Archive | 2013

Crowdfunding Success!

by on 7 December 2013 in Games, Team

Yesterday at midnight the Ninja Cat and Zombie Dinosaurs PowerPack project has finished with whooping 130% funding rate from 50 people, collecting almost 3k zlotys! How is this possible, in spite of its problems at beginning?

One of the facts was that the CD Action, biggest polish player magazine, has backed PowerPack and became patron of the game.

The second thing is that the material status has changed, and extension won’t be available online f2p for everyone. At beginning it was meant to be like that, then I changed it for a one month exlusivity period, finally it became forever. So supporting project on wspieram.to was the only chance to get and play PowerPack, which made supporting the project much more sensible option. In the future most likely I’ll be selling the game through digital distribution, but the price is unknown, and for sure there won’t be so many nice bonuses.

Agata the Ninja Cat

There was also an awful lot of promotion. Really, almost all big polish internet game portals have written very positive news about PowerPack crowdfunding; some even few times. Also Krzysztof Gonciarz, PowerPack ambassador has helped a lot. Thanks goes also to wspieram.to for their huge help, and Artifex Mundi for giving out games in combination with mine.

I’ll be preparing a postmortem from this project, because I made many errors and have learned a LOT. Now, I’m finally back to developer work, and in the meantime will be printing the gadgets and sending them to backers.

Ninja Cat PowerPack

by on 23 October 2013 in Games

EDIT: long story short, here’s epic video which explains everything about game, PowerPack and life. What’s best, it has cats in it!

I’ve been working on it almost a week, with video recording and editing. It has english subtitles so click boldly.

Few days ago I’ve released a crowdfunding project for PowerPack to Ninja Cat. By doing this I want to significantly improve the game. I love it very much, got good reactions from players and game press alike, so it looks like a sensible thing to do :)

PowerPack logo

Here’s the list of new features that I want to add in PowerPack: Read More…

Config::Toggle plugin for FlashDevelop

by on 8 September 2013 in Technology

I am using FlashDevelop to code in AS3. It’s stable, quite feature complete and very lightweight – using it to develop Ninja Cat was pleasure. During that time I learned that it’s possible to create conditional compilation constants, so you can selectively include some pieces of code. Sounds complicated, but it’s just a simplified version of #ifdef macrodefinitions from C language. It’s a simple way of creating traditional debug/release versions of game, but you can also extend it to editor/stats/ads/portal specific versions.

Problem

Unfortunately editing those constants in FlashDevelop is time and labour intensive. If you want to change the value of some of your project compiler constants, you have to:

  1. click mouse on Project->Properties, or better press ctrl+P
  2. click mouse on the last tab Compiler options
  3. click again on the small plus next to Compiler constants
  4. click on the chosen CONFIG, backspace a few times, write the new value
  5. because enter doesn’t close the dialog, grab the mouse again and click OK

Now if you forgot to change also some other constant, you have to do the same again. And it’s pretty much the same if you want to check what’s the value of one of those constants.

FlashDevelop compilation constants

Seems like a lot of time? It is, especially if you’ve based the configuration of your project on those CONFIGs, you’re using them all day long, testing different builds. And in my case (probably not only in mine) that’s what’s happening – because they’re incredibly useful, allow to quickly change the build of the app in a fundamental way, in an mutually independent way.

… (read about the solution)

Level editor design in Ninja Cat, part 1 – inner workings

by on 3 August 2013 in Technology

I’d like to share some of the design concepts applied, and lessons that I learned, while creating and using in-game editor in Ninja Cat. I like reading about how other developers make games, their stories from the trenches – it inspires me, gives knowledge and allows learning on others errors :-P So here is my story for you – how the Ninja Cat editor works, what’s the reasoning behind some of its concepts, and what proved to be good, bad or ugly.

At start, I want to explain how levels look like, so that it will be easier to communicate. It will be rather complete list of all possibilities, because of what I’ve stated – I like reading gory, low level details and think it’s very informative.

How does it work?

When the game is built with editor support (which can be checked using CONFIG::editor directive in AS3), press TAB during game. Then the game gets paused and editor UI appears, as visible on screen.

The editor has 3 modes, changed by pressing 1-2-3 number keys (or clicking on the menu captions on left). I will refer to controls visible in top left corner as main menu.

… (read the rest of article)

Trailer for Ninja Cat and interview for Puerto Rican gamers

by on 8 July 2013 in Team

Recently I’ve been pretty busy with few activities. They were:

Trailer

It came faster than I expected… after one week of sending emails, exchanging ideas and fixing problems… Ladies and Gentlemen, here comes the TRAILER:

It has been created by Michał Friedrich, who’s got much more experience with video editing than I can ever hope.

It made nice splash on polish social sharing site, Wykop. It got there 276 likes, 87 comments, almost 10 thousand views and was featured on the main page. Because of that, YT video also jumped to 4300 views. For me it’s a lot. That sunday I was constantly collecting my jaw from the floor. I love that Ninja Cat finally became exposed to more players.
 

Interview

Recently I’ve been interviewed by Bay A Pantoja, chemist and owner of Peurto Rican facebook gamer fanpage. Puerto Rico lies in Latin America, but what you won’t learn from Wikipedia is that they have a very strong gamers community there. Mostly Playstation lovers, but recently there’s trend toward PC. You can read it in spanish on their fanapge, and below is the english original:

 

Bay: Hi Hubert, welcome to our little Facebook page. We have over 2 thousands fans who plays on different platforms, from mobile to PC, and on behalf of them we appreciate that you are dedicating some of your time to us.

