Over the past year or so I have been really inspired by blogs which are open with their development. The best example I could point to is wolfire.com. Those guys are pretty amazing and  inspire me from design all the way to marketing. I think the biggest concerns with developers not being open with their development is a) they don’t want to spoil gameplay/story and b) they don’t want somebody stealing ideas. I share the same concerns, but my main goal is to inspire the curious and, hopefully, generate some thoughts from you. Since most of you reading are developers, and not yet quite “fans,” hopefully, we will all benefit somehow.

That said, there will be spoilers… So run if you’re a fan. Let’s give this a whirl.

Here are a few highlights dug from the repository since the last blog update.

Added a Notification for Unread Mail Message

The first pass resulted in only a mail icon, with no clear indicator showing the user has something to read.

Well, the only reason why I would tap on something like that is because I’m a news junky and I would be curious to see what’s in there. Most are probably not like that, and need a little eye candy in order to see what is behind door #3. I decided to add an indicator.

Moved Game Center Achievements / Leaderboards from Custom Views to Game Centers standard GK*ViewController

Last month I roughly implemented Game Center in my own custom views. I did that for a few reasons, a) Cocos2D was not handling view rotations very well, so using the standard GK*ViewController was not something I felt like diving further into, and b) I wanted to give them their own custom look to fit in with the game.

I decided against the custom look mainly because I didn’t feel like it was going to look right with the direction I took it. Luckily, I saw that Cocos2D 0.99.5 was unleashed which handles rotation on the iPad much better. Well, a few tweaks later I had the modal view coming into the screen correctly.

Improved Capture Method and Combo System

Before I began polishing the existing method a player only had one way to capture a butterfly.  You touched the screen and created a circle.  In order for a capture to be a success you had to come within a certain distance of your original touch. While this worked perfectly fine through play-testing, I wanted to give the player another option for a little more action. Now they can snip the line wherever they want to commit a capture.

This naturally introduces a much more entertaining combo system. As long as the player doesn’t pick up their finger and they capture within a certain time frame, a combo point is earned.

Implemented Stage 2

A couple of challenges await the player. Each stage will have 20 levels. This stage is by far the trickiest for me to play. In addition to capturing butterflies, the player has to mix primary and secondary butterflies together in order to meet the objectives. Later in the level the player will have to be concerned with specific butterflies that fall into trouble and act quickly.

I have not play-tested this one so I’m curious to see how people handle it.

Flurry Analytics

How many people completed Stage 1? How about Stage 2 and 3? How far did the player get before they quit?  These are some of the questions that I’m curious about in order to improve the game in areas that are weak.

And some other interesting questions I’m curious about; How many people tapped mute? Are people tapping More Games? Are they tapping the links within More Games? Does that mail notification grab attention?

Beginning the Brand Building, Again

This deserves it’s own post, but generally speaking, I put together a small mini-site at http://colorflys.igotitgames.com and continue to speak with the gaming community again on several fronts. Yesterday I added olark to the website that will allow fans/customers to directly reach me with support questions. If a fan takes the time to visit my website, I doubt they’re looking for trouble.

http://colorflys.igotitgames.com

I’ve been working on something for the iPad for a few months now. Progress has been a bit slow due to everything going on, but I am back in motion.

I’m really excited about this project. I’ve had the idea for this project in my bag since before the iPad, but I couldn’t develop it because I wanted more screen space than what the iPhone/iPod provided. When the iPad released I absolutely knew what my first title would be.

At this point I would say I am about a month away from release. My initial goal was to get it released before the GDC so I would have something to show off this time around, but it looks like I will not be able to make it (to the GDC) this year.

Feel free to support the project by following it on Facebook and/or follow me @dlmcgraw and @igotitgames.

Look for some more information being pumped out relatively soon!

Well finding an artist to work with us took an extremely long time — somewhere around 2 months?

A lot, and I mean a lot of artists do not like working on a project without earning a high $/hr and many artists completely misunderstand the independent nature of being an independent game developer.  Taking the time to spot someone with that passion is absolutely critical.  If you bring on an artist and they can’t rattle off an independent game, or even a game, that they’ve enjoyed recently they are not the right person.  The core problem I envision is someone bailing midway through the project, which would really, really suck.  It also helps having someone who understands games and how they can create an interactive experience with their artwork.

