Friday, January 11, 2013

New Entanglement Maps and Free Trial!

Over the last few months we've been slowly making additions to Entanglement. Some of these have trickled out over time (e.g. saved games), but this week we finally released the flood. These additions include new levels, a free trial so you can check out the new levels before buying them, and a variety of bug fixes and interface improvements.

New Levels

This update adds eight new maps to Entanglement. Putting the total number of maps at twelve! These maps are split between two new expansion sets.

The Classic Mode Expansion offers four new maps that follow the classic Entanglement rule set. The maps look pretty simple, but you'll be surprised how the shape of each map changes your strategy.


The Tranquil Garden Expansion includes four new maps that challenge players to score as many points as possible with a limited number of tiles. Passing through sakura trees will earn you more tiles. This game mode was introduced in the Sakura Grove Expansion, but here we've explored it further with some great results!


We've also added a Combo Pack Expansion for users who want to get all twelve maps for the cheapest price possible.

In addition to the new packs, we've renamed the Sakura Grove Expansion to Expansion Sampler. Though it has a new name, it offers the same three maps with both types of gameplay.

Free Trial

For players who enjoy the game, but want to try the new maps  before they buy them, we've added a FREE one-day trial. When you start the trial you'll have access to all the maps in the game for one day.


The trial can be activated from the in-game market, accessible from the main menu under 'More Maps' or from the in-game menu on the 'Get More' tab under 'Get More Maps'. Once you're in the market just log in and select the 'Try It!' button to start your trial!

If any of these additions sound interesting, try them out here!


29 comments:

  1. New levels are great but some existing features have bugs now. When I complete a game my high score is at a position way below where it should be. eg. I had score 223, got position 23, but scores above me were 18, 20, 22, etc. Should have been ranked 3rd place. Also when I pull out the sidebar during a game and click new game, it loads a saved game instead of starting a new game.

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  2. The scoreboard is an issue for me too. When I first go into, say, Daily Challenge, if I go through the menu to display the scoreboard it says it's displaying today's scores, but it's actually showing the scores from 6 days ago. Similarly, if you finish a game, it makes out it's displaying the current high score table but it too is actually displaying the high score table from 6 days ago.

    If, in the scoreboard screen, you click on the left or right arrow to scroll to a different day and then click the opposite arrow to scroll back to the current day, it then displays the correct scores and, not only that, seems to continue to display them correctly from thereon in.

    Throughout all of this, regardless of which scoreboard is displayed, it is at least correctly recording your score, so they're not getting lost even when they don't get displayed properly.

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    1. Hi Simon, thanks for the report - I just pushed a new build that should resolve this issue. You may need to refresh your browser to get the latest version.

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    2. That seems to be working OK now - sorry for the delay, I noticed that it had changed a couple of days ago. There's still something odd going on though.

      In today's Daily Challenge, based on the 19-hex Lotus Petal design, the top score is currently displayed as 1249. Looking at the lengths of the leading paths, this top one has a length of 280.

      Now, even if it were possible to use all six paths on all 19 hexes, which of course it isn't, because even in an otherwise perfect arrangement you always lose some of them on the hexes adjacent to the boundaries, that would make an absolute maximum length of 19 x 6 - i.e. 114. And I imagine the actual maximum is somewhere in the mid-to-high 80s - 86?

      And yet not only the current top scorer but also two others, are currently registering path lengths greater than 114. What goes on?

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    3. It looks like those scores should have been attributed to Wednesday's Daily Challenge, not Friday's. I fixed the scores, but will check into what caused it. Thanks for the note!

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  3. While playing the Tranquility expansion pack with my girlfriend, we found that I (red) was given 7 and she (blue) was given 2 tiles to start with… While this was AWESOME for me, she wasn't terribly happy with only having 2 tiles to start… I’m not sure if it was intentional or not, but it seems like a glitch.

    Another glitch seems to be getting the new expansion packs to show up easily…. Even when logged in, you still have to go to the market, then click “Try It”, which starts a single player game by default, which we then have to back out of to get into the multiplayer menu.

    Other than that, this game has been quite the stretch for my cranial sutures, and I hope you keep expanding on it rather than changing the game physics :D

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    Replies
    1. Make sure you are logged in first, then use the expansion pack.

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    2. Hi Digimancer, I fixed the two player tiles issue. Next time you load the game, refresh to get the latest version and you should be set; thanks!

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  4. Thanks for the feedback everyone! I'll take a look at these issues over the next few days and see if I can get them fixed.

