Game and App Development

Game and application development of all kinds

Thinking of Making an Indie Game?

drmop


So, I’ve been making Indie games for years, with very little success, usually because I write obscure little games that don’t usually see much action. So I decided to write something that many gamers do love, an Idle Upgrade Cookie Clicker. I decided to go with the same format as the original by Orteil because IMO its the best and I much prefer the straight forward layout compared to modern idle games. I also decided to theme it around climate change as it’s something that I care about (hoping that it rubs off on a few others). I decided to make it free to play (because obtrusive ads are horrible and paid is DOA) with the option of video ads to generate coins for those that don’t want to spend any money on coins. I opted to integrate Facebook for backup / restore and the usual social features such as login, inviting friends, sharing, gifting, leaderboards.

So how does a cookie clicker perform these days? Lets take a look at some numbers since release a couple of months ago:

Note that the above mobile downloads required me to spend around $200 across Apple search ads and Google Adwords, so I’ve made quite a loss.

So the game wasn’t performing well, but was performing slightly better than most of my other games. With this I decided to put out a version on Kongregate and Newgrounds, (both great game portals with some pretty decent games) to boost the games visibility, which is ok as long as you can put up with the extremely toxic communities. Seriously some of the users (calling them gamers would be a serious stretch) on there were absolutely dropped on their heads at birth, if you are fine dealing with petulant kids then you can turn it into a pretty fun pass time.

Today I have:

After placing the game onto those portals I did see a nice jump in mobile installs, but it was very short lived (a couple of days), its just not an effective marketing tool, especially considering the toxicity of the community and the abuse that you will have to deal with. Also, take note, when you do place a game on a web portal, expect it to be lifted (without permission) and placed all over the place so that some blood sucker can earn ad revenue from your hard work (the word cunts springs to mind).

So in summary, paid ads do drive installs works, but you will need a LOT and I cannot stress this enough a HUGE AMOUNT of money to get your game noticed. Web portals like Kongregate and Newgrounds help the game initially but once the toxic community has done with you, your game will have 0 visibility, so any visibility gains will be short lived. Take a look at the ratings for my game:

  • iOS – 5 stars
  • Android – 4.5 stars
  • Facebook – 4.8 stars
  • Kongregate – 2.65 stars
  • Newgrounds – 2.68 stars

Indie game development for making money is dead, will I still continue to make indie games? It’s fun creating games, so maybe, do I expect to ever earn money from it? No, very unlikely.

If you are thinking of becoming an Indie game developer, I recommend only doing so if you get enjoyment from it, if you expect to earn a living then try something else.

Big List of Popular Flash, HTML5 and Unity 3D Web Gaming Portals

drmop

Big list of web game portals / sites that accept games mainly from Flash, HTML5 and Unity 3D developers:

Facebook Alexa rank 3
Y8 Alexa rank 761
Kongregate Alexa rank 1375
Miniclip Alexa rank 1750
Kizi Alexa rank 1816
Newgrounds Alexa rank 2624
Poki Alexa rank 2985
itch.io Alexa rank 3449
Armor Games Alexa rank 3472
A10 Alexa rank 4164
Pogo Alexa rank 4955
Big Fish Games Alexa rank 5113
AGame Alexa rank 6009
Addicting Games Alexa rank 6657
Paco Games Alexa rank 8024
Girls Go Games Alexa rank 9280
Zepak Alexa rank 9516
Ninja Kiwi Alexa rank 10681
io Games Space Alexa rank 11295
NotDoppler Alexa rank 14516
Games Games Alexa rank 15194
Yepi Games Alexa rank 21526
Nitrome Alexa rank 24779
KHBG Games Alexa rank 24690
Game House Alexa rank 28541
Free Online Games Alexa rank 28628
Games Freak Alexa rank 35802
MAD Alexa rank 36964
Box10 Alexa rank 43227
One More Level Alexa rank 48128
Mouse Breaker Alexa rank 52226
Games 2 Girls Alexa rank 54837
io-games Alexa rank 56104
Fun Brain Alexa rank 57127
Frip Alexa rank 60455
Puff Games Alexa rank 65496
Crazy Monkey Games Alexa rank 68705
Flash Games 247 Alexa rank 72799
Game Gape Alexa rank 76718
Mind Jolt Alexa rank 78550
Bubble Box Alexa rank 80294
Cool Games Alexa rank 90502
Zapak Alexa rank 95136
GameZ Hero Alexa rank 109726
Spil Games Alexa rank 152091
Game Garage Alexa rank 1295785

