Facebook verified my business over night! Time to hit global launch on Calcul82 today!
Literally just this second received approval on Facebook Instant Games. Exciting! Just tested it out too and interstitial ads are live and good to go.
Well let me tell you, publishing to Windows Store is complex and was far from smooth. However I did it and now await their decision =D
Lot's of things that threw me with this one:
Huge install times (hours)
Problems importing the package.
Lengthy validation fail process and packaging.
Revision number kept firing back as incorrect. Revision numbers MUST have 0 on the end (i.e. 1.0.0.0) as the final 0 is reserved for MS use.
Plethora of new image (90+ so far) assets to create (there is supposed to be a generator tool, but it wasn't there so... manual)
Today has been spent creating the plethora of images required to submit your game to Facebook Instant Games.
All done, and Calcul8² has now been submitted for review! Fingers crossed I covered every base.
Point your device/s at https://www.adliberum.com/x/calcul82 to play!
OR on itchio at https://liamtwose.itch.io/calcul82
Spent the day implementing a smart save system to replace the old 'rudimentary' version. Plus interstitial ads will be in this time round (shall see how they pan out).
Point your devices at: https://www.adliberum.com/x/calcul82
The remainder of my #30daydev will now be spent making all the images, icons, banners, screenshots and video required in order to pass review xD
Been a while since I did any what I'd deem 'hardcore' coding, all about the wysiwyg and fast iteration nowadays, so I spent a few hours working through Chris Deleon's JS+HTML5 tutorial.
Reminded me no matter how many years away from it you'll never forget the solid coding principles, so found myself jumping ahead and predicting what was to come next.
Here is the result. Rusty, but still, a solid result.
Was great to finally be able to throw my hand at a light bit of game dev. Started a remake of Calcul8 which I've very cleverly named Calcul8² (Calcul8 squared)
Check it out at: https://www.adliberum.com/x/calcul82
One of the downsides to picking the main goal I have means it's not generating alot to share.
Going to set a few mini goals to give me more to share and start putting the hashtag back on the map.
In this brief blog post I question where we go from crafting in game development?
In this short blog post I discuss briefly about assigning different roles to each device you own.
One, two miss a few... whoops!
My latest blog post for gamedevology.com carries on my discreet game tutorial mini-series...
This blog post explores how to tell your players where to go, without actually spelling it out to them.
So this week to break back into the writing mood I've started a new mini-series which looks at ways to hold your players hand throughout your game without necessarily holding it.
Read the blog post at: http://gamedevology.com/2015/03/30/creating-discreet-game-tutorials/
The series I've pretty much written out ready, just needs expanding upon and will be released slowly over the next weeks, I'm now aiming to write a new blog post every 3 days to keep my mind in writing zone.
Good job I posted so many last time!
My latest post actually talks about the importance of taking a break, which I wrote because I was ready for a break from everything #gamedev related. This is a message we all need to heed regularly as failure to take regular breaks can potentially be damaging.
Read and share the post at: http://www.liamtwose.com/take-breaks-from-game-dev/
This week I wrote another article for #Gamedevology exploring the idea of how time could affect games could affect the game world, evolve it or alter the experience.
This actually sparked from writing a blog exploring AI in games which I will be crunching down into digestible chunks and releasing over the next few weeks.
Phew made a major update to ARGH-P-G bringing it to version 2 with lots of enhancements and improvements. Although the downside a few more bugs / oversights to contend with again.
Check it out at liamtwose.itch.io/arghpg
Also written 2 articles surrounding character exploration for gamedevology.com:
How to give npc characters more character
Bridging the connection between player and character
This week I wrote a blog post all about my thoughts on connecting the player to the character that they play. I'd love to see more games make more of a connection.
Read it on Gamedevology.com -> Bridging the connection between player and character
The danger to taking breaks. Just broke my ARGH-P-G code after a small break :)
Need to rewrite certain elements anyway so no time like the present.
In better news, I officially launched Gamedevology.com to the game dev world today, with its own twitter account @gamedevology
So I've had a small break from any development to ensure I remain in total control of my workload, it's so easy to get wrapped up in a project so much that other things lose a little focus.
Highlights:
This week I attended a local game dev drinks night with some great developers in my area who I will now be sure to stay in regular contact with, made some great connections and the future is certainly looking a lot brighter,
I covered a game dev club teaching kids how to use Kahootz. A great experience.
I've also written a blog post for #gamedevology exploring how to give npc characters more character thus kicking off my first major topic of my new website Gamedevology.com exploring game development to get us all really thinking about the way we make games now and in the future in order to make better games.
So this week I've written a blog to kick-off my Gamedevology website surrounding game dev and design research, exploring How to make Non-Player Characters more interesting
Made a new game dev meme. Started exploring a movement system for a prototype I'm making in Unity3d. Speaking with a contact about a job teaching children how to make games. PLUS mapped out lots of topics of conversation and exploration into game design and dev for Gamedevology.com
Whilst yesterday I didn't get any physical game dev work done, I have however just launched my new specialist website, gamedevology.com, designed to provoke thought in game developers, open minds through thought, theory and research.
I also wrote a blog post with some tips on naming games
In line with where I plan to take my own game dev journey, post judging at a local game jam for Global Game Jam, and in line with my mission to helping future game developers, I wrote a blog post about how collaboration is key to making real gamedev magic
No unity yesterday as I spent a lot of time, bringing my 2d fast-paced dungeon crawler rpg named ARGH-P-G to the next base build version v1.150. Implementing 3 class types to choose from, each bringing their set of strengths, weaknesses and abilities to the mix.
Play the latest version on itchio
The aim currently is to bring it to a classic dungeon crawler stability and then to explore the other ideas I've had for it.
I'm very close to having a solid foundation to build upon, which exciting as then I can start to look at the real meat and substance of the project.
Next up I'm hoping to look into creating seeded dungeons and also to working on making play-throughs more of a progression.
@liamtwose
The last time I coded properly was a few years back now, following the discovery of tools like Construct 2 that make dev quicker, so diving into Unity3d has brought be back a few years.
Yesterday I figured out how to destroy an object after the sound (on the object) has finished, just need to work out a better way to work with audio. But for now it works, which is the most important thing.
The amount of times I've hit play mode only to lose all the changes I just made, is unreal, so I was very grateful for the advice given over twitter which taught me how to set the tint for playmode. Lifesaver!
Next stop, basic level random spawning here I come.
