Category: Gamedev

Game a Week game 1, week 1

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I decided to make a game a week. The rules are:

No how far along the game is I have to move on after the week is over.
No matter how far along it is I will at least release it as beta to the public when the week is over.
I can still go back and improve it as long as I’m also working on a new one during the week.
The timer restarts on Monday.
Try and make a a variety of games instead of doing the same thing over and over.
Must release on at least android and html5

I’m thinking making a game a week will force me to get better at all aspects of game making, especially if it means people seeing my terrible games. It will force me to get better and not be as embarrassed by them.

My first game is Sooap Drop. It’s a typo but I thought it was kind of funny to not fix it.

Things I’ve learned update

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Making original content that is also interesting/fun is really hard. Everything has already been done, only better than what you have.

The bigger the game, the more stupid little details you have to deal with. The more parts there are the harder it is to make everything work cohesively. It’s a never ending cycle of fixing things then fixing things you broke from other fixes.

I’ve gotten better at recognizing errors and how to fix them. After getting the same ones you start to get a sort of”muscle memory”. I can actually read them and figure out where they came from instead of having to constantly google them

Find unbiased feedback. For example, I have a friend that hates mobile games and I had him play mine to have him point out everything bad about it(which was a lot). Most other people close to me would just say ( iTS sO fUN!)

Watch people play. If different people are getting stuck at the same place where they don’t know what to do, it’s not intuitive enough.

 

Suspended from Admob

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So I got a 30 day suspension from Admob..

Here’s the wall of text email I got:

Hello,

We recently detected invalid activity in your AdMob account. As a result, we’ve temporarily suspended your account for 30 days. During this time, no ads will be served on your mobile applications.

Why was my account suspended?

We found that you have clicked on your own AdMob ads in a non test-mode setting, which is prohibited by the AdMob Program Policies.

We understand that you may want to know more about the invalid activity we’ve detected. Because this information could be used to circumvent our proprietary detection system, we’re unable to provide our publishers with information about specific account activity, including any apps or users that may have been involved.

This is a one-time, non-appealable suspension. After 30 days, we’ll automatically re-enable ad-serving on your account.

If you need more time to identify and stop the invalid activity, please remove your AdMob ad code from your apps to prevent ads from being displayed.

Please note that if any additional issues are found in your AdMob account in the interim period of suspension, your account may be permanently disabled even before the suspension period ends. Please review our list of top reasons for account closure to help you understand the possible reasons that publishers may have their accounts disabled.

If your account is found to have invalid activity in the future, it will be subject to additional penalties, and may be permanently disabled.

How does the suspension affect my payments?

You will be eligible to begin receiving payments again once your account generates sufficient valid traffic.

As a result of the suspension, we are withholding the unpaid revenue in your account and refunding the balance, along with Google’s share, to affected advertisers. In addition, once ad-serving resumes on your apps, we will hold any future payments for 30 days—you will earn revenue during this time, and, provided your account remains in good standing, that revenue will be paid in the next payment period.

 

Fair enough, I guess I did click on them a few times while testing and I’m only losing out on about $20. I didn’t get any warning though and the email is saying I can get BANNED at any time with absolutely no warning. I’ve read horror stories from people saying they lost their account with much more money than I had. I think what I should of done would  have been to have test ads enabled. I think I had them disabled because I thought that it would enable test ads on every device, but I think you can put in your device ID and it will show test ads only on that device. I switched from AdMob to AdColony which was easy enough. It’s not like I was putting in thousands of clicks a day and making thousands of dollars. It’s was only a couple clicks while testing. It seems harsh.

I think even having someone play on the same network as you on their device  count against you because it’s on the same IP.

I switched to  AdColony because it was the first ad network I found besides AdMob that Gamemaker has an extension for heh. I haven’t seen anything about people getting suspended from AdColony. They seem less closed off compared to AdMob( from the tiny amount of experience I have with  them) I probably won’t hit the threshold($100) for getting a payout for a while anyway.

 

So what I learned is:

Don’t click your own ads
Read the terms of service
Set up test devices with test ads
Don’t even have friends click on ads

 

Amazon android store

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I uploaded the game to the Amazon Android store.

I uploaded it in the afternoon and by the time I woke up it had already been “reviewed” and went live. From what I can tell it gets virtually tested on a number of different devices and all the Amazon devices.

A few fire tv devices got excluded, I think that’s because they don’t have motion sensors. Which is good because I don’t want to get reviews saying the game doesn’t work.

I’m still improving the game and trying to get more people to play. I’ve learned a lot already though for my next game.

Minigames Universe 1.0.1 Update

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9/12/2016

Made a lot of changes based on user feedback

-Shortened abount of time snowmobile takes
-Removed time clock on polar bear fight
-Sea shell level only takes one “listen” instead of 5
-Made the save the tree level shorter and a bit more difficult
-Increased lawn mower speed and decreased amount to grass required
-Can wood chop at any time now
-upgraded Balloon appearance.

 

Day 2

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So I’m one day out from the accidental release. The problem I’m having is visibility. The only way to get the page seen seems to  be by linking the game directly to people or typing the exact name in. I think if I would have done more advertising and I was established this wouldn’t be as much of a problem. As it stands the game doesn’t show up at all in the play store search. No one can play it if they don’t know about it. My ultimate goal is to have it be the top result when searched. Being on the front page would be huge. I’m learning SEO and marketing on the fly and I’m throwing out tags left and right.

