Mini Militia Classic : Doodle Army 2.5 Self Help and FAQ

A: In April 2018 the Doodle Army franchise, including Mini Militia was turned over to Miniclip to manage and develop. In Oct 2020, Miniclip decided to return the franchise back to Appsomniacs’ control. They will keep the version 5 app up and running and the app is still there. The Mini Militia usage is licenced back in Appsomniacs’ hands while Miniclip maintains v5. Appsomniacs has full control of the franchise and trademarks associated with that once again. For more details about the IP change visit our News page.

Q: What is Mini Militia Classic? How is it Different?

A: Mini Militia Classic: Doodle Army 2 <link to game page? Alpha sign up?> is returning to when Mini Militia had offline capability, was friendly to the eSports community, and had more of the custom experiences. The initial release has brought back a bunch of the old features from the past like custom servers, capture the flag, and offline WiFi. For more details about the differences between the apps visit our News page.

Q: What is the timeline for release? When is the next release coming out?

A: The investment we are making in the deep changes to Mini Militia Classic’s app architecture means we will finally be able to make amazing new content for our players to enjoy. This is also a tremendous amount of work and there are only two of us. Everytime we think we can plan actual dates around when the code will get written some unforeseen problem grinds the whole process to a halt. Instead of listing a bunch of meaningless dates (because we won’t meet them) we have laid out a road map of our work ahead. Visit our News page for a nifty graphic and more info.

Q: How do I sign up to Alpha/Beta test?

A: To get signed up for the Alpha Force team, each step is required to be able to download the latest release from the Google Play Store.

Step 1: Sign up in the Google Group (Mini Militia Classic Alpha Force). Use the email address that you will log into the game.

https://groups.google.com/g/mini-militia-classic-alpha-force

Step 2: JOIN the test. YOU MUST GET ACCEPTED INTO THIS GOOGLE GROUP FIRST.

https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.appsomniacs.mmc

Step 3: THEN install the app. This link works for you (if you are signed into that Google account on the device...)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appsomniacs.mmc&ah=WG6UXmSVsiLdjZLZmvxTJOY_ndU

Step 4: Run the app and log in with the email address you signed up with.

--> If you already have an account, you will enter your password.

--> If it is a new account, the app will create a passcode and email it to you (to the email you created the account with). Passcodes can take several minutes to send (usually it takes no longer than 15 minutes). Email provider spam filtering can make this take longer.

If you have any trouble logging in, DOUBLE CHECK THAT YOU ARE USING THE CORRECT EMAIL ADDRESS. You can always hit resend if the passcode doesn't show up within an hour or you don't know what your passcode is anymore.

Q: How do I stop receiving Alpha/Beta test emails?

A: You can manage this yourself on the Google Group interface. You can set your account per group to how you want to receive emails. We currently send one out one email every 1-2 weeks that contain release notes, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and plans for the future.

Q: When will Mini Militia Classic be available on IOS/Apple?

A: Now! V0.1.7 was successfully released to iOS. You need to have an invite sent to you via TestFlight. Send us an email at testingfeedback [at] appsomniacs.com giving us the email address you plan to log in with. Please add a comment about iOS somewhere in the email. The invites are a completely manual process and each email address must be entered by hand, one at a time. Expect 3-7 day turnarounds on this. It is insanely stupid and we have some very not nice things to say about Apple while we do it. Current restriction is that you must have iOS v13 or higher to run TestFlight. We aren't happy about this either and are looking for another way to open this up to our older devices, but for now this is the restriction we must live with.

Q: What happened to my data / rank / score / profile?

A: Mini Militia Classic is in the Alpha phase, scores and rank are under development. Please do not invest yourself in anything beyond per match scores. The whole system is eventually getting wiped. We recommend if you want to save your scores, screenshot them. Miniclip has their version of the app in the stores (known as Mini Militia - Doodle Army 2) that they are continuing to develop and maintain. All the user data associated with the Miniclip version is being 100% managed by Miniclip and is not something Appsomniacs has access to. Apple/Google doesn't allow cross data sharing between apps published by different companies. We will not have access to any of the old scores and purchases.

Q: When will you add new maps / guns / avatars / game modes to the game?

A: Battlepass, avatars, game modes, or any new content... We hear you. With only two developers we can’t reach that far into new content while also supporting the game. Our new approach with Mini Militia Classic is to create more tools that let people create their own content. MMC is getting reconfigured with new app architecture that will more easily allow us to create new content but this is brain meltingly hard work and we literally have months more of work ahead of us yet. So our Alpha and Beta phases are broken out into pieces that let us test this new architecture along the way. Help us do that. By the end of Beta, there should be a much more highly customizable system. Our plan is to make Mini Militia Classic support game modes beyond just CTF. In the future, going into custom should give you the option of joining a Deathmatch, CTF, Payload, Mini Royal or any other fun creation. The investment we are making in deep changes to Mini Militia Classic’s app architecture means we will finally be able to try out more ideas faster and adopt new stuff.

Q: How do I report a cheater or why won’t you get rid of these cheaters?

A: By the end of alpha there will be multiple ways to report. Emailing support with your evidence is ALWAYS an option. Support handles it now and in the future, we may set up a dedicated email that community moderators can help us manage. As for getting rid of them, it's a constant battle and we are always on the prowl. We spend more time investigating reports and watching for these occurrences which have impacted development many times. We have skipped adding features that would be too easy to hack no matter how fun they were. Cheating is not a victimless crime. We will ban players and wipe scores because we can. Leaderboards are for players with good standing within the community. And cheating is just one reason you would be removed from them.

