So I've been back from my vacation for a little while now and I've been quite busy ever since.
I'm still working on porting over Jungle Jumper to a libGDX version and I'm quite far along. At the moment it is mostly just a lot of boring copy paste work that is necessary to set up all the different screens. When that is done there is some more complicated work of getting Ads and Play Games Services back in there, but hopefully it is not too far away. I don't have a huge amount of time at the moment so it is not going as quickly as I would like.
At the same time I'm doing a complete re-factoring of the code for Space Sheep and fixing some bugs. I really wanted to rewrite Space Sheep so the code was better and it has become a bit of an involved project, but it is moving forward, at the same time I would like to implement a couple of new sheep for the next update.
Meanwhile I'm quite busy at work. This week I'm during training in VMware, which prepares you to do a quite comprehensive certification, VMware Certified Professional 5 – Data Center Virtualization (VCP5-DCV). So that is really exciting and I'm learning a lot.
I've finally gotten serious about taking advantage of the free certification program at Dell. Two months ago I took my first certification ,Comptia Network+, which was a lot of fun.
I'm now scheduled to take, Oracle Certified Associate in Java, next month. And I've requested the first certification in the Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate for Windows Server 2012. So I'll be busy studying for the foreseeable future.
Well that is all for now. Hopefully it wont be too long until I have either the Space Sheep or the Jungle Jumper update ready and when both those are out the door I can turn my attention back on Jorvis and the Sea Rats.
Showing posts with label Lonely Giant Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lonely Giant Games. Show all posts
Monday, September 29, 2014
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Jungle Jumper Progress and Vacation
It's going really well with the conversion of Jungle Jumper to libGDX:
As you can see the game is now able to run as a desktop application. I'm running into several issues, but I'm handling them quite easily. It won't take me long before I have all screens and strings displaying correctly. It will probably take a bit more time to figure out all the implementations (Admob, Google Play Game Services ...).
So everything is looking good for a soonish update to libGDX. But I am going on vacation, back in Denmark, for a week tomorrow. I will be bringing my laptop and might do a bit of work, but we'll see.
That is all for now.
As you can see the game is now able to run as a desktop application. I'm running into several issues, but I'm handling them quite easily. It won't take me long before I have all screens and strings displaying correctly. It will probably take a bit more time to figure out all the implementations (Admob, Google Play Game Services ...).
So everything is looking good for a soonish update to libGDX. But I am going on vacation, back in Denmark, for a week tomorrow. I will be bringing my laptop and might do a bit of work, but we'll see.
That is all for now.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Space Sheep Reviewed
Playandoid's review of Space Sheep is up and it is very nice. There is a nice 10 minute video of them showing off the whole game and they generally have very favorable comments about Space Sheep.
Read and watch the review here.
Meanwhile I've gotten started on porting Jungle Jumper over to libGDX and it is going way easier than I had feared. I think in a day or two I will have the gamescreen running with all game interactions and graphics. As soon as I reach that point I might export a browser version and put up on lonelygiantgames.com.
That is all for now.
Read and watch the review here.
Meanwhile I've gotten started on porting Jungle Jumper over to libGDX and it is going way easier than I had feared. I think in a day or two I will have the gamescreen running with all game interactions and graphics. As soon as I reach that point I might export a browser version and put up on lonelygiantgames.com.
That is all for now.
Saturday, August 30, 2014
Post Space Sheep Update
So I released Space Sheep two weeks ago and it has been great to release another game, even if it is not doing very well at the moment.
The game has only been downloaded 21 times at the moment. But there are several reasons for this.
Since I released Jungle Jumper it seems it has become way more difficult to get visibility in the Google Play Store when you launch a new app. I thought there was a lot of spammy games filling it up back then, but it has become way worse.
I have not been able to display house ads in Jungle Jumper about Space Sheep like I had hoped to. The reason being that Admob has been updated and I need to implement the new SDK before this can happen. The problem with that is, that I have still not gotten around to updating Jungle Jumper to libGDX like I had planned and it will just be a lot of unnecessary work if I updated the Admob SDK, that I would have to do again after the update to libGDX.
I've also not been able to get much free PR. When I released Jungle Jumper, there were quite a few places that were willing to show off the game on their homepage / blog, but a lot of these places have closed or changed their policies. However www.playandroid.com is still doing reviews for free and are doing a review of Space Sheep that will hopefully be out soon.
It's a bit sad that I've gotten so few downloads, but I'm still really happy that I managed to get a second game finished and published, even if it is just a little silly game and I feel way more motivated to finish more games and get more serious with the PR.
So with all that in mind here is my plan for the near future:
In other news I've updated Space Sheep, fixing a few bugs and improving the graphics and there is now a web version available on my homepage. Try it here: www.lonelygiantgames.com/space
That is all for now. Hopefully there will be lot of updates in the near future.
The game has only been downloaded 21 times at the moment. But there are several reasons for this.
