Archive for the ‘Tips’ Category

Posted on January 26, 2010 - by Eric

the $11,000 Come2Play Challenge!

Our friends over at come2play.com has two cool offers for game developers.

GET up to $3,000 in funding for your previously released game!

If you have a single-player game with over 100,000 game plays and a rating over 3.5 on Kongregate or Newgrounds. Come2play will pay you up to $3,000 to create a multiplayer version of it! I would recommend our fellow game developers to extend their old game with a simple multiplayer concept. The key is do not overspec the multiplayer version and just go simple. It will be a good way to earn more from an old game, extend the game’s IP, and learn the basic of multiplayer design.

IN ADDITION to the funding, your game will be included in the judging contest with over $8000 in prizes!

$5,000 for first place,

$2,000 for second place

$1,000 for third place.

You can enter a NEW game or a retrofitted (with the come2play API) game. Contest runs through January 1st through March 31st, More details here: http://come2play.com/dev_inner.asp?f=1&newsid=337

We are using come2play on our next game: FTanks . Good luck and aim for the prize!

Posted on December 26, 2009 - by Eric

Virtual Game Development pt. 2 – Apps

In our previous post, we went through the definition of virtual game development and how to choose the right people to make it work. In this installment, we are going to look over the web and desktop applications we used to make it work and also the principles behind our choice.

Voice vs. Text – When communicating with each other in a virtual environment, the faster and more natural choice is to use mics and communicate verbally. But the wiser choice, is to use text thru chatting or email. Text has several qualities that makes it more suited to this type of work setup;

• the communicator has a chance to review what he wants to communicate before sending it.
• text can be easily referenced
• it can be easily copy-pasted into search engines, documents or into the game.

So yeah, Text pawns Voice.

Unto the tools.

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Posted on October 18, 2009 - by Eric

Virtual Game Development pt. 1 – People

Here at Cavalcade Games we create games in a virtual office setup. Both me and Shikii, live in the same city but create games virtually. With games being a highly collaborative and creative product, this setup has molded our output in more ways than one. In the next year, we will be moving into a physical office. This makes for a good time to conduct a roundup of what we learned during our time with virtual game development. Part 1 – will be about the people component of a virtual game developments setup, part 2 will be about the tools and part 3 will be about everything else.

As a background, virtual office is defined as replicating a working environment – online. This mostly involves substituting concepts and tools found in a physical environment with web or desktop applications. The substitutions starts from the very act of talking to emulating office fixtures such as whiteboards and the conference room.

Virtual Game Development is defined as creating games in a virtual office setup. Virtually creating games is a special case in the sense that, first, the discipline is a creative endeavor in nature; second, it requires participants to be constantly in-step (requiring varied types of communication) and third, game development is known as a huge hard slog to the playable part, much more so when done with less human interaction. So with these characteristics, Virtual game development is much more under duress than the typical virtual office setup. Hopefully, with these tips, other game developers planning to go virtual can get off to a good start. First up! – the people.

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Posted on September 4, 2009 - by Eric

Sound Assets Providers for Game Developers

Being a two-man operation (soon to be 3!), I have to wear a lot of hats for our projects. One of my responsibility is sound design and editing. I recently just done this on our iPhone game, Rock Paper Laser and what I am doing with our current project Word Mansion. My tasks entails imagining the perfect sounds, comb through the local collection of free sound effect (10 Gbs!) and also from websites of sound providers, tweak the sounds (normalize, trim, change bitrates, etc), then test it inside the game – rinse and repeat. This job can be tedious but essential to making a polished product. Alternatively, if you have a couple hundred quid lying around you can outsource it to a professional studio and get a better result.

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Posted on July 2, 2009 - by Eric

Agon Online, I Choose you!

