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[Tankshell]

I am currently writing my iOS/Android (although subsequently will release on Mac and Windows) game purely in Cocos2d, and am finding it meets all my needs. Extremely flexible, yet covers a lot of the basics. It is purely a framework though, no nice GUI ala Unity development tools.

Anyway, my game is entitled: "Ultra Super Firework Planets: In Space!" and should be out in a few weeks. Imagine Geometry Wars, Mario Galaxy and Missile Command had intimate relations (yes all 3 of them) and somehow gave birth to a hideous freak: that is my game.

Will post some screenshots/videos soon.

As promised, click thumbs for full size versions.

All heavily work in progress, everything subject to change, should have some videos soon! Feel free to ask any questions. This will be my first publicly released game, everything developed by just me in my small study at home when not at the day job. Also feel free to support me and buy a copy when it releases in a few weeks =0)

Cheers fellow GAF devs!

EDIT - added sneak peak video below

 

[missile]

Well mate, that looks great! Thumbs up for keep pushing.
What's the mission objective of the game?

 

[DemonNite]

As promised, click thumbs for full size versions.

All heavily work in progress, everything subject to change, should have some videos soon! Feel free to ask any questions. This will be my first publicly released game, everything developed by just me in my small study at home when not at the day job. Also feel free to support me and buy a copy when it releases in a few weeks =0)

Cheers fellow GAF devs!

sounds interesting... but just a minor pet peeve from myself. Try and create a more inspired logo/font style

 

[b0b]

Post here from someone who is aspiring to get into independent game development sometime in the future. I already asked around in the programming thread but didn't get a response so I thought I'd ask here as well.

I'm currently learning Python from a couple of different sources just as an introduction to programming. I'm also starting to teach myself some c++ on the side but I haven't gotten very far with that yet so I'm open to other things.

My question is what are the best languages to learn getting into independent development? What are the most versatile ones and the ones best suited for certain things? At this point I still don't know much about programming, etc. so anything will help.

If you *really* want to learn *programming*, go ahead with python. You won't waste your time. Just don't start to program a game as your first project. If you just want to make a (simple) game, use one of the many available SDKs. Programming games is really hard, it's much harder then one might think.

There is no "best language". You choose one you are comfortable with.

For me it's C++. If you don't loose interest in programming with python I would highly recommend to dig into C/C++. I wouldn't bother with Java, C# or Objective-C. I want my code to run on as many platform as I want to support. I'm skeptical about Java and it's Virtual Machine (it is slow - imho - and I don't really know how good it will be supported in the future after Oracles involvement). C# is really microsoft-.NET in most cases, a no-go for me. And Objective-C is mostly apple-only and I don't like it's syntax. C/C++ might be harder to learn, but the overall result is worth it. If you are familiar with C/C++ jumping to the languages mentioned before is easy.

Don't listen to this man. In fact do exactly the opposite.

You want to make games? Then spend your time making games, not glaring at the beauty of your own homemade c++ engine.

Obsidian next project is getting done on Unity. Chubbigans has released a ton of games entirely made in GameMaker, his latest one even got featured on Giant Bomb. Notch made Minecraft in Java, I bet if he asked what language he should've used NO ONE would've said Java.

The thing is, the end user doesn't give a shit how the game is done so use the tool with wich you feel comfortable. For what it's worth you could make you game in Excel if that's what you want. Game development is difficult enough to waste your time fighting with an awful language like C/C++. You should spend your time designing a game not chasing memory leaks, making an efficient Makefile or fighting segfaults.

I agree with you as it comes to making games. Engine programming is really time consuming and complicated - and in the most cases not worth to do it yourself. You can't expect fast results if it comes to game development.

But I highly disagree on C/C++ being an awful language.

I'm one of these guys who are messing around with an homemade c++ engine. I don't really want to make a game of it now (through I know my engine can handle it as it is right now), simply because I have no idea what game I could make (I have many little independent ideas but have trouble to shape them together somehow so it makes an interesting overall-concept). Before starting my own engine I've tried many tools and SDKs - made levels, models, mods for games like quake, half-life 1 and so on. Spent some time using "Reality Factory"-SDK (and its Genesis3D engine - it was an free quake-engine-clone for windows). After finally removing Windows from my computer I spent some time to look at the available Open-Source SDKs and Engines like OGRE and Irrlicht, the Quake-engines and so on. And didn't really like them (that doesn't mean they are all bad, because they are not bad at all). So after some reading of Quake123-Code I started my own engine. Through it's nothing like quake as I'm trying to make it as flexible as possible. The engine shapes up nicely and I'm really happy with the progress I make. Maybe I will never finish it or never make something "playable" out of it, but I learned so much stuff by programming it so far, that I won't probably regret it some day. I can not live of it (I have a day-job, but it's not about programming), but I've fun.