Since I released Jungle Jumper it seems it has become way more difficult to get visibility in the Google Play Store when you launch a new app. I thought there was a lot of spammy games filling it up back then, but it has become way worse.
I have not been able to display house ads in Jungle Jumper about Space Sheep like I had hoped to. The reason being that Admob has been updated and I need to implement the new SDK before this can happen. The problem with that is, that I have still not gotten around to updating Jungle Jumper to libGDX like I had planned and it will just be a lot of unnecessary work if I updated the Admob SDK, that I would have to do again after the update to libGDX.
I've also not been able to get much free PR. When I released Jungle Jumper, there were quite a few places that were willing to show off the game on their homepage / blog, but a lot of these places have closed or changed their policies. However www.playandroid.com is still doing reviews for free and are doing a review of Space Sheep that will hopefully be out soon.
It's a bit sad that I've gotten so few downloads, but I'm still really happy that I managed to get a second game finished and published, even if it is just a little silly game and I feel way more motivated to finish more games and get more serious with the PR.
So with all that in mind here is my plan for the near future:
- Quickly update Jungle Jumper to libGDX. No real improvements or new features, just running on the new engine and new Admob SDK.
- Do an Amazon version of Space Sheep with Amazon IAB and leaderboards rather than Google Play.
- Finish the sailing game. I've shown this game of earlier, it is quite far along and I should be able to finish it in the near future, at the moment the working title is "Jorvis and the Sea Rats"
- Acquire an iOS test device and start working on iOS versions of my games.
- Start working on my new game which I plan to be a 2D platformer.
In other news I've updated Space Sheep, fixing a few bugs and improving the graphics and there is now a web version available on my homepage. Try it here: www.lonelygiantgames.com/space
That is all for now. Hopefully there will be lot of updates in the near future.
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Space Sheep
Tadaaa! I finally managed to finish and publish a game. Its not really all that great a game, but atleast I finished it.
Download it on Google Play!
Download it on Google Play!
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Just a little update
The Pirate Game
It's been a bit over a month since I announced the new game and it's been going really well since. There is still a lot left to do, but it is really shaping up. Expect an update with a new video soonish.
New Frontiers Program
I mentioned I was applying for a business grant, I have since heard back and I unfortunately did got go forward in the process. I'm not too surprised about this, but still a little sad. For now it just means that I'm putting all my energy into getting the Pirate Game finished. I can of course always apply again next time they are open for applications.
Oculus Rift
Since I posted about buying the Oculus Rift a lot has happened. Oculus VR announced the second development kit and were then bought by Facebook. I like many had a negative first reaction to this. I didn't really think that Facebook would require you to log on to use the headset or anything that drastic, but it was a company that I really like and admire being bought up by a giant corporation that I really dislike. It was more a feeling of loss over having lost a good friend to a bad crowd, than a real worry about the future of virtual reality. It seems now that the future of virtual reality is more certain than ever, within a years time we will probably see the consumer product and at the same time Sony has entered the race.
I haven't used my own Rift as much as I would have liked. I really have enjoyed playing around with it, the experience truly is unlike anything else, but using it is a bit off a hassle. I end up getting the lenses fogged up very easily and using the rift together with my 2 other screens means constantly changing my screen setup as my Nvidia card cannot handle 3 outputs simultaneous. It's silly things I know, especially when the experience is as cool as it is and this is of course still a development kit and I think they will have done a lot to improve these things by the time the consumer product arrives.
I don't think I'll end up buying the second development kit, not for any lack of wanting, but it seems the final product is not too far away and I don't really have the time to try and develop anything for it at the moment. And I do believe I'll need to upgrade my hardware for when the consumer edition comes and I do not have unlimited resources.
That's all for now. I'll try to get back to posting a bit more consistently here. And after the release of the Pirate game I plan to start doing revenue reports again.
It's been a bit over a month since I announced the new game and it's been going really well since. There is still a lot left to do, but it is really shaping up. Expect an update with a new video soonish.
New Frontiers Program
I mentioned I was applying for a business grant, I have since heard back and I unfortunately did got go forward in the process. I'm not too surprised about this, but still a little sad. For now it just means that I'm putting all my energy into getting the Pirate Game finished. I can of course always apply again next time they are open for applications.
Oculus Rift
Since I posted about buying the Oculus Rift a lot has happened. Oculus VR announced the second development kit and were then bought by Facebook. I like many had a negative first reaction to this. I didn't really think that Facebook would require you to log on to use the headset or anything that drastic, but it was a company that I really like and admire being bought up by a giant corporation that I really dislike. It was more a feeling of loss over having lost a good friend to a bad crowd, than a real worry about the future of virtual reality. It seems now that the future of virtual reality is more certain than ever, within a years time we will probably see the consumer product and at the same time Sony has entered the race.
