RandomExile's Forum Posts

  • —,

    I'm certainly open to suggestions, but not only is there no tutorial discussion forum, but on my thread:

    Tutorials Forum for C2

    Tom said, "I don't think we need a new forum for tutorials."

    I wish I could speak more to the trend you've observed, but there appeared to be about three forums which weren't exactly right for tutorials discussions, but for which an argument could be made. If Kyatric or Arima want to move it to General: General Game Design or somewhere, I have no objections, because it was a coin flip for me, since this isn't really about Game Design, per se, either.

  • [Thread moved from Construct 2 General to How Do I...?]

    We've had some homegrown Kickstarter (KS) campaigns here at Scirra, most recently/notably Andrew aka NotionGames and his team's deservedly well-funded Super Ubi Land.

    While we're a smallish community, there's a lot of talent represented, and KS is currently one of the best ways for indie game developers to circumvent the old guard of venture capital and big-label publishers.

    Even though KS currently only accepts projects from U.S. and U.K creators, there's nothing standing in the way of a multinational team designating a U.S. or U.K. team member as the campaign lead and pulling off a completely successful (and legal!) project.

    With all that said, it seemed about time to consolidate our lessons learned and best practices, and so I've spent the last month or two researching the elements which go into planning, running, and fulfilling successful KS campaigns. With any luck, sometime Sunday evening (Eastern Standard Time) I'll post what may be the first of several tutorial articles laying out the principles I've learned from others or identified on my own and through participating in successful campaigns and observing certain failures.

    This tutorial will discuss five practices and considerations which seem to be either absent from the more common discussions of KS success/failure or are under-emphasized, much to the detriment of many a project. For example, while I know for a fact that some KS backers and a few project creators have dealt with this issue, the blogs, Gamasutra post-mortems, and even academic research papers aren't talking about how to advertise your game in established communities without creating a backlash from loyalists bristling at your commercial invasion.

    If it turns out that there's a significant degree of interest, I can develop a whole series of tutorials covering one or another aspect of KS management and guiding principles.

    If you have any thoughts, suggestions, or questions, go ahead and post! I'll also keep this space updated.

    Cheers,

    David/RandomExile

  • Using Chrome, the website worked for me. I thought Kazuko Island had an engaging exploration/fantasy feel to it.

  • Works!

  • I like both your old and new characters, and they each seem to express different personalities.

  • Discmach,

    I've been conducting a study for the last couple months into the factors effecting Kickstarter success, and it's been suggested to me by some of the project creators I've talked to that I should consider providing professional consulting services for indie developers.

    I'm writing an informal blog-style Kickstarter Tutorial for the Scirra website, which might turn into one in a series of such tutorials, entitled "The Top 5 Secrets of Highly Funded Kickstarters." I'm covering DLC/DRM/Exclusive Content, how not to be hated on third-party forums, planning and structuring rewards, and others.

    These are by no means the *only* factors that count (I've identified 74 individual factors in 7 categories), nor even the overall most crucial (structuring and pacing the campaign, immediate backer/inquiry feedback, etc.), but I've selected what I believe are the five most important ones which are under-reported or not yet covered. Proper reward structure, however, is one of those truly critical factors and is both more complicated than one might expect and easy to make errors in.

    Even a lot of successful campaigns might have been able to do even better if only they'd more effectively incentivized and balanced their reward tiers (something Ashley and Tom have had to think about very carefully as they gamified the Scirra website, for example). What are you truly incentivizing versus your intent?

    You mentioned feeling overwhelmed, and maybe putting together a solid game plan and clearly laying out what precisely needs to be done would help. If you're interested, maybe we could talk more about how exactly I might be able strengthen your project and/or directly support you.

    While I've participated (and quite closely, in certain cases) in a number of campaigns, I've never actually managed or directly consulted on one. If it turns out that you think I'd be an asset to your project, I think we can arrange some quite favorable terms to reflect my fledgling status. I'd be happy to discuss my personal qualifications privately and send you my real-life resume and references so you can know and be confident with whom you're dealing.

  • I'm not actively teaching, but my wife teaches gifted and talented students in Maryland, USA and she's always interested in providing venues for creativity and logical thinking. Additionally, my first real C2 project is a less-than-serious "serious game" to teach the operating principles of a data analysis organization.

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  • On an almost entirely but not quite inconsequential note, I just upgraded from the Personal to Business license, and on the Scirra.com/store/purchases page, it shows:

    <img src="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8087555/MyPurchases.png" border="0" />

    "This key is currently suspended."

    =( Maybe we could replace that text with something like:

         Congratulations, this license has been superseded by the Construct 2 Business License!

    That still gives the impression that the Personal License is no longer in effect, but phrases it as a positive rather the negatively connoted "suspended."

    =)

  • Kyatric,

    No worries, I remember Tom said he's working on it, and based on the efficiency with which he and Ashley dispatched the other recent upgrades, I'm sure once they're confident of a solution, it will be implemented swiftly.

    A clearly marked "lab" is a great idea. I was also thinking along the same lines as JoyfulDreamer, which I think will probably be accounted for by the Lab, but perhaps users could also flag games as being not-a-games, using the same mechanic as flagging them for violence or potentially offensive content.

  • I don't want to call anyone out in particular, but it's really common for designers to upload bare test-modules to the arcade. I'm not referring to uploading a playable level for a forthcoming commercial game, but things like a background image and a movable object. Very often, they wouldn't even classify as an example game.

    These aren't really rate-able as games, since what does it mean to call a movement-mechanic test "Really not very good at all" or "Amazing?" Since it's worthless as a game, a single star is fair as such, but what if as a movement-mechanic it is indeed amazing?

    Right now the arcade is cluttered with non-games which should perhaps be separately categorized as "Demonstrations" or "Tests" rather than games, and belong as references in the Your Creations forum.

    How can we preserve the integrity of the Arcade? We don't want people not to post complete but genuinely bad games, because that's nonetheless a "good-faith" effort. Is is truly best just to rate not-a-games 1-Star, or is there a more elegant solution?

  • Fantastic sense of depth, Rockwell. You clearly know how to wield a color palette. =)

  • That's a really cool demonstration, thanks! Only messed with the three main pathfinding heuristics, but Manhattan way outperformed the others in my setup, which had numerous scattered intervening obstacles, with the end goal "behind" a curved wall.

  • Evidence!

    <img src="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8087555/PickScore.png" border="0" />

  • —,

    I'm up to 57,000 points, but still don't show up in the high score list. Is there something I'm missing to properly post my scores?

  • The ratings are fixed again, like Tom posted earlier, but I noted with Pick to Win, high scores might not be registering.