Monday 25 September 2017

Weekly Development Progress Report, 25/09/17

Not too much to report this week, I pretty much took half last week off for various family things. I've made a little progress with my next game, which I'll go into shortly, but got no further with the desktop version of Zombie Cannon Attack!

Trick or treat?

As well as working on a paid desktop download of Zombie Cannon Attack! I'm also considering a Halloween update. The theme would fit in nicely and I've already designed an extra NPC, designing a new themed background and obstacles shouldn't be too much trouble and there's a good chance I'll reuse any assets I make (more on that later). For now you can still try the non-Halloween version for free, there's a demo web version with a good few hours play on Kongregate, or you can download the full game on Android (also FREE!) which has plenty of extras and bonuses.
Zombie Witch concept art, (maybe) coming soon
Spam clicks make the world go round

My next project, provisionally titled Zombie Clicker Attack!, is an incremental clicker with a similar theme to my last game. In fact, as the title implies, it's a very similar theme which will allow me to reuse many of the assets. Hopefully this should greatly speed up development time.

Although the plot will be basically the same (help a mad scientist take over the world with zombies), obviously the game play is quite a departure from a hybrid launch game/endless runner. The aim will be to raise a vast horde of various zombie types and conquer a series of increasingly well-defended territories, using the data you gather to upgrade your zombies along the way, but you'll be doing this while under constant attack from your potential victims.
I'm hoping to add a small action section to make the invasions more than just clicking a button, but it's still early days yet so we'll see. I've almost finished the first 10-15 minutes of gameplay, this comprises the first territory to conquer and will be a good vertical slice of the game for testing. Once I'm happy with that the rest of the process will be gradually introducing features to flesh out that core concept. As ever, more on this next week.
A very early prototype shot, as you may have noticed from the lack of a map on the map tab

Monday 18 September 2017

Weekly Development Progress Report, 18/09/17

A difficult week, all in all. If you read last week's post (which thanks to a fluke retweet explosion is now my second most viewed post of all time) then you'll know most of the bad stuff as it was actually written midweek and things got a lot better afterwards. However I don't really feel like I've got much in the way of progress to share this week so I'll keep it short.

Desktop Stop Shock

I've hit a bit of a wall in producing a desktop version of Zombie Cannon Attack! The method I was using creates an .appxbundle file instead of an .exe file. While it works fine on my PC, from what I can tell it's only really good for the Windows Store, which means incurring extra costs that I can't really justify as it seems unlikely I could recoup them. I'm now looking into a different method, hopefully more on that next week.
Zombie Cannon Attack! desktop version, two weeks away for the last three weeks
Big in Iraq

I experimented with using Google Play Store promotion codes (giving free in-app purchases) for the Android version of Zombie Cannon Attack! (coinciding with the release of v1.2, get it now! etc) and the results were interesting. It's easily been my best week for downloads so far but they've mostly been from the Middle East as opposed to the previous norm of the EU/US regions. The new players have so far generated very little revenue though, and given how slowly downloads have been going since launch it didn't really take much to beat the previous weeks' efforts.
On a more positive note the average rating is now up to 4.8, which is nice, but I'd certainly trade the .8 for a few more downloads. (Hint, hint 😆)

Core blimey, it's working!

I've continued work on the prototype for my next game. It's starting to take shape and I'm fairly happy with it so far, even if most of the game still only exists in my head. I coded a couple of functions that are pretty central to how the game will play and I can see it starting to evolve. I'm now leaning towards thinking it will work and hopefully I can move ahead with it more quickly now I've got the core of it done. Again, more next week.

Thanks for reading.

Wednesday 13 September 2017

Weekly Development Progress Report, 11/09/17

Apologies for the delayed blog this week, I've had a rough few days of crappy sleep and lots of things have had to be put off. It's a measure of how badly I'd been sleeping that what would usually count as a below average night's sleep last night has actually left me feeling refreshed and raring to go. Hopefully that can last.

