Callan S's Forum Posts

  • Not sure I understand. It sounds like you are making the enemy die when health = 0, rather than testing if health <=0. If you test whether the health is at zero or lower then it works. Otherwise damage has to make the enemy go perfectly to zero health.

  • Why can't you just use an ordinary text box?

    Because I didn't know about them :p

    Thanks for the info, I'll have a look. Though I've looked a bit now and I'm not sure how to register when the information has been entered? Separate keypress check for enter?

  • I'm imagining having to type code to catch all the letters of the alphabet, plus space...it all seems a little clumsy to implement for the novelty of naming a character in a game. What method do you guys use - is there an easier way?

  • Perhaps at the end there could be a flagpole and instead of grabbing onto it mario style, he just hacks it down?

  • Would prefer WASD support and space bar as an option to start.

    The blanking out is rather jarring - could you use some sort of rapid black fade in by rapidly increasing the alpha?

    You ought to warn epileptic players. Getting the red coin shifts the entire background black and getting the next coin shifts it to light.

    Fitty bird

  • While it is true that a master might be able to make a beautiful game quickly, it is highly likely that the master spent thousands of hours honing their craft to get to the point where they can do it quickly.

    Thats the big advantage of doing lots and lots of small games for practice. While you are gaining skill, don't expect any of the hundreds of projects you will create along the way to be popular or successful. There will be a few gems, but most will not be worth publishing.

    As I said said in the OP, I'm not looking for millions of plays - just ten recorded scores or so. I have a few plays on my games, but there seems to be rebound so they don't actually play enough to register a score (and I make registering a score happen very quickly in the game)

    What are you practicing towards by making lots of games if you are not aiming towards an audience?

    Currently it seems like 'idle' is the main draw card, along with killing stuff. I have a game with 'slayer' in the title on kongregate which is an idle game with 5000 plays, and an idle game about growing lettuce with 3000 plays.

    My newer small games I'm trying out on Scirra arcade, which is a smaller userbase I grant, but I thought I'd see a touch more traction. Then again 'Khloro Slaying' on the Scirra arcade is mine and got 62 players, 85 plays - the range I'm expecting (slightly better, actually).

    I guess having 'you're killin' stuff' in the title probably is the main draw card. I've been trying to avoid the topic of violence and killing.

    I guess I should have figured that already. Maybe I was trying to avoid acknowledging it.

  • Take pride in your work,

    Seems a little insulting? I'm sure you've heard the story of the artist who draws something in a second then asks five thousand for it.

    I'm not claiming great skill, but more time doesn't somehow make it real and others aren't, or it has more skill involved than something done in a shorter time. There are a number of 24 hour game dev comps out there as well.

    On my main point, take 'Idle Slayer', where I talked with the developer and he said it took maybe 12 hours to make. 134,000+ plays.

  • Thanks for your reply,

    The thing is I've read an account of a developer who put many, many hours into a game as well as money for development and advertising - and just didn't find an audience.

    The point is to develop quickly to find audience response, then develop more slowly with the confidence of actually engaging an audience. Instead of throwing hundreds of hours into a direction and find no one else is going in that direction.

    As developers, I think we've got to stop using the 'put your head down and just keep pushing in a direction for dozens of hours at a time' model of development. There's plenty of unique games out there that nobody plays, as well. Never mind how many developers start projects then never finish them because instead of capping the number of hours, they let feature bloat extend the dev hours indefinitely and eventually break their morale and they let the project die.

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  • I've made a few games now and I can't say I've gotten much traction in terms of plays. Not looking for millions of plays, just ten or more recorded scores.

    I'm looking for a quick turn around on feedback, so a short number of development hours (under 15?). I'm attempting something zombie related, because that seems a grab for a number of audiences. To me, it's possible to bolt on a number of themes on top of zombies - ie, it doesn't really have to be about the zombies at all.

    I see some games in the arcade here with a fair number of plays...and it's a zombie shooter, for example. Or do you guys have any other ideas for what will draw an audience?

  • The game itself is going to be some kind story of vengeance or forgiveness.

    Vengiveness

  • Perma death? Ouch! Particularly with one hit kill ceiling spikes to jump into.

  • You could set a very small grace time period in which a character can jump even if they are not touching ground (that only occurs when touching falling platforms), you'd just set it to bypass the ground touching test for jumping, during that time.

  • I would use a value to track contact

    Like on contact,

    [ if 'touching' = 0, score+=1 touching=2 ]

    If touching >0, touching -=1

    That way the contact is continually renewed and wont allow a new score addition until contact breaks and 2 ticks have occurred (which is usually a tiny, tiny amount of time)

    Good luck!

  • I was thinking of a promo for a game but I'm pretty sure that it's not too hard to edit the save files of games. So there's no point giving prizes (as in manually sent BTC) to just the highest scorers, as they may well be manipulated.

    I was thinking of (manually) recording everyone in the scoreboard as having one ticket and those in the top places might get one or two more tickets themselves, then using a randomiser to determine the ticket. That way the highest scorers get a bit more of a chance, but if the score is a manipulated one, they don't just auto win because of that.

    Thought I'd put this out to the quasi quorum of the construct community to see if you had any different methods that come to mind?