A Day at the Zoo published

Phew. apple has just passed my new Book App 'A Day at the Zoo' and is now available on the Apple Appstore along with the update to '5 Golden Coins'.

I was busy this weekend updating the two web sites for these apps. It was sort of fun, but I have to say that using the official 'Download from ???' style badges are two things. Great and annoying. As my games are available in 3 places now (google play, Amazon app store and Apple Appstore), it is a pain to place that many logos of their sizes onto a web page. The www.sorcerygames.com web page is a bit tighter as it has so much on it, but I managed to Cram it all on there, as you will see if ya clock that link.

On the other hand with more space like on the official books page at www.b4ir.com you will notice how much better set out and pleasing the look is. No longer do those images overpower or clutter the screen. Still good to have something official to link with though.

Now I simply need to find someone to market these two book apps to the correct demographic (parents) and we shall see how it goes. If I can do well enough to pay for the third book I would consider that a success.

I am hoping this Xmas that people with buy my Book/App as a present for their friends or for their nephews and nieces etc.

Heres hoping,
Da Voodoochief

Prototyping a Game

I love prototyping a new game. However the prototype is not where the development of the game really started. Heck I don't start coding till I already have a good idea of how all the gameplay and fun will be attained. So the prototyping in reality is the realization of the fun gameplay ideal I have in my head, or on paper. It is more the proof of concept than the idea itself, it is also not a full game.

So once I have the idea of the game in my head I tend to put it down onto paper. This is not always a set regimen either, it varies how much I write on the type of the game and most importantly my familiarity with the genre. Shooters for example I tend to write less, but platform games I will write more.

Once on paper I start deciding how I will code the game if I go ahead. This always leads me to start actually coding the game and therefore the prototype. The prototype can be simple as well, as I only really need to prove to myself that the game is viable. Sometimes the control will simply not come along nicely and I will then abandon the prototype. If as is usual the control scheme feels good, then I get all excited and need to move along as fast as possible.

This is when it is exciting as I code in the details of the game to expand the prototype and start in on making it a complete game.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Web Pages updated

I have been busy and now I have 'A Day at the Zoo' published into the Amazon Appstore and also on Google Play. These ar e both active and to go along with this, I have the Book App submitted to iTunes alongside a new revamped version of '5 Golden Coins'. I hope these two can come out fairly soon.

Once these are through it will finally be time to get some marketing going. However the two people I had researched have disappeared and so I will have to look around once more.

Other than that I have been experimenting on a fun side scrolling racing and collection game. This uses one of the important mechancis of my Xbox360 game Pellmell. This time I hope more people will see this feature and understand how cool it is.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Odd happening with In game Ads

One of my Android games is Ad supported. Though in truth the small amount of money it has made my in the last 6 months is so low, I should have sold it for 99 cents and a single sale a month would have been better. Still the game seems to me to be fairly popular and generates about 1K Ad requests  a day. Still only pennies per month.

Well about 4 weeks ago I got a nice informative email from Inner-Active. It informed me that due to complaints it was going to cancel my gamea ccount. This game is 'Hot Chicks TCG', and as you can see has some bikini clad women in it. So Ok, np, if you really want to do that go ahead (not that I could have stopped them anyways).

Just as this happened I started receiving emails from someone at Inner-Active asking if they could buy up all my advertising in ALL my products. Well erm.. The main one I have you just cancelled... This was odd. So I simply ignored the email as any sane person would. Still each week since then I have received more emails. Last week I decided to tell this salesman about Hot chicks and what happened to its account. I explained very simply I have no other ad revenue etc.

Well I got a reply a few days later telling me that was great, and could I supply my daily views and average ecpm so they could work out a deal with me. :O

Now I am back to igbnoring him, as he obviously did not read my reply!

Laters all,
Da Voodoochief

A Day at the Zoo now being submitted

It has taken me way longer than it should have. So many distractions and so much work for my day time job. Still I now have the new Book App done and so far I have submitted it to Amazon Appstore. I expect it will take approximately a week to get through fail or succeed.

tomorrow night I will attempt to submit what is most likely to be the most troublesome sku. The iOS (oh crumbs, i cannot use the OS name to describe these products!) Well phooey, I am here! Still the iPad version looks great, but I have not managed to test it on an iPhone 5 yet as I do not have my friends UDID at this time. Soon I expect. Still I also need to upload the new 5 Golden Coins book app as well. Never any rest.

Once all the version are published, including of course the simple to publish Google Play version, I will then go in search of soem cheap but effective marketing person to help me out. I will hopefully have some great news on that front at some point in the future.

For now, I am happy to be finally at the end of this App. Maybe now I can get on more seriously with an App that has actual gameplay?

Laters all,
Da Voodoochief

Artists should do art, not programmers!

Ahh, what a waste of time. My time, my Precious time!

What happened I hear you ask.. Well let me tell ya a story (short one, honest ;)

A Few nights ago I am working on 'A Day at the Zoo', and it is going well. we are nearly finished with the App and I get all excited. I have already made a list of all the final changes required to finish the app, and well the list is not very long. So while my artist Nathan is busy working over the last few pages and any mods I need to the existing images. I decided to help out where I can.

Now for me I have some audio work to redo, but cannot get to that till Sunday (for various reasons of the voice actor being away!). So what am I to do.. Wait? lol, that is not likely. Not when i am this close!

So one of the items on the list is the title buttons. I have my generic grey ones on there, and they look so drab and dreary. As I had previously had some success in making buttons for the 5 Golden Coins app, I decided I could do it again... Woe is me, what a fool I was.

I decided as this app is about a Zoo I would take animal skin textures such as a snake skin, or leopard skin or even a bald eagles feathers and meld them onto a button. Well the final result is that I have 3 buttons on the title page and each one with a different texture.. It looks freakin horrid! What a mess.

Still, the only way to go from here is upwards, lol.

The moral is, don't waste my time when I have a talented artist who can do a great job, and go do something more useful instead.

Laters,
Da Voodoochief

JSIL? Xna->Html5?

Really?

Yes, really!.. Linky Here

There is a cross compiler that can take my XNA C# code and make it work in a browser.. Hmm, sounds really tempting to try. If only I had more time. Though If i did do this conversion, I am not certain what I would do with it.

Place it on my web site, so people can play my games in the broswer? Well that could be good for drawing people to my site. But I would have to suffer the increased badwidth requirements and so might feel that I was paying for people to play my game, not an ideal situation. Though peolpe playing my game is an exciting thought.

Maybe if it works I can place it on a flash/html5 game site and have it use their bandwidth and yet still have people (probably more) playing it. Now that sounds like a better plan.

I do wonder how much work this would be for one of my games, such as A Shooter or Aceball. I do not think that HTML5 wouls manage Pellmell, that game is just too intense with so many freaking crazy sprites and effects going off. Heck even the sounds might send it througha  loop, haha!

If I get some time, I might try and set this up.. Though if anyone would like to volunteer :)

This is still exciting news though, very cool.

Laters
Da Voodoochief