least, after some VERY simple conversion steps) compatibility with standard MIDlet environments; this may also mean other advanced MIDlet-capable platforms (for example, Symmbian S60) may also be able to run the game some day.
The game is, of course, a must to buy. I've too purchased it in order to support the developer (I've previously had it so I didn't really need a new license, but I've found it so excellent that I though to myself the developer definitely deserves this).
Now, let’s take a thorough look at the best new cards.
The best new cards
Creatures
Air / Lord Lighting (Level (price): 9/ Health (HP): 22/ Attack (strength): 5): Whenever attacks Air / Zeus, kills it. That is, if you want to kill Zeus because you have a lot of units on the deck with less than level 7, want to defend them from Zeus’ pretty effective and cheap lighting spell, the opposing slot to Zeus is free and and also have some way of making sure you can stop Zeus attacking in the next turn (by, for example, Earth / Spider’s Web), using this card is excellent.
Its spell is a bit less powerful than that of Zeus if you have little Air (the damage delivered equals to the current air) or some other direct, comparable spells like Life / Knight’s pretty powerful spell attacking all the other cards; but can be cast on any other enemy, even over level 7, unlike Zeus’ spell.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Lordlightn.jpg
Life / Monk (7/ 16 / 1): probably the best, new card; highly recommended. While its attack is pretty bad, its auto-healing effect and, even more importantly, its spell is probably the most handy of all spells. The spell decreases of the target creature’s hit by 2 until 1 until 1, it’s already at 1 and with, say, Fire / Salamander or Earth / Dryad increased or in the very few cases when the damage is pure magical and can’t be decreased – see the brand new Death / Evil Sorcerer. With it, you can quickly decrease the direct attack of even the most lethal opponents.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Monk.jpg
(Note that this was a lvl6 card during the closed betatest. I was one of the testers that pointed out it was far too powerful for being lvl6 only.)
Death / Shadow (5 / 10 / 3) is particularly useful in that it only takes half the damage from non-Life cards.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/DShadow.jpg
Death / Assassin is very important if your enemy has a Life / Etherial on the board and you quickly want to get rid of it – even if the opposing slot is taken. Of course, you still have the other, already-known ways of killing of Life / Etherial. It’s also excellent at instantly killing any other creature.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Assassin.jpg
Life / Kermit’s (6 / 8 / 2) spell (Gift of Life) is really-really useful to make sure your high-level cards like Life / Chimera or Water / Kraken are reborn after being killed. This way, by only spending 10 Life, you can even restore cards of level 13…15.
Beware: as it’s a good spell, it can be stolen via Death / Darklord.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Kermit.jpg
The biggest advantage of Water / Water Troll (6 / 16/ 4) is delivering 4 damage to three opposing creatures at the same time – for 1 Water only. Really useful if you don’t want to spend 13 Water on the similarly-working Hydra (which, in addition, would leave your Water at 0 all the time, unless you have additional ways of quickly increasing it – via, for example, Nixie)
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/WaterTroll.jpg
Air / Soul of Winds (6 / 200 (decreasing by 20 each turn) / 4 (default)) is THE card against strong card - and pretty much useless against weak cards like Earth / Dispercer or Life / Monk. The latter also means you’ll want to put very weak cards against it if your opponent brings this card to the deck.
The initial (but, in 10 turns, fully emptying) health means if it’s put against a very strong card, the damage caused by the opposing card will deliver little total damage. As the strength of the card equals to that of the opposing card, it’ll be pretty damaging to the opposing card. That is, if it’s put against, say, a Life / Chimera (13/30/10), it’ll only lose 10 + 20 HP every turn, while it, delivering 10 damage every turn, will kill Chimera in no more than three rounds (unless Chimera is protected / rehealed). And it’s really cheap!
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/SoulofWinds.jpg
Life / Valor is really useful if you can make sure (with, for example, Elven Archers or other spellcaster cards) there’re no opposing cards when it attacks the enemy owner; then, it’ll 14 damage (by default). Otherwise, its damage (to an enemy card) is 7 only.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Valor.jpg
Death / Evil Sorcerer is useful if you’re afraid of getting hit by Life / Kermit’s spells, decreasing your strength. Also useful against other spells and magical attacks.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/EvilSorcerer.jpg
Fire / Berserker (7 / 20 / 5) isn’t particularly good unless you need to quickly get rid of a very dangerous card causing huge damage (for example, an Air / Fairy or an Earth / Elven Archer) and it doesn’t have more HP than 12.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Berserker.jpg