I’m trying to get people playing it to get reviews in. Even bad reviews would be nice so I could get feedback. I got one of my friends to play it so I’m going to go over with pen and paper to take notes.

The screen recording app I used left stuttering in the video which looks terrible in the trailer. It makes it look like the game isn’t optimized well. My phone is “old” so maybe if i record in 720p it will perform better.

Play here now

Minigames Universe released!

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So I released my first game today(on accident). I’m both excited and nervous. After 8 months It’s finally out to for the world to see. I’m hopeful but I don’t expect too much because everyone always says that the your first game is never successful.

It took about 8 months to start and release but a couple months of that I was just sitting on it and making tiny changes and working on the company itself. I had a game before this one that took about a year to make and I didn’t even finish. It’s just collecting dust. I’m thinking I can drastically reduce the time it takes to pump out games, maybe bring it down to a month or 2.

I didn’t even plan on releasing Minigames Universe now but I accidentally took it out of beta and put it into production.(whoops)

Some things I’ve learned are:

1.Start the game with barebones features and add them in later. If you get bored down the line and don’t want to work on it anymore it’s easier to release it with a couple features than it is to try and mush together a bunch of unfinished features.

2.Start advertising right away.  Tweet everything, make gameplay videos. Do anything to get your game/brand out. My mistake was waiting until the very last minute.

3. Backup EVERYTHING. I had everything backed up and I reinstalled my OS. Lo and behold I missed one thing.. the keystore file. Without the keystore It’s impossible to update the app on the playstore so I had to create a new playstore listing and delete the old one. Luckily It was only in beta so I didn’t lose too much.

4. If you have a good idea, prototype it first. It’s much easier spend a little time protyping  to see if an idea sucks than it is to spend months working on it just to find out you wasted all those manhours

5.Pre-plan ad placement. Instead of making the game first then putting ads in at the end, plan to make ads part of the game so their not thrown in to make them feel more natural and organic

 

Get it here!

Distractions

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Distractions can be devastating.  Distractions can turn a whole day with a clear schedule for getting a lot of work done into a day wasted on Reddit. One downside to being your own boss is that you have to be your own boss… If you’re not a good self motivator, not having someone nagging constantly to get back to work or direct concentration can cause wasted days. A few wasted days here and there can quickly stack to make for wasted weeks, and weeks can turn to months.

At times I have the attention span of a goldfish. Just after writing that I got distracted and looked up the attention span of goldfish, apparently goldfish have a longer attention span than me.
Even when I write about not getting distracted about something I get distracted. I’m honestly surprised I ever get anything done, no matter how small. I can get distracted by anything, the paperclips next to me are distracting, it’s crazy. Alas, I do have some tips to stay on track.

For me, music selection can be a huge distraction. If it’s too interesting, It makes me lose focus because I end up thinking about the music more than the task at hand. Music that works for me seems to be something I can put on and forget about. A pair of headphones with Infected Mushroom on seems to work wonders for me. Podcasts or tv shows are the worst for productivity. At best you get some of what needs to be done and have partial knowledge of what’s happening on Game of Thrones. At worst you spend all day watching tv and get nothing done.

Before I saw the light I would scoff at making to do lists, but they really do work. They work for me because I’m forgetful and constantly need reminding. I can start working on something and completely forget what I was doing and end up staring at a screwdriver for 5 minutes. Lists are also helpful because they show progress. Even if you get only get a couple of little things done, just the act of crossing the items off the list can boost morale. Having lists help direct the important work that needs to be done instead of aimless, non important work.

Having scheduled forced breaks help clear the mind. Often time’s I can be stuck on a problem that I’ve been working on for hours. After  taking a break and coming back I fix the problem in minutes. Even if I’m focused and in the zone, if I’ve been working 8-10 hours my brain will be fried and any progress I make will be trash. My brain could be fried and I wouldn’t even realize it.

These are a few ways to stay focused and I’m sure there are many more, but I just found a video on how floss is made.

Testing

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Minigame Universe is in the open beta stage now, which means it’s mostly complete.  While it’s almost complete, there  are still a bunch of things to finish.

  • Tighten up the graphics
  • Add in adds(heh)
  • Add in more acheivements
  • Possibly add a leaderboard
  • get more suitable music

I can keep finding more and more things to add and change though, and considering it’s my  first published game I’m nervous to release my baby to the world. I won’t get anywhere if it never gets released though.

I’m testing on my daily driver LG G2 and it seems to work work fine. It’s pretty “Old” as far as android phones go being released in 2013 but it’s still pretty good. It’s on the low end of the scale for  good phones now but it works for testing purposes. It’s got a 1080p screen and  Snapdragon 800 processor so I think most people will have a device at least that good. My logic is most people keep a phone about 2 years so they will have a phone newer than my 3 year old phone.

I have the rooms at 1280 x 768 and it seems to scale pretty well to my 1080p screen. I had a 7″ tablet that a friend bought for me for $30 brand new for testing that was terrible and it still ran fine and scaled down to the 1024 x 600 screen. One thing I noticed  was the accelerometer was wonky and it destroyed some of the game levels so I took them out. I’m not sure if it was a problem with that tablet specifically or tablets in general but i took the levels out anyway because  I didn’t want to risk users giving me a bad  rating because it didn’t work. Hopefully the levels that still use the sensors work fine with tablets.

 

The Google Play Developer Console is pretty neat, it allows you to see all kind of stats.for example you can see  install count by devices

Install stats 5_27_16

Or Android version:

android version

 

Previously I only had the beta open to my friends but now it’s open to anyone so hopefully I can get more input before launch.