Fledgling Videogame Developer

It's quite long time from my latest blog article, so I try to catch up what has happened lately.  First of all, we got "Dualball" flash game released to both Newgrounds and Kongregate . For some unkonwn reason, this game was extremely hard to get ready and published. And to be honest, there were some planned features we dropped out from the released version. We just had no motivation to implement those. Also, at summertime we planned to have Android version too, but that is not on our plans at the moment. There has been some queries from flash version players for us to create mobile version, but at this point I don't promise anything. Another change has been the slow migration from Stencyl to Construct 2. The reason for this has simply been the HTML5 capability of the latter one. Exported game can be played on almost any platform you can imagine, and the HTML5 output can be converted to some kind of "native" application e.g. for Android, iOS, WP, etc....

This is just to inform, that " DualBall " flash version was released yesterday to Newgrounds (click picture to access the game). Judgment process has already been passed, and users have rated the game to 2.88 stars (out of 5) currently. But it is a bit different story if this was worth all the effort. For some reason, this game has several setbacks during the development process (HDD failure, migrating from Linux environment to Windows, some lack of motivation, lost asset library, etc.). Anyways, we were able to finish and publish this game. We started developing this game somewhere in the beginning of August. I had an obsession to try how two objects could be controlled by turns using just one mouse button (or touch on mobile device). Even if I have not yet released any mobile games, I have spent lot of time thinking the UI for them. Anyways, when you are planning a game for mobile devices, you should keep in mind that controls should be as simple as possible. The...

I've been bit busy with my daily work for last couple of weeks, so gamedev activities have got less attention than normally. But still there has been some progress since my last update. My original plan was to finish and release "Dualball" flash game in the end of September, but now it seems to take some more time. Game itself is in pretty good shape: the mechanics works, there are no detected major flaws currently, and 75% of planned levels are ready and tested quite well.  We have done thorough testing ourselves and a number of serious bugs have been found and corrected during the process. Gameplay tests have been run on both computer and touch-screen tablet to get some extra coverage. It has been interesting to see that some bugs are not easily visible on both platforms: E.g. "ball ground check" routine worked fine on computer, but on tablet there were strange malfunction with it. So I strongly recommend you to test your games on multiple platforms in...

I am sharing one more chart showing the daily " Turbomole Trial Run " views over last 61 days. So it's about 2 months since we released this flash game to Newgrounds. Total number of views is at the moment 46082, so there has been in average 755 views per day (source of data: Newgrounds Statistics). The number of daily views has varied between 35 and 3620. I am pretty happy to these figures, because two months ago we were expecting no more than 5000 views in total. Ad revenue has been very modest for "Turbomole". There is just one ad shown before title screen, and that's all. I didn't want to irritate players with large number of ads, so there are no between-scenes ads at all in this game. Also, the eCPM seems to be quite low for flash ads. Pre-roll ads would provide better eCPM, but the number of those has been disappointingly low... What makes the chart interesting is the recovery that has happened couple of times: The number of daily view...

We have been working on two separate game projects in parallel. Now one of them is in quite mature condition and it is likely that it will be published in a couple of weeks. So it maybe is time to shortly introduce the game concept? Working title for the game is "Dualball". This is a platform game where player controls two balls at the same time with single click (or touch, depending on the device). The challenge comes from the parallel nature of this game: you must be able to do some multi-tasking and time your clicks correctly. Timely performance is rewarded with coins that are spread on the levels. Collecting all coins is not always straightforward, and you have to carefully think what kind of a sequence is required to clean up the level. We have been testing "Dualball" on flash and Android platforms, and it seems that the latter one is bit more convenient for this concept. However, game will be released in flash format first. Android version will follow ...

By default the back button of Android device sends the active application to back. However, in many mobile games back button is used e.g. to return to the menu (or any equivalent action). This is possible in Stencyl also, but you have to configure the behavior first to match your needs. Here are simple steps to do it: Go  Settings -> Mobile -> User Input Activate " Override Back Button ". This makes back button to act like escape key Go Settings -> Controls . Check escape key bindings (name: Escape, Key:Escape) Open your game scene and go to "events" tab (or edit behavior) Create keyboard event for escape key, as shown in Figure1 below ( Add Event -> Input -> Keyboard ). Set control as "escape". Add transition block and fill in your menu scene name + other required information Figure1: Keyboard event for escape key That's it! Now you can exit from your play scene to menu screen.  But wait, did you forgot...

We have been working on two new game concepts for a while, and introduced the preview video of the more mature one for couple of days ago. At this point game has a working title "Dualball" and that describes quite well what the game is going to be. In short, the target of the game is to control two balls with single button (or touch, depends on the device). There are lots of obstacles and traps inserted to the route and balls should be steered past them. Naturally, rewards are not forgotten and there are certain number of coins on each level to be collected. Basically "dualball" is very simple and easy to play game. The challenge comes from the fact that player has to keep two separate objects in control using single click (or touch) as an user interface. It is far more difficult than you would think in the beginning! Currently, we are generating more levels to the game. Target is to have 24 levels in the first official release later this year. As you might...

