Indie Game Developer

Indie game developer, film buff and fitness person. This is an account of my game development exploits. I have launched Ninja Ball Dash on iOS and Android, and I am currently working on a  new game.

[jamaldolleygames]

Game Dev Journey No. 50 (Covid-19 Edition)

Project Star Beasts Devlog #5 (Indie Sci Fi Horror Game) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=984yOiyAFLU

[jamaldolleygames]

Game Dev Journey No. 49 (Covid-19 Edition)

I have posted a few Project Star Beasts devlogs on Youtube, you can check those out using the below links. Please like and subscribe!

Project Star Beasts : 2D Sci Fi Survival Horror (lighting test, no audio)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrUqux0gwWs

Project Star Beasts Devlog #2 (Indie Sci Fi Horror Game)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oxf1OWtvx-I&t=11s

Project Star Beasts Devlog #3 (Indie Sci Fi Horror Game)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eloWPVSJmRA&t=10s

Project Star Beasts Devlog #4 (Indie Sci Fi Horror Game)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDUOocIneek

[jamaldolleygames]

Game Dev Journey No. 48

I can't believe it has been almost 3 years now since I created the first prototype for a survival horror game. I've been working on the project on and off since then. I have ramped up the production hours noticeably over the last few months during my free time.

I am still excited about the project and that excitement has just grown over the years. Over the last few months, I have created a lot of pixel art levels, I rewrote the main story and dialogue, I bought a 2D Unity Asset Store framework in order to speed up the game design process and soon I will start coding again. Now I am just finishing off the latest level design artwork, which I am planning to share more info on soon.

This is a very brief lighting and asset test.

https://youtu.be/wrUqux0gwWs

[jamaldolleygames]

Game Dev Journey No. 47

I have been MIA for almost a year now, fortunately I found my way back to the light :) I got really busy with work and I had very little time to devote to part time game development.

Now I have a bit of a dilemma, Super Ninja Ball Dash was green lit a few months ago and prior to it being green lit I have been working on a new gamedev project, something totally different from my platformer. I’m torn between starting again with Super Ninja Ball Dash or continuing to work on my new project.

I strongly believe that because I have all this new creative juices flowing I should continue to work on the new project. The new game that I am currently working on is a sci fi pixel art horror game and I will be post some artwork soon.

I will put Super Ninja Ball Dash on the back burner for now, as I plan to use an entirely different platformer framework which I found on the Unity Asset Store, and I will scrap all of my custom code which I took a year to write. Due to this gargantuan undertaking I will work on my new project first then I will come back to Super Ninja Ball Dash.

Please stay tuned.

[jamaldolleygames]

Game Dev Journey No. 46

Thank you for all the support. Super Ninja Ball Dash has been greenlit on Steam Greenlight :)  I know I’m a little late, however as the saying goes “it’s better late than never”

[jamaldolleygames]

Game Dev Journey No. 45 Battlefield 1 is awesome :D... Been taking a break from game development for the last 2 weeks and I have to admit it has been nice just coming home from work and playing some Battlefield 1 online. I'm not being 100% honest though, whenever I have free time during the day I still do lots of game dev research. Currently, I've been researching on how to go about rendering a game in old school pixel art resolution on a 1080p/Full HD display. It's a pretty loaded topic with lots of intricacies. As my engine of choice is Unity there's quite a lot of people who have already started blogs on the topic, as you are probably aware by now old school retro looking graphics has been making a serious comeback lately i.e. Lone Survivor, Towerfall Ascencion, Shovel Knight, Fez etc. As my main inspiration for game development has mostly been games that I've played as a child, I think it's only fitting that I design my next game to pay a strong homage to old school Mega Drive and SNES games. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for news on my next project.

[jamaldolleygames]

Game Dev Journey No. 44

First 3 days Steam Greenlight Update

This will be a quick update on Super Ninja Ball Dash on Steam Greenlight. I recently re-launched my Greenlight campaign after making significant gameplay upgrades.

I’ve included several powerups like Arrows, Bombs and a shield. Some powerups you can make even more powerful by combing it with another powerup. My first game had no poweups at all, it was just purely platforming.

I’ve added many new enemy types as well, in addition to tweaking the player movement to make it more responsive.

Overall my new Steam Greenlight campaign seems to be doing worst than the first for some reason even though I feel the game is much better now and the trailer respresenting the gameplay is also much better than the first trailer, which I used with my initial Greenlight campaign.