Earth / Kobold (6 / 10/ 5), because of its blocking any damage under 5, can be very useful when you, for example, play against the CPU and it uses Water / Scylla. Then, by reducing Scylla’s hit to, say, 3 by using the new Life / Monk, you will have a constant source of water. (The AI is still "dumb" not to see Scylla is useless and keeps rehealing it when it reaches too low levels, giving you a lot of free Water). Of course, there are several other cards you can use the same trick with – for example, Air / Gargoyle with the Petrification spell or Air / Astral Cloud.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Kobold.jpg
Fire / Wall of fire (3/ 25/ 0) is one of the best cards. I consider it much better than the similar (3-level, dealing 3 damage) Fire Spikes if you want to quickly put a card on the deck, while quickly dealing 4 damage to all your enemies. Note that the card itself doesn’t attack; that is, if you need to take out the opposing card and don’t have other means like Earth / Elven Archer, forget it.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/WallOfFire.jpg
Earth / Dispercer (5 / 13 / 1) isn’t particularly strong (deals 1 damage only) but, when it dies, you receive one element each. For example, against a non-speller / non-positive-side effects unit, it’s a good choice.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Dispercer.jpg
Blade Master (9 / 30/ 8) should also be your preferred card because of its dealing 1 damage to all the enemy cards upon getting hit and its free (!) Shuriken spell dealing 2 damage to the other owner.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/BladeMaster.jpg
Water / Giant Turtle (8 / 20 / 3) is useful against low-HP cards (typically, cards under or around 10 HP) because, once the card’s HP decreases under 10, it’ll be instantly killed.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/GiantTurtle.jpg
Water / Elementarist (7 / 18/ 3) is a very useful card to quickly kill very dangerous, powerful cards like Chimeron: the card you cast Magic Link on will receive the same damage Elementarist suffers from attacks hitting her. That is, if you want to get rid of a card really quickly, place it against a powerful, strong card and link immediately. Note that the Magic Link spell is very expensive; that is, use with caution.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Elementarist.jpg
Earth / Elven Archer (7 / 19 / 0) is also one of the cards I consider the most useful. It can not only attack any other card, even right after summoning, but also increases Earth by one each turn. I’ve found bringing 3 or, in cases, even 4 archer to the deck pretty much lethal, particularly if the opponent doesn’t have mass-killing spells like Fireball: any new enemy card brought to the deck by the opponent can be instantly killed (in most cases, right in the next round). As it has no direct attack, you’ll need another card to directly attack the enemy owner, though.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/ElvenArcher.jpg
Spells
Air / Wings of Wisdom: particularly useful spell to quickly bump up all the elements by 2. Note that the official description states this doesn’t apply to Air; this isn’t true as yet because of a bug, which will only later be fixed. Until then, you’ll want to use it if you don’t have other spells to cast or cards to place on the deck. Particularly useful when you have Life / Chimera on board, with its halving the cast cost.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/WingsOfWisdom.jpg
Life / Armor of God is also very useful for quickly healing, blessing your card and removing negative spells (like poison or strength reduction) from them.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/ArmorOGod.jpg
Air / Moonlight is a very-very good spell if there are very few enemy cards on the board (it heals them too) and you quickly need to fully heal all your cards.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Moonlight.jpg
Fire / Blood Ritual: particularly useful for quickly bumping up your fire elemental; particularly if you have a Chimera on the deck, making this spell even cheaper.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/BloodRitual.jpg
Death / Enslave is also very useful to quickly steal the strongest enemy card. You can even have a gain of 8 by stealing a level 15 card (for example, Water / Kraken) with this level 7 spell. In this regard, it’s much more useful than the more expensive (lvl 8), comparable Air / Black Wind because the latter doesn’t steal the enemy card.
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Enslave.jpg
Life / Pure Heart: another very useful (and comparatively cheap – lvl5 only) card. Especially useful against the CPU when it starts using Death / Black Mage’s Extract Soul to change all its cards into Death / Ghosts because of the extra 10 damage delivered to Death cards. (Incidentally, this seems to be a bug with the AI – sometimes, it changes far more expensive and powerful cards into Ghosts when it would be absolutely unnecessary. Using ghosts, BTW, should be avoided whenever possible because of the owner’s also taking damage from direct attacks. That is, I don’t see why the AI likes it so much, particularly when spending 2 Death elements on Extract Soul spells.)
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/PureHeart.jpg
Appendix: my favorite (no-spell) cards
With these cards, I was able to beat the AI in the vast majority of cases – in Hard level. Note that this is just MY favorite deck when playing the AI; yours may be completely different. Also note that I don’t present a deck optimized for games with spells enabled; then, the restricted number of the in-game available cards would mean I would have needed to leave out some very cool cards. As a rule of thumb, I would have selected Fire / Fireball, Life / Pure Heart and/or Armor of God, Air / Chain Lightning and/or Moonlight and/or Wings of Wisdom and Death / Enslave - along with, of course, Life / Chimera (to halve the price of the spells) and Life / Unicorn (to protect my cards from destructive spells).
Water:
Nixie (to bump up water and to deal a lot of damage to Fire creatures)
Leviathan (to heal the owner; to deal 1 damage to all opponent cards)
Ice Wizard (to fight other Water creatures (1 damage from them); to bump up water; in need, to quickly heal owner (albeit, for this, Leviathan is preferred)
Tython (to quickly heal the cards)
Fire: Red Drake (because of the +3 damage upon summoning and not taking any damage from opposing fire creatures; that is, the most ideal card to fight Fire cards)
Diablo (mostly because of its spell, particularly when used in pair, mutually strengthening each other)
Efreet (because of the excessive damage sent back to the attacker; high HP and comparatively high strength)
Wall of fire (very cheap but, still, immensely useful). (You might want to go for Blade Master instead of this or, say, Efreet; it is also very useful and causes direct damage to the enemy owner without using any mana)
Air: Manticore (for the spell to quickly get rid of really dangerous spells like that of Monk, Elven Archer, Fairy etc.)
Zeus (to quickly get rid of cards below lvl7. If your opponent rarely uses low-level cards, you might want to go for Air / Lord Lighting instead)
Fairy (to cause immense damage to the other owner if he uses powerful, strong cards)
Nymph (to bump up air) (you might want to go for Soul of Winds instead, which is also very useful against strong opposing cards)
Earth: Satyr (the best Earth "bump-up" card - not counting in Elven Archers - particularly when deployed at the beginning of the game and particularly as the first card to deploy)
Elemental (very strong; bumps up Earth really fast; has a nice, free, protective spell)
Pyhon (suffocating is very useful, particularly if the opponent goes the Forest Spirit route)
Forest Spirit (to deploy against strong cards – if you don’t use Air / Soul of Winds against strong opponents; to heal owner)
Life: Monk (one of the best cards – both its spell and auto-healing are really worth using)
Chimera (strong; especially useful at healing owner; albeit in a no-spell game not as useful as in a game with spells)
Ethereal (to deploy against very though opponents or Scylla)
Paladin (in case you need to quickly take out a strong Death opponent like Dark Druid or Grim Reaper)
Death: Dark Druid (comparatively strong; great at healing owner)
Darklord (owner- and self-healing; stealing "good" spells, particularly that of Life / Kermit).