One note: Hacking cheats should not be confused with acceptable modding, which doesn’t affect legit play spaces by changing the rules of engagement for one person or group over another.

Before you report there are three major things to consider here:

1) Some reports of cheaters end up being a bug like a client error. If you see someone walking and shooting through walls it's probably a map loading bug. Someone probably joined RIGHT as a game started and the app doesn’t know what map to load, it’s a thing in the Alpha we intend to fix. Ask what map they are on. This is one **should** be fixed by the end of Alpha/Beta. We know there are wall hacks out there and since the Alpha started there have been a few accounts spotted and blocked for it. Some blocks were done on legit players with this bug load issue so caution is needed and an investigation needs to be done before players are banned.

2) It turns out there are some very good players out there as well as insanely lucky ones (the former number greater than the latter imo.) When you play against enough players you will begin to see a pattern. These players are insanely good. Not just good-good, but INSANELY good. They aren’t hacking, they are just better and got the drop, that’s not saying that some don’t use exploits. Some have even come to be part of the game (e.g., punch sprinting.) Lag is also another factor that affects your view of the world. Check your lag indicator. Is there a correlation? The bottomline is we researched so many of these reports and were simply outplayed. Hard. Almost 99% of the time. I am not saying you shouldn’t report, but understand most reports are met with no action because the investigation bore no viable evidence to the case, but sometimes it shows us a bug or an exploit and that is on us to consider how to fix.

3) They really could be cheating but you can’t just say that and expect action! Sometimes it is obvious. If they are a Hacker/Cheater, we need to know what they are doing. Please provide as much *specifics* as possible. 100% of reports that claim “I found a hacker” are pretty much ignored outside because they lack basic information or evidence. We are not mind readers. You gotta give us more to go on to be actionable (this lack of info happens A LOT.) In order to narrow down how hackers are manipulating the game we need more information. Please describe the offense with as much detail as you can:

- What did the hack let them do? (try to be a specific as you can)

- What was the game mode?

- Does the hack relate to a known game bug being exploited? (like flying through walls)

- Do you have screenshots or video?

- Can you send us their Appsomniacs Global ID (shown in [brackets] next to the player name)?

To access the Global ID:

Type DA2ID into the chat of a running game (not in the lobby)

Take a screenshot of the score board showing the players' GIDs.

If you send us a video, please also include notes about what is happening with a time stamp of the issue shown in the video and a description of the issue. Without more information these reports get filed into an "unknown issue" bucket and get put off as a very last priority.

Q: What is the difference between the Loadout and the Armory?

A: Loadout is where you choose what you start each life with in hand. It will be the replacement to the current Store. You will be able to assign and change your 'loadout' to adjust your game tactics via starting gear and skill 'cards' prior to the start of the next battle. That’s the plan. We still need to see if it works. The Armory will be the place in the app you would configure loadouts and weapon configs while not in a game.

Q: Why don’t you add voice to the game?

A: You are not alone in wanting voice added to the game (it is requested a lot). Voice is tough at this point, but we recognize the need for in-game team coordination tools to be taken more seriously in the competition scene. We would like to add more emotes such as fm - "follow me", dt - "defend top", cm - "cover me" or whichever commands people want most. In addition to chat console commands, there needs to be some way to issue these emotes in two or less gestures. All speculative features. For now we recommend using voice app like Discord. Did you know we have a Discord server? https://discord.gg/93DgqsRtfg

Q: Is there an official MMC Discord server?

A: Appsomniacs has a Discord Server: https://discord.gg/93DgqsRtfg
At some point we will need to do a redo of the server, including getting some outside help/crew to moderate. We weren't the original owners, those folks set this up for us but have moved on and have passed the site on to us. In the short term, this is still a place to make contact with us (Chad and Hunter) and share feedback. It is a public forum, so the expectation is that people not be jerks to each other, troll to the minimum, and be cool. Beefs are taken offline, save it for the arenas. So low trash. We don't mind a little banter but there are boundaries. No hate speech (race/sex/gender/etc.). No crime (although our laws vary greatly). No hurting people just to hurt them. We can carve out some decency here and have an enjoyable shared experience. Just try to be excellent to one another.

Q: My older device isn’t supported or will you support older devices?

A: Not all architectures are supported yet and may never be if it is deemed a security issue by Google or Apple. There are some minimums we are forced to work with (4.4 Android on Google Play and iOS 10 on Apple) because of 3rd party libraries. We currently only support Android armeabi v7 and arm64 compliant devices. We will support as far back as we think we can go, it's just work that needs to be researched (it was broken making the game compliant with new Google and Apple security requirements). Google requires an Arm64 build minimum to be able to post an app, and we haven't had time to figure out what's missing in the new library code to get those older architectures up and running again. Times change, so do the requirements. The tech industry isn't updating their code to support the old stuff out there (abandonware sickness) leaving it to us to fix. We are stretched too thin through Alpha to begin that research right now. We haven't forgotten about older devices though, but might end up being really limited on which devices we will eventually be able to support.

Q: Do you have a YouTube channel?

A: Yes, but it is very sad and lonely. You will quickly discover our skills are in programming and not video production. Far more useful and informative videos can be found within the Doodle Army’s Mini Militia communities. Please support your community and their findings. It helps us. Thanks!

Q: I’m new, how can I learn how to play Mini Militia Classic?

A: We are very fortunate to have a great community of content creators that make videos about playing Mini Militia Classic.