I have to admit I was not nearly as active on social media as I was before due to working full time now. If you are interested in the stats of my first Greenlight attempt please checkout my earlier blogs.

I don’t see any point in putting in another 50+ hours of development time on a game that doesn’t seem like it will ever get Greenlit. If ever it will get Greenlit, I’ll put in the dev time then. As they say the first 2-3 days in Greenlight are the most important and my 3 days are spent already.

Now, I’ll take a short break from game development as I need to play some survival horrors for research on my next game! I will start working on my Magnum Opus soon!

[jamaldolleygames]

Game Dev Journey No. 43

Steam Greenlight Submission Research

Today i have done bit bit of research on which day of the week is the best day to launch a Steam Greenlight campaign. I have decided to research this topic, as most games, based on my research of the last few months suggested that all the games get greenlit on mostly internal Steam traffic, as opposed to any traffic generated externally from social media or websites etc.

Due to having a limited amount of time I decided to focus my research on the following factors

- The time frame which I used was between 17th September 2016 - 17th October 2016

- I only counted the games which were Greenlit during the period above and the days when their Greenlight campaigns were launched on Steam.

- I did not filter the greenlit games by any specific genre, instead I counted the total game which were greenlit

Knowing how many greenlit games launched their respective Greenlight campaigns on which day of the week, should give a decent idea of which days of the week over the last 31 days was the best days to launch a Greenlight campaign.

Below you will find the data that I gathered for the 32 day period between 17th September 2016 - 17th October 2016

Total games greenlit = 274 games

Below is the breakdown of the number of greenlit games and when during the week the campaign was started, additionally I have added the percentage of the total number of greenlit games during the research period as well as the average amount/percentage of games per day

Monday (x5 days) = 35 games / 12.7% / Average per day = 7 games / 2.54%

Tuesday (x4 days) = 40 games / 14.5% / Average per day = 10  games / 3.62%

Wednesday (x4 days) = 34 games / 12.4% / Average per day = 8.5 games/3.1%

Thursday (x4 days) = 38 games / 13.8% Average per day = 9.5 games / 3.46%

Friday (x4 days) = 48 games / 17.5% Average per day = 12 games / 4.37%

Saturday (x5 days) = 36 games / 13.1% Average per day = 7.2 games / 2.62%

Sunday (x5 days) = 43 games / 15.6% Average per day = 8.6 games / 3.12%

Based on the above data, I will rank the days which had the most amount of greenlit games launch their respective Steam Greenlight campaigns from best - worst. Please note that below I will only indicate the average games/percentage per day, this is due to some days having 5 days within the research period and others only 4 days.

Fridays = 12 games / 4.37%

Tuesdays = 10  games / 3.62% 

Thursdays = 9.5 games / 3.46%

Sundays = 8.6 games / 3.12%

Wednesdays = 8.5 games / 3.1%

Saturdays = 7.2 games / 2.62%

Mondays = 7 games / 2.54%

Now it’s easier to see that games that started their Greenlight campaigns on Fridays, Tuesdays and Thursday had the highest amount of Greenlight success. This could be due to more Steam users voting during this period, it could also mean that there might have been less games fighting for attention.

Lastly, I would like to mention that there might be a 2-3% margin of error due to miss counting some games as fatigue was setting in, as a result of  how monotonous it was to check all the 274 Steam Greenlight campaign pages.

Due to it being Friday today, I think I will re-launch Super Ninja Ball Dash’s Steam Greenlight campaign today, 21st October 2016 as it seems to be a good day to start.

I just though that It would be interesting to share this data with you. I would also greatly appreciate support for Super Ninja Ball Dash’s.

Let me know your thoughts.

[jamaldolleygames]

Game Dev Journey No. 42

Steam Greenlight campaign re-launch update!

It’s been a busy few weeks since my last blog post, I was able to complete my Steam Greenlight trailer and the campaign Icon within that time. The icon you can see attached in this blog post and the trailer I will release on the Steam Greenlight re-launch day.

Based on the feedback that I have received after releasing my last game trailer, I have made some significant changes on how I approached my new gameplay trailer. My first trailer focused on the slower exploration and puzzles elements of Super Ninja Ball Dash however many people felt that It made the game look very boring or dull. The new trailer will purely focus on the more engaging gameplay aspects, especially the new exciting gameplay features which I have added. This feedback I even used in the design of the icon, as you can see in the attached gif, the game should look both fun and challenging.

