Topics

91

Misc Archive / Pondering something...

« on: May 16, 2013, 02:43:23 PM »

I'm thinking of releasing full source code for Windward and possibly even Starlink, but not quite certain what to price it on, and if a full-out game would be of interest to many people. Starter kits tend to do fairly well on their own, but this would be a lot more than that. Way more code, and as well-commented as it may be, it's still a lot. What do you guys think?

92

Misc Archive / Starlink - The First Month

« on: May 11, 2013, 12:16:01 AM »

Starlink was, and still is an experiment. I started it off as a premium game, then added a free version alongside, then converted to a freemium app where the full version is unlocked via IAP. Two days ago the sales were $474 on Android, $329 on iOS, $141 on Desura, $54 on Amazon, and $45 via PayPal. In total that's $1043. This means:

45.4% - Google Play
31.5% - iOS
13.5% - Desura
5.2% - Amazon
4.3% - PayPal

Some notes:

• iOS version launched later than others, but it also had a much quicker falloff -- likely due to visibility of the app dropping off shortly after launch (within 48 hours).
• Android version was pirated on the first day, and majority of the traffic was coming from pirate sites.
• Piracy had a very positive effect on the Android version of the game, directly leading to exposure and sales.
• Day-to-day sales remain mostly constant on Google Play, unlike iOS. Even though it's been out over a month now.
• Free+Premium combo netted the same sales as the freemium version with IAP unlocks.
• Many people (~17%) were abusing Google Play's 15 minute cancellation policy by buying the full game, then canceling the order. Since the APK is not deleted after a cancellation, this netted them a free game every time they did that. Pirates were doing the same thing btw.
• IAP-based version is superior here because of the cancellation policy, as if the customer cancels the order, IAP-based unlock is automatically removed, so they lose their full game access.
• After the freemium version went live, cancellations disappeared altogether.
• Just for fun, I added a 2nd unlock to the game: +2 Ability points priced at $3 (the game costs $2 on mobiles!). It was a minor thing, added as a "just in case you want it", and again meant as an experiment. To put it in context, max points for abilities is 12 without it, 14 with it -- so it's not that big of a deal. In addition, this unlock is not even offered to the player until the player obtains both the first IAP (full game unlock), and a mid-level. Net result? 7 people bought that unlock so far.

93

NGUI 3 Support / New general discussion forum, and a question for indie devs

« on: May 08, 2013, 06:07:12 PM »

Figured I'd make a generic forum to talk about non-support stuff, in case people want.

First topic is titled "Let's talk exposure":

http://www.tasharen.com/forum/index.php?topic=4163.0

94

Misc Archive / Let's talk exposure

« on: May 08, 2013, 06:05:23 PM »

First, a random fact. This forum receives over 2000 unique daily visitors on weekdays and 1000 per day on weekends. Most of them are developers. And so I have a question for you, developers. When it's time to market your indie game, who do you turn to? Whom do you trust?

Since I released Starlink I've had quite a few shady-looking individuals and companies get in touch with me claiming that they can greatly increase the app's exposure... for a price. Now, call me naive, but I am of the mindset that news sites should write about games because they are good, not because they've been paid to. Yes, I know that's not how most of them work, but I really don't want to be the guy who forks out thousands of dollars to some shady company I've never heard of for services that they may or may not be able to provide.

So, any recommendations?

95

Misc Archive / Brainstorming

« on: May 07, 2013, 04:53:07 AM »

Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Survival
Time Era: Current
Setting: The game begins shortly after some unspecified major disaster destroys the major metropolitan area where the survivors used to live, turning the entire city into a post-apocalyptic survival warzone. Think "The Colony" (TV show).

The Team

• The player chooses his team of 3-7 survivors of various professions -- Engineer, Doctor, Hunter, Soldier, etc.
• Each profession gives certain skills and benefits that the survivals have access to from the start, such as cooking, building, fighting, scavenging, etc.
• Each survivor has random traits -- strength, stamina, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, patience, stubborness, empathy, etc.
• The traits govern how well they are at certain tasks, and how much happiness they get from performing them.
• The lower the happiness, the lower the morale, and the worse the survivors become at performing tasks and the less likely they are to survive for very long.