I haven't used my own Rift as much as I would have liked. I really have enjoyed playing around with it, the experience truly is unlike anything else, but using it is a bit off a hassle. I end up getting the lenses fogged up very easily and using the rift together with my 2 other screens means constantly changing my screen setup as my Nvidia card cannot handle 3 outputs simultaneous. It's silly things I know, especially when the experience is as cool as it is and this is of course still a development kit and I think they will have done a lot to improve these things by the time the consumer product arrives.
I don't think I'll end up buying the second development kit, not for any lack of wanting, but it seems the final product is not too far away and I don't really have the time to try and develop anything for it at the moment. And I do believe I'll need to upgrade my hardware for when the consumer edition comes and I do not have unlimited resources.
That's all for now. I'll try to get back to posting a bit more consistently here. And after the release of the Pirate game I plan to start doing revenue reports again.
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Jorvis Goes to Sea
Presenting my new game, which still doesn't have a title, for now I will just call it the Pirate Game.
I've been working on this game since the beginning of the year more or less and it is starting to shape up. There is still a lot to do and the game is full of temporary graphics at the moment. But the core of the game is beginning to settle in.
Here is a little video of how it looks so far:
I hope to have game finished within a month or two. But it all depends on how much time I will be able to put into it.
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Back on the Horse
It's been a while since my last update and I'm happy to say that there are lots of news.
New Game
New Frontiers Program
Oculus Rift
Yesterday I ordered an Oculus Rift development kit. I'm super excited for this to arrive so I can play around with it. I have to admit that I bought it mostly because I wanted to play around with it, but I hope to also try and develop a bit for it.New Job
That's all for now. but a big update on the new game will be coming up very soon.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Quick Update
Where are the reports?
If you've been coming here for the monthly reports, I'm sorry for them missing these last two months. The reason is that Jungle Jumper isn't doing all that great any more and it really isn't all that fun to write them when nothing new is happening. For now they will be retired until I release my next game.
What are you wasting your time on?
If anyone is wondering why no reports or blog posts or new games are coming. The answer is simply. I'm trying. I've started a new job. Once again one that doesn't leave me much free time and I've had trouble finding the time and energy to finish any projects while balancing my social life.
What are you going to do about it?
I really want to get another game out. I really want to be able to do this full time, so I will be making a few changes.
Treating development like a full time job. Through 2013 I've only been working on my games a few hours each week, feeling bad if I spent too much time on it because I neglected my girlfriend and my friends. This is simply not getting the job done. So I've made a deal with my girlfriend that I'll have two full time jobs for a while. My office job and my game development job when I get home. Hopefully I will not have to do that for too long.
Onward to greatness!!!
Hopefully that gives you guys a bit of a idea of the status of things and hopefully I'll be able to have some more interesting news to share soon.
Saturday, July 13, 2013
50.000 Jungle Jumper players
Jungle Jumper got past 50.000 downloads on Google Play today.I don't know how big a percentage of Android games get to 50.000 downloads, but it feels like a pretty big achievement for my first ever game.
Not much more to say other than... This is pretty cool.
Friday, July 12, 2013
June Report
And the June report makes its late entry. Lets get down to business.
Total installations end of June 2013:
The numbers from June were very similar to the ones from May. I implemented Google Play games services in the game and I think that is awesome, but it did not improve my download numbers at all. This is obviously not the $400 which has been my next goal for a while now, but I'm hopeful for several reasons. The reason for the missing numbers is that GetJar's developer console is down. I'll go back and fill in the remaining data when it is back up.
Total installations end of June 2013:
| Google Play |
48,203
| +7,797 |
| GetJar |
???
| +??? |
| Amazon |
1,511
| +323 |
| Handster |
696
| +56 |
| TOTAL: |
???
| +??? |
Active installations end of June 2013: | ||
| GOOGLE PLAY ACTIVE |
11,631
| +419 |
Admob stats June 2013: | ||
| Impressions | 318,221 | -23,263 |
| eCPM | $0.38 | +$0.02 |
| CTR | 0.81% | +0.04% |
| REVENUE | $122.32 | -$0,15 |
Conclusion:
The numbers from June were very similar to the ones from May. I implemented Google Play games services in the game and I think that is awesome, but it did not improve my download numbers at all. This is obviously not the $400 which has been my next goal for a while now, but I'm hopeful for several reasons. The reason for the missing numbers is that GetJar's developer console is down. I'll go back and fill in the remaining data when it is back up.
Next:
My long term goal is still $2000 to make a full time living of my games. I'll keep my next month goal on $400 until I reach it.
So I think that Jungle Jumper is more or less done, it will keep earning a bit, but I really don't think it will suddenly start downloading and earning like crazy. I will keep improving the game, but I think it's safe to assume that it's glory days are behind it. Jungle Jumper will however be passing it's 50,000 download mark on Google Play very soon which is a bit exciting.
It's all about new games... I've talked about working on other games and one in particular several times, but I still don't have anything to show for it. I can only say that I've had very little time for it and that I have not really hit upon the right recipe for my next game.
But my situation is changing, I should be getting considerably more time to work on my games soon and there are several other things going on that will hopefully make it easier and make my games better.
