Visibility the missing component ?

I have writeen several posts in my time about being invisible. Or put another way, not being able to get my game seen or downloaded by a lot of people.

This is a conundrum that all Indies and Big companies alike face when putting out products. In this day and age people are being bombarded with advertisements for stuff all over the place. It used to be simple 20 years ago, now with all the connectivity, it is not simple. there are many choices of where you can advertise your wares, but that does not make it simple, as anyone only has so many dollars or time to spend on the task of getting your product seen. you do not have the kind of money that is put into advertising AAA titles, so you cannot go the way of THQ or EA etc.

Now if your product does not get seen, then there is a lower chance to make any sales at all, never mind making it big! Though i do believe there is a chance you can reach just the right person. That person in turn puts something out on twitter or on facebook and a bunch of people pick up on that and whammo, suddenly you have gone viral.

What if you manage to get seen, get on Kotaku or Joystiq or something like that. Well most likely if you are an Indie developer, you are getting noticed for something bad. I will not go further on that description hower. Still, bad press IS press, so maybe it is good. It certainly paid handsomely for one group i know. Back to the point, if you got your game seen, then you have a lot more chance to reach the viral stage, or the stage below it which is genuine interest. good luck on getting to this stage.

Visibility can be achieved in many ways, but they all seem very difficult to actually get going. Advertise, whell how do you advertise to people only on the xbox? Most xbox users i reckon don't set foot on review sites etc for indie games at least. So instead you have to hope that word of mouth amongst friends on Xbox Live will pick up your game and try to beat each other. Then, through their networks you may get enough downloads to make the creation of the game financially viable.

But back to what you CAN do.
Reviews, get them. as many as you can. These are to start off with are your best chance to get noticed. One of these reviews could possibly spring your game into the light, and i hope they do. I also love reviews because they cannot be bought. They should be unbiased (though some are very biased :( ). some sites use forms to submit for reviews, although not my favourite way to do it, it is certainly a way to weed out the lazy marketing guys. This is a good thing for you now isn't it, cos you are not lazy! Other sites will just take a press pack (Yes, always do a press pack). A Few others you might know and follow already on twitter, be nice. They are fans, and even if your game stinks, being seen is more imjportant than a good review. Oh so onto...

What if my game sucks according to everyone else. Well this has not stopped coutless thousands of downloads of vibrator apps for Xblig, why should this top your game from making money? In all honesty, good and bad games are a subjective thing. Which means that not everyone will find your game offensive. So roll with the punches and kep promoting your title. get more reviews and they will most likely balance out. If they are all bad, that again, is not so bad. People love to watch a train wreck every now and again. But use the reviews and what they say to motivate you to greater hights on your next game.

never Retreat, and Never surrendor.

Try hard, work hard, visibility may come. While your game is out there, you can never ever disount it's chances.

Da Voodoochief

A Shooter Update and Competition

Is now in Peer Reveiw. Not bad being about a day late for me. Still i have not made that many changes, and the ones i have made are small ones. Though my testing cycle is very lengthy.

It should be stable and ready to go, i hope it goes through quickly and then players can appreciate how the powerup asteroid was supposed to function. I just wish i had noticed it, instead of accepting it. Hindsight eh!

So any Peers, i would love it if you can check out my Game and push it through asap.

At least this should free up my weekend a bit to actually playtest some games myself. I did get a few done this week, so that's a good thing. Still never gonna be able to do as many as i would like.

COMPETITION - WIN Win win

So I wonder who will Win this weeks Competiton. Event number #2 is now brewing and less than 48 hours left. Woohoo! I am quite excited, and currently Lohengrehn is sitting in 4th place on the leaderboard, behind My co-devfeloper and Myself, and of course last weeks winner. Will someone pass him up for the T-Shirt?

Laters

A Shooter has Passed Peer Review

Now it's onto the Marketing work.

I have just put the promo video onto Gametrailers.com, check it out here. The comments section will fill up i am sure with plenty of good comments soon enough. If you can vote, please do so.

I now have the codes to send off to reveiwers and i am very excited about that. Though at the moment the game is not actually Listed either in the Xbox dash or the Xbox.com game listing. I expect that will change in the next few hours.

I would love everyone to download the game, Even if you are not going to buy it. the downloads might get me into the top downloads list and more xbox owners will see it that way. All help is greatly appreciated.

