Gamestyle of Pacman

I was given the charge last week of writing a minigame for Playstation Home. A place i am sure not too many developers are really familiar with, heck i am certain there are very few developing for this great place on everyones PS3.

I was told the game style would be a bit like Pacman. Though the actual design was not done, and yet i was ready to start coding immediately. So i decided i did not require a full design, after all Pacman had very select and very few elements in its game. So off i went coding the Dots and the basic control of the player. This btw was a good way for me to get back into coding not just in Lua but also in the Home SDK (HDK). It has been over a year since i last did anything personally inside home (Midway2).

I have to say it took me very little time to get back into the swing of things. Soon enough i had this enemy elements along with picking up or eating the Dots i ran over. Now i wasn't sure what the Maze was going to be, there had been a couple of suggestions bandied about, so i decided to ignore all of them :)

Istead i made the maze not a maze at all. Let me explain, hehe. I created a simple layout of a 10 x 10 grid, and placed the Dots on those grid points. Then i allowed the player to just roam around the whole square playfield area at will. finally my last idea came into play with the enemies. Not so much ghosts but aggressively moving objects that would just run you over if you got in the way. No AI required. I have them now randomly appearing round the edge of the square playfield area and then rolling along quite mindlessly. I have some gameplay elements to make this a bit nmore friendly amd playable. Essentially though i have written pacman. You run around collecting the 100 Dots and when they are done you get a new playfield full of them.

Then to make it more interesting as i was having fun, i added certain other gameplay elements. such as when a sheet or level is completed, you will get another enemy added to the horde. Oh i forgot to mention there are 6 enemies on the first level and they can go all the way up to 20. One touch is death.... I also added in 3 lives and a high score retention. Then on friday afternoon the fun realy started after i tidied up a few bugs. I had a few other workmates play the game and now i have a target of 731 to beat, yay!

On friday i also found out that this game style was now superfluous and i was charged with working on something completely different. Bah!

Thoughts...
Although the game is not needed, i may just add a few other touches to it. I have to say I think it is possible to make a nice feeling and progressive game out of nearly any idea, and although eating the dots is the only real pacman idea in this game, it was still a good starting point.  Now if only Xblig had leaderboards i would write the game for that platform and make it multiplayer as well. Oh well :(

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Giving Character to a game

Bob the Frog, the game i am currently developing is taking shape pretty well, though i have other distractions I need to work on at the moment. Such as the Android and iOS versions of my book 'Five Golden Coins'. While i am working on this new title i am spending more time considering options and challenges facing Bob the Frog.

What options do i have besides gamplay? Well that's the thing. I know the game itself will play well. I already tested and am happy with the core gameplay mechanics and how the game feels. So what do I do? Come up with level layouts and more elements to fill in the game with, such as exploding platforms or something? Well i could come up with more gameplay options such as these it is true. However one thing dawned on me (maybe it has been a growing feeling), and that is the Frog.. Bob.

When people pick up my game the one thing that they have ALL remarked on was Bob the Frog. Now this is as it is supposed to be. Though now i realize that the expectations of the game were in some ways smaller than they were for the Frog. I got asked questions about the Frog, but virtually none about the levels. Intriguing eh!

I already have some ideas to expand Bob and make him more interesting and basically flushing out his character. He needs a voice and a direction and then needs some cute movements to get people interested in helping him. all these things are in my design already. But there is so much room for improvement in this area. So now i am pondering the best and cheapest/quickest ways to expand.

I think it is time to really focus on the development of Bob the Frog as a Character. Usually i write most if not nearly all of the game before asking an artist to step in and add in cool graphics. This time the character of Bob needs to happen as early in this development process as possible. An interesting change for me. I hope the interaction with my artists goes smoothly, or this could be a major delay.

I also think showing off my game with so many test graphics is a mistake if i want to get interest in it from Facebook users etc.

