Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint

[JPickford]

We'll have a look at improving the colour blind issue.

Is everyone (still) voting for us in App Madness?

We're in the lead with 63% of the vote but the gap is closing so please vote if you can: http://appmadness.net/?p=1186

Only one more round after this so we've a decent chance of winning.

[Andrew__72]

Thanks the welcome.
I got over 5 million on one table and near 5 million on two others. None of them played perfectly.

Sometimes the difference between getting, say 2 million and 3 million is making the right choices.

Imagine this situation: your tariff is 170 and you'll finish getting a combo of 20x taking into account your finishing shape. Now, let say you have 4 balls of the same colour loose. If you make a ring your tariff goes up 20% due to the ring (it went to 200 due to the creation of the ring (10x3)). If there is already a grouping of that colour a diamond will stay on the board and you'll get a combo increase of 20% (up to 24 from 20). So ring or diamond and you'll get the same effect on your finishing score of a 20% increase. If the diamond would leave the table then make the ring.
Now consider if you have 5 balls free rather than 4. Going to a finishing combo of 25 by making a trapezium is only a 25% increase in combo whereas...

Andrew

[gribbles]

Thanks the welcome.
I got over 5 million on one table and near 5 million on two others. None of them played perfectly.

Sometimes the difference between getting, say 2 million and 3 million is making the right choices.

Imagine this situation: your tariff is 170 and you'll finish getting a combo of 20x taking into account your finishing shape. Now, let say you have 4 balls of the same colour loose. If you make a ring your tariff goes up 20% due to the ring (it went to 200 due to the creation of the ring (10x3)). If there is already a grouping of that colour a diamond will stay on the board and you'll get a combo increase of 20% (up to 24 from 20). So ring or diamond and you'll get the same effect on your finishing score of a 20% increase. If the diamond would leave the table then make the ring.
Now consider if you have 5 balls free rather than 4. Going to a finishing combo of 25 by making a trapezium is only a 25% increase in combo whereas...

Andrew

I just enjoy banging the pretty balls into each other

[Jedburgh]

I'm going to have to have a lie down and think about this.

[RiK]

Someone else mentioned red-green colour blindness. The different diagonal stripes help but I would really like red and green cross hatching to be swapped with yellow and blues.
Yellow and blue are different in brightness and as far as can be away in hue, they don't need the difference of horizontal vs vertical.
Other option would be less stripes on either red or green.

Yeah great suggestion actually. I'm red-green colourblind too and find the colours awkward, but I just see them as 'lefties' and 'righties'

[Misfit]

I just enjoy banging the pretty balls into each other

Phew! I thought it was just me....

[JPickford]

As the co-designer of Magnetic Billiards I have to say it's a great feeling to see people working out these strategies. We've spent a long time on this game and its brilliant to see people 'getting' it.

Ste's going to have a look at the colour swap thing. Seems like it will be an easy change. I was toying with the idea of (optionally) slapping some high visibility symbols over the top of the balls while taking a shot (when the balls aren't moving).

JP

[RiK]

Ste's going to have a look at the colour swap thing. Seems like it will be an easy change. I was toying with the idea of (optionally) slapping some high visibility symbols over the top of the balls while taking a shot (when the balls aren't moving).

The yellow/blue would be perfect. That's what they did in CoD5 and it made a huge difference.

[Andrew__72]

There is so much in it, it's took me awhile to get it fully (a lot of smacking pretty balls together) and even when you do know most of the ideas you still have to get there.

I think of it as requiring:
- strategy, planning out which shapes to make to maximise the finish
- tactics, deciding how to get to the shapes you want, like if I play this one out of the way first, I can play this one next. If I hold of finishing a ring i'll have a better preview to set up other shapes, etc, etc
- execution, knowing when you are 'previewless' that 18% power gets top to bottom on a particular board, knowing how a cluster will move when hit

Thanks for putting the effort into the game, look forward to new stuff, I bought the skeleton key after playing about an hour.

Andrew

[JPickford]

EDGE just gave us 8/10.

http://www.next-gen.biz/reviews/magneti ... rds-review

[gravy]

Woo!

[RiK]

EDGE just gave us 8/10.

http://www.next-gen.biz/reviews/magneti ... rds-review

Well deserved too

[JPickford]

A good review from 148apps (?)

http://www.148apps.com/reviews/magnetic ... nt-review/

Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint is one of the smartest games I’ve played on iOS

Slightly annoyingly this 80% review knocked our metatrictic down a point. But hopefully that Tap! (100%) review will be added to the mix soon which will bump us up to 85 if my maths is right.

andrew__72 is getting some very impressive scores at the moment. We're going to add an achievement for breaking 50million and name it after andrew. Or you can name if you like?

[gravy]

Call it Better Than Jed

[Andrew__72]

The RSI award, lol.
Got over 60 million now but I'm finding it harder to beat my scores.
You'd think table 20 would be higher scoring but the table is bigger so you get less bounces at the end.

One for over 5 million and 10 million on one table would be good awards.
Best so far is 6.78million on table 17 but it's beatable.
Trying to make a few interesting screenshots if any one is interested.

Andrew