ipsilondev

[ipsilondev]

Well, last screenshot saturday wasn't bad, but we tough we could do it better, so we made a cute animation with the screenshots, as a teaser video. in the era of marketing first, video is the king (?)  

[ipsilondev]

For the #ScreenshotSaturday we show today a sneak peak of the first fast-paced mini-games included in our upcoming game, Party Duel ! 

All genres, from puzzle, to action, dodge, runners etc..

3 Game Modes: Arcade, Multiplayer and Custom selection

Up to 4 player locally!

Up to 13 achievements to complete

You can see more info about it there: http://ipsilondev.com/partyduel

[ipsilondev]

How unity improved the workflow and development time

Hi everyone :)

enough of product related posts lately right? it’s time for some devlog post :)

I’m a open source guy. Whenever i can use open source for something, it’s my first option. This is not why i want everything for free, it’s a philosophy and long term planning reason. Open Source never dies, you never lost “support” why in the worst case scenario, you can grab the code yourself and keep using it, updating, adapting to your needs. This is my first reason to use open source software. The freedom that i’m not tied to a future of a company to keep my projects up and running (actual and future ones). When i started doing games, flash was the main platform. Of course was not open source, but it was easy to use, fast, you could use flashdevelop to use an IDE only environment and the flash studio to make the animations. Oh, those where the good times. When flash started to die, well, i was in a predicament, as i was not good with editor environments (like unity has) and i don’t wanted to face the learning curve of learning a new language, editor, controls etc..

For that reason i started to use haxe / openfl, that was the open source replacement of AS3 / flash. I could use the same language syntax and the same IDE, and i was happy. Don’t get me wrong, haxe & openfl are awesome platforms, i’m even contributor on some code for extensions and addons on it. I made 2 games on it plus i have a very complex app unreleased that is made on it too. But this year i tried to improve my development times. Coding a game on haxe / openfl, even the simplest one it will not take me less than 2 months. i needed to get things faster, better. There wasn’t much ready to use in the open source world that would surpass openfl  / haxe. I know about ogre 3d, illricht, game maker, construct, kha, no one of this would improve the workflow. Another goal was to make the transition to 3D, this would solve most probably one of the problems in the development, that was the creation and adapting the 2D assets to all resolutions, and get it into the code. Godot was a good option, is even made by a Juan, someone i know personally. In the end, i decided to go with Unity, for the support, but mostly anything, for the asset store support. The main objective was to improve the development time. I love to code, but my objective is to make games, not engines or extensions. With unity and very very little money, i could have ready to use code, like a FPS engine, or a tabletop to adapt or modify, or a social media extension ready to use for $10. Plus models and assets that can be easily imported and modified at my needs. When i started, godot didn’t had this, so i bet into going with the all popular option. 

I released 2 projects so far. For someone that is not familiar with an editor, the transition was not easy. understanding the logic of “attaching” scripts to objects, wasn't easy either. But i started using a ready to use isometric engine for Dumb Zombies Commander helped me a lot to understand the structure of everything, how collision works, how instantiate elements works, how to interact between scenes, etc..

The latest project, 5 Shapes was made from 0, with no pre-made code nor assets, applying what i learned the first time. It was made in a week. It is a simple game, but the development time was so fast, i can’t believe it (do the builds, screenshots, video and marketing took me more time than the game itself :P ).

For one part i regret not making the change earlier, for the reason of not wanting to face the time to learn a new platform, but on the other side, i had to implement some knowledge i learned with openfl / haxe into unity, mostly in 2 critical parts, the alignment of 2D elements on all resolutions (unity doesn’t handle this as it should) and the android / ios build process (unity packages from the assets store doesn’t give a shit about others packages, so you can easily end up with duplicate libraries in the project, that would broke completely the build process. if you don’t know the internals, you will never figure out this...)

And that’s all my friends. I hope my experience will help others developers on a similiar situation ! Don’t be afraid to change !

[ipsilondev]

 5 Shapes is now ready for all platforms ! 

Download NOW at: https://ipsilondev.com/5shapes

[ipsilondev]

Who's ready for some puzzle action? Our game 5Shapes very soon on all devices !

[ipsilondev]

It’s ALIVEEEEE!!!! today we launch Text2VoiceOver, A web app that let you create voiceovers for your videos. Upload a video or use a youtube video link and add a voiceover to it !

Text2VoiceOver is a new web app, SaaS (Software As A Service) that allows you create, preview and integrate natural voiceovers with great quality and pronunciation. Using Google text to speech synthesis and our exclusive technology, we allow you to add a voiceover at any point of time in any video, with our easy to use editor. You can upload a video from your PC, use a youtube video link or just create a bunch of independent voiceovers in our complete editor. All needs covered !

We support 15 different voices and 13 different languages, taking your content to people all over the world! Text2VoiceOver delivers a zip file with:

-> Individual .mp3 files with every block of text converted into a voiceover -> Concatenated .mp3 file with all the voiceovers plus silence betweem them to match the length of the video -> The original video provided -> The video with it's original sound and merged with the generated voiceovers

Voiceovers are expensive and hard to make, to integrate, but we created a tool that let you create them very easily, in a semi automatic way, with a great quality. Using Text2VoiceOver you can improve your communication strategy and beat language barriers in your audiovisual content

Try it now for FREE at: https://text2voiceover.com

[ipsilondev]

A new DIY video ! this time, how to make an arcade stick with a couple of rubber bands and a couple of bolts !