After comparing, evaluating features and then testing the sample games. We finally came to the conclusion that the best social platform overall is Agon-Online. Factors that convinced us are the following;

• Its neutral in terms of its appearance and functionality (compared to scoreloop which had the whole avatar / coins ecosystem which tended to steal mindshare when a player is using an app)
• Its cleanly designed (compared to geocade which looked rough and rudimentary)
• Its free (OpenFeint charges ‘pennies’ which is a fair offer, but once you factor in the fact that you will be paying crackers or pirates using your app. Then its not a viable thing anymore.)
• Its open and inviting (plus+ is a big wall, which we, iPhone developers should be very allergic by now)
• its pretty easy to integrate (more…)

Posted on May 7, 2009 - by Eric

Tips on Creating A Great Iphone Game

So many crapp

The most common thing you hear about the games for the Iphone is how most of it is crap. Well, in the hopes of NOT contributing more to the crappy pile of apps, here are several points that Iphone game developers should keep in mind when developing their apps;

1. It has to be a conversation starter – given how word of mouth is the most effective way of spreading awareness of your app, it has to have something that will make players want to talk about it with their family or friends.
2. It has to be familiar – have some major element in the game that everyone can recognize. This helps customers have that familiarity base to help them explore further your game. This can be words or objects in the game. Zombieville USA had zombies, Flight Control had airplanes, Glyder had the glider.
3. It has to ‘elevator pitch’ friendly – this relates to the 1st one on this list. The more people can easily explain your app the less time it takes for them to decide if they like it or not.
4. 2d gameplay is most recommended – due to size of the screen and the mobility of the device, it helps to have a game environment that has minimal reorientation time. 3d games require more time to get to the state of play.
5. The game has to revolve around a single (or two) concept only – Most users use the game apps as time wasters and won’t want to ‘think’ about the game.
6. Novelty is good. iBeer, iDare, Ouch! all revolves around things that are quite exciting to try.
7. Do not use non-simplistic words in your title. While it might be cool to use Incendiary or Scorch. Try using Flames or Fire(if its not too crowded). they are much more commonly used hence browsing users are able to understand your game more quickly.
8. Design the experience for an interrupt-heavy sessions. No long-winded dialogues, cutscenes, or non-controllable periods. Users has to have the option of pausing, or quitting the game as often and as quickly as possible.
9. Substance – if possible have the game offer real world value or uses (even if its just a percieved one, like in Idiot test).
10. Polish is important – sweat the details and it will reward you exponentially, by leaving players a pleasant and comfortable experience.
11. Have visual clarity – the game has to be easily understood just by its title+screenshots. And if possible have an art style that is not generic but not too radical.

These are just based off of my personal observation using the iPhone and trying out EVERY notable games and analyzing successes in the later charts. If i missed some more important points, let me know.

Posted on April 23, 2009 - by Eric

MyMicroFund Proposal Tips

Following the great italian PROgrammer’s lead. Here are our tips and thoughts on how to pass a strong proposal for the MyMicroFund.com.

• Determine if you really need it. The fund is compatible with a certain scope of ventures.
• Have a clear vision on your project
• do a little SWOT (strength, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis on your venture
• Believe in yourself enough to make anyone believe in what you plan to do.
• pratice the “anal” in analysis. analyze the market you are in to death. It really helps that you know how the market works even if its just on research.
• You should have a website running.
• Be communicative, what you see in your head cannot be glimpsed upon by others. Words is only enough if both you and the person you talk to understand what you are telling him. Use pictures, references or draw something up to get everyone one the same page in imagining anything.
• Have a worst case scenario exit/retry plan.
• Have some proof of your ability to execute, commit and finish projects.
• Be responsive and anticipate what might be in the head of the other person and address them beforehand.
• Be patient.
• The venture should be measurable and have clear metrics for success and failures.

Why did we get the fund?

Cavalcade Games is made up of two people, me and a skilled programmer. We both have families to support so we can’t just quit our day jobs. My partner has an inflexible working schedule and this left him just around  15-40 hours per week to work on projects. We were just one or two flash games away from being sustainable enough to try and compete in a market where we feel a bigger opportunity awaits us. The Iphone market <cue horror music>. We are fully aware of the challenges in that market but we believe in our abilities and the ideas we have lined up for the market. These ideas are 100% market conscious and user focused which we believe are major determinants of a successful app. We are timing our release on the  speculative debut of the 3rd gen iphone (around june – august) so hopefully that will help. MyMicrofund has accelerated our plans and that is truly important in getting to a white hot market like the Iphone platform.

How to submit your ideas.

Consider the following things;