Meredith Cook, of MulchMedia.com, gave a great talk to the local Adobe user group meeting (PDX Adobe) here in PDX about her experiences helping make Flip the Bird. I was her colleague/wing man to handle any technical questions, but that is not what made it great. She is a thoughtful, well organized speaker, no ones time was wasted for the sake of the well organized narrative she gave. I may be biased, but her story was well received.

http://mulchmedia.com/blog/post/2013/01/08/Presentation-The-Design-Development-of-Flip-the-Bird.aspx

All the nitty gritty details (and links to the updated slide deck) can be found here on her Blog.

She did a great job, the meeting location was much improved over the closet they got stuck in last time (so I am told.) It was fantastic to meet the organizers and people in the community interested in learning and already doing this kind of thing.


 

 

Why do we call it 'X'. Well because it is our cross platform version. We are heading into testing with Android this week? (I am small part of that project, so I am looking over my shoulder to get confirmation, yes... Chad is nodding that is what he *wants* to do. Ok that is properly caveated. We have the Windows 8 Win32 version working quite well and passing the WACK too! That leaves 64 bit and ARM to be worked out, it is rather non-trivial though. You Surface users will NOT be left behind. I am doing this for you. I really need to get off my desktop and get one I guess. The simulator only goes so far (i.e., Win32/x64)

We are using cocos2d-x to port the existing HD version of the original game over to  the new platforms. There is no reason we have to stop there. We have almost gotten over the tipping point effort wise.

For people looking for help, look me up. I simply have no time to put stuff out right now. I may change my mind if a lot of people want help. Let me throw some search terms out there:
Windows 8
Cocos2d-x
CC_PLATFORM_WIN8_METRO (which I have renamed CC_PLATFORM_WIN8_STORE for accuracy reasons. Metro is not a template type (anymore))
Chipmunk (yes I have gotten chipmunk to compile and run in windows store project. I know the settings. Seriously I will write and share about this, but don't wait. just ping me if you never found it. If anything it will force me to post once, and share if a lot of people are looking for it. There is no reason *everyone* should suffer. I make a good martyr eh! ;)

I have taken the last two weeks as vacation from my day job to just bunker down on this porting and Windows 8 problem for Appsomniacs. The cocos2d template was not v2 (API) so I bit the bullet and made it support that API for the calls we used. A complete update is a bridge to far and I don't trust my C++ 100% yet. It doesn't mean I won't share what I got, in a pinch I'll just send it to you, but eventually I will add it to the official project fork I made. 

Happy super duper holidays. Remember to hug your kids and loved ones. Enjoy the moments and let the less fun parts of life just sit in darkness for a while. The new year will be upon us and we can start to tackle all our open issues with renewed vigor once we take a moment to remember what we are fighting and striving to promote, protect, etc. Am I calling for a holiday cease fire? I guess I am. It has been a really hard week to work on violent games. Really hard. Especially with kids involved. Some of you guys may never get that, that's something you will get with time. An appreciation of life in general comes with time (on average I think that is true.)

For the few that actually read this. Thanks for watching, and see you next update.

 

 

 


Well I a lot has happened since last update. Lets see if I can summarize.

Doodle Army 2 (DA2) has gotten a lot of attention this round. It was due. We have always had a serious hacker problem. It stems from an architecture choice made from its inception that makes hacking easy. At the inception it was easy to handle bluetooth near proximity networks, and community policed. You just walk over to the offender and knocked the device out of their hand and had words ;).  I could care less about the piracy of in app purchases. I give a lame kudo for keeping a buck or two out of my pocket per script kiddy using your hack. Its a game after all, and those purchases function within the normal expected bounds of the game experience, but what I can not abide by is people hacking to gain "1 shot" kills, infinite life, etc. That affects the positive multiplayer experience in a negative way, which effects the number of people who want to play, etc. So DA2 is getting some serious client and server tweaks as we take steps to make it annoying to hack, etc. The sad part is it ups the amount of work the servers have to do, so it actually costs us more. A downer, but that work has went well. We added some new weapons. Fixed some odd bugs (rocket launcher and map related. We had some issues integrating an ad framework into DA2, that slid us to the right several weeks.

In other great news we are still working on an Android for Doodle Army (the original) and now we are just starting a port to Windows 8. It is a matter of time before we are simply building games in an agnostic as possible fashion then porting to every platform. The days of use being a one platform pony show are coming to an end.