* Alexa rank accurate as of 2nd October 2017

Cookie Clicker Save the World free game for iOS, Android and Facebook Gameroom

drmop

Just released my latest mobile and Facebook game Cookie Clicker Save the World targeted at raising awareness of climate change in a fun and challenging gaming environment. Gamers playing the game are gradually introduced to various climate issues and what can be done to help, such as recycling, using wind power etc..

The game is an idle builder / tapper based in the near future where current day currencies have been replaced with a new cryptocurrency called cookies. Players have to research and buy new technology to reduce carbon emissions reducing mankind’s impact on the environment.

Game features include:

  • Bake cookies by clicking on the cookie moon, use cookies to purchase items and technology that help the climate and produce more cookies.
  • Use cookies to buy over 200 upgrades and mods to speed up carbon reduction and cookie production.
  • Earn over 200 achievements.
  • Use powerups to speed cookie cooking production.
  • Evolve your cookie mastery to gain extra benefits.
  • Daily bonus awards.
  • Login with Facebook, invite friends, share progress and compete with friends in the cookie master leaderboards.
  • Offline cookie cooking.
  • Random blessings boost your play.
  • Deal with random curses such as striking workers, maintenance shut downs and more.
  • Endless play allows you to play an indefinite amount of time

Cookie Clicker Save the World is available for free on the App Store for iPhone and iPad

Cookie Clicker Save the World is available for free on the Google Play for Android

The game is also available for free on Facebook and Facebook Gameroom

You can find out more about the game at the official Cookie Clicker Save the World website.










Upgrading from Unity 5.4 to 5.6

drmop

Recently had the need to upgrade a couple of projects from Unity 5.4 to 5.6 and after much trial and error and scouring the net for solutions I finally managed it. My project uses two plugins which do not play well with Unity 5.6, these include:

  • TextMeshPro – Do not use the version that is currently on the asset store (Version: 1.0.55.0b11) or your project will explode, instead grab it from here. If you already have a version of TextMesh Pro installed into your project then delete it (backup fist!), then install the version this link
  • Chartboost – Update to version 6.6.4 as previous versions do not compile with Unity 5.6!
  • Facebook SDK – Deleted old Facebook SDK 7.8 including the Facebook related stuff in the Plugins folder, installed latest Facebook SDK from fresh!

By the way, if you see errors appear, shut Unity down and reopen the project them allow, most of the time the errors just disappear.

From Unity 3D to Facebook Hosted!

drmop

So I decided to have a go at getting one of my mobile games up and running on Facebook’s site, chatting to other game developers they warned me to steer clear as its a pain and it will eventually break when they change to the next API release etc… Of course I didn’t heed their advice and went ahead and gave it a try. The main reason being that Facebook now host game content for you, so you no longer need to host it on your own web site using up your own meagre bandwidth and best of all you do not need to buy and manage SSL certificates, whats not to like.

Exporting to Unity WebGL

So the first thing I did was export a build to WebGL gave it a quick test. However I didn’t like the Unity logo, app name or full screen button at the bottom of the screen so I opened up the exported index.html and commented out the following lines of html to remove them and provide a clean clutter free view of my game:

      <div class="logo"></div>
      <div class="fullscreen"><img src="TemplateData/fullscreen.png" width="38" height="38" alt="Fullscreen" title="Fullscreen" onclick="SetFullscreen(1);" /></div>
      <div class="title">Tens Junior</div>
    <p class="footer">&laquo; created with <a href="http://unity3d.com/" title="Go to unity3d.com">Unity</a> &raquo;</p>

Set the screen resolution

Ok, I wasn’t happy with the default screen resolution that Unity exported my game at so I changed it, taking into account that my game will be shown in a frame on Facebook, so I changed the canvas width and height in the Unity WebGL export settings dialog to 480×800. Lovely, it now fits on a 1080 display.

