toothtwelve

[toothtwelve]

Back on track!

Hi

So in a past few weeks we were not very active in terms of blog posting and development of ponq. The issue was school and some personal issues we needed to take care of. Unfortunately we couldn’t focus 100% on ponq and its development. But now things are finally getting back on track! We basically doubled our development team and managed to bring some fresh blood into the company.

We are preparing some new exiting projects like the new TODO app and of course focusing on delivering ponq beta ASAP. 

Stay tuned for more

Predrag

[toothtwelve]

Another TODO app?

Some changes happened in our team and also we had to focus on the school, but now as it ends we decided to start working on our first app. 

Yes, as the header says it's todo app. And yes we know out there are thousands of todo applications. They are big, and robust. You can set exact time on your event, or you can divide your events into different categories like Home, Work, School and so on... These applications are great, they allow you to plan your life to the last detail.

At my opinion, i don't really need to plan everything exactly to the last point. And also i don't like when i want to add something into my todo app and it takes me about 2 minutes of filling every information. I just need to do a quick note in few seconds. In this moment you probably think "There is a Clear app!" yes there is, and i like it a lot, and it inspired us a lot.

So we decided to do something really quick, easy to use, and also aimed on people who don't need to have everything settled. On the photo you can see one of our concepts, and you probably noticed that it has 2 columns. 

   One for "urgent" tasks and second for "minor" tasks. Everything you have there is really needed for you, and you have to have it noted somewhere. But in the left (urgent) column you have tasks which are really necessary to be done, because if you don't do them, i don't know, your house will be on fire for example... On the other side (minor) you have tasks which you don't want to forget, but if you don't do them like in next few hours the world is not going to end.

That will be all for today. What do you think about our idea? And do you like our concepts? Please send me your feedback here - johancutych@ttwelve.eu 

Thank you!

Cya Johan

[toothtwelve]

How Much Does It Cost To Market An App?

Hi

How much does it cost to develop and app? Well obviously it depends. Do you know how to code and create some cool design? Good for you! That will significantly reduce development cost. Will you pay for special software or use a free alternative? But all the technical stuff aside today we are going to talk about marketing and budget required for you to reach top brackets of App Store and google play.

Now please bear in mind that it is possible to be successful on Appstore without paying a single dime. Its just a lot harder. You will need a lot of press coverage, huge fan base and a fair bit of luck.

Average figures required for successful app on appstore is about 30 000$ spent on marketing. With smart use of that money you should be able to make your app quite successful. Anything beyond that is pretty much safe bet. You will get into the top brackets given that you actually created an quality app.

Frankly when I learned this numbers I was very disappointed. Not very indie friendly huh? Thankfully not all hope is lost. Even with little budged you have (which is most of us) you can still do wonders. Just use your own time instead of money. Getting featured on review sites and by apple and google play is a great help too. It takes a lot of hard work but it is doable. 

If you are starting developer just remember that days of "If you build it, they will come" are long gone. You will have to think about marketing from the very start.

Predrag

[toothtwelve]

Mind Flow - Making of Tutorial (Programmer's Diary - Entry #4)

"Why tutorial? This game is so #&@%§! easy!" [After first UE tests] "Well f**k... Sooo what do we have here... I need to learn a player how to play in less than a minute. Mechanics: Ball launch, bat control, skill usage. Yeah and there are 2 lines of skills so both of them just to be sure... Ok, done." [Meanwhile, during tests on noob] "Will you tap that flashing thing, when it is highlighted, arrow is pointing at it and there is a sign 'TAP!’? ... Great ..."

"You just have been defeated by AI that I created? Now I am sure that I am god. Yes this can't happen, AI will avoid balls when needed so we get player satisfied with how 'good' he is... Second tutorial? For menu?! And then we will show them how to press Home button? ... I hate ... EVERYTHING!" [Next test on different noob] "Nice launch, swipe's good... Oh AI avoided ball and you scored, you like it? Yes? You're creepy... Oh so you've beaten my super-über-ultra-total useless AI. Good job." "For sure, why would you read that? It is just some text..." "Nevermind, just click that last highlighted button and I can take some..."

"Hey guys? Where's that rope?"  - Peter

[toothtwelve]

What the font?!

Hi everybody,

in this post i'll tell you something about fonts and buttons in our game ponq. As you can notice we don't use classic buttons with some box and border, but only clean text for the simplicity. It's true that the design looks more fresh without buttons, but on the other side, only the plain text is little bit confusing, and sometimes you don't know where the button ends, because the text is falling loosely.