The World

• Procedurally generated ruins of a major metropolitan area: half-ruined buildings, rubble, few to no amenities.
• The player's first order of business should always be to find shelter. Choosing one of the nearby buildings would be the logical choice.
• All survivors start without any food, so finding food and water must be one of the first tasks as well.
• Supermarkets would be the logical choice to go to in order to find basic supplies. The player needs to explore the area, find the closest ruins of a grocery store and bring back as many supplies as possible.
• The player won't be the only one doing this, however! The game should generate several such groups of survivors, and each group would be competing with each other. At first there is enough food and water for everyone to carry, but it's a finite resource, and as such won't last long.
• The player can even choose to make the supermarket his "home", but doing so means that other survivors will immediately know where the player's base is located, and as such it won't be a very safe place to be.
• Once supplies are back at the "home base", the next logical step is to reinforce it as much as possible, in order to deter other survivors from taking the resources... but it's up to the player on what they want to focus on.
• Some players will focus on defense, making a powerful stronghold. Others will venture out scavenging as much stuff as they can find. Some will want to take a more hostile approach and go after other survivors. Some may have a softer touch and focus on creation instead.
• Crafting should be a very big component of the game. Reinforcing walls and scavenging materials is great, but being able to make stuff with those materials is even better. Scavenged a car battery? Use it to power something. Scavenged a solar panel? Use it to recharge the battery when the sun is up. A power generator? Find some fuel and have electricity even at night.
• The goal of the game should be something the player sets. Some will want to survive as long as they can and will attempt to create a sustainable community. Others will want to eliminate other survivors, ensuring their dominance. It's up to the player.

Multiplayer

• Multiplayer should be fairly straightforward. There are many groups of people in a procedurally generated city. Each player can choose a survivor group of their own.

Added Challenges

• The game should have random events happening -- for example raiders coming by the area in an attempt to loot and ransack (defend or even capture them), or lone survivors coming by and offering to join the player's band (let them in or turn them away? resources are scarce after all!). Another example of an interesting event would be a major food drop somewhere in town that all survivor groups become aware of at the same time, and can choose to go after it or play it safe and let others fight it out.
• As survivor groups run few on resources, they will become more and more desperate, reverting to their primal nature. For some it will mean violence, for others -- depression. Others still may simply leave their group and attempt to find another in order to trade resources or simply join them outright. Either way, survival should always be a key component of the game, and in more sense than just defense. Emotional survival is also important. A sociopath may kill people left and right without remorse, but a pacifist forced to kill someone may not be able to live with the consequences.

96

Misc Archive / Localization

« on: April 30, 2013, 12:24:01 AM »

Starlink is fully localized, but only in English and Russian right now, and the Russian was actually a partial community contribution. If you want to see it in your own language, you can find the localization file here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmTyhvfb_nj5dHh4WmlKS0I3cVFLWkxZSDdIQ1MzY2c&usp=sharing

97

NGUI 3 Support / If your account is "awaiting admin approval", read this!

« on: April 28, 2013, 03:28:51 PM »

Long story short, this happens when you've registered from an IP or email address that was marked as "spam" at some point. You need to send me an email to support at tasharen.com with your username, and I will do it. I will not authorize anyone who does not explicitly request it (as I don't know who's a bot and who isn't).

98

NGUI 3 Support / So... I finally popped my own mobile game cherry.

« on: April 09, 2013, 03:46:34 AM »

'Tis true! I know many of you have already had stuff up there for years, so you'll be like "meh", but for me it's like "omgyes". I actually finished a game for a change. That's f#^&ing epic. Maybe now I can finally focus on dynamic font and the upcoming GUI properly, eh?

99

Misc Archive / Build 111

« on: April 06, 2013, 01:44:15 AM »

This week's build is just about feature-complete. There are now server-side statistics, a leaderboard, experience / ability point unlocks, titles, and -- most noticeably -- music. Although the music is not quite done yet, and there are only two tunes for now.

In the coming few weeks I'll be creating a bare-bone "lite" version of the game that will be freely playable, and I will submit the full game to Android and iOS marketplaces. I'll also need to create a preview video for a game (which I will likely do tomorrow), as well as a Desura page (also likely tomorrow).

What other features do you guys think are needed? I don't see anything super-critical that should be added, but here is a list of things I would like to see:

• Bluetooth connectivity support
• Achievements
• Auto-replay at the end of the match, Civilization style
• Support for player-created maps (this is more long-term)

100

NGUI 3 Support / Limited support until March 30th

« on: March 22, 2013, 01:52:43 AM »

I will be at GDC all week, so please note that the support I will be able to offer will be limited at best. :|

101

Misc Archive / Build 99

« on: March 20, 2013, 02:02:23 PM »

So the current build features most things I wanted. Difficulty levels work, multiplayer / LAN works, all abilities have been balanced-ish... Some things still missing for version 1.0.0:

- AI ability "packs". Right now AI is able to use all abilities (hard or higher), but AI is also limited by the 12 point cap and will not exceed it. Regardless, it's better to have "packs" of abilities that AI will choose from on start instead. I will likely sneak this in for Build 100, which will be the GDC build.
- Progression. Currently all abilities are unlocked by default. This won't be the case later.
- Music / sounds. I have one tune already, need a few more.