Nice review Menneisyys,
I've had Orions since it came out, and have both the addon's too. Its a top game, in the magic/pokemon esque mold. the deckmasters adds alot of features i had wanted to see for a long time.
The ability to duel with your own custom decks is great in its self. How ever i would like to see an improvement to the campaign game, something like HOMM would be great (i have palm heroes which is pretty much just that) with no standard cards and you have to buy all the cards you hold in your deck.

UPDATE (06/26/2008): Make sure you read JAMM's review HERE.

Related

The Orions: Legend of Wizards Strategy Guide & Thorough Spell & Creature Chart

The Orions: Legend of Wizards Strategy Guide & Thorough Spell & Creature Chart
You may already have heard of Orions: Legend of Wizards, without doubt the best Windows Mobile game released so far this year - and, I'd say, the best turn-based strategy game for the Windows Mobile game ever released. It’s one of the very few games you MUST buy – believe me, if you don’t mind wasting some time on learning the rules and getting known the cards, you WILL love it.
There already are some Orions: Legend of Wizards reviews out there; I really recommend that of Ben Stanley here, that of Doug Goldring here, that of Allistair Lee here and that of nonstandardized here. I've also posted some remarks / comments on the first two reviews in their Comments section, which may also be worth checking out.
What I have always wanted to do is creating an objective, easy-to-use, chart-based unit / spell comparison as I did some 8.5-9 years ago for Blizzard's Starcraft (I’ve published quite a few articles on Starcraft, the different units etc., mostly in a similar, tabular format). Knowing what your creatures and spells are capable of and when they are best used is the best way to beat your opponent. Therefore, what I present here is not “another” generic review, but more of a supplement to all these already-existing reviews, containing a lot of never-before-published, “advanced” stuff.
Please note that the rest of this guide assumes you already know the game at least at a basic level. That is, I won't explain how the cards are placed in the empty slots / spaces, how spells should be used, what elements there are, how the cards are randomly selected in Duel and need to be purchased in Campaign etc. This guide is written for players that do know the basics of the game and only need some expert gaming help, recommendation, strategy advice & clarification. If you need a quick recap, please read, strategy-wise, Doug Goldring's review and the comments.
As with other, decent strategy games like Starcraft (let’s now forget that Starcraft is a real-time strategy game, not a turn-based one – a decent Starcraft player will still play Starcraft as a turn-based strategy game and will always beat a less experienced player doing less turn based-like micromanagement), every unit and spell has a counter-unit or spell of, in general, less (!) price. This means if you have all or most of the recommended cards, you will be able to, to a certain degree, successfully counter-attack the cards / spells of your enemy. Everything depends on how thoroughly you know what spells and creatures you and your enemy have, what they are particularly sensitive to and what are the sometimes very important side-effects of summiting a card (in most cases, adding HP to friendly and/or stealing HP from enemy cards).
Yes, this game, strategy-wise, is as advanced as, say, Starcraft, which also requires a lot of learning to become a decent player. This also means you’ll need at least a week to master this game – assuming you play at least 2-3 hours a day (which isn’t a hard thing to do because the title is so damn enticing and gripping – you’ll love pulling out your PDA to continue playing while, say, you’re waiting for something, particularly if you can also enable the in-game music).
Unfortunately, the in-game creature / spell explanations are, in general, far from verbose and, in some cases, are very hard to understand (see for example the in-game explanation “Steal Spell” of Death / Darklord). As, after playing the game a LOT, I know all these units and spells, this was also one of the reasons I’ve spent quite a lot of time compiling this chart (and writing this guide). I hope it is WAY more informative and cleaner than the in-game help, particularly when it comes to comparing and mentioning the alternatives to a given unit / spell (particularly enemy owner HP decreasing-wise).
The chart can be found here. Make sure you open it in a maximized browser window.
I don’t think much explanation is needed for the chart; therefore, I only elaborate on some of its columns. Let me know if the meaning of some of the columns can’t be understood; then, in a later version of this guide, I’ll elaborate on them too.
The most important column will be the “Recommended?” one. In there, I’ve explained whether the card is recommended and if it is, when, under what circumstances you must consider using it. This column is of extreme importance to achieve the goal I’ve outlined above: to find the cheapest and, therefore, most economical solution for a given task. For example, if your opponent summons a Death / Grim Reaper, which costs 12 Death points, you can easily counter-attack this creature by quickly summoning Life / Paladin and casting Exorcizm. In addition to having only spent 8+2 Life points (that is, 2 less than with the enemy’s Death spell) on the summoning and the casting, you will still have a moderately-strong (4 damage done to non-Death opponents) Paladin with (still) 10 HP on the board, also ready to quickly kill (via the above-mentioned Exorcizm spell) another Death creature. Now, think of how much it would have cost you to get rid of Grim Reaper WITHOUT relying on Life / Paladin (and, assuming, you don’t have (or, currently can’t afford) Air / Black Wind or Fire / Fireball, two of the other, excellent instant killer spells) – yes, you would have spent much more. (Incidentally, this is how a decent Starcraft player, putting special emphasis on casting advanced spells, plays. A simple Plague spell from the Zerg Defiler can cause, resource-, micromanagement- and time-wise, orders of magnitude more loss to the enemy than the original price of a single Defiler, even including climbing the tech tree to be able to produce it at all.)