I might be the wrong person to give advises about "game development" as I "only" write an engine without it being a real game.
I made some little games before (programmed myself or used an existing engine), on PC and TI-85-calculator (d'oh) but they all sucked then it comes to gameplay. I even started an 3D-FPS-metroid-clone before Metroid-Prime was released using Genesis3D-engine. I had a space-marine with a laser-like weapon, and one type of enemy (at least they were animated) running in two levels (highly "inspired" by the Super Metroid opening). But the engine sucked so badly (their BSP-code was broken then it comes to doors and area-brushes) so after getting tired of working around the flaws of the engine I lost interest... For now I have more fun/interest in programming then designing things.

 

[Tankshell]

sounds interesting... but just a minor pet peeve from myself. Try and create a more inspired logo/font style

Yeah, it looks a bit more interesting in motion, but you're right, I was hoping to tart it up a little before release.

BTW added a video to my post above.

 

[Limanima]

As promised, click thumbs for full size versions.

All heavily work in progress, everything subject to change, should have some videos soon! Feel free to ask any questions. This will be my first publicly released game, everything developed by just me in my small study at home when not at the day job. Also feel free to support me and buy a copy when it releases in a few weeks =0)

Cheers fellow GAF devs!




EDIT - added sneak peak video below

I haven't yet watched the video, but the screen grabs look great. Nice job.

 

[Margalis]

In terms of being productive working on a game I would probably learn C#.

In terms of being productive working in the games industry I would learn C/C++.

It just depends on what you want to do. Nobody is going to hire you to work on a PS3 game if you don't know C/C++. (Well...maybe you could work on tools/exporters)

C# gives you access to a lot of 3rd party environments that you can use to put stuff on the screen and do stuff relatively quickly.

 

[BlueKnight]

Hey everyone.

I've been following this thread since it was started (and the Indy Game Development one before), but I'm much more of a listener than a talker.

Having said that, I would love to hear from those of you whose main skill in game development is on the programming and design side, but who have absolutely nothing on the art side. How are you able to finish your games in these conditions? Do you team up with someone who can help with that aspect? What about if you really want to do something on your own? Is it worth it to try and learn how to work with some tools that can help with the art side? I doubt I'm the only one in this situation.

To anyone who is interested in a little background, I have a master degree in Computer Engineering and have been working with Unity for a couple of years in making serious games. Recently, I've started using cocos2d-x for my 2D projects. I call them projects because they are simply my gaming ideas put to practice in Unity or cocos2d-x, but it's hard to take them seriously when the art side is filled with placeholders..

 

[bumpkin]

Thanks for the Chopper Mike TestFlight hookup, razu! What sort of feedback are you looking for? Just bugs I encounter? Suggestions for tweaks or improvements?

 

[Heart of Black]

Is there anything that does this automatically? Like use give it an image and it spits it out in pixel art?

No. Any art that you do should be from a reference of some kind, and then either shrunk down, or just used as a basis. But just using Mosaic or something won't help you make good looking sprite graphics.

 

[JulianImp]

Hey everyone.

I've been following this thread since it was started (and the Indy Game Development one before), but I'm much more of a listener than a talker.

Having said that, I would love to hear from those of you whose main skill in game development is on the programming and design side, but who have absolutely nothing on the art side. How are you able to finish your games in these conditions? Do you team up with someone who can help with that aspect? What about if you really want to do something on your own? Is it worth it to try and learn how to work with some tools that can help with the art side? I doubt I'm the only one in this situation.

To anyone who is interested in a little background, I have a master degree in Computer Engineering and have been working with Unity for a couple of years in making serious games. Recently, I've started using cocos2d-x for my 2D projects. I call them projects because they are simply my gaming ideas put to practice in Unity or cocos2d-x, but it's hard to take them seriously when the art side is filled with placeholders..

For my current project, I decided to stick to very basic geometry with pretty shaders on top, and it works fine despite being severely limited; a friend of mine said he'd give me a hand with some textures I needed, bit what I aimed for was an art style that looked okay and didn't rely on coming up with complex textures (I'm using mostly linear and radial gradients so far).

I'm already used to filling my games with placeholder graphics until I can get some help. The only thing I could probably do reliably is pixel art, but even then I'm only halfway decent at making small to medium-sized sprites (I'm awful at drawing backgrounds).

You shouldn't worry too much about placeholder art until you're sure the game is great and have the desire to finish it, since you'll probably be able to find someone interested in helping you out when you eventually decide to replace the placeholder assets.

The only thing you should keep in mind is that placeholder art should reflect whichever aesthetic style you have in mind, since it's a lot easier for artists to know what you're aiming for in that case rather than coming up with several different concepts from scratch because you used single-color cubes, capsules and spheres all over the place.