I'm not going to go into any details because I'll be doing a big status update about it all in a few days.
It looks like July will be a really bad month and that I won't make it past $100 which is quite sad since that will be a first since getting above it. Maybe it's all the nice weather making people go outside and play in real life. But I'll keep my $400 goal just to spite everyone :).
So I think that Jungle Jumper is more or less done, it will keep earning a bit, but I really don't think it will suddenly start downloading and earning like crazy. I will keep improving the game, but I think it's safe to assume that it's glory days are behind it. Jungle Jumper will however be passing it's 50,000 download mark on Google Play very soon which is a bit exciting.
It's all about new games... I've talked about working on other games and one in particular several times, but I still don't have anything to show for it. I can only say that I've had very little time for it and that I have not really hit upon the right recipe for my next game.
But my situation is changing, I should be getting considerably more time to work on my games soon and there are several other things going on that will hopefully make it easier and make my games better.
I'm not going to go into any details because I'll be doing a big status update about it all in a few days.
It looks like July will be a really bad month and that I won't make it past $100 which is quite sad since that will be a first since getting above it. Maybe it's all the nice weather making people go outside and play in real life. But I'll keep my $400 goal just to spite everyone :).
Friday, June 21, 2013
Jungle Jumper 1.30 - Google Play games services
Jungle Jumper 1.30 is out, or will be very soon at least. I finally managed to get an online leader board implemented in there by using Google Play games services.
If you're wondering why I didn't mention this in my monthly report, it is because I didn't know I would get to do any work on Jungle Jumper. I've just had a weeks vacation and it turned out I suddenly had the energy and time to do some really productive programming at the end of it.
I've wanted to have an online leader board from the moment I made Jungle Jumper, but I've been hesitant to implement other peoples' middle ware to do it. I was seriously looking at doing a Facebook integration, but it never really felt right.
Then Google announced Google Play games services at Google I/O and it seemed all my prayers had been answered. It took me quite a bit of time to figure out how exactly it all worked, but when I finally did, it turned out to be a very simple implementation (good work Google). The leader board looks good and the login flow is easy and problem free. I also set up five online achievements and that part is looking good too.
I'm really excited to see how many people will log in and how high peoples' scores will be and whether it will make more people play.
I actually fixed a lot of other small issues with this update and I believe that I got rid of the rendering bug that has been plaguing the game ever since update 1.2.
If you're wondering why I didn't mention this in my monthly report, it is because I didn't know I would get to do any work on Jungle Jumper. I've just had a weeks vacation and it turned out I suddenly had the energy and time to do some really productive programming at the end of it.
I've wanted to have an online leader board from the moment I made Jungle Jumper, but I've been hesitant to implement other peoples' middle ware to do it. I was seriously looking at doing a Facebook integration, but it never really felt right.
Then Google announced Google Play games services at Google I/O and it seemed all my prayers had been answered. It took me quite a bit of time to figure out how exactly it all worked, but when I finally did, it turned out to be a very simple implementation (good work Google). The leader board looks good and the login flow is easy and problem free. I also set up five online achievements and that part is looking good too.
I'm really excited to see how many people will log in and how high peoples' scores will be and whether it will make more people play.
I actually fixed a lot of other small issues with this update and I believe that I got rid of the rendering bug that has been plaguing the game ever since update 1.2.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
May Report
Here comes the May report. Again a bit late, sorry about that, but again the numbers are not so good and it makes it a bit less fun.
Total installations end of May 2013:
May was not so great, but actually in some ways it was better than April. All the way through April the amount of players and the daily revenue was falling. Through May the numbers have been steady, going neither up or down. But I'm obviously not reaching my goals at the moment which sucks.
Total installations end of May 2013:
| Google Play |
40,406
| +9,465 |
| GetJar |
31,884
| +2,421 |
| Amazon |
1,188
| +245 |
| Handster |
638
| +29 |
| TOTAL: |
74,116
| +12,160 |
Active installations end of May 2013: | ||
| GOOGLE PLAY ACTIVE |
11,212
| +1,120 |
Admob stats May 2013: | ||
| Impressions | 341,484 | -108,627 |
| eCPM | $0.36 | -$0.08 |
| CTR | 0.77% | -0.09% |
| REVENUE | $122.47 | -$76,82 |
Conclusion:
May was not so great, but actually in some ways it was better than April. All the way through April the amount of players and the daily revenue was falling. Through May the numbers have been steady, going neither up or down. But I'm obviously not reaching my goals at the moment which sucks.
Next:
My long term goal is still $2000 to make a full time living of my games. I'll keep my next month goal on $400 until I reach it and who knows maybe something good will happen.
I still need to do a good update of Jungle Jumper, to fix some issues and hopefully get Google Play game services in there, but I don't have much programming time and what I have is being used on the new game.
The new game has stagnated a bit, I'm trying to figure out how advanced I want to make it and whether I want to port it over into a newer version of libgdx. But I still feel good about the game, it is just not coming as quickly as I hoped.
