FlashGameLicense.com

What is FGL?

It’s a lot of things; a community, a marketplace, a helping hand, your site’s primary game resource. Basically, FGL is a site for both developers and sponsors to sell and buy games respectively. As a developer, you register on the site, and you’re instantly part of the community, with a wide range of resources from job opportunities in flash game development to a forum that will help you figure out those annoying bugs in your latest flash game. As a sponsor, FGL makes sure that you have a working flash game portal, with a certain amount of traffic before verifying your account. Once you have been verified, you can browse through all the games on FGL, talk to developers you’re interested in, make bids, watch games for changes, and even chat to the community. Interested? Thought so, it gets better. As a developer, once you’ve familiarised yourself with FGL, had a chat with a few developers in FGL’s live chat, you may want to submit your latest game and see how successful it is! When you submit a game, you are in control of all aspects of the sale. Your game is put on auction and sponsors will receive an email with a list of new games. If they’re interested, they’ll bid on your game. I’m getting carried away with this introduction, let’s move on. 

Flash Game Auctioning?

Yep, you read it right, FGL is an auctioning site. Putting a game up on FGL couldn’t be easier. All you have to do is navigate to My Games, and click on Add a New Game. There you will be asked a number of questions like game title, summary, genre, estimated completion date etc. Once you fill everything to the maximum of your ability, you upload your swf with the choice of adding encryption on it, if you haven’t already done that. FGL will then ask you about the bidding options. Are you only looking for non-exclusive licenses? Or do you want a full-blown exclusive license for your game? You then choose whether you want other developers and friends to see your game, and then you’re done! Developers will be able to see your game instantly, but you will have to wait for the FGL staff to approve your game before sponsors can see it. Don’t worry! Approval usually doesn’t take longer than 24 hours.

Once your game has been has been submitted and approved, you will probably see something like this in your My Games section.

Game information on FGL

As you can see, you can change anything you want while it’s up for bidding. You can update your game, update its description, stop developer viewing, whatever you please! If a sponsor gets interested, and places a bid, you will see the details of the bid, what sponsorship they’re offering, any special conditions, and more importantly how much they’re offering! The only people who can see bid information is you and the sponsors.

First Impressions

You may have noticed the tab First Impressions on the picture above, this is another great feature you’ll find on FGL. After you make a game, you have the option of ordering First Impressions for your game. A First Impression is a review of your game by a user after playing it for the first 5 minutes. It’s designed to help you answer the question “How can I make my game better?”. FGL chooses users from diverse backgrounds to anonymously review your game under several headings such as Ease of Use, Fun, Graphics, and Sound. You can, of course, ask a specific question to the reviewers too. Here’s an example of an FI on my latest game:

First Impression on FGL

First impressions can be bought through paypal, and are going at 5$ for 5 impressions, 10$ for 11, etc. The more you get the better value! You can win First Impressions however through your Community and Market level (which i will talk about later), and competitions held by FGL periodically.

The Community

There is a buzzing community at FGL, where you can find almost anything you need to know about making flash games.  The forum was the first place I went to when I signed up. They include anything from a section on how to solve those annoying bugs in your games, to finding out about development Job opportunities that companies are offering. The full list can be seen in the picture below, though bear in mind that some forums are hidden from view until you build up your market level!

Forums at FGL

Community and Market levels are earned through your activity at FGL, and are used for a variety of things. Community levels get you rewards like First Impressions, but also give other developers and sponsors an idea of how active you are. The impression you give to the sponsor interested in your game is of the utmost importance, so the more active and involved you look the better. You can earn Community points through chatting on FGL’s live chat system, posting in forums, and rating games. Market points are earned through the actual buying and selling of games. When you buy or sell a game, you get the number of points equivalent to one point per $.10 of your final sale price. Market level tells sponsors that you’ve sold games before, and as a result make the buyer more confident about the risk of investing their money in you. The inverse is true too. As a developer, it’s important to know whether your sponsor can be trusted. It’s important to note though that you will only get market level if you donate the optional 10% that I will talk about later.

How do FGL make their money?

They don’t, at least not unless a developer is generous enough to give a donation of the optional 10% of the sale price. Again, it’s optional, and you are not forced to do it, but here’s why I do:

Before I found out about FGL, I had just started making games, and had no self confidence at all, let alone how anything in the flash game market worked. I had made my first game called Hotel Escape, and was wondering if someone would take my game, (for free), and put it on their site. A friend introduced me to FGL, so i signed up to see how it was, rumour had it i could earn some money for this game! Within a few hours, I already had suggestions on how to improve it and make it more appealing to sponsors. I’d like to mention at this point that the FGL staff are extremely helpful, and will usually go out of their way to help you if you have a problem. My game went on to make over $1500 with ad revenue, and i would have given my game away for free were it not for FGL.

I was more than happy to give my 10% to promote the continuation of such a great project, and I think the FGL staff deserve at least that if you sell your game on FGL.

Conclusion

I’m extremely happy that I found FGL. It started my career-on-the-side as a flash developer, boosted my confidence in my games, and encouraged me to go further! I thought I’d share the love with anyone who happens to pass by my blog. What are you still doing reading this drivel?  Go check it out!

Also, if you think FGL is great, you might want to check out FlashGameDistribution, and FlashGameBlogs, but thats a story for another time

So i needed to make an intricate piece of furniture for my hotel reception, and decided a pool table would further the grandeur of the room. It actually took me quite a while to make it look good, but here’s the result, let me know what you think!