Also, in order to make looking up information as quick as possible, I’ve also tried to separate information belonging to different categories. For example, this is why I’ve created a separate column about “Increasing / decreasing elemental”. For example, if you need to quickly look up which creature will help in increasing an elemental (mostly the one it’s belonging to, except for Life / Apostate, which increases Death instead of its Life home element), you just look at this column in the section of the given elemental (sections, in order to save horizontal screen estate, are separated in the first column; I’ve denoted a new elemental section with bold there) and search for any entry. For example, if you look at the Water section, you’ll see there are two creatures to increase Water: Nixie and Ice Wizard. (While the otherwise very strong Hydra will actually decrease it each turn by two – until it reaches zero. I’ve also included these cases in here.)
Another example: when you want to be absolutely sure you summon a creature to an empty slot, you choose the slot (the opposing creature) taking the “Particularly vulnerable to...” column into account. For example, if there is an empty slot with an opposing Fire (enemy) unit, you won’t want to put a Water / Ice Wizard or Ice Guard in there because they sustain 200% damage from any Fire creatures or spells. Taking this further, you will also want to consult the “Immune to...” column in there to see whether there are any creatures immune to Fire creatures (as can clearly be seen, Red Drake is, in addition to the well-known, low-cost example of Earth / Forest Spirit). Finally, you’ll also want to consult the “Delivers extra damage to..." column to see whether there are any creatures (or spells) that deliver some extra damage to Fire creatures. (As can clearly be seen, Water / Nixie is one of them; that is - if you don’t use any modifiers like Earth / Dryad in the next slot or Fire / Salamander anywhere else - it’ll deliver 2*3, that is, 6 damage.)
Similarly, if you need to counter-attack a very powerful Water creature spending as little money as possible with the best outcome, you (in addition to the joker-of-all-trades Earth / Forest Spirit, preferably backed up with an Earth / Dryad in the next slot in order to bump up its attack by not less than 2) may want to look up a unit immune to Water spells / creatures. Just a quick glance at “Immune to…”: yes, Water / Ice Wizard (only 1 damage only taken from any enemy Water unit) is one of your best choices in this case. (Let’s only hope that, seeing this, your enemy won’t use Fire spells like Fire Spikes or – for you, even worse – Fireball to quickly get rid of your Ice Wizard - don’t forget the two ice-based Water creatures are particularly sensitive to fire. Or, it won’t use a cheap, but, in this case, pretty powerful (2*2 base damage to Ice Wizard and Guard) Fire / Cerberus in the next slot of the opposing one in order to protect it from your direct attack.)
Also, if you quickly want to further decrease the health of the enemy’s owner but don’t have (currently – because of the lack of elemental points – access to) the traditional HP decreasing spells like Death / Steal Life, just summoning a middle-priced Death / Banshee will inflict 8 damage to the enemy owner right at summoning. In order to quickly find this information, you’ll need to scrutinize both the “Increasing / decreasing opponent health” and the “Effect on enemy owner” columns (these columns are pretty similar in meaning; I still wanted to keep them separate to better separate spell- and unit-based damage).
Note that the “Price when produced” column refers to the Campaign mode. In Dual mode, it has no meaning as, unfortunately, you can only have 4 randomly selected cards in each element in Dual games. This is one of the most annoying shortcomings of the game, in addition to, in Campaign mode, 1. the inability to destroy buildings and 2. to get rid of unwanted cards in order to be able to purchase other ones. Implementing a solution to the latter two would be really beneficial because you can easily reach the maximal number of the structures on a given Orion (see the PS section below) and you will always want to use other cards than is currently available. I will definitely ask the More Games Entertainment folks to add the possibility of more cards for example playing Dual games – it’ll greatly enhance for example multiplayer gaming.
PS: just a remark. None of the reviews I’ve read so far mentioned the fact that you can’t build an unlimited number of structures on a given Orion. This MUST be kept in mind when you, for example, in Hard games, only possess 2-3 Orions and allocate most of your experience points to, as is also discussed at the comment section here, “Power” in order to quickly get some of the better cards, even at the beginning of the game, as the only way to defeat much better opponents. Then, if you fill up your words with resource harvesters / converters like in this screenshot, after reaching the building number threshold, you won’t be able to build anything else (see this screenshot showing this), even when there would still be plenty of space to build your new structures on.
Incidentally, the screenshot above also shows the optimal number of each resource harvester / converter. As can clearly be seen, you’ll need the most Crysols harvesters to bump up Crysols production (otherwise, an Orion only produces 20 Crysols a day). The number of Sulmors converters should be slightly (about 50-70%) less than those of the Crysols harvesters. Then, the number of Goldius converters should be about 5-15% of that of the Crysols harvesters, while Eractus converters should be about 2-4%. If you fill up 2-3 Orions (almost) entirely with resource harvesters / converters, you won’t likely to ever run into resource shortage – actually, most of the time, your Crysols will still remain at 9999 (the maximal level).
PS 2: as you may have already noticed, in the chart, I’m referring to the six elementals using italic; also, when referring to a particular spell / creature card, I always name the elemental it belongs to so that you can more easily find it. Finally, when referring to a spell of a particular creature, I also mention the creature, along with its elemental to greatly speed up the lookup.

