v5.kazzuya.com

Rants Service Pack #1

2012-01-12T19:12:00.000+09:00

XML is shit.. but when everyone eats shit, then I guess that shit starts tasting good, and most (?) people now just looove it !
Oh, but it's human-readable ! Yes, a string of hex values is also human readable..

C++ is pretty much shit as well.. but there was no alternative and I had to move on from 'C' ..sigh..
But if could be fixed.. all you need is a time machine and an hacked-up Terminator handy.

Unity/Unreal Engine/OMG-I-Just-Want-to-Make-a-Game Tool... are just a way to be somebody's bitch. One either is a developer or is a user.. if you use Unity/WhateverEngine, then you're a devuser.
OK, it's not all so black or white.. that's true, in fact Unity is just brown 8) (..conceptually, because I wouldn't know the first thing about those canned engines).
The engine companies don't want you to make games.. they just want people to waste money and depend on them (aka "being a bitch of").
So, man-up and write your code !! And don't start crying about how hard it is, or how long it takes on how you don't want to "reinvent the wheel" (the lamest meme of all).. it's all about you learning how to get things done.

Men wearing hats indoor, because they just want to look cooler.. are another category of "people that ought to be strangled in front of their children" (cit.)
Useless fedora hats or those condom-looking condom-hats that are so popular in Japan.. they just look lame.. especially if I'm sitting behind you and trying to look ahead !

Men should really not wear shorts.. and sandals, and baggy t-shirts. Just dress properly, nobody wants to see your legs !
Also I don't really care about your t-shirt.. if you want to send a message, leave a suicide note and jump off a building. I'll be reading the news 8)

I've developed a full-on hate for TV now. Before it was the commercials, so loud and in your face. Now it's 99% of what's on. Serial TV which you have to learn to like. Guns guns guns and more guns. Or lots of knives and gang yakuza beatings if you're in Japan.
The sad thing is that the American serial TV are rather realistic.. people just like to shoot at each other, they like crime, murder and so they think that it's cool to actually do it (death is exciting !)
Inability to separate human instincts and curiosity from reality is a very dangerous thing.. and not all cultures are at the same abstraction level on that.
So, TV is shittier than ever and luckily we don't need it anymore. Dear TV, please die soon !

Politics is... ahhhh... what can I say. I'm constantly amazed on how people can reason on one side and the act completely dumb on the other.
Politics is a reflection of people's inability or unwillingness to be consistently coherent and logical.

People that want to become game designers because they are good at games and know all about them.. are simply doomed to fail.
You don't wake up one morning and become a movie director and not everyone in the movie industry can be a damned director ! Some will become directors.. just not you ;)

And, that's it for now.. (^_^)

I Still Blog You !

2011-12-29T04:26:00.000+09:00

I've been meaning to write a free-style blog post in a while.
The past blog posts have been too focused on mobile game dev and marketing.

A lot of things that one used to gather in a blog post, nowadays end up scattered around Twitter and Facebook (I have FB setup so that my tweets end up in there as well).

Most of the pictures I take are also by cell phone and they end up on Twitter (see the recent images gallery.. but what if I want to see all of them ? mumble mumble !)

As 2011 wraps up, I'm still going forward as an independent mobile games developer. Holding on, but it's certainly a struggle.
Without a monthly salary and with the marketing and PR of your own games in your own hands, anything that you do or don't do has an effect to you being able to live well or struggle to pay the rent (which I now realize is so expensive !).

At the same time, the marketing stuff is so up in the air. Does writing a post in some message board or a tweet somewhere actually make a difference ?
I've seen that having a natural connection to the Italian market (friends and family and translating a game to Italian) does have an effect. My latest game Fractal Combat sold relatively well in Italy and was high in the charts there for the first couple of weeks of the release.

On the other hand, how does one have an effect on the biggest market, the American one ?
Does advertisement space make a difference ? If it does, it's not in the immediate, because it's really hard to correlate any increase in sales when spending hundreds of dollars in ads space.