Zombie Road Rage is doing well enough. Not super amazing, but interesting to see how many people are still playing (about 1/15 the amount as DA2)

Flip the Bird... (Flop the Bird) Well the kids love him. We see him going free someday when we have a slow moment. Otherwise it is just underwhelming. We think we know part of the problem. It needs a tutorial, and a 

I am sure I am leaving out something interesting... In any case I better get back before someone realizes I have slipped out of my enclosure.

What I really want to do is fire up Dwarf Fortress and Tekkit (Minecraft)... But that will have to wait... There is much work to be done yet.


I saw XOXO announced a while ago, but before I was ready, and I want to participate someday, but I never got my stuff ready in time to pitch in (will it ever be ready ready?!) My issues aside the event looks really interesting! Especially the popup indie game arcade. The downside of announcing this now I believe the conference portion is completely sold out, but the fringe bits and the market look open to the public. Maybe there is still more to experience and not be officially part of it.
 
Well now the event itself is on your radar.
 
---
 
XOXO
PORTLAND, OR · SEPTEMBER 13–16, 2012
XOXO is an arts and technology festival celebrating disruptive creativity. We’re bringing independent artists who use the Internet to make a living doing what they love together with the technologists building the tools that make it possible.

I am not sure why everyone is so bent about using Windows 8 (which is not windows phone 8, but hang in I will get to that part, as I believe MS will get Windows 8 to be more attuned to windows phone 8 too.) So W8 has essential what is a Windows 7+ interface *and* the new interface formerly known as Metro (IfkaM)

If you don't like one part use the other. Essentially very little changes in that regard if you use the win7 style interface. Personally I think the IfkaM interface would make a great screen saver of sorts. The live tiles are interesting concept. So it may make a great interactive desktop. Give it a chance I say. Be open to change. Hell give it a month and someone will have a Windows 3.1 interface if that floats your boat.

So I am not bent about the existence of windows 8, but I do loathe that my world is about to have ANOTHER dang platform to consider... but this news actually piqued my interest today: http://www.edge-online.com/news/unity-announces-windows-phone-8-support 

Supporting multiple platforms is a real time sink and I think I am ready to commit to a tool to make it happen at the cost of control at or near the hardware... I think I am... Ask me later what I thought about it. ;)

 

I tinker with my Linux because I have to.

I tinker with my Windows because I can.

I tinker with my Mac because I was told not to.


Software is never really done. It is just stuck in an infinite loop of improvement iterations with varying degrees of usefulness...

 

So given that. All that a release or project abandonment really represents is a blocking call in the overall effort of the loop in question...

That is all... I hope you were not expecting more!!! I think this needs accreditation in parts, I have heard this in parts from others, my hope is I have made it my own enough to claim that it is from my own mind...


I recently replied to a post made on a 'Independent Game Dev' LinkedIn group I am member of. Essentially giving my opinion of what has been working for monetization (i.e., making a living making games.)

My opinion boiled down to this:

Make at least the full paid version first (even if you never release that start there.) You can think about monetization as you go! Maybe even put a placeholder in, but don't get hung up on the details because who knows what the market will be like when you finally get there. You can always plan on rolling out a free 'monetized' version at the same time or even after (e.g., Flip the Bird has a free version coming out for iOS soon. You heard it here first...). I think it is ok to separate the free and full versions. Let the user buy into the full game.

Make a game you want to play (and play them!) I have been playing Flip the Bird off and on for a year now. The latest iteration of updates has got me interested in it again. I want to grow this bird into something bigger, but my players are coming in slow and my efforts are being spent on the apps that are producing monetary results (not Flip), its not a bad game, the endless game play is fun, but we have so much more in store: levels, challenges, even the stalled tutorial development (you wound not believe how many folks do not see the "Tap to Flap" message flashing on launch, and even launch suffers from what I call angry-bird-itus... You tap to launch, not pull and release! We know this part sucks and we will address it in the free cycles because we want everyone of our apps to be great.) but I digress...

Monetize naturally. Always play the games you make, and look for natural breaks and placement to insert revenue generation on the free version (e.g., Doodle Army 2 has an ad in the lobby, that free and users who have paid for the access to the full set of in game weapons. 'pro pack'.) We are toying with adding a subscribe option to allow users to buy them away and tell us "make sure the servers stay up" with the power of their wallet. Your app might have load screens. Remind the user the game is not the full version and show them an add for a bit. Don't forget to cross promote your own apps if you have more than one too!

