Played iPhone original version - My Top 10 improvements

[badbrad130]

I am a VP3 PC regular player, but I gave the iPhone version (original version) a try for a solid week.

Here's my top 10 things that would be nice to see improved:

1) The CPU tuning in career mode was rushed. On 9 ball "Hard" mode, the AI is not very difficult at all. They hardly string more than 2 balls in a row, and 90% of the time choke on the 9 ball. This is for CPU players rated D to A. Once you hit "Champ" CPU players, Slow Roll and Curly, then it is way too hard. They make un-makeable shots with ease, to the point where safety play doesn't matter, they'll kick the ball in the pocket from anywhere (90-95+ % of the time). The other thing I noticed that they don't do bank shots, like the PC version. Maybe to make the CPU think speed faster some optimizations were made, but definitely kick shots should be tuned better.

2) It is hard to see which ball is which. I've played quite a few online matches, and never have I seen the wrong balls being hit by mistake than the iphone version. The screen is small, but the ball colors don't pop enough (the 4 and the 7 ball, and the 1 and the 9 for sure). The overhead view needs to have the balls more obvious.

3) The physics are still the best out of all the games on the iphone right now (I think I've played all of them). The balls move a lot more slowly than on VP3 defaults, which is probably to make position easier on the iphone. One physics issue I've noticed the most is the side pockets. The balls hang up very easily and lose all their speed when hitting the points of the pocket.

4) Online matchmaking - Having online is sweet. The matchmaking setup has too many filters though, especially when trying to find people to play. You have to keep selecting the game type that you think people are in, since there's no way to "see" where the people are (i.e. 9 ball? or 8-ball, or straight pool., etc.). Perhaps if there was an option "Play random" that would solve that, or have a number of the people searching in each game type. The same goes with friend names. To use this feature you need to coordinate when to play by other means, but this is difficult as all you have is their name. The chat screen isn't available often.

5) The cue stick is too low on the screen. I'd rather have more stick to press my finger on.

6 )The sfx quality is very compressed from the PC version. Surely it could be less compressed, there's not that many sounds in the game.

7) Add a miscall feature for straight pool. Right now it is just a random shootfest.

8) The game crashes to the iphone desktop when chatting when the game ends, or sometimes when hitting cancel on the wait for player online popup.

9) It is cumbersome to move the cue ball when in ball in hand mode. This could be easier in overhead view. Even better, add a zoom in option in the overhead view.

10) General interface improvements and bugs. There's some typos in the CPU player's descriptions, it said "descent" instead of "decent" for example. Sometimes the text gets cut off before it word wraps in these descriptions. When you win it shows a popup with money, but no sfx. How about a clap sound or something more rewarding?

Those are my top 10 issues for the iphone version.

badbrad130

[vpeer]

Thanks for the post, some good comments.

[lucky.m.effer]

Great game!

[zwylle]

Virtual Pool Online really plays nicely and much better than expected!
Some aspects I actually like it better than in the PC version. For example that the balls don't bounce around like in a pinball machine.
That being said.. I hope there will be a VP4 (or whatever next generation) for iPhone with the improvements that were already suggested and some advanced controls:

It would be nice if the sound could be turned off independently from the phone sound.
Buggy right now: when muting the phone (iPhone 4), the regular game sounds are off, but Curly's videos aren't muted.

Intuitively I'd expect to zoom by moving 2 fingers on the screen.. implementing that could speed things up too
Double tapping on the screen to get in and out of overhead view would be nice.. in addition of being able to move the ball or zoom while in overhead view (mentioned before)

It happened a couple of times that I accidentally resigned a match (clumsy me) when I actually wanted to put the career on hold.
I'm wondering if it was possible to have a confirmation (popup)?

It's a little annoying having to enter your nick name again for each new career.
Couldn't it be defaulted by an existing one with the possibility to overwrite?

..and very minor: It looks odd that the players in the career rooms are sorted by player name, ending somewhere in the middle of the alphabet when scrolling down. Like something is missing. Maybe randomize the order?

[ramicio]

Buggy right now: when muting the phone (iPhone 4), the regular game sounds are off, but Curly's videos aren't muted.

This is not a bug in your software. This is how the iPhone 4 seems to behave when playing video in any situation. Anti-aliasing would be nice for the iPhone 4. I think it supports it.