More programming time. So a big reason that I haven't gotten all that much done, is that I really don't have all that much free time at the moment. I'm working a full time job and I have a bad work schedule and very long commute times. So I've quiet my job, I'll stay through my current project, but then I will be looking for another job. Hopefully one that will give me more time to work on my games.
I still need to do a good update of Jungle Jumper, to fix some issues and hopefully get Google Play game services in there, but I don't have much programming time and what I have is being used on the new game.
The new game has stagnated a bit, I'm trying to figure out how advanced I want to make it and whether I want to port it over into a newer version of libgdx. But I still feel good about the game, it is just not coming as quickly as I hoped.
More programming time. So a big reason that I haven't gotten all that much done, is that I really don't have all that much free time at the moment. I'm working a full time job and I have a bad work schedule and very long commute times. So I've quiet my job, I'll stay through my current project, but then I will be looking for another job. Hopefully one that will give me more time to work on my games.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Now It's Even More Official!
So I set up an official homepage for Lonely Giant Games a while back and have updated it a few times since, but the homepage has been at the domain www.lonelygiantgames.co.nf. Now I finally took the leap and bought www.lonelygiantgames.com. The homepage is live and I'm busy making sure all links are now pointed at the new homepage. I'll leave the old one up for a while as I guess quite a few things have crawled it and they need a bit of time to find the new one.
I've also finally gotten around to printing out the registration form to register as a sole trader and hopefully I'll get it filled out and filed soon. There are quite a few things that need doing when that goes through, like getting a business bank acount and figuring out how to file my taxes when the time comes. I'm thinking that when I get a bit further in the process I'll do a bit more of a practical post on starting your own business.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
April Report
Here we have the report for April. Sorry it's a bit late, it's not quite as fun to write the report when you do not reach your goals as when you do :P.
Total installations end of April 2013:
April was a bit of a let down compared to March. Downloads went down, impressions went down, and the big reason for the downturn in revenue, the eCPM went down. My goal for this month was of course $400 so I didn't even hit half of that. I can't control the eCPM of course, but the downloads have gone down rather than up. I'm not completely sure why. GetJar really seems to be loosing a lot of steam and Google Play has lost quite a bit as well. I think part of it was my bad judgement In-App Billing update which is now luckily over and done with.
Total installations end of April 2013:
| Google Play |
30,941
| +10,671 |
| GetJar |
29,463
| +4,322 |
| Amazon |
943
| +161 |
| Handster |
609
| +62 |
| TOTAL: |
61,956
| +15,216 |
Active installations end of April 2013: | ||
| GOOGLE PLAY ACTIVE |
10,092
| +1,836 |
Admob stats April 2013: | ||
| Impressions | 450,111 | +19,718 |
| eCPM | $0.44 | -$0.13 |
| CTR | 0.86% | +0.03% |
| REVENUE | $199.29 | -$70,39 |
Conclusion:
April was a bit of a let down compared to March. Downloads went down, impressions went down, and the big reason for the downturn in revenue, the eCPM went down. My goal for this month was of course $400 so I didn't even hit half of that. I can't control the eCPM of course, but the downloads have gone down rather than up. I'm not completely sure why. GetJar really seems to be loosing a lot of steam and Google Play has lost quite a bit as well. I think part of it was my bad judgement In-App Billing update which is now luckily over and done with.
Next:
My long term goal is still $2000 to make a full time living of my games. I'll set next months goal at $400 again. I don't really think I will reach it, I might not even reach $200 as the game still is doing poorly, but things might turn around.
I need to make another update to Jungle Jumper to get rid of the bug that is plaguing it and causing quite a few bug reports, but I'm spending all my programming time on my new game at the moment. And after my two last updates which really haven't added much of value I would like the next update to actually add some content to the game.
That content might come in the form of the infamous high score system that I've never gotten in there. I hear rumours that Google will be announcing a game platform for multi-player and social aspects for Google Play and if they do that I would love to use that system as opposed to a Facebook implementation. We should know more about that soon at Google I/O on May 15.
New game! I'm still not ready to disclose anything on my new project. But it is going really well, it will however not be coming out in May so it won't have any impact on this month.
I need to make another update to Jungle Jumper to get rid of the bug that is plaguing it and causing quite a few bug reports, but I'm spending all my programming time on my new game at the moment. And after my two last updates which really haven't added much of value I would like the next update to actually add some content to the game.
That content might come in the form of the infamous high score system that I've never gotten in there. I hear rumours that Google will be announcing a game platform for multi-player and social aspects for Google Play and if they do that I would love to use that system as opposed to a Facebook implementation. We should know more about that soon at Google I/O on May 15.
New game! I'm still not ready to disclose anything on my new project. But it is going really well, it will however not be coming out in May so it won't have any impact on this month.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
House Cleaning
This update will be a bit of a housecleaning, so bear with me if it is a bit rambling.
