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Hey everyone,
Just here to let you all know about our new iPad application. I want to cover this by saying we're STO players first and foremost and believe is has genuine ability to add immersion and enjoyment to the game, hence why we're posting here. If this causes any problems I'd urge a moderator or dev to get in touch with me, however having checked the forum rules I think we're ok :-)
We call it Tap Play, and it's an exciting new way to control your
World of Warcraft, Star Trek Online or any other MMO, Action using your iPad.
Using just your iPad and a small server application on your Windows or
Mac PC you can control your spell casting and gain access to regularly
used commands at the touch of a finger. Think of all that finger stretching reaching to press Alt and 0 together - gone! Much faster game play for all those situations where speed really does matter - the difference between life and death in your next PvP match!
The app includes bound keys for items such as the different power trays, spellbook, bag access and many more. For Star Trek you have full impulse controls, firing phasers and torpedoes and other similar expected functions. It can also be used with a number of other MMO's (so long as they support key binding or key
reconfiguration) so why not check us out? We're also running a small competition on our Twitter at the minute so take a look
Any questions please give us a shout, we'd love to hear from you.
This is the creation of myself and my wife (who also plays) she's been testing it for the last month or so and loves it, makes controlling in space so much simpler, check it out.
Check our blog out for full details or search on Google (don't fee appropriate to post the direct link)
This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Cryptic Studios Forum Usage Guidelines and Cryptic Studios Infraction Policy ~WishStone
Comments
No. This is due to UI constraints, the iPhone 4 has a significantly smaller screen than the iPad, we are however planning an iPhone app to work alongside this to allow you to steer your ship on the iPhone and to fight using the iPad.
Awesome to hear guys. We're really proud of it and hope you enjoy it. Follow us on twitter or facebook to keep up to date.
Just my two cents - other then that fantastic. Oh, the interface on the iPad looks great but doesn't "feel" like the Star Trek LCARS yet... for example instead of just clicking a button to increase impulse, you should have a slider that you can slide up and down to change the speed of the ship.
Applauds...
Ok so to respond.
First of all - I'm quite happy with my body thank you, though I do
find your attempt to comment on my 'lack of chin' making it less
professional a tad offensive in principal. Still regardless we do plan
on reshooting the video with a better quality camera in the next week
or so, the video was shot when we half expected Apple to shoot us down
and didn't really expect to make it to final release (you'll notice
the WoW has undergone a large cosmetic overhaul since and the STO one
has had tweaks.) It's in the works and the sound and perspective have
both been noted - funnily I've received more comments on the video
than the app! Odd!
Secondly - the slider's an interesting point and something we have
considered before, the problem from a technical perspective is that
other than using the mouse to control it, the speed control in STO
isn't actually a slider, you can't hold down your throttle button, you
have to repeatedly press it. The sliders a nice principle and
something that may come in down the line if we can figure out a way to
make it work and work well. Interestingly we tried this in the alpha
phase and we couldn't get it to 'feel' right, it was buggy and jerky
and ultimately this gave the greatest level of control over your
speed.That said - if people ask for it enough we might put out a
'Beta' layout in the next version so people can try it out and see
what they think to it - just because we didn't feel it was right
doesn't mean it was wrong - if you see what I mean? It's a tricky
balance working on iOS, over network protocols and into Visual C but
we're willing to work on feedback received. I'm interested - have you
tried using it? What were your thoughts if you have?
Any other LCARS based feedback? We aimed to show a sort of transition between DS9 and STO with colour and layouts.
I apologize if you were offended but I would have said the same about myself or anyone if shooting a video - you want it to show off your positives and not your negatives, even when its just a video about an application. When making a video I feel it important to film it at the best angles, etc. and I wasn't trying to offend you. Same when making movies, every actor has "strong features" and "weak features" and you don't want the weak to be noticeable.
Again I apologize if it offended you!
EDIT2: I hope for this pice the 'iPhone'-App will be a universal app included to the iPad Version
EDIT: I havn't tried this jet so i don't know if it's already in. But perhabs you could ad a configuration to the iPad app where you can change the emulated key of these buttons on the iPad UI.
So i could use my custom configured keybindings. And you could easly define which button is for Teamspeak, Ventrilo or other voice chat program.
MfG Michael
Hey-... you get a (close to) Starfleet Shuttle console... not just a game controller.
Yea all for the great starting price of £429...... what a great deal...... I must rush out and buy one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAl28d6tbko
Haha no hard feelings. We've got a 1080p camera available this coming week so expect a hd reshoot ;-)
Whilst I respect your opinion I disagree here. Compared to other iPad apps on the store it's not that highly priced. There's a phrase used about the iPhone app store and that is the 'race to the bottom' whereby developers often put a 59p price tag on to attract many customers. However I believe whole heartedly this app is worth it's price tag and our customer research seems to agree.