Now i am off to start divvying up the codes.

Laters

A Shooter Enters Peer Review

So what next?

Take a nice break and sip a BIIG cuppa tea?

Nope is the short answer. In fact i started this morning by peer reviewing 4 games. I know i should have been working on the Press release, but i gotta pay my dues. In fact i quite enjoyed most of them, so it wasn't torture, but it does take me a fair while to get through them. When i am in the middle of developing a game i do not have much bandwidth to do much reviewing and i tend to prefer Playtest anyways. So they are the only games i usually do, unless it is one of the Peers i chat with regularly on Twitter. My Tweeple can have my time anytime!

So yeah, ya mighta guessed it. I have not done the press release yet. and to be honest i am not in the mood tonight either, or not at this point in time. So maybe tomorrow sometime, i will see then. What is bothering me is still the setting up of the competitions for the t-shirts and hats i bought. What if the high score sharing component doesn't work out. I guess i could cancel the comp till i do another version, yeah maybe thats it.

Well i have spent an hour testing my games review version on the xbox and it seems aok. time will tell on that one as well.

G'night

A Shooter busy day

So i am finally getting into the HD revolution, though i think the revolution happend several years back. I am actually gonna setup a new tv and it is an LCD HD one. Awesome i hope.

Well anyway today apart from setting up my living room for the new TV, i have been working on A Shooter. Taking into account the latest playtest feedback. Mainly from Chris Hughes, who is a top lad and someone i respect for trying hard to do Indie with Honor. So today i added my last piece of music, the commisioned piece by Liam Tarpey that will be SorceryGames theme music. After adding that (you will hear it on the credits) i got to work on the Bosses.

The issue with the bosses is that they all look the same. So people will think they are the same. Even though they are all orignial and evolving. So what to do. Originally (this morning) i asked my artist id he could supply another definition at least. But then i realised i should take Chris's other comment and just see what happens when i tint them. And lo and behold it looks sweet. I have about 8 colors and then just reused a few and i am really surprised at the results. They look really good and i think this has added the missing element to my Bosses.

Then i gave the game a quick onve over and noticed a part of the instructions was erronous, so fixed that up and then added abit about multiplayer. Whammo i feel i am done...

I will let it rest now for a few days (ok, ill keep testing it of course). But what i am mainly waiting for is tuesday. The reason for releasing my game into Peer review on Tuesday is so i can try and make some effort (though it may be futile) to get into the new releases list for friday. Now games usually take longer to go through peer review than a week, but i have a lot of peers that i would call friends and i am hoping they will help me achieve the friday goal. And yes, of course i will publish the succes or not of this adventure. :)

G'night, i have to get up early in the morning to go off roading with my family up at Rowher again. I love off roading on my Honda 450x..

Work all night and no play

I have been diligently working on the Reviewer Excel file that Chris has sent me. I have added  bunch of new reviewers and emails etc. This is good, however it has taken me several hours up till now. Ouch!

I have not been doing much since working on this apart from doing a bit of editng to my A shooter Promo video, but i haven't spent long on it. Which as it just so happens is what Peers have done with the game in Playtest. I think i might just move it over to Review and save everyone the Reviewing fatigue. Might work out better that way.

Once never knows eh :D

G'night

Work Reviews

These always seem to come with such bad connertations, though i do not know why. In my experience they have been nothing but productive. Or more importantly they have made a nice re-focus and so everything after those reveiw meetings have gone much smoother.

I do not mean code reviews, or anything like that. I mean setting aside time in the schedule to really try to look over everything that is being done. then deciding if it is being done the correct way, or if there needs to be a re-alignment. These meetings themselves can get quite awkward and argumentitive at times, but in the end it is better to do it sooner rather than later, especially if later is too late.

So when i do my own games i set aside time here and there (depends on my flexible schedule), and then i try to use my critical and objective eye to see what i am doing. Sometimes it is gratifying to know i am doing it all right, woohoo! It is also really good when i see i need to make some changes to make the game better, or just fiish on time. also in my experience this kind of thing should be done more often the bigger the team, or the newer the team.

Just food for thought, don't leave it till too late.

Here is something that cheers me up when i feel a bit unfocused or down. Sent to me by @Ninjaharlot via twitter
OMG CAT

G'night

Why not finish your Game eh?

Any idea what that title means ?

Any idea to whom i am talking ?