save the animal from ninja new physics based puzzle game on android market

hi guys,
i have just launched my new game save the animal from ninja its a exciting physics based puzzle game
you can try it from android market :-
market.android.com/details?id=com.TigerCubStudio.SaveTheAnimal&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5UaWdlckN1YlN0dWRpby5TYXZlVGhlQW5pbWFsIl0
features :-
30 levels in increasing difficulty
realistic or real time physics
standrad physics based puzzles
support for android 1.6+
hd graphics
runs at full speed
realistic jungle music
easy to play but very hard to solve all levels
blast mode and fruit mode is coming soon for more enjoyment
highly optmized only 3 mb
how to play
you have to drag and drop objects from top right corner in such a way that it will cover the animal when you have dropped all the objects test now button and two ninja will come on the clicking of that button ninja will throw their weapons randomly at any place if that will touch animal you will lost else level cleared
Hi,
I've tried your game a little bit and would like to point out some things, which, in my opinion could be improved:
* main menu text is really hard to read in colorful background, maybe adding an background views, rounding them and making white with transparency, would help. I'm not a big fan of that font either, but that's a matter of taste.
* ad area view is larger than the ad itself, doesn't look good
* what's the point of having to drop all the obstacles from fixed height? It looks like it's only to demonstrate that there is physics in the game and make the construction more difficult than it needs to be
* first time playing I had no idea about ninjas and where are they attacking from maybe some in-game guide lines would help or maybe a way to try their attack angles before placing all objects
* I can't scroll level list if I start scrolling on a level button (that fires an event to go to the level)
* Some animal animations (hurt/happy/falling) would be nice
SnottyApps said:
Hi,
I've tried your game a little bit and would like to point out some things, which, in my opinion could be improved:
* main menu text is really hard to read in colorful background, maybe adding an background views, rounding them and making white with transparency, would help. I'm not a big fan of that font either, but that's a matter of taste.
* ad area view is larger than the ad itself, doesn't look good
* what's the point of having to drop all the obstacles from fixed height? It looks like it's only to demonstrate that there is physics in the game and make the construction more difficult than it needs to be
* first time playing I had no idea about ninjas and where are they attacking from maybe some in-game guide lines would help or maybe a way to try their attack angles before placing all objects
* I can't scroll level list if I start scrolling on a level button (that fires an event to go to the level)
* Some animal animations (hurt/happy/falling) would be nice
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1) ya right i will add something like button behind this text
2)on which device you are i have test it in three devices in none it is outside of actual ad
3) thats necessary just imagine how it would be if you have to directly put the object where you want also that can create some weird issue what if one put object on top of other object also by doing this it will make some what accuracy to drop the object as because of physics you have to calculate little bit
4) i had written it clearly in android market description seems no one is reading that may be one extra screen shot in instruction can help
5) that's why there is no button at right side
6) not possible because that needs designer and with my current earning it is even hard to afford dog or cat even dare to say mouse so no chance for designer
Hajsaaaaaaa
Sent from my GT-S5660 using Tapatalk
tigercubstudio said:
2)on which device you are i have test it in three devices in none it is outside of actual ad
3) thats necessary just imagine how it would be if you have to directly put the object where you want also that can create some weird issue what if one put object on top of other object also by doing this it will make some what accuracy to drop the object as because of physics you have to calculate little bit
4) i had written it clearly in android market description seems no one is reading that may be one extra screen shot in instruction can help
5) that's why there is no button at right side
6) not possible because that needs designer and with my current earning it is even hard to afford dog or cat even dare to say mouse so no chance for designer
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2. I've tested it on Galaxy Tab 7 and then on Galaxy Tab 10 (in this case ad area is even more "outside of ad"
4. Well, still, I mean there's no indication of possible danger to poor animal when you start your first game And, it's true, no one reads market descriptions and I don't think many are looking for game play instructions there either.