I find it very interesting to be around creative people, but for whatever reason I have yet to make a lot of contact with artists whom are interested in game development.  It’s the common dilemma surrounding coders.  I could rattle off quite a few coders I know.  Artists? Not so much.

I started this adventure to find an artist by taking advantage of my current environment.  I work with 300+ artists of varying degree at the visual effects studio I work with.  I had a surprisingly small amount of people interested in collaborating.  I say surprisingly, mainly, because I see quite a lot of independent things going around the studio.  So I know people are doing things outside of work.  We even have quite a few folks that are from the game industry.

During the time above, I listed something on a freelance website for an iPad project I will be doing after the current one.  My experience was pretty lackluster.  The artist had a great reputation/portfolio, but it has taken a long time to get anything out of them.

I then moved into some of the independent forums and craigslist.  Craigslist, by far, was where I gained a tremendous amount of traction.  You can skip paying $75 (bay area) listing fee by posting in gigs.  Within that first evening I had over 20 responses.

What is really interesting here is that I specifically tried to narrow down the responses immediately by asking a simple question within my listing.

What was a game you recently played that may have inspired you artistically?

This question was aimed to gauge if the person had any knowledge of games (bonus if they mention independent games) and also served as a way to filter submissions that were merely spam.  I was very shocked here.  Only 5 – 10% of my responses answered the question.  From there, maybe 2% actually put an effort into answering the question.

Yet, people wonder why they can’t find work?  You need to show some passion and some interest into what you’re responding to!

We’ll be posting game updates on Facebook and Twitter in the near future.  If you would prefer to keep up to date via Email, you can sign up for our Newsletter.

The free version of Spin & Shoot has already been submitted.

I’ve implemented iAds into Project Void, but it will need some additional iOS 4.0 work.  Once I clean up how it handles being thrown to the background, I will submit it.  It shouldn’t take too long to fix up.  After this version is released I will be replacing the Cocos2D scoring system with the new Game Center (depending on my next project).

I started designing a new project for the iPad. I’m pretty excited about this. While I still don’t have an iPad I am hopeful that I can snag one from a friend when it comes time to doing hardware testing…  Or I may just end up buying a basic one since there are some good stuff being developed for it already.

I recently bought Carcassonne for my iPhone.  The developers have done an excellent job on this.  The user experience is really slick.  $5 is hard to swallow, but it is worth it if you are a big Carcassonne fan.

Project Void picked up another review from the guys at TheAPPera: http://bit.ly/cdUyGW

Conclusion

Project Void is your reverse approach on Tetris. In many ways it is the anti-Tetris and compliments the gameplay of it perfectly. Sometimes a game is just not logical, and this one isn’t, but that doesn’t make it any less awesome. Kudos.

Edit: Finished updating Project Void to handle the multitasking bit.

I ended up going through 4 iterations before I found a design that I really liked.

What are the essentials?

• Your Name
• E-Mail
• Phone
• Web Address
• Something Memorable
• Use both sides!

Unless you own a business and need people to visit your primary location, I would leave off your physical address. Waste of space and distraction. Most of the time your contact isn’t just going to show up at your door. You can give them this information later when it’s warranted.

So how about the ‘flow?’  Well, that is tough to pin down. It boils down to experimentation. You’ve probably seen dozens of card designs out there (Google some if not). Use those as a base.

The card I used in 2008

People thought it was cool, but today I find it pretty boring and not memorable. The basis was that you’ll find me without a Dr. Pepper in hand, and I wanted to note that I was a programmer.

Ouch...

Idea 1

Going completely opposite from 2008, I wanted to introduce color but I found it distracting.  It also concerned me what a printer would do with this.

The texture on this is intense. Very dark.

Idea 2

I decided to try something on the lighter side.  I also wanted to incorporate a subtle piece of my iGotIt Games logo.  I had a hard time with what to do on the front side of this card, and the gradient was concerning.

(back of card) I wasn't confident about using gradient.

Idea 3

I further simplified the design by trying out a ‘reflection’ idea with solid colors.  Here, the person would see the back of the card from the front, with the goal of persuading the holder to flip the card around for more information.

In the end, it felt too cheap.

Idea 4

Here, I built off of my previous attempts to form the final card.  I included the reflection, solid colors, and the iGotIt Games logo.  On the back I plan to put a promo code for Spin & Shoot or Project Void.

Winner

In the end you want your business card to be memorable.  Leave a simple quote, or a icon that identifies you.  See Darius Kazemi for more business card/networking advice. I just noticed he wrote a few new posts regarding business cards!

