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.

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

I've been working a lot on a new game and it's really beginning to shape up. I'll make another post presenting the game with some images and a video later tonight or tomorrow.

New Frontiers Program

I've applied for the New Frontiers program here in Dublin. New Frontiers is a program to help technology oriented start-ups. Next month I will know whether I get into phase 1 of the program which will last around two months and include evening classes where you learn more about managing your start-up. After phase 1 there is a chance to be accepted into phase 2 which includes a 6 month grant to help you spend your full time on your start-up. I don't know how difficult it is to get accepted in to either phase, but I'm extremely excited about having applied.

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

I ended up changing jobs again very quickly and this time I'm very happy where I've ended up. I'm now working at Dell as a Server Supporter. The job has good pay and benefits and I work together with two good friends from my IBM time. The job is also technically challenging and gives a lot of opportunity for bettering myself.

That's all for now. but a big update on the new game will be coming up very soon.

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. 

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.

June Report

And the June report makes its late entry. Lets get down to business.

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 :).

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.

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:

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.