Well now. It seems i have failed a few games lately that still went through to the Live list, and they are now available on the Xbox in the XBLIG section. I am a Peer Reviewer, it is one of my jobs to be a reviewer and makes me a better community member. Sometimes I love the job, sometimes I find it frustrating. These last two games are on the frustrating side of things for me. Why am I frustrated with them I hear ya ask. Well, you are in luck as i am gonna tell ya.

Number #1.. I like these games. I would like to buy them one day when they are finished and go live. Hey wait a minute.. did i not already mention they had gone live and were therefore available to buy? why yes I did.

Number #2.. I do not buy unfinished games. I have written so many games over my career I believe i know when one is finished. This detail can be awkward, as some people would point out i am sure that a game is Never truly finished, it just has run it's course, or got to a good stopping point. Though i agree with these sentiments in principal, you really can tell when a game is finished and that means ready for selling.

Let me talk about the latest game that gets me frustrated. It is a nicely put together piece of software. The gameplay is solid. The graphics are good. The menus are even done with a little style. So what is the problem? Well it is one of completness. And this game is just not complete. Below I will list my playtest report to the Devs (ok, i thought the game was in playtest when in fact it was in review).

Ok, so first off, I thought this was a Playtest i was doing, so I wrote some notes up.. I have written them, so figured I might as well put them here in this thread anyhoo.
1. Hmm - The title music is very common music is it not ? And does it really say tennis? sounds like a gameshow. (personal preference obviously)
2. Bad - Sometimes the camera would move upwards and I would see a grey screen, I believe the ball may have been lobbed incredibly high.
3. Bad - sometimes the players ran to the net and stopped there for quite some time. Again i believe the ball was somewhere in the stratosphere
4. Good - nice reactions from the players after winning or losing etc
5. Bad - 40-40 is NOT freakin 40-40, it is DUECE! This will aggravate ALL tennis players no end (oh yeah, i am one!)
6. Bad - The racquet graphic has issues. a, it looks like a Wii tennis controller. b, it has missing polys near it's handle
7. Hmm - Audience Avatars are awesome, but they do not ever do anything. No yay, or clap. Seems very sterile
8. Hmm - When players change court (though it is change ends really), they move to each other and then pause there, I think you should cut before they stop moving.
9. Bad - No options. For the music and SFX volumes specifically.
10. GREAT - I loved the control. Though it was hard to figure out how to pass my opponent, they all seemed to move so well :S

So if you have read the 10 points I listed you will see that none of this points are Big. Not really. Well ok, two players could be real Big, but I never mentioned that above did I? haha. Oh wait back to topic.. So if none of the items missing from this game are so devastating to write. Why not do them. why not clean up that transition timing on the change of Ends ? Why not change the text so it Says 'Change Ends' and not 'Change courts'. C'mon i am not asking for much really. This product must have taken at least 6 months to write, and now you are going to push it out there with a few more days of work left unfinished.  WHY!?? I ASK WHY??

Rant Time!


This then is what ticks me Right Off. So many Devs on the XBLIG platform are putting out their 'Games', their pride and joy unfinished. They want it out, 'Oh c'mon it's close enough' Let's make some money sooner!. Well guess what, I doubt that your game will do so well without those last precious days of coding and touchups. People can tell when something has had that care taken on it. (Not that they always get downloaded). Most of the games that have a good Sell Thru (this is a good metric, not download numbers), have these little things tidied up. Each game has different things, but also most games have the same little things. Like sfx when pressing buttons, or fade transitions when apropriate etc.

So I am going to Appeal to the XBLIG Devs. Please publish your game after you have tidied them up and finished them. It will make the channel much more appealing and will draw a larger crowd. And i NEVER ever wanna hear some one say ever again that 'Oh sales don't matter, i just wanted to get it out, i wasn't meaning to sell it.'. Well this channel is for sale, If ya don't wanna sell it. Then publish on the PC!!

Ok, that is enough Ranting for tonight.

G'night

Second Feedback post for 'A Shooter'

Wow, I am so surprised I have already gotten a second feedback post. Only hours after reposting the game up after my alterations in response to the first post. Last time I used the Playtest I got virtually no input for a whole week. So life is GOOD.

Here is what my Peer said
  "VoodooChief:
  SDTV offsets supported for in game scores and HUD."

