Name: Yaht 3D - Author: Kelbicom

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kelbicon Posted: Tue, Jan 3 2012 1:30 PM

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Hi,

I've uploaded my game Yaht 3D for testing. It's not my first XNA app, but it is my first game so please be nice :-). It's actually an XNA/Silverlight hybrid. Apologies that the game is not an original idea, but I'm hoping that it will be the best of it's kind on the Windows Phone.

I'm pretty much ready to submit the app to the marketplace I just need some sanity testing to make sure i've not missed anything and some general feedback would also be helpful.

The only thing I haven't finished is the "Share This App" feature because I want the user to be able to share the marketplace link using their social media but I need an app Id first. Not sure whether I can get an app ID until after submission but i'll soon find out.

I see that you also write app reviews so if you can spare some time for that, that would be awesome. :-)

And thanks for providing this excellent service.

Cheers,

Dunc

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Simon Jackson XNAUK Admin replied on Tue, Jan 3 2012 3:55 PM

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Just picked up your XAP for test, will let you know how I get on.

Remember though this service is for any XAP not just games :D, apps are welcome too.

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Simon Jackson XNAUK Admin replied on Tue, Jan 3 2012 4:15 PM

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Few first thoughts:

• Best to have the prompt on location pop up after the main menu has loaded, currently if the user waits to make a choice the app crash/closes before a choice is made (the app 20 seconds start / 5 seconds show limit).
• The wording on the location prompt is too wordy, just use the standard, do you want to let this app use your location question text
• The buttons on the front page are out of theme with the rest of the app, best to use images for the buttons or style them better
• Might be better on the "Select players" screen to start with just 2/3 players and have an "Add more players" button, rather than the 8 options from the beginning, then drop the check boxes
• Consider styling default title panel on the "Select Players" page to be more in line with your game page
• The Ad's are very harsh in the game view, best to have them animate in with some opacity over the page
• Buttons on Game page need styling 
• (*Bug) Cannot continue game, once my rolls have complete i cannot continue the game, score button does not activate and computer player does not get a turn
• Consider using the shake gesture to roll the dice?
• Game needs a little intro on how to play, even knowing it's Yahtze, you have to account for people who have not played it before.  it also has to be intuitive if you have not seen it (just imaging you have never used the app and think what would someone think)

Overall it's a very clean and simple game which really shines with the use of XNA 3D on top of the Silverlight background.

Generally it just needs styling to meet the game play view.

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kelbicon replied on Tue, Jan 3 2012 4:48 PM

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Thanks for the excellent feedback,

I'll look into making those changes. To complete your turn after you have finished rolling, you need to select a score on the scorecard by tapping it and then the score button becomes active. I guess that bit isn't intuitive. And I completely agree the styling could be improved, i think I was a little bit lazy although I have to admit it is not my strong point :-)

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kelbicon replied on Wed, Jan 4 2012 5:08 PM

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I've uploaded the latest xap file which I think addresses all your feedback. I also went a little bit crazy with the restyling so I hope it's an improvement, but a bit worried I made it worse :)

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Simon Jackson XNAUK Admin replied on Thu, Jan 5 2012 11:22 AM

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Right, picking this up again now, will get back to you soon.

Congrats on the quick turn around :D

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Simon Jackson XNAUK Admin replied on Thu, Jan 5 2012 12:31 PM

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Right great progress, few more points:

• Splashscreen!! :D
• Buttons need to be bigger on the main page, although they are not really in line with Metro guidelines as its a game you should be ok
• In the new info page, drop the app title as you don't need it, you need more space for the text
• Better to break up the text on the first page as it's too wordy for a page (try not to scroll if possible!) , have an intro (just basic info), a basic rules pivot, advanced rules pivot.
• Must have a way to get the info page back up again (button on main page?)
• make Start game bigger on "Select Players" screen
• Consider pre-loading XNA assets on the main page (I've created a separate static XNAManager class in the past , just be sure to "SetSharingMode" on the graphics adapter before loading and set it back afterwards), use a separate thread to kick it off.  I did have a couple of occasions where the game page stuttered on start. (if you have trouble about the pre-loading, i'll throw up a quick blog post on it.
• Consider Having the Scorecard highlight the best scoring options after finishing rolling / playing the round to make it easier for the player to select scores, or have a pop up window to make it more obvious (might be better to just auto select the highest unless there is a choice) - Main reason is after playing a few rounds some of the scores were highlighted but not valid for the current round, not sure if this was intended or not

Keep it up as it looks like a fantastic simple game and the 3D dice really set off the scene

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kelbicon replied on Thu, Jan 5 2012 2:27 PM

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Thanks again for the feedback and encouragement :) I'll get working on an update.

If you have selected the "Don't show this screen again" checkbox on the introduction screen it can still be accessed from the Options menu (Options->Rules).

When you say some scores were highlighted but not valid I think you mean they were showing with a score of zero, but still selectable? This is intentional because you may want to strategically sacrifice one of your scores even if it means zero points for that round. e.g. if you are going for sixes and on your third roll you only manage to get 3-4-5-5-6 (and you have already used up your 'fives' score) then you may want to select 'Ones' on the scorecard and get zero points because you may think you can get more than one six on another round. So choosing the highest available score for a particular round is not necessarily the correct decision strategically speaking :). Also, there will be times, especially toward the end of a game, where all the unused scores show zero points because you've been unable to roll the right combination, and you must always select a score to end your turn.

I would be very interested in the pre-loading article especially if it caters for deactivation/tombstoning in a Silverlight/XNA hybrid situation :) (if that makes any difference?)

Btw i'm not sure if it is obvious but did you know you can play against other human players on the same phone? On the player selection screen, tap the monitor icon next to the player name and it will change it to a human player. You can mix any combination of AI and human players. Just wandered if I need to make it more explicit by mentioning it in the introduction section?

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kelbicon replied on Fri, Jan 6 2012 4:40 PM

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I've uploaded v1.02 with the following changes:

• Splashscreen :)
• Bigger buttons on main page
• Removed app title from info page and all pages for consistency.
• Broken up text on the intro page into more pages... 'intro', 'basic rules' and 'more rules'... 'advanced rules' was too long for the screen.
• Start button is bigger on "select players" screen.
• Significantly reduced stutter when starting a game.
• I've got my app Id so the 'Share This App' button is finished. (Obviously the link won't be valid until the app is published)
• Slightly improved the image quality used for the buttons.

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Simon Jackson XNAUK Admin replied on Tue, Jan 10 2012 4:52 PM

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Sorry for not getting back for a little while, but here now :D

Looks like it's almost there:

• Like start page buttons could be bigger on game screen
• Still hard to make out which scores I can select once a round has finished, the scores i've selected in previous rounds are bold but all other scores are grey.  could do with a better way to represent this like, scores completed change to red, scores that are positive have a highlighted background (rectangle with rounded corners?)  to show they can be selected from.  Just to highlight more that this is what the player needs to select from.  Leave options with no value ( 0 ) as they are.

That's it.

Make sure you have run the marketplace test kit against your project and also ensure you also test tombstoning on each screen (set the option in the project properties "Debug" tab to force tombstone on suspend/exit) and make sure it doesn't crash.

Great job, look forward to seeing it out there!

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kelbicon replied on Tue, Jan 10 2012 5:27 PM

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Thanks that's great,

I'll see if I can implement those final suggestions and then i'll go ahead and publish. Thanks again for taking the time to provide this awesome service!