The only things left to do on my prelaunch checklist, is to take some compelling screen shots of the game and this time I will overlay some text, in order to explain game elements.

Lastly, I am contemplating creating a demo of the game however I’m not sure If I will go ahead with this, as It will require valuable time which could be spent of other aspects of the game. I will keep you posted!

Please let me know what you think of the attached Icon.

[jamaldolleygames]

Game Dev Journey No. 41

Steam Greenlight failure and renewed enthusiasm!

My last blog post was approximately 4 months ago when I did a post-mortem on Super Ninja Ball Dash on Steam Greenlight, It has been a very interesting journey to get to this point.

The biggest reason why I have disappeared, was due to starting a new job with long hours and 6 days a week of work. The new job took some time to get used to initially, hence I haven’t been very active. I did start working on the game again with whatever free time I could muster and I always try to put in at least 1-1.5 hours of game design daily and a little bit more on my off day.

Now, back to Super Ninja Ball Dash, that is of course the essence of my Game Dev Journey and the reason why I started this blog in the first place.

As you can see by the screen caps of my most recent Steam Greenlight analytics page, the game is doing very poorly or should I say It did very poorly, as now it has almost complete stopped getting any visitors.

In my 149 days on Steam Greenlight I have a received a total of 789 visitors of which 138 voted ‘YES’, that brings it to a 22% ‘YES’ to ‘NO’ vote ratio. Additionally, I gained 8 followers and the game is currently at 20% to the Top 100 Steam Greenlight games. 

Lastly, 90% of the visitors/votes I received in the first 3-5 days on Steam Greenlight.

I cannot see the game getting Greenlit ever with the data mentioned above, hence I have decided to relaunch my Steam Greenlight campaign soon. In order to avoid the same fate as my first Greenlight attempt, I made some significant changes to the game, by adding many new features and by making exciting gameplay improvements.

In my next blog I will discuss in more detail, what changes I have made to the game, why I have decided to make said changes and also why I think these features will make for a more engaging gameplay experience. Lastly, I will also discuss what effect I am expecting these features to have on my next Steam Greenlight campaign.

Thank you for taking the time to read this!

[jamaldolleygames]

Game Dev Journey No.40 : Super Ninja Ball Dash Steam Greenlight Post-mortem

This will be a multifaceted blog on the status of Super Ninja Ball Dash on Steam Greenlight, in addition to some conclusions that I have made thus far.

I started my Steam Greenlight campaign on 27th April and in the first 2 days, I was able to get mostly positive feedback on the game with the only exception being the following:

- Game being a mobile port

- Someone disliked the GUI

- Someone complained that the clouds in the background are static

Other than those comments above, it’s been all positive.

The first 2 days I got a 94/295 YES/NO vote ratio and I was 11% to the top 100 and the top 100 is basically the sweet spot where you are almost guaranteed to be Greenlit. These stats was quite disappointing however, I knew that most people will probably dislike my game, as you can’t please everyone right? Day 5 my YES/NO vote ratio was 108/394 and I was still stuck at 11% to the top 100, at this point my daily page visits went down to a crawl.

I was a late and missed the first 2-3 day traffic spike, however I was able to put together a demo of the game, my last attempt to positively impact my YES/NO vote ratio. I put the game on both Itch.io and Gamejolt. I figured if people can play the game then, they might be convinced of how fun Super Ninja Ball Dash is and hopefully vote YES instead of NO. Based on my overall stats the demos didn’t have any effect on my campaign, most probably due to me missing the first 2-3 day traffic spike. This also helped me realize a painful truth, which I will elaborate on more below,

You can try the demo of Super Ninja Ball Dash on PC, MAC and Linux using either one of these links. I would love some feedback :)

https://jamaldolleygames.itch.io/super-ninja-ball-dash-demo

http://gamejolt.com/games/super-ninja-ball-dash/145571

Today I checked my stats again, that’s after 16 days of being on Greenlight and my votes did not change much, I’m at 115/433 YES/NO votes and I climbed to 17% of the way to the top 100. This I'm assuming is due to games ranked higher than mine being Greenlit recently, this is only speculation though.