102

NGUI 3 Support / Serious question -- NGUI 3.0?

« on: March 16, 2013, 10:27:42 AM »

I have a serious question for you guys and am curious what you think.

Throughout the development of NGUI I have been hamstrung by maintaining backwards compatibility. As I discovered new things to do something (better way to handle events being one of them as an example), I couldn't simply change NGUI as it would break backwards compatibility with existing projects. Because of this NGUI hasn't changed much at its core since a year ago, and the fact that the Free version of NGUI built in May of last year is still able to open projects made with the current version of NGUI is a testament to that.

In retrospect, Unity itself is stuck in a similar boat. When a question is raised about keeping something backwards compatible, or changing it to be much better, the former always wins.

With that said, as many of you know, my work at Unity involves the creation of the "next" UI system -- the followup to NGUI. In order for it to be as awesome as I can make it, I have to make some compromises, such as changing the event system (which in itself will ship separately in a future version of Unity). To give you one example of this, as you likely know one of the events NGUI sends out is the OnPress(bool isPressed) event. The new system sends OnPressEvent() and OnReleaseEvent() instead, which plays better with tools like Playmaker. The new event system also has additional events such as OnDragEnterEvent / OnDragExitEvent, which make it possible to react to the touch sliding off one button and onto another easily. With this event system also being native to Unity (it's built-in on the C++ side), it's also naturally a lot faster as well -- and it even plays well with the OnGUI buttons, in case someone still uses them for debugging.

Other examples of the changes: replacing the UISprite, UIFilledSprite, UISlicedSprite and UITiledSprite with a single sprite that will have an option for how the content is drawn, depth vs Z issue fix, complete replacement of the event notification system (onSubmit, on value changed, etc) with a drag & drop delegate solution, visual placement functionality (drag / rotate / scale widgets with the mouse instead of adjusting inspector properties), and more.

So they are all obviously better systems, but these improvements come at the obvious price of backwards compatibility. I can't simply change NGUI to make use of these changes because doing so will completely break backwards compatibility with all existing projects, and with 100,000+ developers using it today, that would obviously be... quite bad.

Another issue here is -- if I was to make such sweeping changes to NGUI and release NGUI 3.0, simply replacing the existing version in the Asset Store is not a good solution, as there is no way to download an older package when you need it, and I can't possibly force it on all the current customers. Likewise, #ifdefing out the new system is not a good approach either as it would double the code and complicate the $^&@ out of it -- something I am not willing to do. I also can't release it for free either, even verifying an existing NGUI purchases -- processing and verifying 100,000+ requests would mean an insane amount of time which I don't have.

So it would have to be a separate product that people can choose to buy.

And so comes my question. If I was to ditch the backwards compatibility out the window and create a version of NGUI now that would allow developers to easily migrate to the upcoming UI system when it's finally released later this year -- would you use it? And more importantly -- do you believe it would be a viable product for me to invest my free time into?

Personally, I am a bit hesitant about this and am leaning towards a "no", simply because some people will inevitably expect all this work to be done for free... but I am curious about what you guys think.

Yay or nay?

103

NGUI 3 Support / MOVED: Change HUDText Position

« on: March 10, 2013, 04:59:30 AM »

This topic has been moved to Other Packages.

http://www.tasharen.com/forum/index.php?topic=3398.0

104

Misc Archive / New build, new UI.

« on: March 03, 2013, 10:15:33 PM »

Known issues:
- Not all UI works yet. Selecting difficulty and such doesn't work yet.
- The game can sometimes crash in the browser. I have not yet figured out why that happens.
- Going MP, then exiting can make it impossible to re-join the game without force-restarting it. I'll fix it for the next build.

105

TNet 3 Support / Video Tutorial #2

« on: February 23, 2013, 10:03:02 AM »

This is a second video tutorial showing how to use TNet. In this tutorial I create a networked game from scratch and write all the supporting code for you to see.

http://youtu.be/cTjy-L8C6WM