 

[Heart of Black]

Hey everyone.

I've been following this thread since it was started (and the Indy Game Development one before), but I'm much more of a listener than a talker.

Having said that, I would love to hear from those of you whose main skill in game development is on the programming and design side, but who have absolutely nothing on the art side. How are you able to finish your games in these conditions? Do you team up with someone who can help with that aspect? What about if you really want to do something on your own? Is it worth it to try and learn how to work with some tools that can help with the art side? I doubt I'm the only one in this situation.

To anyone who is interested in a little background, I have a master degree in Computer Engineering and have been working with Unity for a couple of years in making serious games. Recently, I've started using cocos2d-x for my 2D projects. I call them projects because they are simply my gaming ideas put to practice in Unity or cocos2d-x, but it's hard to take them seriously when the art side is filled with placeholders..

You really don't need great graphics from the outset, this coming from an artist. A game that I did design and art on started with just circles on screen & as the artists finished with their art, the circles were replaced on each stage.

Find an artist to work with, but it's important that the game works before art is implemented.

 

[razu]

Thanks for the Chopper Mike TestFlight hookup, razu! What sort of feedback are you looking for? Just bugs I encounter? Suggestions for tweaks or improvements?

No problemo!

Anything at all. First impressions are super important. But other than that, anything that springs to mind.

Massive thanks!!

 

[razu]

Hey everyone.

I've been following this thread since it was started (and the Indy Game Development one before), but I'm much more of a listener than a talker.

Having said that, I would love to hear from those of you whose main skill in game development is on the programming and design side, but who have absolutely nothing on the art side. How are you able to finish your games in these conditions? Do you team up with someone who can help with that aspect? What about if you really want to do something on your own? Is it worth it to try and learn how to work with some tools that can help with the art side? I doubt I'm the only one in this situation.

To anyone who is interested in a little background, I have a master degree in Computer Engineering and have been working with Unity for a couple of years in making serious games. Recently, I've started using cocos2d-x for my 2D projects. I call them projects because they are simply my gaming ideas put to practice in Unity or cocos2d-x, but it's hard to take them seriously when the art side is filled with placeholders..

I'm a programmer. I've been writing games since I was a kid. Since 1997 for a living. Just recently started my own indie label, VAMflax.

I've done *everything* myself. And as others have said, that's made a super clean, simple art style a requirement. That said, the choice of colours and ridiculously high quality shaders have made Chopper Mike look amazing on mobile devices with super vibrant screens. Favourite screen is the 4S that I've seen. It really helps the toy helicopter look and feel.

Actually making geometry is a pain. But, the more you do, the easier it gets. I use Blender, and it's been a fight to do things I know how to do in Max, but don't know the word or keyboard shortcut for... But google gets you there.

Other than that, read design sites. Read about typography. Read about everything, practise, and you will actually become an artist! It's not in the genes, it's something to work at. I say this from my future self, as I'm not fully there yet myself

Music? Garageband. I used a bit of auto-generated bits, but I tried to put in as many bits of my own as I could. Again, read about music if you want to make music...

I think the thing is, as long as you keep things simple, you can make something that people like. Good luck!!

 

[Blizzard]

sounds interesting... but just a minor pet peeve from myself. Try and create a more inspired logo/font style

I respectfully agree with this if you're trying to sell the game -- try to at minimum avoid being so similar to the Mario Galaxy font and logo color scheme, lest you attract lawyers or something.

 

[missile]

... Having said that, I would love to hear from those of you whose main skill in game development is on the programming and design side, but who have absolutely nothing on the art side. How are you able to finish your games in these conditions? Do you team up with someone who can help with that aspect? What about if you really want to do something on your own? Is it worth it to try and learn how to work with some tools that can help with the art side? I doubt I'm the only one in this situation. ...

It always helps, since one can do a lot of stuff from simple concepts. You can
go a long distance before you need a pro artist. Personally, I have an artist
on may back if needed, but I for one are very interested in procedurally
generated content for video games. Anyhow, it depends on the game how far one
can stretch certain things. That's something you will learn while going along.

 

[BomberMouse]

But I highly disagree on C/C++ being an awful language.

Yeah, I should've put "awful language for making games or coding game logic". It has it's merits but common, there's a reason why most people use and embedded Lua/Ruby/Python when it comes to game logic.

 

[razu]

Yeah, I should've put "awful language for making games or coding game logic". It has it's merits but common, there's a reason why most people use and embedded Lua/Ruby/Python when it comes to game logic.

C++ is perfect for coding games and 'game logic', or anything else. I would imagine the best games ever made have been coded in C++!