Create a Facebook App for your game

So I now have an app that I can submit to Facebook and have it hosted by them, the next thing to do is to go and create a Facebook app. To do that head over to the Facebook Developer Site and create an app. When creating the app ensure that you add the Facebook Web Games platform and in settings ensure that you have WebGL and Simple Application Hosting enabled. In general settings also ensure that you at least provide App Name, Email Address, Privacy Policy URL, App Icon (1024×1024) and select the Games category.

Uploading your game to Facebook to be hosted

In the Facebook Web Games section, locate the Simple Application Hosting section, just beneath that there is a link named “uploaded assets”, click that link, a new browser tab will open which takes you to the Manage Hosted Asset section, click the add and setup button to the top right then under Hosting Type select Unity (WebGL).

Now go to your Unity exported WebGL folder and zip up all the files, this should include index.html, TemplateData and Release folders, ensure that index.html is in the root of the zip. Go back to Facebook Manage Hosted Assets section and click the Upload Version button, select the zip you just created then upload. The file will show up as processing, after a while this will change to Standby, at this point you can push your app to production by clicking on the small Move to Production button (If you want to later replace the build with a new version, simply move the build back to Standby by clicking the Move to Standby button, delete the build then re-upload a replacement.

Once the build is live you can visit your app url (see the Facebook Web Games Page URL in the Facebook Web Games section of your apps settings). Visit this URL and you will be able to test the game. Note that your game will not go live however until it is reviewed by Facebook and approved.

Getting reviewed

I am quite lucky with my game because I do not require any extra permissions. The game only logs into Facebook, uses the players profile picture and shares the players progress via the share dialog. To get the ball rolling you need to click the Add Products button to left hand side of the screen in app settings then select “App Centre”, fill out a bunch of info about the app including short / long description, app icons / screen shots etc. Once that is added you can submit for review. Note that if you need any additional permissions such as publish_action then you will need to provide additional info during submission.

Finally don’t forget to make your app public (go to the App Review section of the apps settings and click the button at the top of the screen, this will toggle your app between live and development mode).

The end result can be seen by taking a look at Tens Maths IQ Challenge on Facebook.

Facebook now host Games up to 500MB!

drmop

I’m usually so busy that I miss cool stuff sometimes, anyway, I’ve discovered today that Facebook will now host WebGL (including Unity) and HTML5 game content for you for free. So gone are the days of having to host your own and get a SSL certificate etc.. There are some limitations however such as 500MB max content size, 500 max files and no use of scripting languages such as PHP. Still for most uses its great.

You would not believe how m any times I had to retype that last paragraph! My son gave me a gaming keyboard and after years using tghe same keyboard, its proving very difficult getting used to one with bigger keys!

Ok, more details about this cool new Facebook feature here

Booty5 HTML5 Game Maker 1.9.3b out now – Droidscript support added

drmop

It has been a long while since I released an update of Booty5, but at last it is here. A good fellow over at Droidscript got in touch to let me know that they had added a plugin for their awesome app (check it out to see what I mean by awesome) which enables developers to develop games using the Booty5 API directly on an Android device and / or via a desktop browser, which to me is coolness of a higher degree. I had planned a release of Booty5 to push out the latest changes to the engine as well as support for texture packer trimmed bitmaps amongst other things so I went ahead and interfaced the Booty5 editor directly with the Droidscript app allowing games to be sent directly to Droidscript and played on the device. This provides a very rapid development environment directly on device.