1. Not sure if I am missing something, but I do not see any way to change the offsets. On my 36" HDTV the player #0 is cut off at the top of the screen. The Stage: 1 is outside of the recommended safezone of 80% of the screen as well. You have a lot of realestate to work with... it wouldn't hinder anything to move the upper left down and to the right so the text starts at 128x 72y and the lower right text above 648y (those values are for 1280x720)

2. Do I have a life count? I don't see anything to indicate that I do. I blink red after getting hit. Looks like 3 hits and then I die completely, but it's definately not clear if the next shot is going to kill me or not.

3. Would like to be able to change the options from the pause screen without having to end my game to do so (ie to change rumble, change the control scheme, etc)

4. Would like to know that I got a highscore... I end up having to check the highscore table to see if I got the highscore or not when the game is over... and then I have to remember what my score was to see if I beat my last highscore.

5. Would like it if the collected powerups had a higher res, they seem a little jagged... (for example the apple) completely pixelized would be cool or just a higher resolution.

6. Nice variety in enemies and bosses as you progress through the stages (I mean the bosses have the same model but each have a different pattern which is cool).

7. Aside from the title safe issues... I did not encounter any other issues. Yanking out the memory unit, signing out and in of a profile, trying to purchase the game using a guest profile are all handled.

8. Movement of the ship feels a little sluggish, but I can live with that. I tried the game on easy and medium and on stage 6 there doesn't appear to be any difference (do you get more lives or something?)

9. overall a good Shooter. ( I do feel I have died cheaply a few times after using the smart bomb and then running into one of the bullets immediately after, but since I can start back on a stage after losing I can live with that. It seems it only happens if I move the ship to the left so that it goes off screen after using the smart bomb.)
 
Ok, So he was a busy bee and wrote a number of things. I will address each one in turn as I did in the Forum thread, only I will add more of the thought process behind each comment.
 
1. I have it detect 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratio and adjust the properties based on that. However i am not sure why your HDTV has screen safe issues of more than 5% or so. Mine actually sees all the borders and is what I work on. I test on a 17" sdtv when i have my main code base ready. So I think I need a bit more info if you have any. I will look into this further though. I might also put an option to alter the position for people to play with if they want. - That was my reply. I do not quite know at this time why on his HDTV and not mine he has such a problem. In the mean time i have taken the precaution of bringing in the Hud elements from the game. Of course i have a lot of real estate, but i do not want my aliens bullets to be residing behind the scores and pop out and kill you, that would feel and be unfair.
 
2. Yes you have a life count. It is the large heart in the middle of the ship, which starts off green, then yellow, then red. It also gets smaller the less life you have (this was especially for colorblind people). You are correct that 3 hits and you are dead. I will be spending a bit more time on this, as a first time player... this is the most importnt thing about your ship. I will make it better, just got too many whacky ideas to sort through. - That was my reply. As you can see i am obviously concerned that the first time player will not notice the ships 'Heart'. So far i have Made the Heart Bigger, and therefore more noticable. I did think of putting an effect on top of it as it changes (also suggested by a friend), but i think that will just hid th Heart even further. Not sure atm, just what else i can do. I am open to suggestions though.
 
3. Hmm, the options screen from in game is an interesting one. It is also something i will look into, as it would be nice for it to work that way, but it will not be a fast change within my menuing system (the pause is the same level as the options). - That was my reply. I obviously could do this with work. But i am not sure i want to. Let us look at what it would give us. In game i could alter the control scheme. hmm, something that a person would do once? Maybe twice at most ever. How much development time is that really worth. The next things are Rumble and the Volumes. Well ok, you might want to alter the volumes in game, get that balance of music and SFX just right for ya. However the Rumble is something that people tend to leave on or off. Is it worth me spending a number of hours to get this, rather major change put in and debugged? At the moment I do not think so. I also think this will not alter the perception of quality with my title or effect sales of it at all. so for now, i will not be doing this.
 
4. This was brilliant, no idea how i forgot to put the highscore on the screen, silly me! I will be fixing that.- That was my reply. Well it speaks for itself really. So I have already put the Highscore on the top middle of the screen, in screen unsafe area, mwuhahha!
 