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    1. Scoreboard is fixed. Good job. Still cannot do a new game from the sidebar menu, though. Still wants to load saved game. Only workaround is to go the menu, reselect the board, and start a new game that way.

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    2. I've just pushed a new build that fixes the New Game button. I believe the scoreboard problem is an intermittent issue related to our datastore, so I need to do a bit more there yet.

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  5. I recently tried out the game in Firefox and was unable to get the game to zoom out. Is there a way to start completely zoomed out or do I have to lay tiles for it to take effect?

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  6. Hmm, is this occurring on a touch-enabled device? We have the game start zoomed in on touch devices due to the screen size typically being smaller. If this isn't the optimal behavior for your device, let us know; thanks!

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  7. Hi Digimancer, regarding accessing your expansion maps, are you able to pull up the main menu from the side tab? Menu tab on right (or top-right corner button on mobiles) -> Main Menu -> Multiplayer -> Tranquility

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  8. Gopher guys,
    I would love to see a bounded setup that has no dead ends.
    Every boundary tile would have loopbacks, like the central tile in the groves.
    Scoring would be a little different: The path you make scores as normal, but any loops you make that are not your path score against you.
    If you make a loop that is 3 segments long, you lose 1+2+3=6 points.
    You could then have 3 objectives:
    1) Make the biggest score possible. Ideally, you would leave no loops.
    2) Make the most negative score possible. Your path is short and leaves many loops or 1 big loop.
    3) Make a score as close to zero as possible. Balance your path against loops.

    These would be fun because there are no dead ends, and you can create a very long path. The last move would be exciting.

    Thanks for listening.

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    Replies
    1. I thought my name would be there.
      Shiny Silky Goose.

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    2. Thanks for the ideas; we'll keep these in mind as we continue to develop the game!

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  9. Playing Shakura Blossom -- when a path is laid that moves through 2 trees, only one tile is credited! Expected results: number of tiles increases by 2.

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    1. After playing a bit, and getting a cool 9-tree run, I now have a better handle on this. If I pass thru one tree, I get one point. If I pass thru multiple trees the amount of tiles I'm given is n-1 | n=number of trees passed through.

      BTW -- I'm a Senior Software Engineer. :)

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    2. Very cool, glad you enjoy the Sakura maps!

      Note that there is a tile being lost naturally in the tile-placement "transaction". When you see this happen, are you accounting for the one that is naturally lost?

      For example, if you have 1 tile left and place it to go through 3 Sakura trees, you lose the tile you placed, but gain three more. So visually you go from "1 tile left" (before placing it) to "3 tiles left" (after placing) which at first appears as if you've only gained 2 when in fact you have lost one and gained three.

      That said, this is not the first time this issue has been raised, indicating we should probably update the visuals a bit to make things more clear. One possibility may be to show some "-1", "+3" messages on the screen to highlight the complete transaction... ...I'll think about it a bit more.

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  10. Hi,

    some months ago I played Sakura Grove a lot. But now it seems, that the game doesn't remember any longer, that I bought it :( Could you please check what went wrong? Thanks,

    Andreas

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    Replies
    1. Hi Andreas,

      E-mail us at feedback@gopherwoodstudios.com and let us know what e-mail address you use to log into the game and we'll check it out.

      Thanks,
      Todd

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  11. The Sakura Grove expansion seems to sometimes but not always decrement my tile count when I place a tile... is this a glitch or is there something I'm missing?

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    1. Hi Allison,
      It should always decrement the tile count by 1 and then if you passed through a Sakura tree you should also be awarded 1 tile for each path segment that passes through a Sakura tree.

      If you are not passing through any Sakura trees and the tile count does not decrement, it's a glitch! If this is the case, let me know; thanks!

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    2. Okay, I tested it on all applicable maps and it seems that it ONLY does it on Daily Challenges. For instance, in this screenshot: http://i50.tinypic.com/2yo4hhj.png, I think it's pretty obvious I didn't have 2 tiles left.

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    3. Ha! That's pretty wild - yeah, looks like a problem; I'll check into it. Thanks for your thorough investigation!

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    4. I recently moved to a new computer and it now appears I do not have the expansion at all. Is there a file I need to move over to make it work?

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    5. Hey Allison,

      You should only need to log into the game with the same email account you were using on the previous computer to access the expansions.

      If you want to email us at feedback@gopherwoodstudios.com with the account we can look into it.

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  12. Hello,

    I was wondering, could you add a undo button for entanglement? I accidentally selected a wrong piece position multiple times and an Undo functionality would really useful.

    Thanks,
    Best,
    Catalin

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