Trouble getting back into it

Things are not going well as far as progress on Barrage's development.  I have been having a difficult time finding the time/motivation to get much progress on Barrage these last few weeks.  Things have been very busy with the holidays and work, I write payroll software and end of the year is very busy as tax time approaches.  Not to mention that even when I do work on the game it is usually for 1 to 2 hours at a time which makes it very difficult to get large portions of development accomplished.

This is not to say that Barrage is sunk by any means, I plan on seeing this game all the way through for sure.  What it does mean is that the timeline for getting this game released is going to have to be pushed back.  It's looking more like end of February or early March for a release of Barrage.  The delay can be a good thing as this will hopefully provide me with extra time for polish.

Back from a break

I decided to take the weekend off from writting any code.  Between programming at work during the day and then again at night for games I was a little burnt out from staring at a computer screen.  I am now ready to do some more work on Barrage this week and hopefully make some good progress towards getting the first level started.

I purchased a great XBLIG this weekend called "Leave Home" and played it a bunch this weekend.  It's a great game and part of the same genre as Barrage.  The overall length for "Leave Home" is very short but the replayability is through the roof as it sports a dynamic difficulty based on the performance of the player.  Add a stellar presentation to that and you have a great game that is definately worth a purchase.  I hope that Barrage can live up to that level of quality when I am done with it.

I also found a couple of reviews for Ripple on-line, one positive, and one rather neutral.  It was nice to see some press for that game even though I have made very little effort to market that game.  The neutral review had a few negative things to say about the game which was actually helpful since I got to read another player's perspective and add to the list of things to change for the Ripple update and for Ripple 2, which I will begin work on after Barrage is complete.

Plus, we are smack in the middle of the Indie Games Uprise which began this month which sports some great releases on XBLIG.  If I were you I would check them out and start downloading.

Untangle the mess

Barrage was beginning to feel like a bit of a mess.  Some of the code I had put together just felt very tacked on and unkept.  I decided I would like to re-write some of it so I took this opportunity to move the project from XNA 3.1 to 4.0 incase I don't get it done by the beginning of January, which will be to cut off for XNA 3.1 submissions.  I really like some of the changes I made and it feels like a good move.  Although I probably should get cracking on an update to Ripple before 3.1 goes away for good.

Enemies on screen for Barrage

Random enemy generators just don't seem to work too well with a side scrolling shooter.  It looks like I may have to go back to my original method of loading the enemies from a flat file.  I will also need to work on adding obstacles that the player must avoid.  While I find it fun and interesting to tackle theses problems I really wish I could find better examples of how others have done this.  I'm sure that the methods I am using are not the best but they get the job done.  Microsoft has great starter kits that explain a lot about getting your game started but it seems a bit lacking in tutorials that deal with this stuff.  Time to put the nose to the grind stone and figure out my own method.

Barrage is going well

I think I finally decided on the direction I want Barrage to head.  I think its a solid gameplay mechanic that is score driven and has arcade style elements.  It should be intense enough for hardcore gamers but with the ability of being casual for the recreational gamer.  Ripple seemed to turn off a lot of gamers due to its difficulty so I hope Barrage has a greater level of accessiblity without ignoring the harcore gamers.  Today, I finally got a couple of hours in one sitting to work on Barrage, and it was nice.  With videogame programming being a hobby of mine I don't have as much time to devote to it as I would like but tonight I was able to get two and a half hours solid to work on it.  This allowed me to make some good progress and I feel good about the direction the game is taking.  I am really shooting for a January 2011 release but that is difficult to tell at this point.

New Xbox dashboard

So it has now been nearly a week with the new Xbox 360 dashboard and I have liked most of the changes as far as indie games are concerned.  I do like how all the lists have been extended to the top 50 instead of the top 25.  That means more games more more of a chance to be easily viewable, it has given my game some more time to show on new arrivals.  The down side is it is now harder to find indie games.  Instead of just going to Game Marketplace > Indie Games you now have to go Game Marketplace > Speciality Shops > Indie Games.  This will make it harder for someone to stumble across the marketplace for indie games but it shouldn't have a huge effect.  All in all I think the changes are welcome and will hopefully increase the attention that indie games receives.