So I didn't get around to doing a post when I did the 1.23 update a week ago. It wasn't a huge update, I just removed In-App Billing, fixed a texture and set the AdMob banner to only show on the game screen. So I'm really pleased I removed the In-App Billing, it was a mistake to put it in their in the first place and I already sleep better at night. I have wanted to only have the AdMob banner show up on the game screen from the beginning, but I've never really been able to figure out how to do that. It turned out to be very easy and it makes the game seem way more professional that the ad is not blocking the title of the game in the menu.
Jungle Jumper is not doing so great though, it's not being downloaded at all as much as it was a few weeks ago, but hopefully it will go back up again. This means that I won't be meeting my $400 goal this month which is a bit of a shame, but that's fine.
So there is a nasty bug in Jungle Jumper that is causing around 10 crash reports a week. The bug seems to have been introduced after update 1.2. But I didn't realise it was their until a few days ago because I had hidden the bug early on as I thought it was a one time issue. The problem is that the stack traces don't really tell me anything other than that it is a rendering issue. I'm guessing that I made a mistake with all the improved graphics. It looks like I'll simply have to go through my renderer class and clean up all the code and hope it makes a difference.
So I've been pretty sick the last couple of days and have had to stay home, it seems I've gotten influenza and I'm coughing like a chain smoker. It has however been a bit of a blessing in disguise as I have been able to sit and program a bit, which leads me to my next point...
I've finally gotten started on my new game. I'll play it close until I'm a bit further along, but I can say that it is going really well and that I now have a really nice alpha version of it, that looks like crap, but has the basic game play elements in it and is already quite fun. Hopefully I'll be able to share some more info about it and possibly some screenshots soon.
So I warned you I was going to be rambling a bit and I just wanted to mention how excited I am for the next Iron Man movie. I'm planning on going too see it on Friday with my better half if I'm well enough. So far I'm hearing very good things about it, such as people comparing it to The Dark Knight movie.
Jungle Jumper 1.23
So I didn't get around to doing a post when I did the 1.23 update a week ago. It wasn't a huge update, I just removed In-App Billing, fixed a texture and set the AdMob banner to only show on the game screen. So I'm really pleased I removed the In-App Billing, it was a mistake to put it in their in the first place and I already sleep better at night. I have wanted to only have the AdMob banner show up on the game screen from the beginning, but I've never really been able to figure out how to do that. It turned out to be very easy and it makes the game seem way more professional that the ad is not blocking the title of the game in the menu.
Jungle Jumper is not doing so great though, it's not being downloaded at all as much as it was a few weeks ago, but hopefully it will go back up again. This means that I won't be meeting my $400 goal this month which is a bit of a shame, but that's fine.
There is a Bug in my Soup
So there is a nasty bug in Jungle Jumper that is causing around 10 crash reports a week. The bug seems to have been introduced after update 1.2. But I didn't realise it was their until a few days ago because I had hidden the bug early on as I thought it was a one time issue. The problem is that the stack traces don't really tell me anything other than that it is a rendering issue. I'm guessing that I made a mistake with all the improved graphics. It looks like I'll simply have to go through my renderer class and clean up all the code and hope it makes a difference.
Portfolio
You might have spotted that an extra tab has appeared on my blog. There isn't much in there yet, but I plan to have it bursting with links and images for different projects down the road.Sick
So I've been pretty sick the last couple of days and have had to stay home, it seems I've gotten influenza and I'm coughing like a chain smoker. It has however been a bit of a blessing in disguise as I have been able to sit and program a bit, which leads me to my next point...
A New Dawn
I've finally gotten started on my new game. I'll play it close until I'm a bit further along, but I can say that it is going really well and that I now have a really nice alpha version of it, that looks like crap, but has the basic game play elements in it and is already quite fun. Hopefully I'll be able to share some more info about it and possibly some screenshots soon.
Iron Man 3
So I warned you I was going to be rambling a bit and I just wanted to mention how excited I am for the next Iron Man movie. I'm planning on going too see it on Friday with my better half if I'm well enough. So far I'm hearing very good things about it, such as people comparing it to The Dark Knight movie.
Feedback
So I'm beginning to get a decent amount of traffic here on the blog and I'm wondering if I have any regulars out there. If I do please write a comment, I'd love to hear whether anyone finds my ramblings of any interest and whether there is anyone in a similar start up situation who gets any info out of my monthly reports. Any feedback would be very welcome.Tuesday, April 16, 2013
The Lure of In-App Billing
So since I updated Jungle Jumper with In-App Billing, my download numbers have gone down, my bug reports have gone up, it has become way more difficult to use one code base for several app stores and I have not sold a single "Remove Ads" product in the game.
I don't like In-App Billing. When I originally wrote out my values for Lonely Giant Games, one of them was "Make games without hidden costs, e.g. In-App Purchases." I since changed that to "Make games without hidden costs, e.g. pay to win." I did this because I thought it would be nice for people to be able to upgrade Jungle Jumper to an ad free version with an In-App Purchase - and I still do to some extent, but it is a slippery slope.
