Defining Awesome

Played LD with Mr. Bot for nearly an hour. I think it’s solid. What this game needs right now is grenades & medkits and its good to go.

Attachments are working for guns. Like in JA2 you drag & drop them on the gun attachment slots. Working are a silencer & flashlight. In the future there will be: recoil reducer, bigger clip, different ammo, bipod, laser sight, scope, barrel extender , talon grenade launcher, … ?

If I don’t code for a few days and then return to it I usually feel like someone that has no math/programming background. It seems like a strange world and I don’t understand much. Coding the simplest thing requires uberman effort. The same applies when I code for a few days non-stop and then try to do something in real-life. It seems disconnected and things like talking require effort. I suffer from what is called the writers-syndrome were you can sit with someone at the table and look like you are looking at the distance, not talking much. You are really in a “zone” thinking about your project. I think many of you can relate to this. In the past I would think that “this is how I am”, but it’s not true, I was just constantly in the code-zone. You see it requires a totally different mind-state and you might seem odd when caught in that state in a social situation. The other-way around it also applies. If you spend a lot of time socializing coding seems odd. You can’t get anything done. My thinking about all this changed when I started becoming aware of my brain states. It isn’t that easy because it requires installing an external observer on your thought processes (and maintaining it). So if you haven’t done this yet, I have a message for 2 kinds of people which might be you.

The first-kind thinks of themselves as rational/introverted and find it hard to do “normal-everyday” activities.
The second-kind thinks of themselves as artsy/extroverted and find it hard to do math/coding/logical activities.

You are not hard-wired to be any kind of these people. It’s all a matter of your brain state and you can change that.

There are long ways and quick ways to switch states. You probably want to read about the quick one. For a situation like today were I haven’t coded 3 days I use, what some esoterics would call them – spells and chants. Specifically I use Metal Music to get back into code-zone. I recommend. It doesn’t have to be music for you. Spells, chants and rituals are all methods of brain state change. I can elaborate if anyone is interested.

There is a lot of bugs with split-screen, like 5 big bugs. It was a spontaneous decision to make s-s so the game wasn’t prepared for it. I have to move on to other stuff and return to fixing later.

Today I’m making player keys configuration GUI. I’m making sure it allows all sorts of funky keys like 6 mouse buttons and 16 joystick ones.

Where do you place the 3d sound listener in a split-screen game? Play the sound 4 times for 4 players?

Today I’m rewriting the controls code to accommodate up to 4 players on split-screen.

Things are going pretty smooth with LD now so I guess I’ll layout a release plan.

Link-Dead deathmatch test

Should be out in the next weeks. This version will contain as the name suggests a deathmatch mode with split-screen mode and bots. I want to test the simplest game mode before moving to my bigger plans.

Link-Dead alpha release

I plan this version to have fully working networking such as dedicated servers and a master server. Also the basic form of the RTS gameplay mode. New graphics.

Link-Dead beta release

This version will contain all of the functionality and gameplay elements I have in my head + bugs and glitches. They will be ironed out in regular updates. This version will continue for an indefinite time until I’m satisfied.

I also want to start making some money out of this somewhere between the alpha and beta release so that I don’t die of hunger in the process. I’m not an academy teacher as some think! I do games full-time. Soldat is my only source of income and its not as much I would like for the work put in it. I don’t have any definite model thought out yet but Link-Dead in contrast to Soldat will not be a free game with paid options but a paid game with free options. I’d also like to get this into Xbox and other systems (OSX, Linux, PS3?).

If you have experience with online ads please read.
Just for fun, I tried advertising Soldat online for money. This is my second attempt after getting nothing from Google’s Adsense. This time I tried Facebook. It seems like a decent platform. You can advertise to people selecting them by age, maritial status, sex, language etc. In addition to that you can show your ads to already established fans of your products or friends of your fans which are not yet fans. Seems like a pretty good idea. I setup an ad selecting exactly those people from english speaking countries and Germany (cause fans from those countries buy Soldat Registered most frequently). The profile of the person is of course male 16-29 yrs old, not married. This is how my Facebook ad for Soldat looks like this. (I tried several variations and this one got most clicks).

Results:
After 2 months of this there were 600,046 views with 154 clicks. 1-5-4 CLICKS! That’s 0,0002% if my math is correct. This is astonishingly shameful. Bad, bad, bad. The only good part is that I spent only 35$ on this. But still it wouldn’t get me anything. My well-estimated guess would be that every 100th person buys Soldat Registered so I lost 10$ on this deal. Of course assuming that at least a 100 people from those clicks actually played the game.

Now my question goes to people that used online advertising successfuly: how do you do it? I agree I didn’t spend much. I set the CPC lower than expected. Yet I got a lot of views. In my opinion people just didn’t click it when they viewed it. It’s no wonder Facebook can’t pay for its bills and the only reason Google is rich is because it has billions of worthless sites with ads on them. Am I doing something wrong?

Today I’m making inventory serializing. In human this means you can save your inventory to a file. Also it will allow to send the entire inventory with slots arrangement through network. So server can create its own inventory slots, force the players to use specific weapons or change item/weapon variables.