5. The graphics, none of them really (excepting a very few) are finished. My artist is busy moving house, so that part will have to wait. They should be nice graphics soon (i hope). But i have to take exception to ya not liking my graphics, geez. (not really though!). - That was my reply. We all know the graphics need some love. Hopefully soon. Did you notice what i did there though? I added humour and personality ito my reply to him. Not enough to say i am not laughing at you. But hopefully enough to engage the reveiwer. This is done so they might come back and re-playtest or review my game later. And angry tone with Peers giving feedback will get you roasted and ignored. Better to go the other way.
 
6. Thanks for the kind comments on the variety. Also noticing that the bosses were different, even though they ALL look the same (currently that is all 13 of them bah!) - That was my reply. It is always so nice to get compliments. Always acknowledge them, even if they are small or backhanded. Then hope this leads to more.

7. I am glad there no other issues, and thanks a bunch for trying stuff.- That was my reply. This is a HUGE relief so far. The reason is simple. Most games in Peer Review fail for MU pulling reasons, then second on the fail list is the Profile manhandling. Awesome result so far with my rewrite of this stuff.  

8. The movement of the ship is balanced to the enemy bullets, and it can feel sluggish, but the trade off is excellent, as you have a lot of accuracy. Which is better to slip the bullets with..- That was my reply. We all will feel differently about this. But the remark he made allowed me to iterate something about my product.  Something very very important. That is 'I designed it that way on purpose'. This may seem trivial. But some reviewers will totally believe that the ship speed or any other thing just happened to be that speed etc. It is good to show you have actually put thought and design and balance into this work. I love replying to these kind of comments. Makes me feel all proud that i set things this way. We must of course be careful not to be a braggard though :O
8a The easy and normal difficulty settings effect several things.Enemy rate of fire and the number of HP each enemy has are the two main differences. Once again the second part of his comment allowed me to share with the world (ok, XNA world) just what my design goals are and how i implemented them.
 
9. Your final comment was interesting and caused me to look into the smart bomb, i hate people feeling like they have died cheaply. They should know why they died and feel that they can do better next time. So the smart bomb was designed to be smarter than i should have made it. It is now cured (maybe i am) of being so clever. You will not die on it again. What happened was the bullets it linked to were still active for 0.5 of a second after they were smart bombed. Now they are immediately unhittable. - That was my reply. Here i apologise for something not being right. It was my design idea, as previously blogged about of course. But sometimes things are not easily understood. So back to the drawing board and vanquish my silly idea. Ahh well. It is always good to apologize, unless the feedback is getting on your nerves. This is what you signed up for right?
 

I then had some final thoughts. I love my final thoughts, as i try very hard to connect with not just the Peer who gave feedback, but also with other Peer who may look at this thread. What I say now might just influence them to come give me feedback too. In the first sentence you will see I describe myself as trying to give the best experience I can. In the second part I am saying that i really want you to do this more or again, and to please you i am going to get on with it now, look at me work hard at your behest. (of course i am realy doing this!)
"I am glad you liked the pickup and start on any completed stage idea. I feel it is important to give people options if they pay for the game.
Once again, thanks for your time and consideration playtesting this for me. I will get on with fixing all the issues you have highlighted for me. It will get better and stronger thanks to people like you."



Well that wraps the analysis up for now. I think i have explained myself quite well. I also hope you can see that Feedback is not something to be taken lightly. It is also something that should Never be taken for granted. Be self effacing and enjoy the Feedback. Even if it does not Gel with your feelings at first.

G'night

First 'A Shooter' playtest feedback

Tonight I thought I would post about something that is now happening with my latest XBLIG game. i have already mentioned that i have put it into Playtest, a place where my XBLIG Peers can check out what i have been busy doing, and give feedback in the forums if they so desire. This is a good place to take your game, anytime especially if you are new to creating games. As these peeps will find some bugs for you, and make suggestions that could greatly increase your chances of success when the game goes live.

Onwards...
On Monday i placed the game into Playtest. About an hour later I realised that I had left the default difficulty at HARD and not Normal. ARGH! I was at work now, so was unable to pull the game. However by the time i got home (late), someone had already given my game some feedback. Now i will not name the Peer that did this, as i believe in their privacy, and i don't want to go around asking permission all the time.

Here is what the FIRST Peer said:-
-I did some testing with memory card pulling and didn't find any issues.

-I noticed one title safe issue. While playing the game the player name is cut off of the screen on my television.
-This is a personal one but the controls bothered me (and my buddy I tried coop with). We really wanted to push A to shoot and kept accidentally using the special.