The iPad install base is significantly smaller than the iPhone therefore developers tend to need higher price to pay for development costs both having occurrd and to update an expand into the future. We have a situation whereby as small developers we need to look to cut a profit from it and honestly the bottom level pricing wouldn't let us do that. That said when we release our iPhone app there will likely be a different price point there due to the higher client base and lower app functionality due to the smaller screen size, we may even develop the app to be universal so you buy once and install on both devices. Time will tell, but in a world where people pay $20 for a starship this isnt really that much.
All that said, thanks for the feedback, keep an eye on our twitter and facebook as we may run offers from time to time such as over the holidays. We also have a twitter competition running right now to win a copy.
The iPhone app is up in the air right now, if we can mak it universal and make it work well then obviously it'll be free. If a separate app is required we'll assess price nearer the time. For the record we hope to make it using the universal option.
The ability to set custom keys should come in time. It won't be straight away but it will come, at least for some of the buttons (PTT as you say is a no brained)
Sounds good ...well perhaps when work is finished i'll give it a try
MfG Michael
It is a awesome app in my opinion.
Nice immersion tool to be honest.
hopefully ill get to try it some day
Thank you, ultimately this was our aim, to create a more 'trek' feel to playing.
I would ask if people are downloading it to consider leaving an app store review for us :-)
1. How do I get the PTT to work with Ventrilo in STO?
2. The number keys work fine from 1-0. However the CTRL range of numbers and the ALT range of numbers behave just like the regular number keys from 1-0. Is there something i need to do differently?
Here is my setup:
1. Macbook Pro running STO in STO UMV 1.2b5 Wrapper . The keyboard shortcut works fine with the keyboard.
2. I am using your mac app + ipad app.
At this stage I can't fully say.
Obviously STO is a Windows game therefore we can only really offer
full support for it running in Windows, I do know that the app works
fine for WoW on the Mac though so it's not that. Could it be an issue
with the virtualisation software receiving the commands (different
keyboard layouts for example?)
PTT should work if you set PTT in vent to T, failing that see below.
Some trouble shooting options here I'd like you to try for me.
1) Try setting your keybinds in STO, go to the options menu, find a
power and use the iPad to enter your binds - if you press the Ctrl + 1
button does STO enter Ctrl + 1 into the key binds menu? If not then we
need to try something else.
2) Is it possible to download the Windows client (an EXE file) and run
that in the same virtualisation software? The Mac server is designed
to work with Mac software so it could be that the Windows Software
will be needed to work fully even though you're on a Mac, if that
makes sense?
Let me know how these turn out - number 1 is of particular interest.
Finally I was afraid that I would break the screen when I try to make my cruiser turn faster.
When I try to key bind, this is how the ipad app is being recognized:
- all the numbers come out the same, e.g. CTRL+1 = 1, ALT+1=1
- even the full throttle is R and not SHIFT+R
Right, I've just got home and given this a go - or at least best as I can.
The Mac client works fine on the Mac, with World of Warcraft.
I can't vouch for Star Trek Online as I don't have a Mac capable of running it - virtual machine or otherwise. However as the software runs as intended for World of Warcraft when all the software's Mac based there shouldn't be a problem, therefore I suspect this comes down to the fact you're running STO within a virtual environment (something that was never planned for)
My only suggestion is to try running the Windows Client in a virtual environment too - the Mac client and Windows client are actually very different beasts and I suspect that\s the cause of your problem. Unfortunately I can't offer much more support than that in this particular case.
On a seperate note did you get the PTT to work? That should be relatively straight forward (assuming you're running an OS X version of Ventrillo/TeamSpeak etc)
Open a TextEdit and used the app with it. When I press "Full", I get r instead of R.
I still can't get it to work on Ventrilo, however, I suspect it is some setting on Ventrilo I need to configure because i do see the t when I click on the PTT on the app, however, it doesn't seem to hold down the t and appear to be a single strike.
I also tried this, instead of using the ptt, I assign the "target" button to Ventrilo and it recognizes it as a TAB, however, the app target button doesn't work after the setup but the keyboard tab works.
I think the video's aspect ratio is off: its width is scrunched-up, making everything look narrow. That's probably why it looks like you have no chin even though your profile is probably quite normal in r/l.
This is most likely because you didn't upload an HD video yet it looks like your footage is widescreen that has been resized to 4:3 aspect ratio.
In time perhaps, it'll be a modification of the current software, however we want to get things smoothed out as well as possible first then we'll look at adding dedicated controller sets (plus we don't play EVE ourselves at the minute)
Backseat mod
I've put a mention in the main post asking a mod/dev to get in touch if they see issue with it,it's something that has had an interest expressed in it in other threads so I saw no harm in posting it - we'll see what the decision is in time though, it's not here intended as an advert so much as letting people know it exists if that makes sense, that and to allow communication - though should a dev/mod believe it to be inappropriate I of course won't argue with it being closed.
Actually I've just done a 'report' on the thread asking the mods to close if it's inappropriate, I hope it'll be seen as passable though.
And yeah, you're quite right about the ration.
When I open notepad, the keys are map correctly. When I hit "Full", I get R (on the mac side I get r). The ctrl keys and alt keys don't generate any numbers in notepad (on the mac side, they generate numbers in a textedit)