I'd say you have to want to be a programmer to use it though. Which isn't a requirement to make games. Nothing wrong with using *anything*, if it gets the job done. But let's not go mad and say C++ is awful for making games!!

 

[razu]

As promised, click thumbs for full size versions.

All heavily work in progress, everything subject to change, should have some videos soon! Feel free to ask any questions. This will be my first publicly released game, everything developed by just me in my small study at home when not at the day job. Also feel free to support me and buy a copy when it releases in a few weeks =0)

Cheers fellow GAF devs!




EDIT - added sneak peak video below

Looks great. Any chance of a test flight invite...?

 

[Tankshell]

I respectfully agree with this if you're trying to sell the game -- try to at minimum avoid being so similar to the Mario Galaxy font and logo color scheme, lest you attract lawyers or something.

Totally agree. Infact I have just redesigned it from scratch up, am much happier with the new version, more of am emblem/logo and less of some random floating text. To be fair that text was the first thing that went into the game and doesn't really fit with the aesthetic anymore. =0) Will fine tune it a bit and post back here for approval =0)

Looks great. Any chance of a test flight invite...?

Sure thing, will sort out access for anybody from GAF who wants to trial it over the next couple of weeks, should be mostly playable by then!

 

[RastaGundam]

Sign me up, too, please (should have plenty of time after getting #Robotanika out the door, and taking Razu's Chopper Mike for a, uh, spin)

 

[BlueKnight]

For my current project, I decided to stick to very basic geometry with pretty shaders on top, and it works fine despite being severely limited; a friend of mine said he'd give me a hand with some textures I needed, bit what I aimed for was an art style that looked okay and didn't rely on coming up with complex textures (I'm using mostly linear and radial gradients so far).

The only thing you should keep in mind is that placeholder art should reflect whichever aesthetic style you have in mind, since it's a lot easier for artists to know what you're aiming for in that case rather than coming up with several different concepts from scratch because you used single-color cubes, capsules and spheres all over the place.

The first bold seems live a very good idea for 3D games, but what about 2D games? And also, having placeholder art that reflects the aesthetic you are looking for is a problem in itself. Is it acceptable to use art from commercial games as placeholder?

You really don't need great graphics from the outset, this coming from an artist. A game that I did design and art on started with just circles on screen & as the artists finished with their art, the circles were replaced on each stage.

Yeah, I understand that. It's just that having something in your portfolio with unfinished art will undoubtedly have a negative impact in the opinion of whoever is looking at it. Maybe I'm just being too critical and having no art can be an understandable situation, but I would much rather follow razu's approach in having an enforced super clean, simple art style that can at the same time be very pleasing while also having the advantage to maybe be within reach of someone with little knowledge in that field.

I'm a programmer. I've been writing games since I was a kid. Since 1997 for a living. Just recently started my own indie label, VAMflax.

I've done *everything* myself. And as others have said, that's made a super clean, simple art style a requirement. That said, the choice of colours and ridiculously high quality shaders have made Chopper Mike look amazing on mobile devices with super vibrant screens. Favourite screen is the 4S that I've seen. It really helps the toy helicopter look and feel.

Actually making geometry is a pain. But, the more you do, the easier it gets. I use Blender, and it's been a fight to do things I know how to do in Max, but don't know the word or keyboard shortcut for... But google gets you there.

Other than that, read design sites. Read about typography. Read about everything, practise, and you will actually become an artist! It's not in the genes, it's something to work at. I say this from my future self, as I'm not fully there yet myself

Music? Garageband. I used a bit of auto-generated bits, but I tried to put in as many bits of my own as I could. Again, read about music if you want to make music...

I think the thing is, as long as you keep things simple, you can make something that people like. Good luck!!

I've been following your progress and it really is sort of an inspiration
Chopper Mike does look very nice. In this case, the art style perfectly matched your needs as a programmer without sacrificing the look and feel you were looking for. You deserve a lot of credit for that!
I started learning how to use Blender sometime last year, but gave up because of the increasingly short time I had available for it. However I may try to start again.
I also like to believe that art is something that is gene independent, but sometimes I'm not so sure. Either way, I do think it can be improved with work, so at the very least it may be possible to improve it enough to get started on your own.
Music doesn't bother me as much as art, because I think I can handle that myself. That and because for some reason I don't feel bad about using placeholder music as much as I do when using placeholder art

I hope you are right about that last comment. I will surely keep trying! Thanks for that and good luck to you too

It always helps, since one can do a lot of stuff from simple concepts. You can
go a long distance before you need a pro artist. Personally, I have an artist
on may back if needed, but I for one are very interested in procedurally
generated content for video games. Anyhow, it depends on the game how far one
can stretch certain things. That's something you will learn while going along.