Wish me luck,
Da Voodoochief

Jak & Daxter Interview

Last week i was lucky enough to be involved in an interview about the re-development of Jak & Daxter for the PS3. Mass Media, the company i work for was charged with the difficult task of taking what is probably the most technically accomplished title from the PS2 and put it onto the PS3. Meanwhile keep all the gameplay and feel of those games exactly like their originals. No easy task i can tell ya.

Well i won't go into details about the conversion/translation here. Instead i want to mention briefly about the interview.

I am not too shy a person, so i was really looking forward to the interview. In fact i have so much to say about the job that i was busting at the seems to know what kind of questions they were going to ask me, and i was worried my answers were all going to be way too long for video. I did try hard to keep them short, but not sure i succeeded. After all i was interviewed for approximately 1.5 hours, and then when the guys had finished interviewing several other co-workers I also got to chat to them some more as I showed them some of the games and also some of the tech that went into creating the PS3 version.

The interview was done by a group called '2 Player Productions' . a group of acomplished documentarians. They are currently doing several things i am sure, but one of the subjects they are working on is a biggie about minecraft, which was kickstarter funded, cool stuff. Check it out here Kickstarter.

The interview went well, we were holed up in the companies conference room. To be honest i felt a bit stiff and awkward, as i was in a seat that did not have a lot of room around it. I also felt i shouldn't move too much. Which is difficult for me when i get excited. And i was excited haha. So I will be very interested in seeing how stiff i look on camera. :O  I was asked several questions that were all quite interesting and deep, not those crappy yes/no asnwer type ones at all. These guys know their stuff it appeared to me. Which is good of course. They interviewed in total 4 people from Mass Media, from the director to the creative director and technical director, oh and me the Lead. We all had plenty to say I am sure, even if I was the one in their the longest.... by far.

The answers i gave tended to be quite long and i think informative. I am not great at analogies so i am sure i sucked at those, maybe they will just cut that crap out, sure hope so. But i did give a lot of inside information about the technical side of this game development. I sure hope that makes it into the piece. 2 Player Productions were going to be spending the next day with Naughty Dog to get the other side of the interview process and story. I hope they say nice things about what we achieved. We are all very proud of what we accomplished, and also hope the public that buys this game likes what we have done.

It is a faithful reproduction in so many ways and yet also looks a whole lot better, but does not look out of place i think in current PS3 titles.

In the end 2 Player productions was at Mass Media for approximately 6 hours interviewing and taking video of various things. I look forward to posting their final video, which i think they are terming a retrospective.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Severe bugs

Some people believe that the only severe bug in a game are A bugs. But that is of course just another classification. But what constitutes an A or severe bug? It is usually a bug that faals into one of several areas

1. Effects the control of the character in a negative way (eg: stuck in wall)
2. A player abusing a bug can get an unfair advance or advantage in the game.(eg: allows you to skip difficult content)
3. Glitches that make the game generally unplayable. (eg: Screen graphical corruption obscures the game area)

Bugs by nature are a malfunction of the game code itself, though sometimes it is not the code, but is in fact the level layout, or maybe and more likely the level collision (missing a wall? :S).

Anyway, i wasn't gonna discuss all that really, but sometimes a bug that doesn't appear to be any big thang, can in fact be a severe bug. Let's take my current game for example. Bob the Frog has a circular scrolling level (horizontally). This means that stuff that goes off the left side comes back on the right side fairly quickly, and also vice versa. Well i have no regular severe bugs that i am aware of, but there is a graphical anomaly in the background graphics that i have been noticing and getting on my nerves. Well i decided that i needed to look into this bug, and the main reason is i regard it as severe. Yes, a simple looking graphical problem.

My reasoning i think is quite sound. This glitch makes my game look like it has been developed by an amateur. It makes the game look untidy. Though ti does not efect the gameplay of anyone playing directly, it does distract. So this is a must fix for me, otherwise i would expect people to mark my game down on quailty, and that will hurt sales potential.