Once you are live make small changes (i.e., the balancing act.) As you murder the last great idea with the newest great idea, try to do so without losing your customers... Reminds me of the game Smuggle Truck sometimes as I try to make sure every change I make does not throw customers in such a way I can not recover them when they settle back down and realize I am not trying to screw them or don't care (I will look for a good example of this occurrence regarding monetization, but the only one that comes to mind is not monetization related, but related to using too much memory on Flip to allow the game to run on older devices. We figured out a way/hack to keep em supported, but wow what a lot of work... I can not wait for my users to upgrade!)

Use some form of analytics to keep track of user behavior. If your taking this seriously I don't see why you should object to exploring this in some form (staunch privacy advocates just started hissing at me.) And if you offer a free game track the user actions, that is part of the price of free. yes I just promoted the player's privacy be a monetized incentive. If you find it distasteful or invasive make your full game not have a lick of it and rely on more traditional methods of gathering feedback. The idea there is that you already have money from that person, so its all about making sure their gameplay is as pure as it can be. But it behooves you, the developer, to understand the players of your game. And I think a lot of players, paid users, would not mind letting you know how they play for the express purposes of making your game more interesting. Give it an 'opt in' option and state your intent to do no intentional evil with it but make a better game for those playing. But seriously think about it. I am personally tired of being dead wrong with some choices I have made. If I really knew how my players ticked better I would not have as chosen so poorly (it is varied in topic and degree to illustrate my bad choices, suffice to say it may be an interesting post for another time when looking at the reflection pool...)

I am sure there is more, I will end with this opinion:

Making games is a lot less fun when money starts to matter!

That is an excerpt from "The Tao of Fun and Profit", the working title of my next book.


Sound advice from Jeff Vogel  (on February 9, 2012) of Spiderweb Software for the indie: "Find your niche and own it. Accept what you can't change, be as awesome as you can, charge what you're worth, and stand proud on the ocean floor."

Jeff Vogel is one of the long term success stories I like to aspire to. He works hard, loves what he does, and as long as he keeps delivering the quality goods I expect he will continue to do well. I've never spoken to him, but if I do I think I will simply say "Thanks for all the fun and advice!" He has had a great influence in where I am and heading today.

Thanks Jeff! Thanks for all the RPG loving over the (dry) years! Thanks for encouraging and sharing as much as you do! Its the kind of stuff that fuels my forges here at CodeWorx!


I have been asked where do you sounds for apps. Well here are a few sites I have used for sound/music sources recently:

http://soundbible.com/royalty-free-sounds-1.html

http://audiojungle.net/

(I am sure I have forgotten some. I will edit when I remember!)

Those are the sites I start with. There is a LOT to be had right there and I usually don't have to look far. After that Audacity/Sound Forge apps comes in handy making new sound combos derived from other sounds. Its fun to play with, but I spend WAY to much time on it when I get into it!

I want to mention this last one, it has a reasonable cost to consider, but I find their samples to be great to try out entire packages of sounds. The guy running it has been very receptive to my feedback. Overall the polish is there. The need to rework sounds is non-existent. I have yet to buy set of sounds from him (no new projects in need yet), but it would save me countless hours of surfing and amateur foley work (did you know snapping a bundle of celery makes a great bone breaking sound?) Audio Skins is on my short list for sure! 

http://www.audioskins.com/index.php <- Definitely worth checking out!

Side note: Remember to read and understand distribution your license allows (royalty free or not!) That is a topic for another post another day!

Do you have a favorite sound site? Commercial or not, please share in the comments! I'd love to hear it!


I stumbled onto a blog by Marc-André at http://exludis.tumblr.com/

He had some great media and thoughts and ideas I believe are worth spreading:

 

His post on obsession and passion (the original item that drew me to his blog in the first place) was thought provoking: http://exludis.tumblr.com/post/23227103235/from-passion-to-obsession

and the two games he found inspiring I found intriging as well: http://exludis.tumblr.com/post/22778740998/two-inspirations

Ira Glass on Storytelling [but this applies to any creative venture]: http://vimeo.com/24715531

 

Jesse Shell on information flow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y92-vkyHKbY

 

That leaves very little else not linked that he has shared on game development... Just go check em out and form your own opinion... 

I post in the spirit of sharing something I found interesting, but I really don't think I am will add anything to the overall discussion... at this point in time...


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