Indeed, simple seems to be the focus word for someone in this situation. And yes, procedurally generated content can also be a good way to deal with this.

Thank you to everyone who pitched in. Talking about this is already helping me feel more capable

 

[JulianImp]

The first bold seems live a very good idea for 3D games, but what about 2D games? And also, having placeholder art that reflects the aesthetic you are looking for is a problem in itself. Is it acceptable to use art from commercial games as placeholder?

When I said placeholder art, I mostly meant something you made yourself based on what you want the game to look like. It will probably look bad at first, but so does most programmer art. Search the internet for some Braid prototype pictures and you'll see the game looked awful with placeholder art, but you can easily see how the final graphics are just prettier versions of the placeholder ones.

Pixel art is even easier to work with than 3D models when it comes to characterization, since you have little space to work with in the first place. Constraints like that force you to focus on what really matters, like making the character skinny and tall, robust and muscle-bound, short and round, etc.

You can also add lots of characterization with just a pair of pixels. Say, put a few dark-skin pixels on the character's face to give him or her a scar, and the player will realize that he or she is somewhat old and/or a seasoned veteran on the battlefield. Give the character frowny eyebrows to make him/her evil, or remove a few pixels from a cape to make its wearer look less like part of the nobility and more like a wanderer or hermit.

That's why I like pixel art more than 3D graphics when it comes down to placeholder art: if I want to have a pixellated young pirate captain or bloodthirsty cyclops in my game, I can draw something that remotely resembles it, and once the game goes further through production, I can show the sprites to an artist to give him a better starting point than he/she'd have from a written description or reference images I took from the web. 3D art, on the other hand, requires you to model something decent, unwrap its UVs, create a texture, rig it and finally animate it, which are lots of extra steps compared to single 32x64 sprites and two-frame placeholder animations.

 

[Tashi]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2oyHpftKFg

Another update on the prototype. Just added an enemy character that moves in one direction.

I actually have a question. I have his "movement" in the Update method in the game class. (XNA here). Is that a bad idea? Should I have it move to its own thread? Anyway, next is collision detection and then some super basic AI. I'm going to have the enemy change direction and move in the direction of the player character. Looking to dive right into a per pixel collision system but a basic rectangle collision system that encapsulates it. Just so I don't have the game checking each pixel every fuckin frame.

 

[BlueKnight]

When I said placeholder art, I mostly meant something you made yourself based on what you want the game to look like. It will probably look bad at first, but so does most programmer art. Search the internet for some Braid prototype pictures and you'll see the game looked awful with placeholder art, but you can easily see how the final graphics are just prettier versions of the placeholder ones.

Pixel art is even easier to work with than 3D models when it comes to characterization, since you have little space to work with in the first place. Constraints like that force you to focus on what really matters, like making the character skinny and tall, robust and muscle-bound, short and round, etc.

You can also add lots of characterization with just a pair of pixels. Say, put a few dark-skin pixels on the character's face to give him or her a scar, and the player will realize that he or she is somewhat old and/or a seasoned veteran on the battlefield. Give the character frowny eyebrows to make him/her evil, or remove a few pixels from a cape to make its wearer look less like part of the nobility and more like a wanderer or hermit.

That's why I like pixel art more than 3D graphics when it comes down to placeholder art: if I want to have a pixellated young pirate captain or bloodthirsty cyclops in my game, I can draw something that remotely resembles it, and once the game goes further through production, I can show the sprites to an artist to give him a better starting point than he/she'd have from a written description or reference images I took from the web. 3D art, on the other hand, requires you to model something decent, unwrap its UVs, create a texture, rig it and finally animate it, which are lots of extra steps compared to single 32x64 sprites and two-frame placeholder animations.

I guess it is possible to have placeholder art that doesn't look good but still somewhat shows the direction you are aiming for in terms of aesthetic. Those Braid prototype pictures are a very good example of that.

It's funny because I never thought I would be doing pixel art myself. Not even for prototyping. But the more I think about it, and also after reading what you said about it actually being easier because of those constraints, I'm starting to get really interested in learning more about that. It's just that it always bothered me to think of having everything look really ugly, but I guess I just have to accept that that's just what prototypes are. Their main focus is on the game mechanics and not on having stuff look nice.

I think I'll stick with 2D until I have something finished. It's so easy to start working on a new project, but getting one of them from start to finish is where the difficulty is..

Any particular tool you like for creating pixel art? I'll search around, but it's always nice to have personal opinions.