The bug is a rounding issue. One where if the scrolling is going in a positive direction it all works fine. But if i scroll the other way (negatively on the X), then i get a strange effect. I have two halves to the Moon, they need to stay exactly 240 pixels from each other so they align properly. However when i print their positions i can see them alternating between 240 and 241 as i scroll in the negative X direction. This means i can see a pixel line (gap) appearing on and off again as i scroll along. Bah! so annoying!

This needs to be fixed, and probably soon, as it is getting on my Nerves.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Promotional Strategy part1

I have been reading over the last several years about promotional strategies for generating interest  in the game before it is published. So when it is published it will have the biggest splash. However i have never really been good at this part. Once the game is written and put out there i think i do a pretty good job of contacting reiew sites and doing my press releases. It seems so far this is not enough.

So back to visibility.... i need it, my games need it. It is great having a 25% conversion rate, but it does no good when ya only got 2000 downloads. So what to do?

Well, i am gonna finally relent. I am going to do what a number of people have suggested over the last few years. Which is to get as much social networking into the mix as possible. Now i hate Facebook. I really tried very hard a couple of years ago to create a nice Sorcery Games FB page, but failed. It was a very frustrating time and really, all it wanted to do was use my personal page for everything, even after i deleted my personal page, grrr.

• I already have a twitter account i am active on, though mellow is a good term for my usage.
• I have a web page that gets updated once ina  while, but is a great way to link the place i am very active.
• My blog is the place i am most active, telling stories of victory or woe, along with some insights along the way (my insights!).

So what i need now is a Facebook page, not one in fact but several. Or at this time, one for the company and one for the new game 'Bob the Frog'. I am not ure how i will go about creating these pages, but they need to be done.

Meanwhile i am going to try to grow my Blog audience. I hope abd believe that if some of my Blog audience sees how much time, effort and thought into my games, they will be more likely to try the game and maybe recommend it to a friend. I should also try hard to increase my tweeps number, but i am not sure at the moment how to do that. Maybe some free codes will suffice. I am not sure i have any for my WP7 games, and i have yet to publish my first iOS and Android game.

So the strategy is simple, though work.

1. Create Sorcery Games Facebook page
2. Create Bob the Frog Facebook page
3. Grow Blog Audience
4. Grow Twitter followers

I really hope by doing this i can get more interest and noise about my game before it actually comes out. One of the issues is that i really need to get some concept artwork doen to help me promote the vision of the game. So that will have to start much earlier than i would usualy for my games creation. Usually i wait till the game is nearly done before real graphics go into it. Not this time. I need Bobs character for sure to shine out.

Got any good ideas of other ways to get people interested in my games creation? Let me know if ya do.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Lines from IGE to Game

Here is a screenshot of the game.

This is a screenshot i took last night. It is of my development level 9. Which means it is the level where i am experimenting on using moving platforms. Platforms that move a certain distance and then come back, repeat etc.. Also i have platforms that move in circular patterns.

Well i placed a bunch of these platforms and realised that without some visual clue to the range of the movements they were going to do in normal play mode, i was in trouble. I could not gauge where to quite place something and then set it's radius etc for it to allow me to jump over some small gap or other. This was annoying and i realised that i needed some help. So i decided to use Mr Do's wild ride stylings. In that game the balls etc that moved were always along lines. This is great i thought, i can show just where the range of the mvements will take the platforms and then be able to match up some good gap jumping for the player.

In fact this method worked rather well :)  So well in fact that when i played the level after editing it (and no lines now visible!) i was a bit put out, and felt i had lost soemthing good. So now i have made the lines be there whilst playing the game. This works so well, i shall most definitely keep them :)

Woot!
My debug helper lines went from the In Game Editor to the Game itself.

Tip:
Try never miss the oppotunity to put in enhancements to ya game, wherever the idea may come from. If it's gonna make the game more friendly, then why not do it ?

