Not Ready to Kickstarter?

I really feel I am getting close to the point in development where I need real artwork for the game. All my programmer and stolen art is looking and feeling rather disjointed.

However to get artwork I need to pay someone. So my thinking is that if I could use kickstarter to get some money to get the game some real artwork. However... After some serious looking at failed and successful projects I can see that I am not yet ready to do a Kickstarter campaign.

Let me explain my thinking,

1. People back projects on how they look more than anything else I can see (once they have been made aware of  said game).
2. My game looks like crap, or close to it right now. Most like this will put people off backing it, rather than seeing that the game is going to be finished and should be a fun shmup.
3. In this day and age I would have thought video of the gameplay would be enough to get backing, but I am not certain why.. but it doesn't appear to be the case.
4. You have something like less than a second to make a first impression, so if my current artwork is their first impression, how can I expect them then to imagine my game with glorious graphics?
5. Along the same lines as the last point.. This is my game and will be the artists game. Why should I expect potential backers to see the potential and glorious looking game I do in my minds eye? This is after all not their baby, or even their focus.
6. A lot of the backed games that needed money for artwork either had a LOT of artwork to show at the start of their campaign. Or it appears failed. I am sure their are exceptions as...
7. I do not have enough followers to get enough publicity if it doesn't look amazing. Not enough followers equals failed, unless your artwork can be mentioned by people saying how cool it looks. As for people mentioned how cool it will look, well that is absurd.
8. So I need some artwork to display for my kickstarter.. Geez. I have a 20 level game already and 8 Aliens that are all sort of like mini bosses themselves.

I will keep working on Space Invaliens and hope that I can figure out how to acquire an artist without breaking my bank. In the mean time I have some work to do on another title and then I'll be back to my Space Invaliens and getting GameCenter in it for the iOS.

Alrighty, that is my thoughts for the day,
Laters
Da Voodoochief

Fraps rocks, but gah!

I love Fraps, it has been my video recording friend now for a number of years. Since I got into XNA and XBLIG development. Fraps was a great buy (and still is) for recording my gameplay videos and development videos directly from the simulator.

Well last night I tried hard to do the same thing in the Marmalade simulator, and though I have done this before, this time I get a yellow flashing constantly. It looks like some kind of clear screen as it is a blank yellow frame. I am not certain at this point how to remedy this, but I was hoping to show some gamplay elements from the now 20 levels that are setup for the Space Invaders inspired game, Space Invaliens.

Hopefully I can sort this tonight by using an alternative openGL rendering setup (Marmalade offers several flavors).

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Difficulty Dialer Video

Here is a demo of me showing off the difficulty setting in Space Invaliens.

I start out by setting the difficulty to 25%, and there are few bullets from the alien 'Arnie' as he is affectionately known.

Then I alter the difficulty and set it to 99%, called ridiculous in the setting menu.



Space Invaliens- Arnie Difficulty demonstration from Robert Toone on Vimeo.


I hope you liked the demo. I shal have to setup some form of rig to stop my wondering hands when trying in vain to play the game with one hand, whilst holding the camera with the other. I wonder what other developers do for their gameplay videos...

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Difficulty Dialer is Awesome

I have to admit that some of my ideas come out really well. In fact they really exceed my expectations. The difficulty Dialer in Space Invaliens is one of those ideas. I finally solved all my bugs and now the slider works and the implementation is in and working.

Simply put, I have a slider in the config screen. You can set the game to Zero difficulty(easiest) all the way to 100 (ridiculous). this means you can set it to any integer in between as well. Slowly incrementing the difficulty of the game. as I said, it has worked out so well. The game truly is Ridiculous at a difficulty of 100, and at zero, it is rather boring for me.

I took the value from the difficulty dialer (slider) and converted it to a percentage. This was then inverted and used to multiply with the random drop rates of the aliens bombs. Thus making the higher difficulty reduce the chance of not dropping a bomb (I know that sounds awkward, but it works). So with a multiply value of zero it Always drops a bomb at the basic rate I have setup for each alien.

I also used the same technique on the spawning of the enemies special firepowers. To the same result. The game can now be set to interesting for nay skill of player.

Oh, and one more thing I have to add to this. The incentive to be good, is that I multiply the score you are receiving by the difficulty level divided by 10. So want a high score? Well as you get better that is gonna happen.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Testing not playing!

I finally got it together!

 After a couple of playtest sessions where I methodically wrote down notes while playing each level. I have balanced the first 10 levels to a ramp of difficulty I am happy with. They are now extremely easy.. but I am now a very experienced player. Hopefully this curve will work well for novice and new players. Of course this got me to try and hook up the difficulty setting from the config page, especially as my mate Jeff was haranguing me about it being too easy. Well I hooked it up and although I had this part planned a ways back, it in fact doesn't appear to alter the difficulty of the levels in any significant way.. I am most perplexed. I guess fixing this will be my next priority.

Then It will be onto fixing a few bugs I noted along the way. booorrring!

But after the bugs I shall get to write more Aliens and more Alien firepowers. Yeeehaw!

Bring it on,
Da Voodoochief

Testing or Playing?

It seems I have a confession to make.

I have been playing Space Invaliens for several days now and supposed to be balancing the difficulty of the first 10 levels. As it happens they are balanced.. only they get a bit difficult a bit too fast.

I need to take down the difficulty ramp a LOT, and to do that I have several variables that is pretty easy to adjust once I know what I want to achieve for each level. So playtesting is necessary for each level to be brought to the correct setting.

However I am doing a bad job, and so incidentally is my daughter who is also trying each level and finding that the challenge of difficult levels is quite thrilling and also rather exciting. I really need to test these levels a lot more than playtesting them. Then maybe I can finally finish up these first 10 levels and move onto creating some new aliens I have to get on creating.

BAH!

I suppose at the least seems like fun haha!

Laters
Da Voodoochief

In Game Upgrade Costs #2

The best idea I have had in the last week was to plug in some numbers and try them.

WOW, duh!

My experience in making games tells me that I should do certain things. Like not bite off more than I can chew, and my intuition also tells me that I should probably not spread myself so thin mentally. Yet time and again I make the same mistakes, only usually I get over them faster each time. This was not one of those times. Still, here I am with new numbers plugged in.

What I got was information, some great stuff, like my powerups were coming in way too slowly, and also, that they were too powerful once bought. From this information I was easily able to go to the next step.

I broke down my powerups to give me more granularity. So for example I had two bullet sizes, now I have 3. Also I have rate of fire and damage, which now both sport 3 levels of upgrade. This allows me to sell more packages to a player which is more interesting, and also be able to balance the progression through the game better as each upgrade is not phenomenal. Cost wise it is great to make the bottom tier so low, but then ramp up the costs as the player really progresses. In the game the number of gems you can earn per level goes up with level as well to match.

I am still tweaking the new cost table I have created, but one more pass should see the peewee fire options and ancillary options set. Then I will move onto multiway fire I reckon. I will post the table once that part is stable. I also have the issue that although the game ramps up in difficulty really nicely, the ramp is simply too steep, and by level 11 it feels more like level 30 difficulty.. argh!

On a side note, I still do not have my 4th firepower type, though I do have several ideas I am not exactly happy with.

Laters
Da Voodoochief