A: No problem Bay, I’m happy to participate and come into contact with Puerto-Rican game players … (read the rest of interview)

Ninja Cat – how to play, tips n tricks

by on 22 June 2013 in Games

Many important informations are given in a tutorial, which automatically starts on a first play. However, for those who didn’t read it, forgot it, or want to know more, here’s the extended tutorial, with additional tips and advices:

First, you are NOT controlling the Ninja Cat directly – he decides where to go. Really, no use in pressing arrows or WASD. There’s no direct jumping or shooting either :) Ninja Cat moves on a path, and you rarely have the chance to change it – see junctions later on.

Your aim is to kill dinosaurs. Type the letters that appear under them, to throw shurikens. The word you need to type is visible under the dinosuar AND at the bottom of screen. After killing you’ll see how much points you’ve made on a flying numbers.

Ninja Cat and Zombie Dinosaurs

When typing, only correct letters will be entered. Letter case doesn’t matter, so that ninja = NINJA. Also you don’t have to press Enter to finish a word.

Watch your health meter - it’s in the top left corner.
 
In the bottom right corner you can see a score counter.

There are few rules. You get extra points for killing dinos:

  • in a row: evey time you kill another in a short timeframe, combo meter increases. The higher the combo, the more points. You can see it in the bottom right corner of screen.

    • combo-meter-3

  • with a style: fast and accurate typing will be much pointa-flous (I’m inventing words) than slow and sloppy
  • at short distance – Katana kills give 30 points flat

Your points are taken for … (read the rest of tips)

Google Analytics for Flash – gentle introduction

by on 16 June 2013 in Technology

Being able to check out how many players play your game, from what countries, for how long, on which levels they have problems, even do they ever visit your precious Credits screen – that sounds incredibly useful, doesn’t it? Fortunately, in web browser games, there’s a way to get such informations. In this post I’m going to describe the process for Flash (ActionScript 3).

And there are even many ways. First, some time ago you could use Playtomic.com – however they had notorious problems with reliability, and are now out of bussiness. Then, the second try could be Mochimedia – they have many services, and one of them is statistics. Unfortunately, it is very simple and unable to give you such detailed data as in the first paragraph. You could also google and find few other services… and among few smaller ones, Google Analytics for Flash project (later shortened to GAF).

That’s true – you can use the well known, very powerfull, complex, free, reliable and spied service from Google to process the statistics from your own Flash games. And it’s actually pretty easy to use. Sadly, the documentation is rather cryptic, sparse, ambigous and hard to follow. So, here goes a quick, practical tutorial for you + code samples :)
Read More…

Ninja Cat and Zombie Dinosaurs – postmortem

by on 8 May 2013 in Games, Technology

Here I want to share some details about my first indie commercial game (you can play it here).

Fun facts:

  • It took me 8 months (starting July 2012) to create it and another one to sell it.
  • I created half a meg of AS3 source code.
  • I made everything by myself, including code, design and graphics.
  • I used free sounds from the internet, and music from Kostya Dolgushyn
  • I made one week prototype in C++, with my old engine Sculpture Clay 2
  • I used Mercurial for version control
  • Game folder on hard drive takes 1.5 GB, even though the game compiles to 2.7MB
  • What you learn from this game is that triceraptops attacks its enemies by falling behind them from the sky.

What went right

1. Final game Quality

I really took time and effort to make as best game as possible. So it looks nice, is fun, original and polished (of course I’m not objective). What else one could want? Perhaps that other people would react to it positively and like playing :)

Indeed I did a lot of tests in real life, with people from different backgrounds: hardcore players, casual players, and no-players. Over 95% speak about the game positively. You can see the (almost) full list of testers and feedback givers in game credits.

Ninja Cat menu

I was doing those tests from the very beginning. As soon as I had a first working prototype in Flash, Read More…

Digital Dragons 2013

by on 22 April 2013 in Events

Digital Dragons is a new polish game industry festival that took part in 19-20 April in Krakow. Organised by Krakow Technological Park, it started last year as a 2-2.5 times smaller, nonetheless successfull. This year it was again a closed event, only to people from the industry and press. Here’s a short relation from yours truly :)

I was there for two days, almost from the very beginning to the very end,  and was given one computer from organisers to show Ninja Cat and Zombie Dinosaurs as part of Indie showcase. My motivation? I went to Digital Dragons mostly to show my game, listen to some lectures and panels, network a bit and perhaps find an investor/sponsor. And so to attract attention I was wearing custom and totally awesome Ninja Cat T-shirt. Other 2 T-shirts were printed for my girlfriend and father :)

Me at Digital Dragons

I was also giving out little stickers with my game’s logo. I got 7 and given around 11 bussiness cards – which is something new, since at other gd events that I visited so far (IGK, WGK, GameDay, ZTG, KrakJam, Mrroczne Sekrety Tworcow Gier Komputerowych) I was exchanging around zero bussiness cards. Maybe it’s because of me, my different role or the event – perhaps all. Anyway, I made a few nice contacts that way.

People who were playing my game Read More…

Virgin Delivery – next game

by on 12 April 2013 in Games

I’m already thinking about next game, and many things point that it will be continuation of jam project. I took part in KrakJam 2013 with a friend Mariusz, a professional arist, and we created little funny game. It tells the story of Igor, classic-hunchback, whoose Master needs to eat virgins to live.

Virgin Delivery

Igor with his Master, and one unfortunate Virgin. (version 0.3)

And so Igor has a never ending task of brining him virgins… but he needs to check to be sure… you know what I mean ;) And so you can imagine the game’s going to have quite dark taste of humor. It will be much smaller, faster and easier project than Ninja Cat. Hopefully I can also bring it to mobiles.

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