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Bugs at night

I am not sure about any of you coders out there. But for me i hate getting bugs in the middle of the night. Cos there i am last night after watching a movie that was a bit drab tbh (Intacto). A nicely made film, but on a subject i find a bit incredulous i suppose.. Still that took an hour and 45 minutes of my free time up and so left me to start late on coding for Bob the Frog.

It must have been around 11:30pm when i started coding and the aim was to implement the features i had put into the editor the night before. These features allow me to set/edit certain values to make the elements like platforms in the game do a circle or move a platform back and for. Then control the distance and speed of those movements. Anyway it did not take long to get coded in, maybe 15 minutes or so, though in real time it took a whopping 1 hour 15 minutes. That is because in the background i got into a battleground in Wow cos i had just missed Tol Barad. I was thrust into an Isle of conquest and that game went all turtle and ended up lasting an hour. Though it was truly a fun hour and i accumulated 210 kills and 1 death, also was top healer with 8.9 million healed  :O  Shocking eh!....

Oh yes, back to the story. So after we won the battle it was getting late and so i closed down Wow and focused on creating a nice level with circulating platforms etc. It was while iw as testing this new level that the crucial bad bug decided to rear its ugly head. Bob fell through a platform... GAH!  I was shocked, surely i must be mistaken. But no, i was not. Upong further testing i could see that vertically moving platforms were an issue. So then it was time to figure out the bug, which did not take long. Only i wasn't quite sure of the best way to solve the issue.

I have a collision routine that Bob runs in his update, and that checks to see if he has landed on a platform while bouncing around etc. Well, the bug was simply becasue the platform could move upwards from next to Bobs feet, after his check was done, effectively moving past his detection. simple enough for sure. So my first thought was to write another collision routine from the platforms to Bob, but i hated this immediately. I have had enough practice to know that spreading various collision routines around does not make things easier, in fact it can end up being a right muddle of contrasting collision views from the code (more bugs will ensue!). So then i figured i needed to make the single collision function i have from Bob to the platforms take into account their movement. Something i had not needed previously.

It was rather easy to solve this issue once i had made this decision, still the hands of the clock were still turning and now it was about 1:35am. Getting late for sure as i have a day job :O  I did have trouble with my 'If' statement being just the correct way around to work however and i reckon that trying to solve that bit of code in the wee hours of the morning certainly delayed me going to bed. I was in fact about to give up when i solved the issue and Bob stopped falling through the platforms altogether.

In hindsight, i probably should have gone to bed at a reasonable time and sorted it tonight.

So killing bugs in the middle of the night is slow going, mentally. I'll try ahrder not to do that again, though i am sure it will happen.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

The IGe is ready

It didn't really take me long at all to get the IGE working after i solved the scrolling issue. The new editor version seems clean as i added some feedback (flashing the button pressed etc). I had to solve a couple of typo bugs, but that was the worst of what i have had to deal with.

I also added some niceties to the editor. Some mode changes that i never originally designed in, but after soem repetitive use i noticed i was doing the same patterns of button clicks over and over. For example whenever i chose 'Place' and clicked onto a particlur element to place, i always had to then choose what to do with the element, like move etc. Well as it happens i found i was Always choosing 'Move' as the sub command. Makes sense i know, so now i altered the editor so that once i chose an element type then it auto went into the Move sub mode. This is great becasue now the editor seems to mae more natural sense. As well as saving me time :)

Today i let me daughter design a level to see how the editor was gonna work out with a novice at the controls. In fact it worked great apart from her not knowing if the level had saved. I had neglected to put feedback on that button press. Now i have it, it is nice that it lights up for half a second before going back to it's original color. Great feedback, and i now i know the level has saved.

I really need to add some more features now to the game such as my AI from A Shooter. Then i can so many wonderful things with the elements i can place. I did intend to get that done this weekend, only the painting of the house and my wife playing tennis got in the way, mostly a good thing i suspect hehe.