Text version of the video: http://www.ipsilondev.com/maker/en/arcade-sticks-with-rubbers-bands.php

[ipsilondev]

We are releasing a couple of DIY / IoT projects videos from our experiments ! The first one, how to do a arcade pushbutton with a plastic bottle cap!

English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjcd9oOZ-gM Español: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwcy7w-u8-g

Text version: http://www.ipsilondev.com/…/arcade-button-plastic-bottle.php

Version Texto: http://www.ipsilondev.com/maker/es/boton-arcade-con-tapa-plastico.php

[ipsilondev]

Dumb Zombies Commander is LIVE ! Finally, we published our latest game, a mix of strategy of the lemmings type and puzzles, to conquer the castle in 20 different levels !

Can be downloaded for all platforms here: http://ipsilondev.com/dzc/

We will update in the future, how people received it and how it performs in terms of ads and user progress. It’s the first game we make with unity and i think we improved our game design and coding in several aspects that also will be reflected in future products and games releases :D

Thanks for all the support, to all the people who download our games our try the things we publish, it means a lot for a “Weird” company like us, that try to innovate and dedicate to R&D only :D

[ipsilondev]

For #screenshotsaturday we share a mosaic of the first 6 levels of 24 in our upcoming game, Dumb Zombies Commander!. With a mix of strategy and timing puzzles, it will challenge your skills ! Very soon on all platforms, you can see more and subscribe to our mailing list at: http://ipsilondev.com/dzc

[ipsilondev]

We are about to submit it to the stores and do the final build of our latest game, Dumb Zombies Commander. Dozens of levels that would test your mind and skills. Soon available on Android, iOS, Windows, Mac and Linux ! Subscribe to our mailing list at www.ipsilondev.com/dzc . You can follow us on our other social networks too, links on the page :)

[ipsilondev]

Another Update !

40hs and counting, the mostly delay occurred for stupid mistakes at unity, as i have no idea how models/prefab/shaders works :P (first time doing 3D )

Still, i made a huge progress:

All UI is done and transitions too

All level-related inner code code is done

Save and load user progress

the first 4 levels are done, 44 more to go :P

Input via mouse and touch works, tested on mobile and desktop

App icon is done, plus some extra art like the banner you see here :)

To Do:

Improve AI at dead ends path’s

Design the rest of the levels

Integrate Ads

Integrate social media plugin

Integrate purchase to disable ads

Make all platforms builds

Build website

Build screenshot and Release video

The list is still big, we will see how it goes on :)

[ipsilondev]

Doing another small game, this time in unity 3D. I'm not a lover of 3D, nor of closed source engines, and i'm bad at visual editors, i'm from old school only code IDE's (i normally use OpenFL and i would like to use Godot in the future) but went with unity instead to achieve the objectives of this project.

The objectives to achieve with this project are:

1) make a simple lemmings type game, with isometric view, zombies theme 2) do it in less than 19hs of work (i'm already at 22hs  :'( ) 3) learn how unity editor and workflow works 4) use this experience to make a better game

for the sake of saving time, the core of the game is based on The Verby Noun Toolkit that was cheap, and easy to use.

Zombie asset is also from the store, plus i will add some assets i brought years ago :)

i already made: Menu GUI's Half in-game GUI changed the code to follow the zombies changed AI of zombies added direction blocks actions to pattern changed how patterns are loaded internally

of course that i already failed the timeline, but maybe in 8-16 more hours of work, can be done

Just an screenshot for now, posting more later !

Thanks !

[ipsilondev]

YAY! Drop Alive, the game we are publishing in partnership with Gamedia and developed by INVI Games has been approved by the community to be on steam ! Many thanks for all the support !

[ipsilondev]

HackNBlocks Financial Postmorten

I’ll keep it short, after a month of launching HackNBlocks the game, here are the results:

Sales

Desktop: 0

Downloads on PlayStore: 14

Downloads on AppStore:  15

Ads money:  0

Visits and social media

Points on reddit: 5

Visits on the landing page: 190

Plays on YT video: 24

Twitter: Around 2000 impressions with 20 interactions, in 4 tweets

FB: 1200 impressions and 35 clicks

Gameplay statistic (from google analytics)

Not sure if this numbers are correct, or just this is real why the game has been pirated outside the appstores, and that’s why i have a lot more of plays than downloads:

Users: 95

Sessions: 102

Average Play Duration: 2:20 minutes

99% of the people played the challenges, and not the survival mode

30% of wins (when an user win a level)

70% of loses (when an user lost a level)

Maximum level reached by users: 15 of 30

Most played levels: 

level 4 with 37%

level 1 with 9.55%

level 2 with 7%

level 8 with 7%

Top countries player: US, India, Argentina.