 

[Tankshell]

Totally agree. Infact I have just redesigned it from scratch up, am much happier with the new version, more of am emblem/logo and less of some random floating text. To be fair that text was the first thing that went into the game and doesn't really fit with the aesthetic anymore. =0) Will fine tune it a bit and post back here for approval =0)

Guys I can haz new logo. It looks great animated on the screen, for example the vines grow up around the text and the "in space" part floats and bounces etc. Also I'm not quite sure about the placement of the "ultra" and "super" words now. I might turn them into psuedo emblem style wings instead, might look better. Thoughts? Looks a bit blurry in thumbnail form, click on it and view it native for better idea.

 

[JulianImp]

Guys I can haz new logo. It looks great animated on the screen, for example the vines grow up around the text and the "in space" part floats and bounces etc. Also I'm not quite sure about the placement of the "ultra" and "super" words now. I might turn them into psuedo emblem style wings instead, might look better. Thoughts? Looks a bit blurry in thumbnail form, click on it and view it native for better idea.

Now that looks swell! I like how the new logo now has an identity of its own. By the way, why does the title have "Ultra Super" in it? It's the one thing that's barely readable in the logo, and I think it'd look fine without them unless it's a sequel, I guess; even then, I'd say you should stick to a single adjective unless you're just aiming to sound funny.

Today and tomorrow I'll be working on the game to try and have a playable version as soon as possible, and hopefully make it to the IGF submission deadline. Let's hope everything goes well, and I don't have to rewrite too much code!

 

[JulianImp]

Here's a small update of my progress so far:

I've finally replaced the placeholder background particle texture as well as the props' texture (which I'm testing different colors on). I've also tried making two possible replacements for the old plant prop, and here's what the all look like in-game:



Oddly enough, I think I still prefer the placeholder one, but that got me thinking if I could use enlarged thorny plants as some kind of background brier, and I think that turned out okay:



I'm trying to define a good color palette for the background color and the particles for now, but I'll have to work on the menu system as well, so I guess I'll mostly focus on making sure things work before I start polishing stuff.

 

[Ydahs]

Started brainstorming concepts for my game. It'll be a bullet hell game, but since I've never really played much of the genre, it's gonna be my own vision of what a bullet hell game really is. Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen but I guess that's the part of the fun.

It's going to be developed as a Metro app, using SharpDX in C#. Was exposed to the library and the language through University and I'm loving them both.

 

[The Friendly Monster]

My game Total Pool will be Amazon's free app of the day tomorrow, should be interesting. I'll be happy to share download numbers and sales impact for anyone interested.

Ok time to follow up on this.

Before the promotion I was getting a handful of downloads per day on Amazon for both Total Pool and the Total Pool Demo. I had next to no visibility on Amazon and was questioning the point of being on the store.

On the day of the promotion I got just over 100k downloads and about 35 reviews.

Since the promotion I have been getting approximately 40 purchases per day for the game, a massive increase and also significantly above what I see on Google Play. I know this is at least partly down to being featured further after the free app promotion and expect this to drop down to single digits soon.

I saw a small spike in interest on Google Play but nothing too significant.

It's definitely worth doing if Amazon give you the opportunity in my opinion, I've made more money in the 10 days after being free on Amazon than in the 6 months prior.

The breakdown of my current income is something like this per day on average:
$105 ads on Total Snooker Free
$12 ads on Total Pool Free
€15 sales of Total Pool and Total Snooker on Google Play
$40 sales of Total Pool and Total Snooker on Amazon

The ads have been a big breakthrough in finally making a decent amount of money. The sell-through numbers for the ad-free version are pathetically low. Each free download converts to about $0.02 in ad money overall, a paltry amount for providing hours of entertainment. I think there's a discussion about the ethics of all this, I don't feel nearly as comfortable being ad-supported as having my content paid for, but that's best saved for another thread.

My main obstacle to the Pool game being successful is the bizarrely low search ranking of Total Pool Free when "pool" is searched for on the Play Store, it's halfway down the 4th page for no reason I can comprehend. Very frustrating.

If anyone has any questions about Amazon, Google Play or the money side of things then ask away.

 

[Krelian]

Thank you. That's very interesting. How did you get to be chosen as app of the day by Amazon? Did you apply for it, was it random? I don't have any idea how it works. It seems to be key to getting a decent number of downloads if you don't have an otherwise recognizable brand name.

 

[The Friendly Monster]

Thank you. That's very interesting. How did you get to be chosen as app of the day by Amazon? Did you apply for it, was it random? I don't have any idea how it works. It seems to be key to getting a decent number of downloads if you don't have an otherwise recognizable brand name.

They contacted me, absolutely no idea what process they go through to pick it. There was about a month between being emailed and the game going up. They have also contacted me about having Total Snooker as the free app of the day, which I declined until seeing how Total pool went. Given Snooker's low profile in the US, where at least 80% of the downloads and sales have come from on Amazon, it's hard to see this being anywhere near as lucrative.