So next up is conversion time from C# to C++. I am very very excited to get circular moving platforms into the game.

Tip:
Always try to make a tool, such a level editor as natural and friendly as possible. Though if you overthink it and fill it with features it will be a pain for someone to learn. also think of the intended audience for the editor. If it is just you, then do what you want. If however you intedn for an editor or tool to be used by Joe public, then you must get some playtesting in by friends or family.

Laters
da Voodoochief

My IGE is saved

Ahh it was a good night. I had a hard time deciding on which method of scrolling the screen i wished to use, and in the end i decided i would probably end up with both. But here is what happened...

1. I thought about adding a scroll square to the top corner of the screen, and proportionally scroll the screen from input inside the square. Seemed like a clean and easy answer.
2. I also thought about the way i would o this traditionally with a joystick controlled screen (not touch like th enew editor). This i would have done by pushing the screen edges around (usually while having an object selected). This one sounds perfect for me laying down lots of elements.
3. I decided i will probably do both, but one hase to work on them one at a time, so i chose the push version first. this one seemed the fastest to write, simply becasue it was really written already, and with very few mods could just work.
4. I grabbed the touch screen scroll 'if' statements from the switch (editor mode) area and placed it outside so it will always work. Then i altered the area of detection to just 10% of the screen at each edge. Then i made each one proportional , so i could edge it slowly, or move it faster if i so desired.
5. I then tested the combined scrolling with the various placment and edit modes of elements to see what could go wrong. In fact i was very happy to see that everything was rather happy.
6. I liked this scheme so much i decided to test it by editing the same level layout i tried a few days ago that made me annoyed with my editor. I was very pleasantly surprised by how wel it now works. It seems pushing the screen while laying down these elements is about perfect, woot!
7. I realised i do not at this time need the control square, the push works so well i am not sure it needs a backup. so i will hold off on making that till it seems like it would improve things. Less work is always a good thing :)

While i was working on this new level i found my bug and cleaned that out too. so now the editor seems very stable. There is only in fact one slightly annoying thing happening left, and that is a single line fix, woohoo!

So now i am back to editing my new level. Then i will get on with bringing my AI class over from A Shooter. Then the real fun begins :)

Laters
Da Voodoochief

My IGE or In Game Editor Sucks

Maybe i am being a bit harsh on my editor. Maybe it is in fact not too bad. Then again maybe it really does suck and i am not as good a designer of IGEs as i am game design. Still it appears it might not all be useless, or that is my current hope haha!

Let me tell ya what happened.

So i have spent some time writing this editor, as previously mentioned in this blog. Then last night was my big night to actually use it to create a level. To create a wonderful masterpiece in moments was my desire. Only... well... the level was coming along well, but not particularly quickly. I was having a couple of issues. The main one being i had decided to separate the scrolling of the level into it's own mode, so when working with the elements that make the level (platforms etc), it would be stationary and easy to work inside. The main reason it was separated though was so i could have this nice proportional scrolling while in the level scrolling mode. I needed all the screen for that and so placing something if i had mixed modes would make the game screen move while i was trying hard to place something. Unless i came up with more modes or partial modes. Grrrr..

 Another issue with the scrolling is that even when in that mode the screen scrolls the wrong bloody way. Now this could be a subjective view of course, i am not certain. However i made the screen scroll the way it would whilst playing the game, only it doesn't freakin make sense when in the editor. In the editor ya feel (I feel) that the screen should be pushed away, not drawn in like it is in the game mode. So first up i switched that. It now feels pretty natural, even if my brain thinks it Should work better the other way. Next up is a solution to the scrolling Whilst placing platforms etc. Oh, yes. I haven't actually stated the reason moving and placing is a chore when separate is the fact you can see so little of the game screen, and it can take only a few seconds to need the game screen scrolled a bit again. So here i am changing modes way too often.  bah!

