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.
Posts categorized “Development log”
Link-Dead release plan
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?).
Online advertising is bullshit
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.
Quick look at a draft of the LD inventory. Shows also the gameplay possibilities it can generate.
When I first saw a grid-based inventory system in Diablo I thought it was a pretty clever idea. It was fairly realistic and fun – something which I always aim for. Nowadays I see a lot of bad opinions about it. Somebody even making a parody called “Inventory Tetris” – http://ping.fm/t7KYb Out of all the make-fun comments on that site one of them states: “… we are falling for the PR people’s “less is more” trap. Basically, mainstream game design in the 21st century consists of eliminating anything that could confuse a stupid person. And it’s good because, that way the audience is expanded significantly.”. I have to agree with this. Players are made dumber and dumber. You can’t make hints or walk-throughs or make a cut-scene out of a grid-inventory system so the only solution for AAA games is to eliminate the system and introduce something simpler than simple. Grid-systems are simple and work well in my opinion. I’m going with my intuition here and will take ideas from X-Com, Hidden & Dangerous 2 and Jagged Alliance 2 inventory systems.