As soon as I decided on this, I though that I could also make the new world, that I'm planning to build for Jungle Jumper, something you could buy, and maybe you could buy a few extra costumes as well.
So what's the problem with that you might ask? It's not like you can "pay to win" by doing that. No, but you are making your game into something that it is not supposed to be: A shop. Games are suppose to be a place where you go to have fun and you're transported to another place. What you are basically doing is smacking the users in the face with reality, when you are suddenly interrupting them by asking them for money. In the end you are breaking their suspense of disbelief, and that is simply one of the worst things you can do in any form of entertainment.
There is also the fact that Jungle Jumper is a game for kids as well. And I'd like for parents to not have to worry when their kids play my games. I know you can set up parental control stuff to avoid kids buying from the Play Store, but I think a lot of parents still don't know that.
We've seen some beloved game series like Diablo and Dead Space flirt with variations of In-App Billing with bad results. I truly hope that this is only a phase while publishers are enamoured with the idea of micro-transactions everywhere. I think it's important to have higher aspirations than to just make a game that earns as much money as possible.
As for myself, I'm going to take In-App Billing back out of Jungle Jumper as soon I have time to make the next update.
In-App Billing is crap, whether you're a gamer or a developer. But it's easy to forget that when you're on the end that will receive the money.
I don't like In-App Billing. When I originally wrote out my values for Lonely Giant Games, one of them was "Make games without hidden costs, e.g. In-App Purchases." I since changed that to "Make games without hidden costs, e.g. pay to win." I did this because I thought it would be nice for people to be able to upgrade Jungle Jumper to an ad free version with an In-App Purchase - and I still do to some extent, but it is a slippery slope.
As soon as I decided on this, I though that I could also make the new world, that I'm planning to build for Jungle Jumper, something you could buy, and maybe you could buy a few extra costumes as well.
So what's the problem with that you might ask? It's not like you can "pay to win" by doing that. No, but you are making your game into something that it is not supposed to be: A shop. Games are suppose to be a place where you go to have fun and you're transported to another place. What you are basically doing is smacking the users in the face with reality, when you are suddenly interrupting them by asking them for money. In the end you are breaking their suspense of disbelief, and that is simply one of the worst things you can do in any form of entertainment.
There is also the fact that Jungle Jumper is a game for kids as well. And I'd like for parents to not have to worry when their kids play my games. I know you can set up parental control stuff to avoid kids buying from the Play Store, but I think a lot of parents still don't know that.
"Let not the lure of the dollar signs lead you astray from good game design my children."
We've seen some beloved game series like Diablo and Dead Space flirt with variations of In-App Billing with bad results. I truly hope that this is only a phase while publishers are enamoured with the idea of micro-transactions everywhere. I think it's important to have higher aspirations than to just make a game that earns as much money as possible.
As for myself, I'm going to take In-App Billing back out of Jungle Jumper as soon I have time to make the next update.
In-App Billing is crap, whether you're a gamer or a developer. But it's easy to forget that when you're on the end that will receive the money.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Jungle Jumper 1.22 is out
I put up the new update yesterday here's what's in it:
Improved jungle vine texture: The jungle vine texture has always been a bit crappy and blurry, now it is sharp and crisp :).
Improved spider texture: The spider texture was also a bit poor, I redrew each frame and made it a bit more nasty looking with some fur. I also added an image for when the spider is dead. Before a vertically mirrored image was simply used.
Improved chameleon texture: Much the same as the spider. The lines were not as sharp looking as I wanted so it had a once over and I think it improved quite a bit.
Implemented In-App Billing: There now is a button at the bottom of the screen saying "Remove Ads" and if you press it you are asked to pay a one time $1 to remove ads. We'll see if this works better than my paid version of the game.
Other: I cleaned up a bunch of code, which is always nice.
Conclusion
This update ended up being quite a bit smaller than I had planned. I had a bunch of things I wanted to put in there, but when I have as little time as I do at the moment to program, it very easily becomes difficult to keep track of a lot of different changes that are halfway implemented. I'll try to keep the updates smaller.
I'm not really sure what the next update will be, there are lots of things that I want in the game. The music, a new world for Jorvis to explore and maybe some silly extra costumes that you can buy through the In-App Billing. Not to mention the elephant in the room. The Facebook implementation to get a high-score system.
At the same time I also really want to get another game out. So much to do and so little time ;).
Improved jungle vine texture: The jungle vine texture has always been a bit crappy and blurry, now it is sharp and crisp :).
Improved spider texture: The spider texture was also a bit poor, I redrew each frame and made it a bit more nasty looking with some fur. I also added an image for when the spider is dead. Before a vertically mirrored image was simply used.
Improved chameleon texture: Much the same as the spider. The lines were not as sharp looking as I wanted so it had a once over and I think it improved quite a bit.