-Another issue with controls, specifically in coop. At the end of a level both users naturally push A to advance to the next level but what ends up happening is one user's push results in advancing the level and the other user ends up using their special. We ended up needing to designate someone to be the level advancer.
Playing through the trial I found myself wanting to keep playing after the time limit ran up. I think it's definitely hard enough, though that was on HARD, and in coop.
Overall a fun, well polished game. Good luck.
 
Woah, i was so shocked anyone got there so fast. Now let's break this down into what i did about this post.
1. I was very pleased to see no immediate issue with MU pulling. Phew.
2. ARGH i forgot to finish the SDTV screen safe stuff. I have it in the code but never gave it the right coords (so they only use widescreen coords). What an Idiot!
3. Ahh the controls. They feel switched to me also. Having someone remnd me they are the wrong way around is good. Though they are that way because people asked for it in my previous shooter. this time i will deal with this properly.. Thinking cap is ON.
4. Hmm, i have run into this. Stupid wrong firing of the smart bomb. First thought is to not allow smart bombs to be fired in teh first few seconds of a new level starting.. Thinking cap is now getting orangely hot!
5. Woot! they wanted to continue? This is excellent news, though i still feel there is more to go on this front.
6. The final thought was a very kind one. I appreciate this kind of thing, and always try hard to write something positive at the end of a review myself. I hope they mean't it 8D
 
Now I was thinking about all these issues. I hated the idea of other peeps testing it while in HARD mode. So I pulled the game. Then set about fixing my issues. Here is what i did about each one, numbered for your convenience.
2. Setup and tested the screen safe coords for my in game HUD. Looking good.
3. I switched the control to A=Fire. Then i put a new Option in the options to switch to the B=Fire haha! Solved! (thinking cap start to go back to grey!)
4. Solved this by puting the button through onto the X button and removed it from the smart button. Easy and solid. Thinking cap now at blue and cold)
 
These items took me a while, but ALL of them make my product better. This is very important to me.
 
When i get more feedback i will continue to post about what i did and why etc. This may be inetersting to some devs going through the same thing.
 
G'night

Tidying up A Shooter

Time for a quick tidy up. Getting rid of all those untidy and unwanted functions from my code.

In tidying up i have managed to save like a whopping 18MB off the zip file, haha! I would never have thought it possible. Now i have enough room to put more music into the game, woohoo!

I was gonna rant tonigth about cheap ass games. Or ones i see as cheap ass anyway. These would include most of the Avatar games on the XBLIG service. And i think it warrents a more detailed approach than the one i would end up doing this late tonight. so hopefully i can get it together tomorrow and alienate and annoy some of my fellow developers, cos i think that might happen. Even though i won't mean it personally i tell ya!

Oh back to 'A Shooter'. I have been filling in sections like the Upsell screen. EVERY XBLIG game should have one. YES i mean you!
An Upsell screen is where you go to befroe your Trial ends, it is where you get the chance to try to sell the features or exciting parts of your game to the downloading public. so make it short, make it sweet, and ya never know. You might pursuade them to buy your game.

Next i went onto tidy up my credits screen. This was fairly easy as it is a copy of the one from Pellmell, and the credits haven't changed much at all. So that was fast. Then it links to my X-Marketing screen.
What is a X-Marketing screen... Erm.. Don't tell me you don't have one of those in your game! Your excuse is that it is your first game ? Well that isn't good enough. do you have a second game in the works? Then advertise that one. If nope, then make one up quick, or do anotehr developer or developers a favor by putting their game in your game. You cannot afford to waste any chance of promoting XBLIG my friend. My X-Marketing screen has my previous 3 titles on it, Aceball, Pellmell and A Dreamland Chronicles Game. So it looks pretty full. This time i took the decision to IGNORE SDTVs. Ya hear that Peer reviewers ? I am going to IGNORE screen safe for this screen. It has none essential info on it, and i am Good with that. Phew.. And i wasn't gonna rant :O haha

With this tidied up i took out a buncha debug code and am now going to go onto looking at the saving code i have. It is pretty solid, but i believe there is possibly a hole in the try-catches... Somehow i reckon a Code 4 can squeeze out of. That is not acceptable to me.

Then i am going to play through my levels once more tonight and balance them again. This will be an ongoing job for the next several weeks i am sure. I do need to get this into Peer review at some point. Though not sure when exactly.