The changes for this release include:

  • By setting the host in project settings to the wifi address supplied to you by the Droidscript app and checking the Droidscript checkbox, you can run your projects directly on a connected Android device
  • Updated to the very latest Booty5 engine which includes support for features like tasks, events and smaller exported scene data
  • Open in IDE no longer opens in WebStorm by default, instead Visual Studio Code is used
  • Projects no longer deploy separate source files, instead booty5_debug.js or booty5_min.js are deployed
  • Socket.io can now be exported with projects
  • New export location added to project properties that allows you to specify where deployed files will go when running / testing
  • Host project property added which allows deployed projects to launch a specific host url when running / testing
  • Added two new canvas fit modes, Fit Greatest / Fit Smallest
  • Added Body and Head properties to project properties, additional html can be added here to be exported in the body and head sections of the html file
  • Added nodejs command prompt button
  • Fixed crash bug when creating a label with no font
  • Added animation sets to brushes
  • Removed animation frames, start frame and playback speed from actors, you now specify the animation name to play as default
  • Get actor size will now get brush size if no geometry attached

Note that the Booty5 plugin for Droidscript is currently in beta (see the beta group for more details.)

The manual and API documentation have also been updated so please don’t forget to view / grab them.

The changes to the Booty5 engine v1.5.2 include:

  • Added support for events and event notification (see b5.EventsManager)
  • Added support for tasks (see b5.TasksManager)
  • Added support to brushes for animation sets
  • Added support to actors for working with brush animation sets (see b5.Actor.playAnim)
  • Bitmap based actors now support trimmed atlas images
  • Image based actors that use an atlas will use the size of the atlas frame, can be overridden by setting ignore_atlas_size to true
  • Removed support for web Marmalade
  • All booty5 scene data is now loaded into the b5.data space instead of window
  • Xoml data property names have been minified to greatly cut down Xoml datas format storage size
  • Added polyfill for RequestAnimationFrame to support older browsers
  • Some examples have been updated to fix various issues

Booty5 is a free Javascript based HTML5 game engine available on Github and a fully fledged game / app editor available for free. See the Booty5 HTML5 game maker website for more details.

Happy coding, don’t forget to leave feedback and report issues on Facebook / Google+ etc…

Colour Cycle Effect Unity Shader

drmop

Just added a new colour cycle effect transparent Unity shader to the free shaders collection. This shader can be used to overlay a y-axis colour cycle effect over a texture

The code for the shader is shown below:

Shader "Unlit/ColourCycleTexture"
{
	Properties
	{
		_MainTex("Color (RGB) Alpha (A)", 2D) = "white" {}
		_WaveSpeed ("WaveSpeed", Range(-1000, 1000)) = 20
		_Frequency ("Frequency", Range(0, 100)) = 10
		_Amplitude ("Amplitude", Range(0, 3)) = 0.02
		_RedScale("Red Scale", Range(0, 3)) = 1
		_GreenScale("Green Scale", Range(0, 3)) = 1
		_BlueScale("Blue Scale", Range(0, 3)) = 1
	}
	SubShader
	{
		Tags{ "Queue" = "Transparent" "RenderType" = "Transparent" }
		Blend SrcAlpha OneMinusSrcAlpha
		LOD 100

		Pass
		{
			CGPROGRAM
			#pragma vertex vert
			#pragma fragment frag

			#include "UnityCG.cginc"

			struct appdata
			{
				float4 vertex : POSITION;
				float2 uv : TEXCOORD0;
			};

			struct v2f
			{
				float2 uv : TEXCOORD0;
				float4 vertex : SV_POSITION;
			};

			sampler2D _MainTex;
			float4 _MainTex_ST;
			fixed _Frequency;
			fixed _WaveSpeed;
			fixed _Amplitude;
			fixed _RedScale;
			fixed _GreenScale;
			fixed _BlueScale;

			v2f vert (appdata v)
			{
				v2f o;
				o.vertex = mul(UNITY_MATRIX_MVP, v.vertex);
				o.uv = TRANSFORM_TEX(v.uv, _MainTex);
				return o;
			}

			fixed4 frag (v2f i) : SV_Target
			{
				fixed2 uvs = i.uv;
				fixed4 col = tex2D(_MainTex, uvs);
				fixed d = sin(uvs.y * _Frequency + _Time * _WaveSpeed) * _Amplitude;
				col.r += d * _RedScale;
				col.g += d * _GreenScale;
				col.b += d * _BlueScale;
				return col;
			}
			ENDCG
		}
	}
}

