EVM Buzz v3.0 on the way

[earthcrosser]

I've been getting a lot of really great feed back for Earth vs. Mars, especially from Kindle Fire users on the Amazon Market. And sales are up, so now I'm really motivated to make improvements and fix some of the game's short comings. Also I'll be posting here as I make progress.

To begin, here are some icons I'm developing for the new User Interface. Last time I saved the interface for last; this time I'm starting with it. By the way anyone know what pixel size is best for an android button phone/tablet? Right now all of these icons are 200X200 pixels

 

[earthcrosser]

Here's a preview of how the interface is coming along, trying really hard to get this update out by the end of this week.

 

[earthcrosser]

Things are moving along,

Yesterday, I hooked up all the controls to the mining ships, so that the speed, weapons and armour can all be modified. Today I hope to be able to finish the other ships along with making some slight modifications to their behaviours. I also fixed a logical error that was causing my mining ships to sometimes go after far away asteroids instead of finding the closest ones.

A few bigger tasks remain before I can release EVM 3.0. I have to make the new menu screens, including one that will allow the starting parameters of each game to be modified. So before the game starts you can choose how many ships of each kind Earth and Mars will start out with. Another big task that remains is changing the implementation of the orbit routines and armada mode.

In any event 3.0 will certainly be an improvement to what's currently out there, So if you've already got the game I'd like to say thanks for playing and stay tuned for big improvements

 

[earthcrosser]

Not Done Yet! I'm still working on those new menu screens, but I've also been distracted by redesigning some of the ship behaviours, I'm trying to reduce some overhead in order to get a little more performance out of my phone. (Slows down a bit when I have a large number of bombers) So I'm reworking those a little. Also with the new ship design feature I have to revisit some balancing issues. One comment I had about the previous version was that fighters were too easy to kill, so I'm also spending a lot of time playing to find the proper balance.

well thats it for now thanks for staying tuned.

 

[earthcrosser]

Ok so it has been a while since my last update. But the new day job is kicking my butt so I have been just having trouble squeezing in the time. I did make a lot of progress this weekend though and I am now into the testing phase. I have to say that even I am having some trouble beating this new version so I might have to dial back the difficulty a bit before submitting it to the market.

Improvements made this weekend include: the edition of a set up screen. This set up screen will allow you to choose how many of each type of ship each side starts out with. In addition you can set the controls of either side to human or computer. You may even set both sides to computer and enter what I call fish tank mode, and just watch the computers battle it out.

I have also made some modifications to get the game hopefully run faster. I look for extraneous objects and tried to cut back where ever I could to reduce overhead.

OK so that is it for now hoping to get posted before Easter Weekend!

 

[earthcrosser]

Finally Posted the new version of EVM. However I only made it available for Honeycomb because the game really works best on tablets.

The update should also be available on the Amazon Store for Kindle Fire users in about a week too (pending approval)

 

[Benedict Chandler]

But the game is not there anymore will you put it back!!!!!!!