Implemented In-App Billing: There now is a button at the bottom of the screen saying "Remove Ads" and if you press it you are asked to pay a one time $1 to remove ads. We'll see if this works better than my paid version of the game.
Other: I cleaned up a bunch of code, which is always nice.
Conclusion
This update ended up being quite a bit smaller than I had planned. I had a bunch of things I wanted to put in there, but when I have as little time as I do at the moment to program, it very easily becomes difficult to keep track of a lot of different changes that are halfway implemented. I'll try to keep the updates smaller.
I'm not really sure what the next update will be, there are lots of things that I want in the game. The music, a new world for Jorvis to explore and maybe some silly extra costumes that you can buy through the In-App Billing. Not to mention the elephant in the room. The Facebook implementation to get a high-score system.
At the same time I also really want to get another game out. So much to do and so little time ;).
Monday, April 1, 2013
March Report
Here we have the report for March.
Total installations end of March 2013:
| Google Play |
20,270
| +11,983 |
| GetJar |
25,141
| +10,488 |
| Amazon |
782
| +174 |
| Handster |
547
| +64 |
| TOTAL: |
46,740
| +22,909 |
Active installations end of March 2013: | ||
| GOOGLE PLAY ACTIVE |
8,256
| +5,941 |
Admob stats March 2013: | ||
| Impressions | 469,829 | +211,422 |
| eCPM | $0.57 | +$0.16 |
| CTR | 0.83% | +0.04% |
| REVENUE | $269.65 | +$162,58 |
Conclusion:
March was an incredible month. I did not think it likely that I would reach my $200 goal, but I far exceeded it. I didn't do any updates. The only thing I really did was to update the description on Google Play, which seems to have really had an effect.
Next:
My long time goal is still $2000 so I can make a full time living of it. Next month's goal will be $400 dollars. Which seems pretty possible, if the game keeps doing this well and possibly improves a bit when I update it. Which I hope to do very soon. What I really need is more games, but that seems very far away at the moment. I'm simply not getting enough work done. I have way too little time for it, being back in a full time position at work. I'm hoping that I can maybe take a week of work and work full time on the games and get my next game into shape.
I still have not managed to get the Facebook implementation to work, so I have taken it out for the moment, hopefully it will return for the next update. The big features in the new update, will be a few improved textures and an In-App Billing button to remove the ads for 1$.
I also found out that the game no longer works on Android 1.5 and 1.6. This was because of Google Analytics. I have remedied this issue, which is why I want this update out soon so It works correctly again.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
The Importance of Being Earnest
Just a little update of how it's going with Jungle Jumper.
I haven't gotten any work done on the update recently, what little free time I've had recently I've been spending with my girlfriend and on playing games a bit - something I haven't really done in about a year (the game playing part, not the spending time with my girlfriend - she's patient, but not that patient).
I did however spend a bit of time updating Jungle Jumper's description on Google Play. I read up on how to make Apps more searchable on Google Play. They mentioned repeating search words and making sure that popular words were in the description.
I really didn't want to put in a line of comma separated search tags as I have seen some people do. That seems amateurish and everyone is just putting in the names of all the popular games.
Instead I made sure that the title of the game was repeated a few more times in the text and then I included quotes about what people had said about the game. Especially DroidAppOfTheDay.com had a long nice description of how the game was similar to Temple Run and Agent Dash.
This was apparently a very good idea ... My daily download numbers from Google Play have gone from around 100 per day to around 600 per day. This has also meant that the game has gotten a bunch more +1s and reviews on Google Play and that I'm earning quite a bit more money every day. At the moment I'm earning $5-10 per day and yesterday I earned $12.22.
The game also came past 10,000 downloads on Google Play a few days ago and is now on 13,730. It looks like I might make my $200 goal for this month, but we will see in ten days time.
I haven't gotten any work done on the update recently, what little free time I've had recently I've been spending with my girlfriend and on playing games a bit - something I haven't really done in about a year (the game playing part, not the spending time with my girlfriend - she's patient, but not that patient).
I did however spend a bit of time updating Jungle Jumper's description on Google Play. I read up on how to make Apps more searchable on Google Play. They mentioned repeating search words and making sure that popular words were in the description.
I really didn't want to put in a line of comma separated search tags as I have seen some people do. That seems amateurish and everyone is just putting in the names of all the popular games.
Instead I made sure that the title of the game was repeated a few more times in the text and then I included quotes about what people had said about the game. Especially DroidAppOfTheDay.com had a long nice description of how the game was similar to Temple Run and Agent Dash.
This was apparently a very good idea ... My daily download numbers from Google Play have gone from around 100 per day to around 600 per day. This has also meant that the game has gotten a bunch more +1s and reviews on Google Play and that I'm earning quite a bit more money every day. At the moment I'm earning $5-10 per day and yesterday I earned $12.22.
The game also came past 10,000 downloads on Google Play a few days ago and is now on 13,730. It looks like I might make my $200 goal for this month, but we will see in ten days time.
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