]]> http://www.merlingore.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=176 http://www.merlingore.com/blog/?p=176 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MerlinsDevBlog/~3/VHAeijlAwUE/ http://www.merlingore.com/blog/?p=167#comments Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:08:06 +0000 Merlin http://www.merlingore.com/blog/?p=167 So work has commenced on the third and final instalment of the Hotel Escape series. I’ve decided for this one to make quite a large room, as it is a hotel reception, with the centrepiece being a grand fountain, as you can see in the image below. Nothing is coloured, and what you see is still very rough, but it gives you an idea of what i’m working on! I’ll post more as work progresses.

You can see a closeup of the fountain here.

So it looks like Whirled is holding a competition that’s runs every 3 months. The prizes are split up between Single and Multiplayer (you can win both at the same time). All you have to do is make a game with the Whirled API and submit it to whirled, and as long as it complies with their conditions, it’s eligible for the competition. 

Conditions: 

• You made the game yourself
• No advertising, though links to your site and your sponsor is allowed
• Needs to be in Flash 9, AS3, and use the Whirled API to award trophies
• Putting it on Whirled grants it a non-exclusive license
• You’re not a Whirled member of staff

And now the important part, the prizes!

Multi-Player Game

• improving players’ knowledge of telecommunications
• encouraging players to be eco-citizens using telecommunication technologies
• ending isolation and exclusion via telecommunications.

First place gets £4500, second gets £2250 and third gets £900.

Deadline’s midnight on March 31, 2009.

Link to competition on Whosegame

I think i’ll be joining in!

Fun Value

Those of you who played Hotel Escape 1 may have been faced with a few situations where it took you bloody ages to find anything. I had very small hit boxes for all items, and no visual response to your mouse being in the right position to click. This was originally supposed to make the game harder,and to the hardcore escape game players, it wasn’t that bad, but for the casual gamers out there, it just frustrated them. In Hotel Escape 2, I made things much more obvious. First of all i moved away from having to find too many items, combining them, etc, and moved closer to puzzles you had to solve. As for navigation, and finding items, I changed the mouse icon to arrows. It makes it less frustrating for causal gamers, but moves towards being too easy for fans to this genre.

Navigational Arrow

Cut scenes

One thing that is a big change from my last game is something I’ve already talked about, cut scenes. Though it increases the size of the file, it involves you a lot more, and adds something i think was missing in my first game. I found that HE1 was extremely static, with hardly any movement. You opened a door and you’d get the next picture of an open door. In HE2, you get to see most doors opening!  When you go into the room that you have to get by with a code, you get trapped in, and there’s a nice little animation.

Music & Sound Effects

Usually I’m not a fan of sound in my games. As a flash game player myself, i usually like playing my own music while playing a game, and usually reach for the mute button straight away. In HE1 however, the reviews all pointed to putting some sound, so i added a menu tune. I went a little further in HE2. I added a track for the whole duration of the game, (Moonight Sonata by Beethoven), and had some sound effects too. The response i got from the first impressions though was that i didn’t have enough sound effects. Seems that once you add some, you need one for everything! So next time, it’ll be all or nothing. 

Coding Technique

When i made HE2, i started pretty much from scratch and took a whole new approach, by learning AS3. HE1 was coded in AS2, and was the first time i coded in ActionScript. I do Computer Science in University however, and am very familiar with Java, so when I heard that AS3 conformed to the ECMAScript Language Specification, which is very similar to the structure that Java conforms to, I decided to make a framework for my Escape Games. I made two main classes, NavButton, and GameObject. Whenever I had a navigational item in a frame, I would make it a NavButton object, which handles events, where to go, what to display, etc. GameObject did the same thing but for items. It made things much easier to code, and as a result my game was much more organised. It also means that I can apply the same framework to HE3, so it’ll take me half the effort HE2 did.

In-Game Tutorial

So my first game, HE1, when i look back, was horrific, i have to be honest. That Tutorial annoys me so much how slow and messy it is. As Kyle Gabler said in his “How to Make a Game in 48 Hours”, “All the cool kids are doing it now!”. He was referring to the way tutorials have now moved from static pictures to being embedded directly into the game as you’re playing along. So thats exactly what I did. It could have been better, but not bad for a first attempt i believe.

Embedded Tutorial

Conclusion

I think that it’s a huge step from HE1, and I believe i have widened the audience who will enjoy this game. The success however, is yet to be seen. There has been a few sponsor viewings, we’ll see if it sells! 

Where can I find this game?

As the game isn’t sponsored yet, I’m going to wait a few days before publishing it here, but if you’re a member on FlashGameLicense with a community level of 2, and a market level of 1, you can find the game here. I will have a page here with the game, a walkthrough and some information on it eventually, so check back!

More info on it tomorrow! It’s 1:26 and i have morning lectures

• A compelling story that holds you by the hand and pulls you through the game
• Dynamic gameplay. No click fests, no constantly static pictures, cutscenes.
• A save feature, so that you can go back to the game at any time. 
• Intriguing music, preferably something mysterious.

Cutscenes

I have a few cut scenes in Hotel Escape 2 so far. I started adding them when i realised how much they add to gameplay. As long as they’re not too long, and is relevent to the game, not just randomely showing  off that you can do it. Since you’ve made the effort to come look at the blog, i’m gonna give you a sneak preview of the intro of the game. It’s still pretty rough around the edges, no music yet, but it’s the idea that counts You will only understand the intro however if you’ve played my first game.

Work continues on the game, and will hopefully be finished soon!