CROS's Forum Posts

  • Worked fine here, too, Davio. I know Blargh had the problem that the others were having, though.

    I have Windows 7, he has XP.

  • Lots of questions.

    1) Are you imposing rules on what kind of achievements a game can include? If so, why and what?

    No.

    2) Will our games be tied to some system on your site like steam or live, requiring a player to sign up just to be able to play it, or can they continue to download it from anywhere, play it, and if they choose they can later sign up for an account and play through again to get achievements?

    Games can be downloaded anywhere, played anywhere, etc. They will not be able to save trophies without an account, though. High scores will most likely have two options that a dev can choose to use for their game: either guests and users can submit high scores, or just users. All up to the game developer how they want to handle things.

    3) Further to the above question. What do you have in place to handle issues caused by someone either playing the game offline, playing the game without creating an account to hold achievements, or intentionally wishing to avoid signing up for whatever reason.

    Up to the game dev. If they want to store the achievements in a file, they can.

    4) Is this a free service, or bloated with ads or are you charging game makers?

    The site has ads. Not many, though. Games don't have to have any ads pointing to Game Jolt, although of course it'd be appreciated. Without ads on the site, though, we couldn't do this:

    http://gamejolt.com/developers/ad-sharing/

    5) What does the process involve? For example, a game maker would sign up, then create a "game account" add their achievements, and then somehow link up the plugin to those?

    Yeah, pretty much. You can experiment if you want. Games are by default hidden from view when you add one.

    6) Are the achievements shown on the site following a uniform appearance (like Steam and Live do with theirs), or are you allowing games to provide their own styles. By this I mean I know the actual icon (using the above mentioned examples) are always specific to the game and achievement, but do you still have some guidelines that need to be followed, if so what are they?

    The look and feel on the site is unified. How it's portrayed in the game is up to the dev. For the site, devs can upload a 100x100 thumbnail of the trophy, though. They can also add a title, description, and difficulty setting (bronze, silver, gold, plat.).

    7) Will this service result in forced branding on games?

    No. Game Jolt has always operated as a service to help the game devs and not to force crap onto them.

    8) How deeply does your achievement system impact a game? Does it sit quietly in the background within the game, accepting input only when required and uploading it to the site. Or will it need to be added to the game at the ground level and integrated with everything from the start?

    Not sure what you mean. You tell it to do the commands, and then it does it. You could easily create a whole game and then just add in some trophies. It's pretty modular.

    9) If your plugin requires very deep inclusion with the game, how well does it play with possible future achievement plugins from elsewhere? Some game makers may wish to link up to a number of sites for whatever reason (including their own perhaps), how will yours effect this or wont it cause any problems?

    Don't see any problems here.

    10) Is your plugin tied to Game Jolt, or can it be used, like with the above example, for the creators personal site too, for example if the creator decides to have a page displaying the overall number of players who got each achievement on their own site (without requiring them to have anyone sign up, just have it updated automatically), while also using the plugin to update more specific player accounts on Game Jolt (as well as I imagine an overall page there too).

    There is an alpha Game Jolt Service API, which nearly any piece of public information can be pulled from the site. Devs can use this to pull in trophies or leaderboards or anything into their site.

    11) Are there any limits to the achievement plugin, or does it accept variables (and thus practically anything you wish to throw at it)?

    Right now it only supports trophies. Very soon it will support data storage, in which case you will be able to store anything. It'll most likely have to be serialized in some form as a string or something. This can be used for level sharing, replay storing, save state, etc. Really anything.

    12) Are you insisting on a specific "achievement unlocked" icon/image to be used in game, if so why, what, and what's it look like? Otherwise I take it we can have our achievement unlocked icons/borders etc. look however we want (in game)? But will you also be providing a selection of usable image files, for users who either can't or wont create their own, to at least provide a base level of quality?

    You can use whatever. We will be releasing images to supplement the system soon, though. The basic trophy icons used on the site and stuff.

    Hope this answers your questions.

  • Oh! Sorry, man. You're exactly right. I thought you meant that I needed to add in some triggers or internal messages into the plugin, which was really confusing me. haha

    By the way, if you need to find out why a function isn't working, there is a way to pull out the debug messages for debugging. In case you run into any troubles.

  • Triggers and internal messages?

  • Glad you guys are into it! Remember to send me an email if you want in. I've let newt and Davio in.