So next up is for me to put game screen scrolling in whilst in the element placing mode. I might go with some up,down,left, right buttons, or maybe i can sense the edges of the screen to push it. I am not sure which to do at the moment.

Tip:
Make any editor you use as friendly as possible. You will enjoy (or not hate) the time you then spend in using it. Which will in turn enable you to make and tweak much better levels, and also most likely more of them.

Now i am off to play my existing 5 levels on my Kindle fire, the editor can wait till tomorrow ha!

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Levels saves are a Go!

Yes, it is true. I finally figured out how to get my binary files into my deployment and load them for my level data. In fact it was another simple thing in Marmalade, only ya have discover just how simple it seems.

So all ya do once ya saved out ya file is to place it into ya MKB project file. That way the file gets included and sent over to the deployed to machine. Simple.. then ya just use the normal s3eFileOpen() and whammo, ya got the file and place it wherever ya want in memory. Like i said simple, but who knew that i could effectively load/read the file from the mkb. Well i do now of course, and so do you!

Next up i think i will design a new level and also allocate my level space etc (currently a hard coded array for each level of maximum elements). Once the code is tidied up and the new level is designed. It could be time for me to bring over my Alien Control class from 'A Shooter'. That will allow me to do real fancy stuff with the level objetcs. For example i will be able to have platforms doing circles or figure 8s or something just as cool. Maybe i'll have the angry red stars chase ya, or some new enemy react in various ways when you are close. So many options at that point.

I even have ideas for Bob the Frog to fight back, but i think i will wait till i do a sequel for those kind of offensive designs.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Why must i Serialize?

I am sure there are good reasons for this. I am sure if i could be bothered to search the web i would find more information about serializing my saved data out.

BUT I DON'T WANT TO!

I have been developing games now for so many years (ok, so it's approximately 30). I have never really needed this functionality before. In fact i view all variables and classes and structs etc as simply a layout of memory. after all my first games language was machine code, typed into a monitor.

I just want to save my binary data. that's all. Nothing fancy. then later i want to load it back in. I know what type it is, i know kind of pointer to point at it for it to make sense.

The recent games we just got out the door at Mass Media don't serialize their data out. Nope, in fact they simply save bits and nibbles and bytes etc for information. as packed as we can make them. then when we load the data back in we parse this information. Oh so primitive.

There is only one reason i think that makes sense for serialization to exist (that i can think of at this time), and that is to avoid diferent hardware reading issues. So i guess that would mainly mean byte ordering. I am not sure my small games, or anyones is likely to run into this problem, but maybe that is why it seems we have to do this kind of thing.

My current situation is one where i have generated some nice binary data blocks that are my levels descriptions. I saved them out easily enough, but now i am not quite sure how to load them back in. Ok, let me be more clear. I can of course load them back in on the PC, thru Marmalades simulator. But if i deploy to android i need to make sure these files also go onto the Android device. If i could get this working, i am sure it will help when the time comes to let players create their own levels.

Ok, i am tired, still got my head cold. So i am off to bed to ponder this situation more.

Good night,
Da Voodoochief

Midway3 and more Tease

Let me say right now at the start to this post.

I HAVE NO SOLID INFORMATION FOR YOU (at this time).

Now i have stated that, let me say that Midway 3 is looking pretty neato. I think it will complement the other midways very well and any fans will not be disappointed. I have now started back at Mass Media Games and have enjoyed my layoff. Recovering from Jak and Daxter will most likely be ongoing for me, as it really did take a lot out of me. Still I think when eople play the 3 games, they will be pleased with what we accomplished.

Back to Midway3..... I am going to try and hassle the boss into giving me permission to announce, or declare or just plain mention certain things about the area. Once i get his permission i will do what i can within its bounds. There are a number of exciting things coming from Mass Media and I may not be able to mention them before they go live, but i will try to let everyone know what i can when i can.

Here is to a successful 2012 for Sony Home.