Resume:

Well, this went even worse than i expected. The previous game, Assembly rush, an incremental game, went 10 times better than this (made like 100 downloads and $6 in ads). I know that i had screw up with the ads, trying to not bother the user, i put it when the game sessions ended, by the user returning to the menu. but i discovered that most of the people doesn’t try more than 1 game mode, and just exists the app. so the ad is never shown, anyway, for the type of game it is, i would still not set it up different, why i think that it will bother the user. Also realized that next game i do, it needs to have a candy crush approach: limited amount of lives, share on FB/TW, look an ad, pay or wait 15 minutes to play again. is the only way to make a money on mobile right now. On desktop, still paid, at low price (this was at $0.99, next probably will have a lot more content, so it will be at $1.99 or $2.99).

So, in the end, do good and quality games, and put double the effort in marketing, that what i learned from all of this.

PS: if you wanna see the game:  here: ipsilondev.com/hacknblocks/

[ipsilondev]

The release trailer of our latest game, HackNBlocks :D

[ipsilondev]

HackNBlocks Developer Postmortem

Beware, this is gonna be a loooonggg post.

I want to share the experience of developing this game, with insights of what went well, what went wrong, and what we can improve in the process.

Context

So, HackNBlocks was planning to be a simple game, with a common mechanic, and an appealing heroine that would empathize with the user, and motivate him to beat up the levels. That was the original idea, and my vision. The result was pretty different.

In the end, the game is like many of others, with no special attractive nor feature that would make it “shine”. The reasons for that, are below.

Better control and planning of the art 

My main focus to make this game, special from others, was to connect through the main character and it’s mission. For this, i planned to show the character in special occasions and showing “feelings” (fear, joy, anger, etc..) when you where playing the levels. Unfortunately, the artist i hired to do the task, done a good and bad job at the same time. I asked for frames done in vector format, as i needed to re-size them at will, and i was not sure where i was going to be placed at that time. Even if the final art was good enough, she used a program to convert them to vector. that means that each frame had some inconsistency in size and placement of some elements, and it really looked awful when animated. Plus, the edition was impossible, why it had so many joints, that could not be manually fixed, so that destroyed the possibility of “empathize” with the user.

Focusing in non-important things

The mechanic was pretty simple, so i focused in making things run smoothly, faster and clean transitions, menu, GUI etc.. but I lost a lot of time, trying to do a gradient dynamic background that moved at 45 degrees. it looked nice but when i finally got the code done, and tested on all platforms, was a nightmare to align the elements on every platform. I could not give it up, so it took more hours to fix it, and then, saw that on low end devices, was crashing. this was poor choice of my part, why i ended with a nice and simple background that took me 10 hours of art & coding, and wasted around 50hs in the other that never worked. Must keep things simple.

200hs of work, for a simple game, is too much 

Yes, you are reading right. Between coding, testing, preparing the art (that was done but still, must be tweaked to be used in the code) and posting in all the appstore, it took me that amount of time. I used OpenFL to code it, a framework i’m very familiar with, and i already had a codebase that managed the screen size and elements for all platforms, but it required several tweaks, to run this smooth, like threads. Still, most of the time went in the game itself, doing the levels and integrate them took me around 50hs (for 50 levels). Survival mode took me 80hs. It’s just too much. and i’m not sure i can actually improve it, but i think that any game would require this kind of time and that we could produce something of more quality, more unique, in the same amount of time, with a more proper planning.

Things to improve in the future

I have been thinking a lot of this. I really love to do games, but i love to develop, to create things too. For that reason i do IoT, and other stuff. But game development is not really paying for the effort and most importantly, for the financial costs. i have been also thinking of changing the engine, for 3D support and see if i can improve the production time, but i’m aware that right now i can’t afford the curve of learning and adaptation. So i’m gonna stick with OpenFL. I’m not sure, even if i want, if i’m gonna do another game right away. I need to finish SaleFad (the retail store app) and i have other stuff in mind too. As a company, we need some real funding at this point, to keep doing and creating things.

The marketing problem

I was aware that i needed to promote the game very early one, as marketing is one of the biggest problem with the flood of game and apps out there. I made everything i could, from posting on forums, to reddit, to TW, to FB etc.. i know i made wrong at keeping the devlog half empty and should be updated with real content, like all the things i’m writing here, posting it more progressively. But what i’m worried, is how to build an audience, that would be excited for the things we do. That’s my biggest fail. I need to work double at generating content (videos, posts, etc..) that would make the people to remember our company, our work, to follow our progress, why is that what would benefit to spread the word when we launch a new product or service. Plus, i need to build a relationship with the press, that now is nonexistent, but i know that i need to offer something that they would be interested, to have any kind of communication. It’s the chicken and the egg problem basically.

In resume 

Has been a tough project, but i learned a lot. At the same, i identified the part we need to work on, double in marketing, better planning and code productivity. Even if i fail at code productivity, and have just a slightly better planning, if i fail at building an audience, we are doomed. So, there is where we are heading now.

If someone reads this, i hope it helps to other developers, and i will be posting the financials results of this game in a month aprox.

You can try the game at ipsilondev.com/hacknblocks