Ads are tricky, I like to believe that there is a meaning behind spending money on those. The meaning would be that the game gets noticed in some way and that there is some potential butterfly effect.
Otherwise, if one sees the cost of an ad, and the people that click on the ad, then if all the people that click through the ad, actually buy the 99 cents game (extremely unlikely), one would simply make back the initial investment.

So, ads must serve a secondary purpose.. maybe some sort of reinforcement of a brand of a game name that may translate into a purchase at some point.
Maybe one has to launch a heavy campaign that generates interest on all relevant sites all at once in a short window of time.. Or maybe they are just useless 8)

I don't like these things, because they are chaotic and practically impossible to predict !
This is the exact opposite of programming, where everything goes by the rules, and time isn't unstoppable (when programming, one gets virtually infinite chances to try all possible ways to do something in the exact same state).

Then there are the usual problems of working by yourself at home.. mostly discipline. On one side, I practically work every single day, on the other side, it's hard not to give into distractions and focus is really hard to obtain.. also because I have to do some much work that I wouldn't normally like to do !

Recently I've been trying to broadcast some sessions of programming/stage editing.
Nothing special, actually, mostly boring, because it all seems to happen at a rather slow pace. This is the mostly boring programming bits, when stuff just needs to be done. But knowing that someone may be watching (live or later on), keeps me on my toes.
So far, this has helped to prevent me from stepping off and grab a snack or get lost in some strange corner of the Internet.. or maybe do some other interesting programming, that however isn't what I'm supposed to be working on 8)

So, well, this blog post ended up being about work as well.. but it's a post nonetheless !

Have fun !

Android sales improving for Final Freeway

2011-11-09T11:47:00.002+09:00

Almost one year after the release, the Android sales for Final Freeway are finally improving !
The Android Market has improved a lot since I initially complained about it. In addition to the web interface (as I noted in a previous post), it's now possible to set different prices for different currencies, to have well rounded numbers for every currency.

But the main difference in terms of visibility and sales was the introduction of the racing category. Since that, sales improved 5-10 times and we're now consistently selling more than 20 copies per day. Which is not amazing, but certainly promising.

Here is a simple graph of the Google Checkout monthly payouts for Final Freeway for Android.

We released on the Android Market towards the end of December 2010 and reached a first sales peak in January. Probably mostly due to the fact that the game was a new release.

Sales then went flat for a while, and at that point we were pretty much disappointed.. until the racing category was introduced and the game started showing in there, floating between the 12th and 16th position.

I'm not sure how one does get to a fairly high position to start with. The game has not been featured on the Android Market front page, so no help there.. but it's a fairly popular game on iOS.

It also somewhat helped when I decided to try to put FF for iOS free for one day (I'll talk about this in a future post), because that gave a spike of visibility to the game in general. Two platforms can help each other's sales.

What about piracy? The 1.0 of FF for Android is still out there, but not the latest updates, where we put a little bit more effort into protection.

One nice thing about Android is that the protection scheme can somewhat be customized (more checks, etc.) and my guess is that any customization will throw off the "drive-by crackers" that will crack anything that is crackable with some default script.. but they won't put any effort into cracking a single game. At least not one that isn't hugely popular 8)

Let's just hope that it stays like that...

So, iOS remains the main platform, but future ports to Android seem to be more meaningful now.

We've also been considering moving to in-app purchases for Android. Putting on the market the game for free, but with most of the features and/or content to be unlocked with the in-app purchase system.

However it's possible that that won't make a big difference in actual sales.

The big business of in-app purchases seems to be around addiction and gambling schemes.. not simply making something free form the start and asking to pay a one-time fee later.

We're considering those things.. but it's not a sure bet. The big hope is still to have a better market and ideally being able to be featured on the Android Market's front page at least for future titles.. ..speaking of gambling ! eh !