Finally i need to start looking at J Wattes Highscore code to see how i can make sessions work, as he has sharing of leaderboards working, and i would love to have them. Though i really need to save more custom info alongside the Highscores. I'll look at it while the graphics are being done i hope. Though without a second Xbox i am not sure how to test it :|

G'night.

Smart Bomb effect

Above is what i am currently coding. The effect or one of them for one of my smart bomb types. In the shooter for my next XBLIG game you will have a secondary weapon. This is going to be smart bombs. Each smart bomb type will have it's own, special way of helping you out. This smart bomb effect is for general smarty pants bomb. One that just clears the screen of enemy bullets. Of course it would be boring to just make them disappear. Soooo i came up with an idea.

In the first picture you see i have set off my smart bomb and then moved out of frame. The effect is that i have  abunch of line go from my ship at time of activation and hit each bullet on the screen. Then after a second they all disappear. Oh, and for that second the bullets are stopped in their tracks. But are still dangerous !

Here in this second picture you see me just moved left from when i fired the shot. It is a picture of the 4th level bosses bullets, and i think ti loks quite cool. One downside is if this effect is fired off with not a lot of bullets it looks crap. However it looks it's best if you are surrounded as you may have noticed.

I just had to include this third picture. Generally i still thinkn that if all th ebullets are on one side it wdoes not look as good as when you are surrounded. But man, that looks cool, hitting all those streaming bullets from the boss.

So my next task is to make this effect look better in all situations, for that i am going to include some dummy lines in each of the cardinal positions, we shall see if that helps or not.

Finally i need to actually make the lines fade out, but for that i have to rewrite the list iterator code, so it can wait :D

laters

Lists in C# and RemoveAll

So there i am last night, working diligently on the Roundline class. A lovely thing, though i really need to rewrite it's simplified functionality. Well that was sort of what i was doing. Adding in more controls etc.

I am going to use variable width lines for one of my smart bombs for the new shooter. This should look great if i can possibly do it. Adding in the variable width functionality is also priceless as far as adding in Tech to my rather small tech that i use for writing my games. Gameplay shouldn't need tech, but eye candy does.

So all i wanted to do was attach a bunch of lines to each smart bomb explosion. simple enough, but then they need to all die at the correct time. so i added in an ID to the line class. I thought that removal from a list would be so easy. Just for Each loop thru the list and remove them as i go. This is not so easy, oooh no! So upon research on the web i found Removeall. This is exactly what i needed, then a single command would allow me to remove all the list itmes that were corresponding to my ID. Well what a pain. Yep, i have to say that it took me an hour of reading and trying to get the SINGLE line of code to compile. though once it did, it worked a treat.

So lists... hmm,. I usually use arrays for everything and control numbers of stuff etc with Defines. I never ever make stuff grow and shrink. I have seen the horrors this does to memory fragmentation etc. I also know that allocating and deallocating memory is soo freakin slow. So i don't do it. But it seems like i need to learn lists. Just so i know what i am talking about.

BTW: my problems with messing badly with memory come from 26 years of experience, most on machine that had a fraction of the memory of that handy usb pen drive you have on your key ring.

laters

3 ways to make a better Indie game

This is going to seem obvious, but there are a few ways to create a better Indie game. Now i am assuming that you can already make Indie games. In fact i am assuming that you have already made at the very least 1 Indie game. Now you want to up your game and make a better one. Probably better in every way. Especially as you have seen poor downloads and the self recriminations have started about how you should have spent more time or money on that Box art etc.

Well here is the skinny, it's no real surprise. I am about to present three ways to make your games better.
1. Spend more time on them
2. Spend more money on them
3. Get good help

So onto 1.
If you spend more time on your project you should see it be much tidier, as you do not ignore those creeping little bugs that you published with in your last game. This one mainly means not finishing till your finished. Less timetable and more dedication to the product etc. The real downside to this is that it can get too be a long dev cycle. Leading to burnout on the original idea etc. Well, if you burn out on it, maybe it just wasn't really up to the improved quality of game you were after anyway.

To 2.
Spending more more sounds silly ? Well try getting better music for your game for starters. Lose that programmer music behind. There are plenty of sites on the web to get great music from. Admittedly browsing for music takes many hours (it does for me!). The end results are great though. So spend some money on an important aspect of your new game, that you did not on the last one. Be it SFX or Graphics or Music or even.. Yes, i'll say it.. focus testing. the real downside to this is it costs money, and Indie developers don't have any.