 

[JasoNsider]

It's always fun to catch up on indie-GAF thread

We put together a small interactive piece for halloween time. Maybe you guys would be interested in checking it out. It's called The Abyss, and right now you can have it for free on Android:
http://goo.gl/mwivU

Or, if you'd like, can try it on the Chrome store:
http://goo.gl/1LvJD).

The iPhone/iPad version are on the way still. 'Dat app store wait...

To interact, you touch to create currents under water to influence objects. This project was concepted, developed, completed over the course of 3 days.

I work a lot on bigger projects, but we've started doing Game Jams on our own the last little while, just to keep creative juices flowing. I'll probably make a diary video soon about the process and what went into designing it

 

[missile]

@TFM: Well done, and thx for sharing!

 

[The Friendly Monster]

@TFM: Well done, and thx for sharing!

Cheers, you're welcome. I'm in two minds about posting this stuff but a promise is a promise.

On the positive I think openness is a good thing. I have benefitted hugely from being able to use free and open resources to make this game. I appreciate openness and think it's a net benefit to us all. I also welcome competition, we should be trying to make the best games we can. Advice on monetization is part of this for a lot of us.

On the other hand I am very aware that I have only felt comfortable posting this once I have achieved a modicum of success. It feels embarrassing to sell a handful of copies of your game in a month, yet that is the case for almost everything out there. The psychology of this stuff is very strange compared to working a salaried job and not something I was particularly prepared for.

 

[Diablohead]

Any app store devs know if it's allowed to upload an app without a release date set then use download codes to let people try it out before release?

 

[JasoNsider]

Cheers, you're welcome. I'm in two minds about posting this stuff but a promise is a promise.

On the positive I think openness is a good thing. I have benefitted hugely from being able to use free and open resources to make this game. I appreciate openness and think it's a net benefit to us all. I also welcome competition, we should be trying to make the best games we can. Advice on monetization is part of this for a lot of us.

On the other hand I am very aware that I have only felt comfortable posting this once I have achieved a modicum of success. It feels embarrassing to sell a handful of copies of your game in a month, yet that is the case for almost everything out there. The psychology of this stuff is very strange compared to working a salaried job and not something I was particularly prepared for.

That is a great attitude, man. I totally agree in transparency, especially in communities like this one. We can all stand to help each other. That's why I was sharing all information I can on technology in this thread, stats on our Greenlight page, etc. Really, as lots of us have seen, it's a chaotic world of scattered information out there, so anything we can do to help each other goes a long way.

 

[missile]

Cheers, you're welcome. I'm in two minds about posting this stuff but a promise is a promise.

On the positive I think openness is a good thing. I have benefitted hugely from being able to use free and open resources to make this game. I appreciate openness and think it's a net benefit to us all. I also welcome competition, we should be trying to make the best games we can. Advice on monetization is part of this for a lot of us.

Indeed.

On the other hand I am very aware that I have only felt comfortable posting this once I have achieved a modicum of success. It feels embarrassing to sell a handful of copies of your game in a month, yet that is the case for almost everything out there. The psychology of this stuff is very strange compared to working a salaried job and not something I was particularly prepared for.

You should take that down rather quickly. There is nothing to prove at all.
On a more specific note; we as social people have (were) trained a behavior
which reads cognitive dissonance, which describe the state of holding two or
more conflicting cognitions (wiki). From my experience and understanding, the
problem arises because people think we can arbitrarily separate and
categorize everything and facing the one without the other, i.e. good/bad,
black/white, ying/yang, successful/failure etc., where in the end there was
never a separation to begin with, since most of these men made opposing
things have an intrinsic unity and can't be viewed in isolation. Such
separations will lead one only into circular patterns of thoughts and actions
making one a slave of ones very own mind. Arbitrary separation is a framework
for guiding our thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead us to a
predetermined solution. An entire society lives on this pattern and becomes
slaves in the process. Just separate things and you can enforce power. That's
how it always works - watch the newspapers. You can exploit people rather
easily. Give them some "opposing" things and most of them will fight the
"good" fight. I mean, just watch the language discussion we have over here at
times between C/C++, Java, C#, etc. Same thing. In general, the one fighting
for the "good" thing as well as those fighting for the "bad" thing are all
becoming slaves of the "one" who has enforced this separation and are prone to
become exploitable. In the end we call this politics!

Well, I have a game to make....