Back to the font. Here is an image on which is the first font we've used in ponq. It's sans-serif font for non-formally look, also we've used combination of sentence case for non-interactive text and all caps for buttons - 

After some time i found font "Bebas Neue" and i like it. It's only all caps font, but that doesn't matter, on the contrary it was looking better!  I have redesigned the choose winning score menu (yes there are two mistakes :D) and now it is looking like this - 

As i said, the simply text buttons looks sometimes confusing as in our main menu, and many people said us that they read this like "Multiplayer endless" and didn't noticed that it's two buttons for multiplayer and for endless mode - 

Easiest solution for beware this is to add some little and not disturbing element between two buttons  - 

Now it is obvious that you have to choose between two game modes, multiplayer or endless. 

I think this is enough for today. The next post will be about the T12 logos (yes, you will laugh a lot).

Cya 

Johan

[toothtwelve]

TOP 3 reasons you should publicly beta test your app.

Since we are very close to releasing first public build of ponq I figured that it would be nice to share some info with you guys. Here is what we have managed to learn so far:

1) No more pink-glasses: When you are developing an app or pretty much any other creative project which requires an large audience of people who want and need to enjoy your product vision alone is not sufficient. While you should definitely have a vision and overall fell of the product sorted out from the start you cant just ignore feedback. If 90% of people tells you that this feature is pissing them of ...well that probably means that you should change it to something that will fit their needs. Beta testing offerers you great potential feedback even before you launch your product officially and can really help you shape it to be awesome. DON'T IGNORE THAT. 

2) You have a product: This is probably one of the most important things. Everyone enjoys hearing about new exiting project but do you know what they enjoy even more? Actually showing it to them! Now I cant stress enough how much this works. Meeting with publisher or investor? Show them your beta build. Talking is fine but they need to see a working product. Or maybe showing of your app to other developers at your local off-line meeting? Show them your app and make it easy for them to try it out! Publicity and feedback from other devs is invaluable. And public beta will significantly improve you conversion rate from a dude who knows C# to a passionate fan. Not to mention journalists and others working in press and marketing industry.

3) More engagement with user base: People like to give their opinions and feel like they belong somewhere. You give them that and they become egger to support your company and essentially build up buzz before lunch. When you are developing an app with zero budged you have to take every chance you have to promote your project. Preparing an app for beta is a lot of hard work but its free and with great results.

If you enjoy what we are doing fell free to subscribe and get the latest news.

Predrag

[toothtwelve]

Rapid testing FTW! (Programmer's diary - Entry #3)

Hi once again, last time I was writing something about testing the game and the return of this process. Today I'll go deeper in this issue. Testing is a neck breaking point of development, but there is more behind it, than just checking that every line of code works properly. That's what developer must examine, but good developer must examine reactions of potential players. Just give your dev version to your parents, siblings, whoever you have by your side and watch. There he gets stuck, here she can't orientate and this is so great even 4 years old kid can understand it. Those are things that you as a developer can't determine on your own, 'cause you know the game 'to the bone'. It is pretty important to test your game on wide range of different people, from little children to your granny. Each time give your game to someone who never saw it yet. Return to those whom you showed your game when there is progress, I did this with my father and the reaction 'I see... progress' told in Vader's voice gave me feeling that I am superhero. Trust me annoy everyone with your game, feedback (even when it is bad) is in development one of most prized things. See 'ya later Peter

[toothtwelve]

Is Casual Better?

Welcome to another post about ponq design. Today i will tell you about newer and more casual design of ponq.

As i said in previous post, the "space" styled design was too exhausting and heavy for game of this kind. Mobile players want to relax by playing games on their smartphones and have a lot of fun, so we need to bring them the best possible atmosphere by doing the design casual and friendly.

So i decided to do a new background which will be more fresh, but something from old design still stayed, like the stars, and some other elements.

Also we decided that it's better to have the skills on to bottom of screen, because on the top is the score, and it should have bigger save zone. In this version is still the old ball and old skills, which are now replaced with new and more flat icons like this (i will tell you more next time):

              Cya next time! Johan

[toothtwelve]

The Very First Game UI Design

Hey there,

ponq was my first experience with game UI, so i had to learn from my mistakes (and there were a lot of them!).