Barrage update:  It is coming along nicely, albeit slowly since I can only work on games 5 to 10 hours a week.  I really wish I had to the time to work on these for a full work week but that is not something I can afford at this time.  Otherwise, I think it is looking pretty good and should still be on track for peer review in March, 2011.

Ripple Sales

I have sales data on Ripple's first 5 days on the marketplace.  It's part good news and part bad news.  The good news is over 1700 downloads occurred in those 5 days, which is over 340 downloads per day.  Bad news is less than 5% of those downloads were actually purchases.  Here are my theories on why the conversion precentage was so low. 

1) The game uses all primitives for graphics and does not look particularly stunning.  People often don't admit it but graphics can often times be a big reason why people buy a game.
2) The dual analog shooter genre is very crowded on indie games.  There are many to choose from and several of them are superb.  I feel that mine was of good quality but if your only going to buy one there are several others that well executed.
3) The difficult is rather steep and may turn off some casual gamers.  I consider myself a casual gamer but better than average at this type of game.  I still found it difficult to beat the game, I only did it 3 times during my weeks of play testing.

There are probably a miriad of reasons why this did not perform great from a sales standpoint but decent download numbers and a solid 3 star rating are not bad for never having programmed a game before.

Here are the actual sales figures
10/22/2010
Downloads: 643
Purchases: 22
10/23/2010
Downloads: 496
Purchase: 21
10/24/2010
Downloads: 276
Purchases: 15
10/25/2010
Downloads: 178
Purchases: 11
10/26/2010
Downloads: 131
Purchase: 3

On the Barrage front I am still making good progress.  Much of the ground work has been laid and I will continue to add to the game.  I think that one lesson I learned from looking at other top games online is polish.  I will have to spend a lot of time ironing out the fine details of the game and making all aspects as smooth as I can make them.

Ripple has landed

Today, Ripple was posted on the Xbox live indie games marketplace.  It only came out with one other game today so that means it will be at the top of new releases for longer which will hopefully boost sales a bit.  I will post some sales data when it becomes available.  As for my next project I have been toying around with a few ideas and I have it narrowed down to either a bullet hell type game or just a standard side scrolling shooter like Gradius.  I still like the idea of integrating some kind of music driven gameplay into it but I am struggling getting a method that works well.

Down time

The XNA creators club website has been taken down till Monday for updates.  I decided that I could use this time to start a blog for my small (nearly non-existent) game company.  I started writing games out of curiosity.  My background is in finacial programming but I have always been interested in game programming.  A few friends of mine had created an XBLIG awhile back and I thought I could use XNA and its tutorials to learn how to program a game.  I started just dabbling and messing around with a dual analog shooter as I felt that would be a good game for a beginner to learn with.  Over time, the game evolved and began to feel like a real game.  I added what I felt were unique elements and thought that I might have a chance at selling a copy or two on the Xbox marketplace so I decided to go for it.  This is how "Ripple" was born."Ripple" is my first game and is currently in review status.  As stated before it is a dual analog shooter.  The twist is that enemies cannot be killed with projectiles but rather with ripples.  The enemy is first tagged with a projectile and is then vulnerable to a ripple attack.  The more enemies killed with a single ripple the higher the score multiplier becomes.  This rewards players who leave more enemies on screen with more points but is also riskier.The game sports retro style vector graphics.  There were two reasons for this design choice: the game is akin to an old school shooter so I felt that it fits that vibe, I also lack the artistic talent or know how to create more complex graphics.  Sprite effects and animations are still new to me and I have a lot to learn about them.  Perhaps the next game I will incorporate some more complicated graphics I did have a good time working with one of my buddies from work on the music.  I had no idea he was so talented on the guitar but his stuff was great.  I originally didn't have any music driven gameplay in Ripple but after I heard his music I decided that it was one of the strongest things the game had to offer.  So, I changed the game from stages to surviving two songs.  Each song is about six minutes in length so that makes the game from beginning to end about 12 minutes.  It isn't easy to make it though the 12 minutes but if a player does then the replayability will have to come from wantiing to achieve a higher score.Speaking of my next game I'm not really sure what it will be at this point.  I guess my front runners are a 2-D brawler or a platformer; however, until I figure out how I'm going to create better graphics I'm not really sure what my next game will be.In any case I will just have to wait for Ripple to make it on the marketplace.  I don't anticipate it being a huge seller but I will hopefully re-coup the cost of the XNA membership and memory card I had to buy for testing.