In the end, keep it simple and Memorable!

Talk to any indie and you’ll find, more often than not, that they just want to get their creation out in the hands of you, the user.  Of course money needs to come in to play to at the very least support the foundation that built the product.  Nothing comes free even from an independent standpoint.

Spin & Shoot was an idea born from the primary need to learn OSX, Objective-C, and Cocoa.  I released the project to the iPhone application store June 28th.

A few notes looking back on this that stand out:

• It look about 2 months of development spread over 6 months
• Objective-C’s memory management takes a while to get used to
• Interface Builder is tedious and can be very time consuming (just write the code)
• I didn’t spend enough time thinking about how to get the word out about it

What was the cost of development?

• $100 for the developer program
• $50 for target marketing on Facebook

What was the return on investment?

• To date we have 68 sales with $47 of revenue
• The marketing had no effect
  • It would have been better if it was planned around an event (spring break, new years)
  • I didn’t do any ‘grass roots’ marketing on forums or twitter

Spin & Shoot is a very, very niche application that I didn’t expect to change the world or hit the top 100 app store list.  This application will likely continue to hit sales spikes during certain points of the year, and random buys when people are looking for drinking apps.

I’m pretty happy. Close to 68 people, and counting, has played with my creation.

You can think of the application being likened to a familiar wheel you may have come across in a bar. Such as this one:

We wanted to morph that into an application, providing a fair amount of shots, allow you to enter shots we didn’t think of, provide a way to keep track of your bar hopping buddies, and overall add some spice into the drinking life.  Personally, I am all about trying new things, and most of all of my college/marine corps buddies were the same way when it came to drinking.

I’ll be posting more about Spin & Shoot in the following days.

This was a game that targeted the length of games today. You don’t need to spend 8 to 30 hours on a game to have fun. But, then again, you probably need to spend more than 2 minutes.  I played the thing when it first came out and forgot about it until now.

You Have To Burn The Rope is a short game that your eyes may have come across over the past year. It’s a simple game, as the title in itself is a spoiler:  you burn the rope,  your weapon is useless,  you can’t die.

Is this really innovative? Absolutely not. World of Goo is innovative.  Everyday Shooter is innovative.   We are saying that if this game wins, that it is at the caliber of World of Goo, Everyday Shooter, Braid?  Well, that’s what it implies.

This year the IGF saw a 30% increase in those who thought their game could make the cake.

I don’t fathom a perfect judging system.  But the way these were judged this year needs to be seriously looked at.

This is time for independent games to shine.  This is for independent gamers.  Troll around on the other independent gaming websites and you’ll find VERY few that think this game should be in it’s position.

Very clever game, and if you follow the IGF at all, it picked up a couple awards for technical excellence, and something else.

I revolved this idea around teamwork. I wanted to have two separate starting areas, where both would have to come together to get to the goal. Pretty Marine’ish of me.

So, what’s special about Aquaria?  Well, if you haven’t heard anything about this game, it was developed by a lone wolf programmer/musician, an incredibly talented paint artist, and a beautiful voiced voice over lady.  They spent roughly two years on the project, and it ended up taking first prize at the Independent Game Festival in 2006.  They didn’t end up going the publishing route, and formed their own LLC as Bit Blot (Creative, eh? Programmer/bit, Artist/blot).

I rather not spoil any of the story, so I’d like to direct you to a link to download the demo of the game.  It’s the first part of the game, and if you do decide to purchase it, your save file will transition to the full version.

Move to the Aquaria Demo Download Page

A few things I would like to note about the game.

The Audio. The programmer is also a musician via the piano, and has created a very, very intriguing sound track to follow this game. I find absolutely nothing wrong with the way he blends his sound into his own creation, which is something I am completely envious of. I incorporated my own audio with Breakout Returns, and I can only hope to become this good.

The Control Scheme. While you can opt for traditional play via the keyboard, or a gamepad, you would be missing a very unique experience to control the game with only your mouse. They came up with a really cool way to activate power ups for your character, via a song menu. You play certain notes to activate special abilities, which is just cool. Here is a glimpse:

The Depth This game released on the 7th of December, and people that have rushed through the game have been tallying up the hour count at around 17. This game is deep. There is a vast world to explore, which is great in my opinion.

So, for those that didn’t know about this project, now you do. Enjoy the demo, feel the well designed vibe, and use it for your own personal motivation.