To 3.
Good help is priceless. It is also really hard to get a hold of. In fact it seems to be in short supply. I know so many talented people myself. however trying to get them to commit to helping me is like pulling teeth. Believe me i have tried very hard. I have gone through about 8 friends and mostly to no avail. However if you find just one co-conspiritor, it makes all the searching worthwhile. They can produce stuff you cannot (usually), and they help with motivation as well. I was lucky enough to have an artist friend of mine pull my art out of the drain for my first two titles Aceball and Pellmell. Get help, cos if they spend time on the project, it is like having two of you, only this new one is more talented in areas you are not. THIS by far is the best way to make a better Indie game. Getting cohorts!

Good luck, adn i wish everyone a better subsequent title after this encouraging lecture 8D

How to make a Hit Indie Game (for XBLIG)

An opinion piece on Xblig success...

So we have seen a number of real hits on the XBLIG channel on the Xbox360. It has been a little surprising just how well a game can do. Ok, so very few are really breaking through at this point. But we do have a few. Obviously the lead at the moment on this is Zombie game, but there are others that have proved to be very profitable by the creators. We know that people have to download your game to see it. They are likely not to buy it unseen. However how do ya get awareness for your title out to those 35 million Xbox owners ?

Some have just been plain lucky, others have been given great awareness. Most however had had a great deal to do with several things, in my opinion.

Luck,
I will get this one over with first. If you are lucky enough to get some notoriety or mention on Major Nelsons Blog, or one of very many lucky things. The name of your game can get out there, whether it's in outrage or amusement or real interest. I will name for example one 'A Kitchen Sink War'. This game was the xna starter with a few different graphics and it is terrible (sorry authors). The horror and outrage was awesome to see, but i'll bet it downloaded so freaking many. Example number two will be, yes you guessed it. The Massage apps. The newest one allowing you to pleasure the other controllers. This makes me wanna puke tbh. Outrage is one of the words i would use for this. But they have been popular. They have had so many downloads and one that declared months ago that it had made over 60,000 dollars, freakin ell! My third example is Major nelson mentioning massage apps again. This boosted their notoriety immensely and it hit kotaqu and more. Many downloads were had at this lucky turn of events.

Design,
Some games have brilliant design, some not so much. But what effect does this truly have on sales ? Obviously noone really knows, but i suspect that if your game is badly designed, once they download it. It will not sell. Maybe we only really need to design the trial period. Then they can suffer the rest of the game. I do know that a lot of the most 'popular' games have had a nice design. they have tried to be succinct and honest about their play. Another thing seems to be to lose the idea of a unique design. Those games seem to be relegated to not being downloaded, or only being downloaded about 3000 times in their publishing month. Most of all, whatever you make, make it feel solid. Make it feel like a place people don't mind being.

Implementation,
This is similar to design, but it does not matter how well you design your game or your menu. If your implementation is crap. Noone will care. If it feels harsh and unforgiving, they won't want to stay around. So take a little bit more time on that joystick debounce and make it work for your game. The most popular games are generally well programmed. Even if they happen to be anotehr twin stick shooter for example.

Marketing ?
I do not have much to say for this right now. I have personally tried quite a variety of routes to get my stuff noticed. So far to no avail. I have read everything about this subject i can in the last few months. I am most assuredly having more success. But it doesn't really seem worth the effort. It appears that hoping luck will take me somewhere is a more likely scenario. Though i paint this in a dark light, have no fear. As i am an optimist, and i beleive that if we just keep trying, one thread that we started might just get lucky. So if we put more threads and lines out there in our marketing campaigns. We just might make ourselves lucky.

This was going to be a discussion on how to make a better Xblig game. But it appears i have waffled long and hard, and not got to that yet. So it can wait for another post.
Laters

Wanted to Peer Review, but didn't

I looked thru the list, so many bug fixed versions, or translated version. I don't want to do those ones again. I really wanted to test something not yet on the marketplace.

I managed to find a couple that interested me, but oh man. I click on the links, and then i see i cannot review them... Cos neither had a video. And i have blogged before about that issue. So with that frustration, i am done for the morning.

I may go back tonight and see if there are any other games i am interested in. I may go see if any are by people in my twitter list. That would be a good thing.

Now off to work on 5th Moon i go.