 

[The Friendly Monster]

You should take that down rather quickly. There is nothing to prove at all.
On a more specific note; we as social people have (were) trained a behavior
which reads cognitive dissonance, which describe the state of holding two or
more conflicting cognitions (wiki). From my experience and understanding, the
problem arises because people think we can arbitrarily separate and
categorize everything and facing the one without the other, i.e. good/bad,
black/white, ying/yang, successful/failure etc., where in the end there was
never a separation to begin with, since most of these men made opposing
things have an intrinsic unity and can't be viewed in isolation. Such
separations will lead one only into circular patterns of thoughts and actions
making one a slave of ones very own mind. Arbitrary separation is a framework
for guiding our thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead us to a
predetermined solution. An entire society lives on this pattern and becomes
slaves in the process. Just separate things and you can enforce power. That's
how it always works - watch the newspapers. You can exploit people rather
easily. Give them some "opposing" things and most of them will fight the
"good" fight. I mean, just watch the language discussion we have over here at
times between C/C++, Java, C#, etc. Same thing. In general, the one fighting
for the "good" thing as well as those fighting for the "bad" thing are all
becoming slaves of the "one" who has enforced this separation and are prone to
become exploitable. In the end we call this politics!

Well, I have a game to make....

I am totally lost here. What?

 

[BomberMouse]

I am totally lost here. What?

I'm glad I wasn't the only one.

Thanks for sharing those figures TFM. Devs are usually very secretive about this stuff (probable for the reasons you mentioned).

 

[whitehawk]

Guys I can haz new logo. It looks great animated on the screen, for example the vines grow up around the text and the "in space" part floats and bounces etc. Also I'm not quite sure about the placement of the "ultra" and "super" words now. I might turn them into psuedo emblem style wings instead, might look better. Thoughts? Looks a bit blurry in thumbnail form, click on it and view it native for better idea.

Much better. Old logo looked like you ripped it straight from Mario Galaxy which made the game look cheap.

 

[BomberMouse]

Guys I can haz new logo. It looks great animated on the screen, for example the vines grow up around the text and the "in space" part floats and bounces etc. Also I'm not quite sure about the placement of the "ultra" and "super" words now. I might turn them into psuedo emblem style wings instead, might look better. Thoughts? Looks a bit blurry in thumbnail form, click on it and view it native for better idea.

I looks way better, but the redundant globe is a bit annoying. It's on the logo AND on the screen?

IMHO you should drop it from the logo.

 

[missile]

I am totally lost here. What?

Just some random thoughts then.


Well, back on topic;

I made some further progress on my engine. Now the Nihilo Engine has a 3d
polygon clipping algorithm implemented. It was quite an undertaken to crank it
onto the DCPU-16 but it all works now. A polygon will now be clipped to the
entire view frustrum if needed. This implementation poses no restriction on
the number of vertices used to define a polygon.

The animation shows a cube entering from behind the far plane marching
towards the near plane (which was pushed in front a bit more than necessary
for demonstration purpose). There are two clippings in action; 3d line
clipping (old) and 3d polygon clipping (new). The cube gets clipped against
all frustrum planes while crossing.

 

[Meesh]

I think I've got a good game idea, something in the vein of angry birds for iPhone users but I'm not sure where to start as I don't have any coding experience. What development tools should I pursue? Or is it better to outsource the coding and do the design and artwork myself? I'm a little jazzed about it because everybody I run my idea across in detail said they'd buy it....so Gaf, what should I do?

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

Tell us the idea. I swear I won't steal it.

 

[Meesh]

Tell us the idea. I swear I won't steal it.

ooh tempting lol, but I honestly believe this to be a worthwhile endeavor so I'm looking for all the help or guidance I can get.

 

[Tankshell]

I think I've got a good game idea, something in the vein of angry birds for iPhone users but I'm not sure where to start as I don't have any coding experience. What development tools should I pursue? Or is it better to outsource the coding and do the design and artwork myself? I'm a little jazzed about it because everybody I run my idea across in detail said they'd buy it....so Gaf, what should I do?

If you're serious, then you first need to decide which platforms you want to release it on, this will in turn dictate the best development tools you can choose from.

 

[Meesh]

If you're serious, then you first need to decide which platforms you want to release it on, this will in turn dictate the best development tools you can choose from.

For the iOS mobile market is I think what I'm trying to get at...I haven't considered more than one platform, should I be? I'm confused on the issue a bit, total noob here of course.

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

Angry birds uses box2d for its physics, which is also integrated into cocos2d, a popular free 2D engine for iOS. You could have a go at using that if you wanted to make something angry birdsy. There are heaps of cocos2d tutorials out there, and the forum is also helpful too.

 

[BlueMagic]

Yesterday afternoon I tried Unity, and I have to say it is great. I was able, without any experience whatsoever (I coded in C# but it was easy coming from C++) to create a simple game mechanic that works. I'll see if I post it later, when I get home.

Not sure about how good Unity performs on iPad, but it is probably a good choice, Evilink. The visual editor and environment is easy to get into even if you are no programmer. Keep in mind that it is quite 3D oriented, though.