5. Wrong answer, really. I'll write a bit more below.
6. I completely understand you there
So, to elaborate more on points 4 and 5, I think you should give your game to as many friends as possible (and it's best if they haven't tried it yet) and just let them try to play. You'll see how differently they think and behave in a game environment being there for the first time. In my case (simple running/jumping game) I was surprised to see them just blindly tapping all over the screen trying to do "anything" and, despite the fact that there's instructions in the start of every level, they had a hard time finding out that game character can do double jumps and will jump higher if they hold finger instead of tapping it.
In your game, gameplay is much more complex, so tutorial with clear instructions is a must, in my opinion.
As for game level select, I can asure you, that 9 of 10 will try to scroll the button list, not the side, where is no indication that it's scrollable and nothing to scroll there.
Also, I've experienced, that in the start of some levels animals are being affected by physics (or maybe a wind?) and starts to roll, sometimes falling from the platforms. I don't know if it's intentional or not, but it makes level unnecessary hard.
Ah, one more thing.. I'm not sure that asking users for a 5 star rating is a good idea. In many levels.
And, lastly, take my advice with a grain of salt, since I'm just an amateur developer, still learning all these little things: what can annoy your app user and what can make them happy.
2) ya may be i cant see that is out side of ad because i have all device with small screen 3.2 to 3.5 inch so in large screen it will totally visible.
3) yup i will add extra screenshot to with ninja and darts to show animals are in danger from ninja
4) well thinking to add scroll bar somewhat like in browser to move how will be that
also the idea to try game on friends will be much better i will definitely. use that from now
"
Also, I've experienced, that in the start of some levels animals are being affected by physics (or maybe a wind?) and starts to roll, sometimes falling from the platforms. I don't know if it's intentional or not, but it makes level unnecessary hard."
yup 100% intentional need to be fast to solve those levels
"Ah, one more thing.. I'm not sure that asking users for a 5 star rating is a good idea. In many levels."
well i am not giving popup in middle of the game so definitely it will not annoy user but i am asking every time at the time of exit to give rate until they give rate thought user will give rating if they dont like this just crazy experiment with not much good result
one more game
guys you can also try my other game "feed fruit to the animal'
http://goo.gl/frGXN

[Game][2.0+] Animal Shogi - Fun, free two-player board game!

Hello,
I have just released Animal Shogi, a two-player board game which is a variant of shogi (Japanese chess). With a small board of 3x4 squares, it is easy to learn and can be played in 5-10 minutes - great for learning the concepts and thinking of chess and shogi. It is 100% free (no adverts) and it donation-supported (if anyone ever wants to!). Download it and keep it on your phone for when you have a friend to play with. It is 2-player only as a writing an AI system is a bit beyond me at the moment, but I'll look into it if there is enough demand!
Market address: market.android.com/details?id=com.animalshogi (Can't do links yet)
Please try it out and let me know what you think!
== RULES ==
1) Players take it in turns to make a move, with the starting player determined randomly. On each move they can either move a piece one space in a direction indicated on the piece, or drop a piece from their hand.
2) When you move one of your pieces on top of one of your opponents pieces, it is captured and goes into your hand. You can then place it back on the board as your own piece later.
3) If a Chick reaches the far end of the board, it is promoted into a powerful Hen! A Hen reverts to a Chick when it is captured.
== WINNING ==
There are two ways to win the game:
1) By catching, or 'checkmating', your opponent's Lion. This is where you manage to trap the Lion so that it is guaranteed you can capture it on your next turn, no matter what move your opponent makes.
2) By moving your Lion to the far side of the board, as long as doing so does not allow your Lion to be captured on the following turn.
DEFEND YOUR LION AT ALL COSTS
Version 1.0.1
Just updated to 1.0.1. After looking at a few other apps on here with no permissions, I realised that "Write External Storage" was not necessary for storing saved games. Now Animal Shogi requires no special permissions too!
MoSync's renaming this permission to "Write File Storage" in their IDE didn't make things any clearer...
I try and comment.
Add market link in first post help you for more comments.
You are reading my firm
Looks nice. Love animals.