Here's the latest chart showing the daily " Turbomole Trial Run " views over last 38 days. Total number of views is at the moment 36105, so there has been in average 950 views per day (source of data: Newgrounds Statistics). Still going strong, although the momentum is gradually slowing down. I decided to publish this game also on Kongregate, because it required very minor modifications. Basically, all I had to do was to remove Newgrounds API stuff and replace them with Kongregate equivalents. Since game was created with Stencyl, it was just matter of removing some blocks and selecting the new ones from the list. Another thing to do was to setup the Kongregate Statistics for the leaderboard implementation. And, of course, you had to remember add the block called "Setup Kongregate API" in the startup scene, to make sure that everything works as expected. BTW, there has not been too many views yet on Kongregate, but at least one comment was already receiv...

It is hard to know without prototyping how game concept would work. So during the past week I have built several prototypes to find out if I have something useful in my mind. This process takes some time, but at least for me it is important to get some kind of a visualization how things work on the screen. Static modeling with paper models, sketch drawing, or even using Lego bricks may also help to visualize game mechanics or rules, but I need to have something more dynamic to see the full picture. At this point, few ideas seem to be better than others, so they probably are worth further development. Although we are planning to move gradually out from flash games, it seems that we will still create at least one new game for that domain. The reason for this is that we know the tool (Stencyl) quite well and we are also familiar publishing flash games through Newgrounds and Kongregate. Publishing games to mobile and/or HTML5 is mostly unknown territory to us, so why not try to sta...

First part of my summer vacations is over, and tomorrow it is time go back to work. Luckily, I have still one week vacation left in the beginning of August. :) My game development activities have also been quite minimal for last couple of weeks. However, there is a small exception: I've been discussing with my brother how our gamedev activities should be continued for the rest of the year. And as a part of this process we have tried to sketch a roadmap for upcoming game releases. I work full-time in large telecommunications company and all my game development is done in leisure time, so there is a clear need for some kind of a rough plan to keep things progressing smoothly. First of all, we have a plan to release three html5 games in the next six months: Two smaller ones and one large one. Smaller games are planned to have relatively simple graphics and gameplay, so we are able to finish them ourselves quite smoothly. There are already technology demos up and running for both ...

I decided to write some kind of a post-mortem analysis for " Soccer Breakthrough " flash game we released around 21st of June to Newgrounds (and Kongregate). Overall rating for the game has been 3+ stars at Newgrounds and 2+ stars at Kongregate. But there has been huge variation in ratings from different players: Some players have liked game a lot because of it's simplified gameplay and medal system. They even have encouraged us to continue same way with future games. But then there have been several comments concerning the lack of realism, the fact that game gets boring quick, most of the sounds are irritating (in fact, they are), and so on. I have even received direct requirements to change literally everything in the game. Yippee. Soccer Breakthrough was originally intended to be a HTML5 game with very simple gameplay and simplified graphics. However, we had very tight schedule because of my holiday trip, and we decided to make this release with Stencyl because ...

Yes, I am still alive and kicking, although no blog postings or games released for a while. Sometimes it is a good idea to have a little break and take a closer look what you have done recently. After releasing  Explopool , I have mostly been planning and creating different game prototypes. I've also explored various game development environments and engines to get an idea what kind of tools are available. There are plenty of choices, but I have not yet decided which one to try next for releasing a game. Haxeflixel might be a good candidate, but first I have to get better understanding on it. Stencyl 3.0 came available couple of months ago, and I've been gradually migrating to it. Android support has been the main driver for that, because I really want to go mobile at some point and Stencyl is the most familiar development environment for me currently. Since I am running my game development activities over Linux, it's not always so straightforward to switch to a new t...

Since Mochi Media is winding down the services  in the end of March, I started to look for alternatives for publishing and spreading my own flash games. Previously, I have posted couple of games to Kongregate just to test the flow, but there has been only handful of players for each of them (with zero marketing). However, I also posted Explopool  to kong for a week ago, and this time there has been enough players to get the ratings visible (2.7 / 5.0 stars at the moment). Clear progress, I would say. :) I have heard stories about Newgrounds and how demanding the audience is there. So it has been bit frightening choice for the fledgling game developer who is unsure about his own skills. Nevertheless, I decided to make a Newgrounds version of Explopool (with scoreboard and ads), and test how game publishing flow works there. Basically, integrating Newgrounds API to game made with Stencyl was very easy: Just create game project at Newgrounds and copy the API ID and encry...

Many things must be taken into account when starting new game project from the scratch. First of all, you have to decide what kind of a game you are planning and what would be the feasible target platform (or platforms) for that. You must understand the limitations of each platform, e.g. available screen resolutions, computing power, input devices, etc. When target platform is decided, it is time to think about what development tools can be used for this project. There are plenty of tools available for hobby game developer and each of them has pros and cons. So it is sometimes bit hard to make selection, and in case of hobby developer the "zero budget" drives to use free (or very cheap) software. I have tried at least following game engines or frameworks: - Unity3D - Blender Game Engine (BGE) - GameMaker - Adobe Flash (CS6) - Löve2D - Stencyl Personnally, I want to promote the usage of open-source software. So my favorites from the list above are Blender and Löve2...