Sounds like a problem

As well as getting the latest Android version of Zombie Cannon Attack! finished, I split my time last week between working on a prototype for my next game and getting a Windows version of Zombie Cannon Attack! ready for release. I'd had a lot of problems with the Windows version, which turned out to be mostly caused by the version of Windows I was targeting.

A Windows 10 build is not compatible with anything lower so I'd targeted Windows 8.1 instead. As my games are browser based, the non-web versions run on a webview (essentially this packages the game in a stripped down browser window). The Windows 8.1 webview is based on Internet Explorer which turned out to be the root of my problems, as IE doesn't support web audio (as well as being rubbish in many, many other ways). The Windows 10 webview is based on Edge which runs everything just fine. I'm limiting my potential audience by doing this, but the audio of Zombie Cannon Attack! is pretty essential to it's humour and the workarounds I had to put in place for the 8.1 version compromised the sound effects to a level I just couldn't accept.

Once I'd got the game running I spent a little time adding extra keyboard controls and adding a fullscreen option that I'm pretty pleased with. Everything seems fine after testing and I'm ready to try and turn what I've got into something players can actually download and install.
Those zombies are trying to eat him, they're not his backing singers. Just in case there's any confusion.

That 'difficult' third game

As I mentioned, I also started prototyping my next game. At the moment I'm going for an idle/clicker type game based on broadly the same theme as Zombie Cannon Attack!, with a working title of Zombie Clicker Attack! I've seen plenty of other gamedevs talk about knocking together a prototype in a few hours, but unfortunately that's not how I work so it's taking a little longer and I'm still not convinced I have something that will work. The obvious danger with this is that I end up spending so much time on the game that I follow through with an idea I'm not happy with so the time I've spent isn't wasted. Knowing when to fold 'em is something I've never been great at and I'll need to work on that a bit more. You can rest assured I'll be posting more on this as I make progress.

Monday 4 September 2017

Weekly Development Progress Report, 04/09/17

Another busy week, I spent most of it bashing my head against the brick wall that is developing for Windows using Cordova. To be fair it's not a very strong brick wall as I've so far solved every problem I've encountered, but not without a lot of swearing at my computer. Apart from an annoying issue that stops me changing the volume of sound effects I have what appears to be a fully working Windows version of Zombie Cannon Attack!, or at least a version that works on my local machine. I've a fair bit more work to do before I'm ready to release it though.

Zombie Cannon Attack!, now with added buttons!

As well as the technical behind the scenes stuff, I've also made a few changes to gameplay to adapt the mechanics better to desktop play. Mainly that's meant adding keyboard controls, but as there will be a paid version I've also removed all trace of ads or premium currency from the full game and reworked a few things to balance those changes. I've also added another layer of achievements for the full version only, and these will be in the next Android update too.
Rampage through Brainsville on your Windows PC, soon(ish)
There's life in the old game yet.

I'll do a full postmortem on Zombie Cannon Attack! once the post-release dust has settled (which obviously won't happen til I actually stop releasing on new platforms). At the moment I'm a long way short of where I'd need to be to make a full-time living at gamedev, although this game has done much better than my last game did (both in critical and commercial terms) and I've learnt a huge amount in the course of developing and releasing it.
Ooh, closing in on Version 1.2.34, said the serious proper gamedev
August Stats:

August was a really busy month, as you'd expect from a release month. However that isn't really reflected in my hours worked. School holidays and family commitments have taken up a lot of time (not that I'm complaining, family comes first) so when I've had the time to work I've had to cram it in. Twitter continues to grow steadily, I've been a lot stricter with who I follow back to try and cut down on timeline clutter and it doesn't really seem to have made a difference to the growth of my followers. This blog had a really good month and was up almost 50% on the previous month, helped by me tweeting a lot more as I promoted Zombie Cannon Attack!'s various releases. Readership has now more than trebled in the last 6 months which is always nice to see. A big thanks to you for reading today and helping to add to that.

Twitter 1539 (+164)
August blog views 731
Blog views/day: 23.6 (July was 15.9)
Hours worked 119.5 (3.9 per day) (July was 3.5/day)