Alchemy Bug

[CaptApollo]

I guess you could call this a bug. I found it in another game prviously although I can't remember which one. If you tap on the screen when the game is paused and you happen to tap in a valid square for the current piece waiting to be played, it will be placed on the board. You need to make the game ignore the tap to clear the pause.

A complaint: I don't really play the game for score, I just enjoy the puzzle aspect, but losing 50 points for doing an undo does not seem right to me. As I asked during the beta, I play the game on the bus, and it does not seem fair to be penalized for hitting a bump and my piece going in the wrong square. There has to be a solution. How about one level of undo, less points if the undo feature is turned on, etc...

A couple of comments about the grey scale graphics:

The top row of pixels on my screen above the current piece that is waiting to be placed flickers.

Please remove the white border around the grey symbols on the black background. It makes them hard to recognize sometimes, especially the one that looks like the roman numeral 2 (II).

PLEASE make the squares that flash when you ask for a hint flash black or something more seeable.

The gradient background in the top area of the screen where scores are displayed makes it hard to see them sometimes.

In general, don't try to be so fnacy with the grey scal graphics. The gradients don't usually look very well. You can only do so much with 16 shades of grey.

That's all for now. Sorry to be so long winded.

Did I earn a reg code now? :D

John

[Xiantayne]

I can't comment on the grayscale graphics as I haven't seen them, but I have definately experienced the pause problem. When tapping the screen to remove the pause, the current piece is placed where I tapped (if it is a legal move).

Also, I still find the pause at the end of the game excruciatingly (sp?) long. When you have made a top 5 score, it seems you are waiting forever for the Name Entry form to appear. Can this not appear right away?

One more thing: The gray background at the end of a game just doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the very colourful game. Perhaps simply making it black with white text would be more pleasing to the eye.

That's just my 2 cents worth.

I'm still addicted to the game, though! And I look forward to the next beta......I think I'm going through Beta Withdrawal. :)

[DECx]

Please remove the white border around the grey symbols on the black background. It makes them hard to recognize sometimes, especially the one that looks like the roman numeral 2 (II).

The gradient background in the top area of the screen where scores are displayed makes it hard to see them sometimes.

In general, don't try to be so fnacy with the grey scal graphics. The gradients don't usually look very well. You can only do so much with 16 shades of grey.


Alchemy never really was intended for monochrome :(, without the gradients and the somewhat odd look of the tiles it would be very difficult to distinguish between different sets of tiles with the same symbol on it.

DECx

[ArchiveGuest]

(This post was originally by mikedp)
Switch to the NUMBERED squares instead of the shapes. On the gray scale this becomes really easy to see and actually make the game a little easier by just matching the numbers.

[xcool]

Hi all,

I noticed the pause bug also, and I assume it not only affects Alchemy alone, but Bejeweled also! I haven\'t tested it with the other PopCap games, but in Bejeweled, it not only affects the Pause screen, but also the dialog boxes. When I play Bejeweled, I like to see the number of moves remaining, but, my grafiti skill seems to make the devices recognize my \'r\' as an \'a\' or sometimes \'t\', which results in the \'Abandon Game\' or \'Tweak Settings dialog boxes being displayed. I had to click on the \'No\' or \'Cancel\' buttons, and this would result in the gem under the respective buttons being highlighted. My guess is that its caused by the libraries that I heard Howard saying, which therefore affects the programs which use them.