Da Voodoochief

Eternal progresses

Ok, anyone reading this blog must realise how much i love writing games. They must also realise that my latest game has taken my time by storm. Every game developer out there knows what i am tlaking about. Our latest creations take control of our minds.. ARGH!!!!!!!!  Run, Save the kids!

So it is with Eternal Recoil featuring Bob the Frog. I think it may be time to rename it, only i love the shortened name of Eternal a lot :)

Here is a short list of some of the items i have been busy programming into the game these last two weeks or so (and yes, Xnas and new Years is in that 2 weeks!.

Name changed to bob the Frog

Sky changes color as you progress higher

Menu buttons like Pause added

Full level select menu now in

Deadly spikers added

Springy platforms added

Several sizes of platforms added

Moving platforms added

5 test levels created

Records best times

Collectibles added (gems)

Editor has now been started

Results screen

Effects on several depths for several elements

instructions (yes, i have the class written now)

Recording of number of Gems collected

Recording of Best time for a level complete

Pause and quick restart buttons

And more i am sure i have forgotten...............

So as you can see, i have been way more busy than i should have been. The first 3 levels really showed how well the game could be played, the next two were and are in fact overkill. Still designing levels to play is so much more fun than writing editors. Even if an editor will allow me to design levels in a fraction of the time.

The moral is....

sometimes we do what is more fun, and not what is more productive. But boy is it fun :)

Happy game playing y'all.

Da Voodoochief

ps. here's a piccy of the game in it's current state.

Hotchicks, sales numbers

It is now the 1st of the new year. A year in which i hope to have a much better commercial success than i did with my own games in 2011 (and in fact 2010). Below there is the graph taken from Pubcenter for my game Hot Chicks, which features the really easy and cool in game ads from Microsoft.

So lets start with some some numbers

Currently:-
 Sales to date = 5345 (ok, so it's actually downloads!)
 Earnings to date = $156.64
 Avg Daily downloads for the last month = 30
 Impressions to date = 125,105
 Amount of time game played = 1042.5 hours = 43.4 days

Now onto a nice graph or two

Our first one is my downloads report from the last month....

As you can my daily downloads are pretty cool and are much higher than the otehr titles i have out on the WP7 platform. I believe this is due to the keywords and the obvious content in this particular game. I was going to do a whole comparison thing with my other very similar game to compare downloads and earnings etc, only that would be a long post and i don't wanna do that tonight. So hopefully in this next week or so i will get that done.

This one is my revenue...

As you can see once again the whole revenue stream settled down fairly quickly and has held pretty steady since then. I really believe this shows great potential :)

This next one is my impressions, without these there would be no revenue...

The impressions were really great once. The game does appear to show some good longevity and this makes me believe that people keep playing the game long after the title has worn thin. That kind of thinking is not only good for my ego, but makes me believe that the game i wrote is indeed keeping people entertained, which i believe to be very worthwhile.

Next up is the eCPM which is an incredibly important number...

This number is so incredibly important, as even a few downloads with a really high ecpm can make ya money. If that number is conversly low, then you will make almost nothing from a lot of adverts seved. This is adequatly shown by the spike several weeks in when the ecpm went sky high whilst the impressions stayed at there usual rate. That made my revenue for those few days go ballistic. This was around and including July the 4th. Not sure why people were playing my game then though. Still, it does show the heights that can be reached.

I regard this version of my game to be successful, even though it has not yet earned enough to pay for the cost of the pictures of the ladies. Still i think it will in time, i just hope it's sooner rather than later.

One more though i have on this is that with the downlaods remaining fairly steady, i really feel that the WP7 platform is going to be viable one day. I see it as a growing platform, just maybe not quite as fast as developers like me would like.

I hope you have found this information interesting and informative. I would love to hear from any other devs who have results that match mine, or maybe make mine look pedestrian. Looking forward to your responses.

G'night, and Happy new Year.

Da Voodoochief