  • That'd be me. I used to do a lot of C++ coding a while back, so it actually wasn't too much trouble. I actually had a lot of fun with it. Construct has a nice codebase and making the plugin was actually pretty dang easy.

    And, thanks, deadeye!

  • Hey guys,

    CROS here from Game Jolt. Just wanted to let everyone know that we've launched our achievements system in closed beta. We're looking for interested devs that would be willing to help us test out the system and what not. The goal is to create the best stinkin' achievements system out there that works with as many platforms as possible while still being extremely easy to use.

    The good news? Construct is taken care of, and is a supported platform. A nice little plugin is all ready for testing.

    Current Features:

    Trophies

    High Scores

    Data Storage

    We hope to keep the closed beta period short, so that we can get more devs using it right away.

    Here's some more information on the system, and how to sign up for the closed beta:

    http://gamejolt.com/developers/achievements/

    Let me know what you guys think.

  • Wow, really, Davio? I'd love to see it. Any possible way you'd be able to find it on the 'net?

  • <img src="http://images.cdn.gamejolt.com.lg1x3.simplecdn.net/games/1050/screenshots/1050_2011.jpg">

    This was my entry for the Game Jolt Minimal Contest.

    Note that this game was a big test. I'd like other's opinions on it. It's strange and might take a little time to understand. heh

    You can download Blind Redux from Game Jolt here.

    Some Background

    I guess this game probably requires some explanation. You see, I'm a programmer. I don't do art or graphics. Just a straight up programmer. I wanted to make a game, but I couldn't be bothered with making any artwork for it. Also, because of the love for platformers in the indie world, I wanted to make a platformer. So, what does one in my situation do? Simple. He makes a Text-Based Platformer.

    How Does it Work

    There are absolutely no graphics in this game besides straight up white text. There is no styling done to the fonts besides different sizing. This is NOT a text adventure game. It's a platformer. There are points in the world that are designated by how far the player character is from them. There is no graphical view of the character. You must figure out his position by figuring he's in the middle of the view somewhere, and by the distance between various points in the world. You should be able to figure it out when you're in the game.

    Controls

    Left and Right to move

    Z jumps

    X to proceed to next dialogue screen in cutscenes

    Be sure to move slowly if you want to catch all the dialogue and events

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  • Hey guys,

    Not sure if anyone's planning on entering, but it'd be great to have some Construct users! I think Construct's maybe one of the best tools to quickly prototype games out, so I could see some awesome things being developed.

  • Hmm... Looks like the Kongregate model. It does sound interesting, however I'm worried about legal implications.

    It's fairly similiar, except it's across the board for all games and not just Flash. There's also going to be a few differences, which we will release once the closed beta is ready.

    Interesting. I did not find info about rates, requirements or anything though.

    Is there an API?

    Could you elaborate?

    There will be more information released within a few weeks when the closed beta starts. The lifetime rate for developers that sign up now, though, is 50% of the revenue.

    We actually already have an API, which we've discussed a bit with Ashley about Construct using for their Created Games Portal thing. More information on how games can plug in to the API will be released soon.

    It can be a big undertaking, especially for smaller services. It's always good to see indie developers getting something back though.

    Thanks, Rich. We've got some other things planned too, so be sure to keep checking back.

  • Hey guys. This is CROS from Game Jolt. I posted a while back.

    Anyway, just wanted to keep you updated with some new developments on the site. While we've hinted at it in the past, we're finally revealing some information on Ad Revenue Sharing on Game Jolt. This has usually been reserved for just Flash/casual games, but in our long fight to rid the world of greedy publishers, here ya go!

    http://gamejolt.com/developers/ad-sharing/

  • Don't forget to mention Game Jolt's aggregation.

    http://gamejolt.com/articles/

    Toastface looks pretty cool!

  • I mentioned this to Ashley before, I think. Game Jolt offers an API for retrieving nearly every bit of information on the site. We'd be willing to host all the files, screenshots, soundtracks, information, etc. and the Construct site could just pull all the information in through the API and display it on their site. I'd even be willing to help code out the section on the Scirra site.

    We even have plans for implementing a bug tracker, project forums/chatrooms, SVN/Git repositories, project Web space, etc.

  • Oops! I read Thomas' post wrong.

    Nevermind about that.