To put it bluntly those stats for lack of a better word suck! Some game got 600+ YES votes in the first day of Greenlight and i’m still stuck below 200. It’s not all doom and gloom though and I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

As Super Ninja Ball Dash is a completely overhauled version of the mobile version Ninja Ball Dash, I thought that the 2 months + worth of graphical upgrades, gameplay enhancements and overall polish would be enough to get me through Steam Greenlight, this was not the case. 

I know it’s possible to get your game Greenlit even if the game is not in the top 100, as some devs who got Greenlit at 64% of the way to the top 100. My first Greenlight campaign was an amazing learning experience even though I ultimately feel that it has been a failure. After thinking about how I will proceed with my Greenlight campaign, I realized that I have 2 options.

Option1:

Ride it out with my current Greenlight campaign and wait, with the hope of eventually getting Greenlight by the Steam Overlords, how long this will take if ever it will happen is impossible to determine.

Option 2:

Restart my Greenlight campaign and throw away all my current progress. This would ultimately end with the same result, if I do not make some significant changes to Super Ninja Ball Dash. 

I now know that the graphics of my game is pleasing, people like the music and some people liked the gameplay. I do believe that the biggest thing contributing to my negative YES/NO vote ratio was the overall gameplay and the presentation of the gameplay in the trailers and gameplay videos.

I have decided to go with option 2, ironically I decided that only today. The ironic thing is the that today I have finally completed all of the bug fixing and polish, which means that Super Ninja Ball Dash is official done with development and ready for launch.

I have decided to make significant gameplay improvements, in order to make the gameplay look faster and more varied, this will ultimately require a lot more work however, I feel that it’s better than just sitting and waiting for something that might not even happen.

This will be my last attempt to make something of Super Ninja Ball Dash and I’m pretty excited about it! Please stay tuned for future blogs!

[jamaldolleygames]

Game Dev Journey No. 39

I was finally able to make an Itch.io account, after thinking about if for some time now. I realized that having a working demo of my game could have potentially added to some “YES” votes on my Steam Greenlight campaign for Super Ninja Ball Dash. As a result I decided to upload my game demo to Itch.io. It’s probably too late now as my game is on Greenlight for 4 days now, which means I missed the huge 2-3 day spike in traffic.

I am however still looking forward to getting the demo into the hands of gamers, in order to get some feedback on their experience. The demo is pretty polished and as far as I am aware, it has no serious bugs that could ruin the game.

I am actually planning to release the full game on Itch.io at some point in the near future, while my Steam Greenlight campaign is ongoing.

You can download the demo of Super Ninja Ball Dash on Mac, Windows and Linux using the link below. Please let me know what you think of the game demo.

https://jamaldolleygames.itch.io/super-ninja-ball-dash-demo

[jamaldolleygames]

Game Dev Journey No. 38

The first 1.5 days have been interesting being on Steam Greenlight, I got some positive comments on my campaign page, and a decent amount of YES votes. I have to admit that the YES votes are less than what I initially anticipated before starting my campaign.

I have tried to update a few things on my Greenlight campaign page, in order to hopefully increase my YES votes. I will go over some of the amendments that I have made below.

- I realized that the gif was not as high resolution compared with the other Greenlight campaigns currently on Steam. Above you can see the differences in the resolutions of the gif’s. I basically reduced the total frames by more than half, mainly by removing every second frame and in order to look as fluid as the first gif, even though it’s technically less frames I sped up the speed of the animation. Overall it looks better now. Please let me know your thoughts.

- At the very top of my description I initially focussed more on the story of the game, however I changed this to immediately give an overview of the gameplay, as now I feel that not everyone who will visit the page will be interested in the story of a retro inspired, side scrolling platformer.

- I also changed the order of my videos. Before I had my trailer play first whenever someone opens my Greenlight campaign page, however now I have swapped this around so that my 2 gameplay videos can play first instead of my trailer. Im trying this approach, in order to ascertain if it would have a positive impact on the total YES votes, as maybe my trailer is not conveying the gameplay properly. Please see the links to my videos below. Feedback would be greatly appreciated on these :)

This is my trailer...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yFTqjvVso4

This is my gameplay video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n4UqOzrmbw

- Lastly, a voter asked if Super Ninja Ball Dash was previously a mobile title, as I very briefly mentioned this in my game’s description. He then followed up by saying that due to that fact, he will not vote for it. This comment confirms other blogs that I have read, stating that many Steam users are proud PC gamers and that they do not like getting mobile ports. I admit that that there are a lot of projects on Greenlight, that it is painfully obvious minimal effort went into making/porting those games, many of those games are crappy Google Play games. It is still disheartening having my game dismissed outright on the grounds of being a mobile port. I put in 2 months of hard work over the last 2 months in order to improve every aspect of the game, to appeal to PC gamers. The evidence of these updates are in my previous blogs. To rectify this issue, I basically removed the comment that I made, regarding my game being on mobile first and I also mentioned the improvements between Ninja Ball Dash and Super Ninja Ball Dash.