The first idea of ponq design was something like "space" style. Everything should have been floating in space, with nebulas, stars and other elements like ufos and rockets. 

This was the very first background:

There were no floating nebulas, and stars and no elements like ufo. Everything had fixed position, and it was looking kind of "stucked"

Also the ball and its particle effect was little bit different, the only thing which is still same in ponq are the bats.

Old ball:

Here is an image from game with the old design, you can see that the skills (i will talk about them in one of the next posts) are on the top of the screen, also the effect after ball has an different colors. Finally in this version were the floating nebulas, which were looking cool, but after some time we decided that it is too disturbing and "heavy" for this kind of game...

In next post i'll talk about newer design, which were more casual and lighter.

Have a nice day.

Cya, Johan

For more updates follow us on twitter: https://twitter.com/ttwelvegames

[toothtwelve]

Logic behind marketing of ponq

Hello 

We would like to tell you something about marketing our app for IOS and ANDROID. Today we are going to talk about basics and global strategy involved in marketing our game. Due to pretty much non existent budget we need to rely heavily on the inbound marketing. So basically creating a lot of quality content very quickly and catching attention of the audience with creative usage of social media and blog. That of course includes building relationships with journalists and preparing launch audience for the first wave of downloads. 

Right now our presence is mainly on twitter because we use it as our main source of engagement with audience. Right now we are in process of improving our reach on other social media like Facebook and LinkedIn. Blog and our closed beta should greatly help with that.

Predrag

[toothtwelve]

Everthing's connected (Programmer's diary - Entry #2)

Hi once again pals!

If you're developing games and you want to have at least good game, if not awesome one, you need to do one important job all the time. You must test games made by your competitors on the fly and try to find there things that are annoying to avoid them in your games. In my case last tested game was some no-name space shooter. While on bus I was listening to music and wanted to play something, so I just tapped the icon and immediately I was annoyed with the game. I like when game has soundtrack, but when player doesn't have the possibility to turn off the sounds, it is a real problem. So I started current dev version of ponq. *BANG* Annoyed even more. My own game still doesn't have "Sound On/Off" button. But all the anger away, now I know what I need to do to make my game better. The more games you are testing, the more mistakes in game design, level design and communication with player you can find and avoid them. You don't want your players to look like the person on top of this post. So motto of the day? "Play others, learn from them and make your better."

Take care Peter

[toothtwelve]

Motivation(?)

Hi y'all! I'll let my diary aside for this entry. I trust you'll accept my apology. But this is important. Whenever you're doing something, you are doing it on purpose, no matter if it's school work, part-time job or private project, you except some result. Better grades, money, girlfriend maybe... This result of your work can be your motivation. But when you're trying to do that thing for long time and your desired results are not coming, the motivation is going down and that's just the moment when you need to switch to universal every time working motivation purpose. Do it just because you want to get to the finish! It doesn't really matter what you're doing, it doesn't matter how many times it failed, it doesn't matter how many people laughed at you(in which cases I just change my desktop background to image above). You know only you can do it, and when you're the only one who can do it, you just must DO IT.  Take care and always be proud of yourself! Peter P.S.:Always

[toothtwelve]

Little update - What we are up to

Hi!

Today we are going to tell you about near future of ponq and what we intend to do with our Dev blog. Well first of all we've done ton of things to improve overall fell and gameplay of the ponq. This means that we are getting very close to the releasing stable beta build. Updated graphics and complete overhaul of ponq control system made this possible. We will keep you updated as time goes on.

On a side note we are working on revamping our marketing strategy and from now on you will see much more updates and content on this blog. Our goal is to have at least 3 posts in a single day. We will discuss development of ponq, cover news from the world of the apps and try to help fellow developers with some insight we've gathered so far. You will be able to learn the entire process of developing and marketing an app for IOS and ANDROID.

In the meantime you can sign up for our closed beta here: http://ponq.ttwelve.eu

Cheers 

Predrag

[toothtwelve]

What is ponq?

Hello and welcome to the newest dev blog entry. Today we are gonna talk about what exactly is ponq. Yeah, finally we are discussing what are you guys gonna play when we are done.

First of all its a action packed 2 dimensional tennis sports game. You could compare it to ping-pong but in ponq you are looking at game field from above. Each player controls his own bat and ultimate goal of the game is to obliterate other guy by scoring points into his side of the map. But with what? Well... with a ball. You guest it right.

