The WeeWar Times

I was planning a post on playing WeeWar on an iPhone or iPod Touch and asked DrDrew a few questions since I knew he plays almost exclusively on his iPhone.   He was kind enough to send me back his story which answered my questions in a much more entertaining read than I would have put together.   I’ll compile a list of tips and iFriendly maps soon so stay tuned!  Here’s DrDrew’s WeeStory (typed on his iPhone no less):

I am going to begin this story at the beginning of February 08. My birthday was in February and I really wanted an iPhone I was turning 25 at the time. I had lots of time while waiting for customers, so an iPhone hopefully kept me out of boredom.

My boss was kinda strict about certain things, like no computer no television and uniform/shaving. One day I was actually watching a movie on my computer at my station trying to keep it hidden when out of nowhere bossman was standing next to me. It didn’t go over well with him. One thing he didn’t say anything about was me playing on my phone.

Now back to the phones. I had a motorola razr before getting the iPhone in may (that was my birthday present from February). The iPhone I got in may was a 2g first generation iPhone, which was pretty close to the  current one. So while at work I was searching the Internet on my new iPhone looking for games which were compatible with the iPhone. After a couple weeks of searching and playing different games I saw on a blog somewhere that a game called weewar worked on the iPhone. I checked it out and liked it, but it had some limitations. I couldn’t scroll anything. Controls were a little difficult and touchy. Also when i zoomed in at all it would chop the map. So if I zoomed in a little it would chop the map a little, the more I zoomed in the more the map would get chopped, not to mention I could only see somewhat small map in the first place, my guess was like 15 by 20.

I got to make a couple friends on the site mostly Darkbee Dompromo Dirtstyx Riipperi Colormartinez Jpofsc, just to name a few. I enjoyed when pro players would invite but I could only pick 4 different units to build and smaller maps. That was still fun at the time but got old quick. I actually scrolled the maps and units a couple times but wasn’t sure how it happened.  I had an idea it was possible at that point to scroll but couldn’t figure out how.

I’m not sure how it happened, if I figured out myself or not, but one day I started scrolling the chat and units with two fingers but the map was tricky. I was trying anything I could think of but that darn map wouldn’t move so i played games that weren’t limited by units anymore which was a big step. Started really enjoying the game at that point and played well over the basic limit (which was allowed with invites at the time).

I did figure out that map scrolling, well it wasn’t great but it worked. I took two fingers and I started on the edges of the map and started rubbing, on the map, on the edge of the map, one finger off the map untill it would finally move. it took me a minute to move the maps but it wasn’t too bad. Now at that point I went pro and was playing pretty limitless except for having to click each unit twice at a time for one movement. Each time I had to click the right spot and I couldn’t zoom in without cutting the map off. So I zoomed in to the top part of the map was easy but not the bottom. I was zoomed all the way out, so the hexes were quite small, and I had to click the unit twice then where I wanted to move it twice then who I wanted to attack twice and if I screwed up (which happened a lot with those little spaces) I had to start over, kinda frustrating.

Then the site had an update and things changed a little. So whenever my phone tilted to the side the map got cut off at 12 spaces. That wasn’t bad but when it tilted which it does whenever the phone tilts to side a little. So justa little frustration when the map got cut off. I just restarted the page and waited a minute for it to get back to normal.

After another update I could actually zoom in to the map without it getting cut off, sweet. Now the game got more fun and I could play any map and any units, was just kinda slow. I was even one of the top players. Got my rating around 2000 the right way.

Another update happened. This time I had 20 games going at the time and those games were pretty much against lower rated players. I like team games and at the time there wasn’t team play available on the site. So we just team up without the advantages like zoc. With this new update the map got cut down to 12 by 20. I had 20 games going, all bigger maps.I was pretty dissapointed and didn’t want to explain things to everyone and try to start over from scratch so I just quit, losing all 20 games and not caring. I wasn’t sure if I would play again. Knowing most of my games were 4 player games with lower rated guys than me sometimes much lower I knew I prob would lose a lot of points. I started playing game applications on the iPhone and didn’t think about weewar again for a while.

So about 6 months after I quit I got a little curious and checked out my weewar account. I was a 1600 and had a bunch of games to clear out. After getting bored with a couple iPhone applications I thought i’d try a game or two again on weewar. That’s where I met warmaker galois nature_god and a couple others.

My map was still cut off at 12 vertically and 20 horizontally so I wasn’t sure I would stick around. But thanks to the new guys I met and some of the older ones things started looking up again. I explained what I see on my phone to all players I played and started getting invited to games that fit those requirements. Soon after I went pro again and started making some maps. Some of the people I played with liked playing those team games with me and started helping with the maps. Nature has been vital in me coming back. Still wish I could see the whole map, every time I see an update I hope the map is full again but it’s not. My limitations on the map are only vertical. It gets cut off at 11 and a half. I press the arrows next to the credits to give a full screen of the map but it’s cut there vertically not horizontally also, I see all 30 spaces accross. I enjoy smaller map team games so it’s not so bad for me especially with the people I play seem to like it as well. I don’t have to click everything twice anymore either. So everything works great for me, just waiting to see all the maps. I do have a 3g iPhone now so it is much quicker.

Thanks again DrDrew!

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