The shader works by adjusting the colour of the texel pulled from the texture applying a wave effect which is then scaled by red, green and blue scaling factors which can be used to change the colour of the overlaid effect. Here are a few parameters to try:

Produce a nice upwards red scroll effect:
Wave Speed – -150
Frequency – -20
Amplitude – -1
Red Scale – 0
Green Scale – 0.4
Blue Scale – 0

Produce a slow flash:
Wave Speed – 150
Frequency – 1
Amplitude – 1
Red Scale – 0
Green Scale – 0.4
Blue Scale – 0

You may need to adjust the red, green and blue scaling factors to match the colour of your texture.

Wavy Text Unity Shader

drmop

Just added a new wavy transparent shader to the free shaders collection. This shade can be used to apply x and y axis waves to textures which looks nice on bitmapped based text, e.g.:

Wavy Transparent Unity Shader

Wavy Transparent Unity Shader

The code for the shader is shown below:

Shader "Unlit/WaveTransTexture"
{
	Properties
	{
		_MainTex("Color (RGB) Alpha (A)", 2D) = "white" {}
		_WaveSpeedX ("X Axis WaveSpeed", Range(0, 100)) = 20
		_FrequencyX ("X Axis Frequency", Range(0, 100)) = 10
		_AmplitudeX ("X Axis Amplitude", Range(0, 100)) = 0.02
		_WaveSpeedY ("Y Axis WaveSpeed", Range(0, 100)) = 20
		_FrequencyY ("Y Axis Frequency", Range(0, 100)) = 10
		_AmplitudeY ("Y Axis Amplitude", Range(0, 100)) = 0.02
	}
	SubShader
	{
		Tags{ "Queue" = "Transparent" "RenderType" = "Transparent" }
		Blend SrcAlpha OneMinusSrcAlpha
		LOD 100

		Pass
		{
			CGPROGRAM
			#pragma vertex vert
			#pragma fragment frag

			#include "UnityCG.cginc"

			struct appdata
			{
				float4 vertex : POSITION;
				float2 uv : TEXCOORD0;
			};

			struct v2f
			{
				float2 uv : TEXCOORD0;
				float4 vertex : SV_POSITION;
			};

			sampler2D _MainTex;
			float4 _MainTex_ST;
			fixed _FrequencyX;
			fixed _AmplitudeX;
			fixed _WaveSpeedX;
			fixed _FrequencyY;
			fixed _AmplitudeY;
			fixed _WaveSpeedY;

			v2f vert (appdata v)
			{
				v2f o;
				o.vertex = mul(UNITY_MATRIX_MVP, v.vertex);
				o.uv = TRANSFORM_TEX(v.uv, _MainTex);
				return o;
			}

			fixed4 frag (v2f i) : SV_Target
			{
				fixed2 uvs = i.uv;
				uvs.x += sin(uvs.y * _FrequencyX + _Time * _WaveSpeedX) * _AmplitudeX;
				uvs.x = (uvs.x * 0.9) + 0.05;
				uvs.y += cos(uvs.x * _FrequencyY + _Time * _WaveSpeedY) * _AmplitudeY;
				uvs.y = (uvs.y * 0.9) + 0.05;
				fixed4 col = tex2D(_MainTex, uvs);
				return col;
			}
			ENDCG
		}
	}
}

The code works by applying a sine wave to the y-axis source texture coordinate and pumping that into the x-axis texture coordinate, a similar thing is done with the x-axis source texture coordinate, except that a cosine wave is applied to it. Note that when using this shader you should leave a little space around the bitmap text (around 10% of the image size) to prevent borders from showing.