Diablo 3: Add Animations to Monk Skills

This is fresh news that blizzard has updated skills effects of monk, including Sweeping Wind, Crippling Wave, Deadly Reach, and adding Exploding Palm, Way of The hundred Fists and Fists of Thunder in the future patch.
We’re certainly aware of how we’re handling our skill animation sets, as well as your feedback regarding the monk specifically. While working on any piece of the game we have to make production calls on what has the biggest benefit for the time we’re spending on it, because time is quite simply a very precious commodity. We made some choices, some that you may not agree with, to ensure a solid level of animations throughout the game. To make a call on not displaying a weapon during a skill may allow us to animate a multitude of spell casts for a demon, a higher priority animation for another character, or unique animation to ensure an in-game cut-scene feels epic. Making the tough calls on when and where the game and players as a whole will benefit most is one of the most difficult things the producers, designers and artists have to do.
It’s worth noting that in addition to making those tough calls we take a logical approach to skill animations, and there are some where we purposely do not show a weapon. This is mostly for summoning or buff abilities where a weapon doesn’t play into the skill, such as mantras, or Inner Sanctuary. There are other skills where we purposely do not show a weapon because the concept of the skill is not connected to a weapon, such as Seven-Sided Strike and Lashing Tail Kick. In addition there are skills that purposely do not show a weapon because the skill is conceptually about the monk using his fists or hands, such as Way of the Hundred Fists or Exploding Palm.
Does this mean we're likely to see the usable weapons for classes increase past release day? Or would all of this be finalized for a day 1 patch? Otherwise I might have to keep a sweet two-handed mace in my stash just in case my wizard can use it someday...
Check it on d3guyz.com
The additional weapon types are specific to monks. The original monk design was very different and very weapon dependent. As that design changed the number of usable weapons didn't really keep up to match, and so we're working to correct that.
That's not to say it's impossible for other classes to see additional weapon types, but we have no plans at this time.
Q: You mentioned patches. In these patches do you plan on buffing skills or nerfing skills? Or are all D3 patches mostly for bugs, glitches, animations, or system problems?
Kind of off-topic, but yes, we intend to correct issues and make balance changes through patches. Did anyone think we wouldn't?
Please tell me you've given Monks the ability to use 2 handed maces! PLEASE!
The work isn't complete so I really can't comment on which weapon types because I don't want you coming after me if for whatever reason we can't deliver ... but I think you'll be happy.