That doesn't sound bad right? Yeah well thats about 10% of the actual experience we want to offer you guys. Wait what? Only 10%? Yup, but the real question is how are we gonna do that? I can tell you for sure that coming up with answer to that question wasn't easy at all. It involved a lot of brain storming and over-night sessions. But I am confident to say that we  seceded.

In ponq you will be able to chose from 18 unique skills and 3 type of bats. Thats a lot of different options to destroy your opponent. Our skills will be divided into 2 categories - defensive and offensive. As the name may suggest each category will be used for either defensive play (saving your ass on that last second) or offensive play (FINISH HIM!).  In each match you will be able to select 3 skills to help you win. Also we are giving you guys 3 types of bats to play with. Small bat - Classic bat - Big bad. Each one has its own advanteges and disadvantages. For example the Small bat will be obviously the smallest but at the same time quickest. It will be real hard to master but once you do men... once you do.

At release of the first version of ponq we will include all the bats and skills. Together with single-player high score endless mode and offline multiplayer.  Sounds good, right? Well thats not all. Please follow us on twitter and read the dev blog for more updates about upcoming features. We will tell you more about cross-platform multiplayer and ranked online matches. There is much more to come guys. 

Want to take part in our closed beta test?

Sign up here: http://ponq.ttwelve.eu

Stay tuned.

Predrag

[toothtwelve]

The Team Things and Closed Beta Launch

In the game developing the team is most important thing.

And it’s not always easy to keep a good mood and that right passion for the common goal. Over a year we are having meetings every monday in pub where we are discussing the most important topics about ponq development. But last few weeks was our programmer Peter ill (his article here) so we can’t arrange the meeting. It was hard times, because we had and we are still having a lot of work with closed beta, and there was no team boost. Of course we had some skype calls, and also we had really often chats, but the right atmosphere of the pub meeting was missing.

This monday we finally had another meeting which was really necessary. It was quite long, but very inspiring for all of us, we've discussed new endless mode in ponq, and also the divison of labor.

Just now we have a lot of work with ponq tutorial, and also as mentioned the new endless mode, but we love the game developing, and we look forward to show you the game itself.

Last but not least is the launch of Closed Beta page (here). Right now you can subscribe for beta, and after that we'll notice you if you've been selected, if yes we'll send you an email with all next steps to get the game! Also you can give us your suggestion, what could be better in ponq (it's down on the website). We'll be really glad for you suggestion

New ponq logo - 

  Johan T12

[toothtwelve]

Health issues, code issues... (Programmer's diary - Entry #1)

As well as humans can have a health issues, games and applications sometimes have "health issues" too. I would not surprise you, when I tell you that they are called 'bugs'.  Both of 'em are usual and both of 'em are unpleasant. And when they come at the same time, it's a solid basis for a tragedy. And that's exactly what happened to me. I'm sorry I didn't introduced myself. I am Peter and I am programmer of TPong.  TPong development is progressing slowly, but surely. These days I was readying up the Beta version for iOS & Android as it was mentioned in our previous post. That means to assure that everything implemented works properely, let the game look good and sound good and so on. In this part you know, that your work is finally taking some direction and you look forward to release of first version on your 'counter-platform'. But there is still a work to do as I said, mainly patching the bugs - the code issues. Patching up bugs was my workload from start of this week. And then the second companion crossed my way - health issues.  At first sight it looked like a common flu and I was pleased to be absent in school, just resting on a couch and completing my work for this week. And now it looks like I could even have more free time to finish it all! Today I started to cough blood and some people told me that "It could really be a problem" ... I dunno, I am programmer not a doctor so I will see what he will tell me tommorow. But whatever this a**hole disease is, it won't stop me from MY WORK. Take care & Stay tuned for next entry. Peter

[toothtwelve]

Working on closed beta

We are just working on our first big release of TPONG and it's closed beta. We found that it's really hard to ship the game, just now we are facing that we have no money for developing license.  Also we are working on 200% to do everything what we need in TPONG. And there is a lot of things to do, for example AI should use skills in proper way, and we have to eliminate the numbers of bugs.  Also we don't have any soundtrack or SFX in our game currently, so we are looking for someone who could make sounds for us...

Also we are working on BETA page, where'll be beta registration form and also we prepared for you a suggestions, so you will be able to give us ideas what to do better in TPONG!

It's really hard to do everything as good as possible, but we love it, and we love the progress in our game! Be sure to follow us on twitter - https://twitter.com/ttwelvegames