I will write another blog soon detailing the results of these changes to my Greenlight campaign. I hope that you found this blog informative.

If you would like to support Super Ninja Ball Dash on Steam please vote using the below link

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=673851963

[jamaldolleygames]

Super Ninja Ball Dash - Steam Greenlight Banners

[jamaldolleygames]

Game Dev Journey No. 37

I have to admit, I'm not really following a structured game design document while working on any of my games thus far, hence I'm jumping around between the different game design aspects i.e. pixel art, animations, coding etc. A good portion of this week was used to finish my pending art work, specifically the backgrounds.

The original Ninja Ball Dash on mobile only had 2 static backgrounds attached to the camera, basically one for each world, that’s a whopping 20 levels with the same background :( My goal with Super Ninja Ball Dash on PC was to noticeably increase the overall visuals of the game by adding an extra background image for each world, making it a total of 4 distinctive backgrounds. Each of the 4 backgrounds will have a specific visual tone, this in addition to the various hills, trees, mountains, icebergs and clouds that make up my parallax scrolling scenery, should hopefully add nice visual variety and make each area feel unique.

Creating background images is probably my weakest area of pixel art. I have never been good at perspectives and landscapes however, I think I did okay thus far in creating the backgrounds and I have definitely learned a lot since I first started work on this project a few years ago.

I will probably create another blog today, as I am finally planning to start my Steam Greenlight campaign. I have to admit I'm kind nervous and excited!

Please let me know your thoughts.

[jamaldolleygames]

Game Dev Journey No. 36

Before you can sell your game on Steam, independent game developers need to showcase their games on Steam Greenlight and the Steam users get to vote for their favorite games. If your game gets ranked high enough in the pool of Steam Greenlight games primarily based on “Yes” votes, in addition to some other metrics, you will eventually be able to sell your game on Steam.

A few blogs ago I mentioned some important aspects of a game’s Steam Greenlight campaign and for anyone who have missed that blog, I will go over those points below.

- Having a awesome trailer, showing tons of gameplay - Pics showcasing various gameplay functions and unique enviroments/locations - Amazing branding image to attract as many Steam users to your page as possible

In this blog I would like to discuss the Steam Greenlight branding image or Icon. It is the first impression that your game will make to potential new voters. Your Icon will basically be on a grid layout amongst many other Greenlight games all of which will be fighting for attention, hence having a high quality gif or Icon would hopefully make it easier for your game to stand out amongst the crowd. Please use the below link to see what I am refering to.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/browse/?browsefilter=mostrecent&appid=765&browsesort=mostrecent

While doing a bit of research on how to go about creating said high quality gif, It became aparant that there are usually many, and sometimes complicated steps to follow. I eventually ended up using a few combined tutorials to create what I wanted, below I will give you an overview of the process that I used to create my gif.

I started by making a few very short gameplay clips of Super Ninja Ball Dash, using Quicktime’s screen recording function on my Mac. I then opened up the gameplay clips in iMovie to edit the most important sections that I wanted to use in my gif. Once I was done doing that, I exported the video file from iMove.

I ended up with 4 seconds of gameplay footage and because I exported the file at 60fps, which was a mistake on my part, as more frames = a bigger file size and you are limited to only 2mb. I then opened up Quicktime and played the movie frame by frame, capturing the individual frames with the Mac screencapture function, the total frames ended up being 270 which is way to much for a gif. I then copied every second frame into Gimp (art editing/creation software), even at 135 frames it was still too much and the result was a huge 15.7 mb gif. I had to get the file size down to 2mb! I cropped and rescaled the images inside Gimp to reduce the file size which got me to just under 2mb. Then I only had to export the file as an animation and viola, a pretty cool looking gif!

All in all im pretty happy with how it turned out and all things considered it’s not that difficult to create a high quality gif, once you’ve gone through the process atleast once.

Please let me know, what you think of the gif.

[jamaldolleygames]

50 posts!