RE: NES Emulator Development

RE: NES Emulator Development
I wasn't quite sure of where to post this, so if it belongs elsewhere, will an admin/mod please move it where it belongs. Thanks.
This is a post below from infidelity (a well respected NES ROM dev/modder). He states that he hopes that it "spreads around the internet like wildfire", so that this information will hopefully get out to the right people.
The issue for many, in being able to play many of the best and latest NES ROM hacks, is related to whether their favorite (or any emu they try on their preferred platform) has been coded to support (arguably?) the NES' most high performance and capable mapper: MMC5. EverDrive, PowerPAK, etc. owners are currently unable to run these games, as they also haven't implemented the mapper's support, yet.
Btw, on Android, I can confirm that Robert Broglia's NES.emu runs both of these ROMs great. It's a paid app, and well worth the price. There's a free fork of it (not as good, and several revisions back, but certainly a good and capable port). That would be NES.emu Free
Both of these games by infidelity are two of the best NES ROM hacks I've seen released...ever maybe. They're both pretty dang impressive at the very least.
Zelda - The Legend of Link
Super Mario All-Stars NES
I really hope this isn't disregarded as spam. It definitely isn't. I'm not infidelity (or close buddies with him), and have had little interaction with him, for that matter. I just saw read this yesterday, and felt it was important enough to share. Just trying to help spread the info.
infidelity said:
I hope that this gets spread around the internet like wildfire. So that other sites, and forums read this, and understand my actions. So if there are non Acmlm users here that are reading this, by all means share this post, link this post, etc, however it can get across, the more that see it/read it, the better.
I've been out of the scene for a few months now, my personal life is more busy than ever. I've been sort of enjoying the fruits of my labor, over my latest two projects, "Zelda - The Legend of Link" & "Super Mario All-Stars NES"
The consensus I've come across time and time again on the internet, is the issues people have with my projects on specific emulators, or retropaks/everdrives, etc.
So what I am about to do, is name off some things I've read (paraphrasing if you will) and answer them as best I can. But first....
Why I use the MMC5 mapper
The MMC5 mapper, is the most impressive & powerful mapper ever created by Nintendo. Some will talk about the Konami mappers being just as powerful, specifically due towards it's audio power, but that's not what I'm after. The MMC5 allows the user to max out the PRG-ROM & CHR-ROM chips to 1024kb's/1mb each, making that game a full 2mb's! That is an exuberant amount of space for a Nintendo game. A vast majority of retail Nintendo games, range from the sizes of 513kb's/769kb's. With 2mb's of size, you have so much freedom in the PRG/CHR department.
Speaking purely on the PRG-ROM, take my project "Zelda - The Legend of Link" for example. Without the PRG-ROM being maxed to 1024kb, there would be no Dark World, hell the Light World wouldn't be as big. There would be no advanced sound engine, no additional space for added assembly for enemies, or other various actions such as writing massive amounts of tile tables to the vram engine. Now take my other project "Super Mario All-Stars NES" for example. Without the PRG-ROM being maxed at 1024kb, there is NO WAY, that I would've been able to cram in those 4 games into 1.
Speaking purely on the CHR-ROM, again, take ZTLOL for example. Without the CHR-ROM maxed at 1024kb, there would be no fancy CHR Swapping. By now everyone has seen my story introduction, with the Windwaker Link & Ocarina of Time Link. That is all performed by CHR Swapping. Have you ever seen or created a flipbook, using stick figures on each individual page, and on those individual pages, you have the stick figure in a different position each time you flip a page? That's basically what CHR Swapping is, the MMC5 allows you to swap out different CHR pages, to give the appearance of animation taking place. Without that 1024kb's of CHR-ROM space, that introduction would've never seen the light of day.
Those two giant paragraphs pretty much sum up why I use the MMC5. It allows for so much creativity for the user to accomplish things, code wise & graphic wise.
On top of those things, the MMC5 can allow the user to have 4 individual save pages of $6000-$7FFF! The user can either use that area for actual saving features, or, the user can use it as additional PRG-RAM, or even PRG-ROM! The MMC5 also has very advanced graphical features, making it so instead of a 16x16 block having an individual palette, you can now set all individual 8x8 tiles (like in Super Nintendo) to have their own individual palette! Me personally, I have not utilized that feature, if you want an amazing example of that in action, I highly suggest you look at kuja killer's "Megaman Odyssey."
Answers To Some Remarks I've Seen
His game doesn't work, it just shows up as garbage
Answer: This is the #1 remark I've come across time and time again. There is nothing wrong with my game. The problem is with the emulator the player is using. The emulator obviously lacks the proper emulation of the MMC5 mapper. What is happening, is that the MMC5 reads pages 00-FF for the CHR tiles. But in my game(s), i have 4 individual 00-FF pages. So the emulator does not have that setup properly, causing garbage gfx to appear. Players sometimes like to stick to what they've been using for years & years, and don't like to update, or are just casual rom hack explorers, and find the easiest emulator on the internet they can obtain. In order to play MMC5 games properly, especially enhanced ones, it's recommended to update or obtain, the latest PC versions of FCEUX, Nintendulator, or Nestopia. PC emulators ported over to video game consoles, such as Xbox, PS3, Wii, various handhelds or smartphones, the porter needs to make sure the emulator he/she is porting, has MMC5 capabilities.
Why Doesn't He Use MMC3? It's The Most Popular, They Work On Everything.
Answer: MMC3 lacks the free space I require for additional PRG-ROM & CHR-ROM. There's no huge explanation for this one. :-/
I Tried This On The N8 Everdrive. It Doesn't Work
Answer: The N8 Everdrive (and I believe the Retro PowerPak) uses two 512kb SRAM chips for PRG-ROM & CHR-ROM. I've contacted krikzz, the creator of the Everdrive devices, and he has no desire to revise his device, to incorporate 1024kb PRG/CHR-ROM chips. I even suggested I purchase the same style chips, only 1024kb's each in size, but he said there is more to it than the chips themselves. So enhanced MMC5 games will never work on those devices. It is up to the respected creators. The only way you will ever see these games on actual Nintendo hardware, is by people sacrificing crappy MMC5 games that have the required size, and destroying them so that these enhanced games can replace them.
That Mario All-Stars Game. Why Didn't He Insert The Mario World Pirate As Well?
Answer: That game alone is 769kb's in size. The 4 Mario games I had inserted into the PRG-ROM, made it impossible for that game to be alongside the others. There also would be no room for any kind of introduction screen, controller function, etc.
That's all I pretty much have to say on all of that. I don't have the freedom to rom hack like I used to anymore. I'm not saying that I'm done forever, but I have zero clue as to when i'll ever get back to it. Anyways thanks for letting me get all of this out.
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Source: http://acmlm.kafuka.org/board/thread.php?id=8336

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