First solo game released! Kickball Champion of the World
polycounter lvl 10
It's finally out!
So this is my first game that i have done by myself, It was a hell of a lot of work teaching myself to code. But i feel like it's something i can be proud of and hopefully it will help me get a footing as an indie developer that can do this full time!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kickball-champion-world/id836388314?ls=1&mt=8
It's out on iOS right now, but i'll be porting to android when i get enough money from the iOS release to buy some android devices.
Note i dont recommend getting the game if you only have an iPhone 4 with iOS7. It is smooth enough on iOS5 but 7 just killed performance completely. Running that many physics objects and explosions is pretty taxing on the phones. Im going to try and sort this out when i get back to australia though.
I plan on adding a ton more animation and supporting this for as long as i get people playing it
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EDIT: i held off on posting v1.0 as it had a screen dimming bug but the new version is currently being propagated through the store.
So this is my first game that i have done by myself, It was a hell of a lot of work teaching myself to code. But i feel like it's something i can be proud of and hopefully it will help me get a footing as an indie developer that can do this full time!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kickball-champion-world/id836388314?ls=1&mt=8
It's out on iOS right now, but i'll be porting to android when i get enough money from the iOS release to buy some android devices.
Note i dont recommend getting the game if you only have an iPhone 4 with iOS7. It is smooth enough on iOS5 but 7 just killed performance completely. Running that many physics objects and explosions is pretty taxing on the phones. Im going to try and sort this out when i get back to australia though.
I plan on adding a ton more animation and supporting this for as long as i get people playing it
.EDIT: i held off on posting v1.0 as it had a screen dimming bug but the new version is currently being propagated through the store.
Replies
Only problems I had were that the iphone dimmed on me like I had been leaving it alone, not sure if there is anything you can do about this, and then the noises. I wasn't prepared for that loud girly yell, haha, it startled me and made me think I probably wouldn't open this in public. Also the girly little sequels were kinda.... suggestive, not intentional I'm sure but not what I wanted to be thinking about while playing.
The game itself is fun for a bit but I have a really hard time controlling where the ball goes. I feel like I'm just chasing the ball around hoping to god it hits an explosive device (should be better marked I think), and save me.
Anyways its cool stuff, I'll keep playing maybe some of these points will become more self evident to me. Super congrats on getting it out there, I'm amazed.
For controlling the ball, try hitting with the side of the character and not just the head, And to hit the ball low wait till it has almost hit the floor then slam into it.
With the girls voices i was prepared for that, if you pause you can just turn down the voice acting to mute it. Voice acting is super hard to get right especially for effort noises (this voice actor was the best at is out of 30 and i thought she nailed it), I think i want to do another pass on all of them next update and get some more done, but try and nail it a bit better.
The pickups yeah i think i need to add some animation to them to make them stand out more.
All in all this has been a hell of a learning experience trying to get everything and not just the art to a professional standard, and i'm not sure i even managed it. Even if this release doesn't prove to be too successful at least it is experience under my belt.
Thanks a ton for the feedback!
Keep up that good work!
Justin, i used MOAI and it's mostly coded in Lua. but the engine is c++. It's not very popular aside from the fact double fine uses it.
If you want to get into making games i think Lua is a good jumping point.
I think LOVE 2d would probably be a good starting point. I have heard a ton of great things about it. What i would honestly recommend is just getting in and making a few arcade game clones, but don't follow tutorials, just try and work it out yourself looking at some other peoples source code in the same engine. I failed for a few years to pickup programming till i stopped expecting tutorials to think for me.
https://love2d.org
Gameplay gifs!
Don't have any Apple products myself but I'll be pitching it to everyone I know who does. :P
I'm interested in your choice for merely a platform and not a more friendly, complete engine like Unity. Did you feel it was easier to just start more from scratch ?
Also, myself I feel ok with programming things, but for a project of even small game size, i feel like my class structure just goes a bit out of control and I'm always super messy. The real 'code architect' stuff, you know, how the big picture fits together. How did you deal with that?
Oh and how long did it take you? Was this on the side next to a fulltime job?
Thanks Everyone!
Xoliul, yeah the engine thing seems to be a hot topic for a lot of people. For me i chose Moai because this was as much a learning experience as it was making a game. Things did get messy, and realistically if i chose a far more structured engine i would have been done in a lot less time.
But that wasn't the point i wanted to jump in and learn how things actually work, i ended up implementing texture atlases by myself, and wrote my own scene manager and handled all my own game loops. All this is super important because my next game idea is going to be very math and architecture heavy, as i want to do a 2d verbal space program style simulation cross a strategy game. And that's going to have a ton of fun engineering challenges that i don't think i would be ready to tackle if i took the easy way round for kickball.
in hindsight however i don't think i would have recommended to myself to go this path, i think using a simpler engine like love2d and releasing a few little games for free on the web would have been much better than spending so long on an iPhone game which was about 2 years but that was on and off, while learning to code and in between a lot of jobs.
So far sales have been less than stellar, but i'm just going to keep plugging away at it and expand the game out with another mode, (time attack! with bosses and special enemies!), a lot more animation and music and some other stuff. I think it's one of those things that will never make me rich but it will probably be a good supplement to my freelance work
I'm a little surprised you chose MOAI... IIRC it seemed pretty unsupported with poor documentation the last time I took a look at it. That said, I think it was probably your determination to actually finish a game which influenced your success much more than the tech choice behind it.
I'm looking forward to seeing more games from you in the future
Though currently there is a community branch, and is getting constant updates now. It's turning into quite a cool little engine. Though i wouldn't recommend it to someone like me when i was first starting...
Memory: the idea of 90% of indies using the one technology scares the fuck out of me. No thank you.
"If we all reacted the same way, we'd be predictable, and there's always more than one way to view a situation. What's true for the group is also true for the individual. It's simple: Overspecialize, and you breed in weakness. It's slow death."
-Ghost in the shell
Make it so my phone battery never dies.
Any chance of getting touch control or tilt control? Be cool to touch or flick to kick.
Otherwise this is awesome. Top notch animations.
Only issue I've noticed so far is the icon doesn't install on my ipad. Just gives me a blank grid with circles, and reinstalling didn't fix it. Not sure if that's on your end or mine. Installed fine on the phone, though.
Her name is Elly
Thanks everyone, it really means a lot! All the good feedback makes me think i might be onto a winner, if i can flesh it out more with how everything works.
Joopson, sadly i was loosing money having it online on itunes. I was probably making $2-$3 a month which wasn't even covering the iTunes dev fee. So i couldn't really justify paying it unless i put in the time to try and re-brand the game and improve it to change that. Maybe i might get back into it at one point...
I decided to just move on instead.
Kryzon, it was a font, i don't really see the point in making your own typography besides modifying a font to some specific need. Other than that it was using a bunch of layer styles and font deformers in photoshop.
http://www.dafont.com/moan-lisa.font
If you happen to have time, you should write an article on animating 2D cartoon art for games. I'm personally fascinated by this subject.
It's a shame the Apple store is so saturated. So much work is required outside of the game to get eyes on it. :poly138:
Looking forward to trying your next project.