First month of Fractal Combat's sales

2011-09-05T05:24:00.001+09:00

I've been thinking about posting an update on the situation with my independent game business, but it's hard to sit down and decide what to write.
For example, I wrote a long post a week ago and then scrapped it.. 8)

Fractal Combat so far is doing OK, only OK. Mostly because after the first 2-3 weeks of sale, I've all but stopped marketing it and focused on producing the first update.
This was due mostly to the lukewarm reviews from the likes of TouchArcade, 148Apps and PocketGamer, which got me worried that other review sites may start to copycat those reviews.. which are not entirely negative, but are also not very positive (accusing a cheap mobile game of being too repetitive? Yeah, sorry! 148Apps giving it 3/5 on graphics? Yeah, right!).

Admittedly, some of the potential weaknesses were known.. but I just didn't have the time. The game was complete and I needed to sell it as quickly as possible to stay in business (it's not just me, but I'm the one that depends fully on this 8).
There are no bugs or missing features.. but of course on iOS it's a given that there are going to be updates to improve on the original release and I counted on that (users do, so should I).

A few days after the release, Apple featured it in a decent spot, and that lasted about 2 weeks, which is good, but not good enough.
The game initially sold for $1.99 and is now $0.99. I regret not having lowered the price as soon as it was featured, because I'm guessing that sales volume (or lack thereof) is what makes a game worth keeping in the featured list or not.

Nevertheless the game is still doing quite well in Italy !
That's due to a few factors.. one of them is the specialized sites' reviews. Frankly, reviews are subjective by definition. I have some communication channels with some Italian sites and journalists, and that helped me a great deal to get some fair coverage.
Having any kind of dialogue makes it possible to address potential complaints and to ensure that some things will be fixed or explain why the game is in a certain way.. the reasoning behind it. Not having a communication channel means that your game is one out of many in the App Store, and you're in the hands of some unknown reviewer that my love it or may hate it.

The moral is that PR matters a lot, especially in the context of independent mobile games facing competition from big budget games down selling for $0.99 a month later.
Having coverage in any country is great.. but having coverage in the much larger US market would be even nicer 8)

Now, a few words about piracy: I've been looking at the Game Center's leaderboards entries to estimate a "piracy ratio". GC is tightly integrated in iOS and Fractal Combat posts leaderboards entries automatically, so anyone that has GC activated (most players?) and that plays the game, will show up in the leaderboards.
I can then compare that number of users with the number of copies sold to guess how many copies out there weren't paid for.
Based on that, on the first few days, it was a staggering 9:1 in favor of pirated games, but that was mostly due to some extra exposure in the piracy circle (would you believe that it was an Italian "script adult" getting the cracked version up on the most popular iOS pirate site ?)
After a month, the ratio now is more like 2:1, meaning that for every 2 users on the leaderboard, one copy of the game was sold.

Now for some sales figures.. here is a chart of the first month. The initial larger sale is in coincidence with being featured in the New&Noteworthy games section (games only, not overall) on App Stores world-wide.
Unlike for Final Freeway, there is no spike for the TouchArcade review this time. Probably because the review wasn't quite an endorsement. We got 3.5 (out of 5).. but it sounded more like a 2.5.

And, that's the story so far, but it's not the end of it 8)

In the meantime, Final Freeway on iOS keeps on selling (one year later !) enough to keep me afloat, and the Android version is slowly taking advantage of its placement in the new racing category in the Android Market. Currently selling about 1-copy per hour, and placed 14th in the racing category. But it's too early to draw conclusions on that.

And now, back to work!

The Thunderbirds are Go!

2011-08-03T14:03:00.007+09:00

Here I am writing a new blog post.
This time around with the new Blogger interface.. nice and clean, if white (not my first choice).
What really matters though is to have a properly working "undo" that hopefully works across auto-saves (used to be really easy to delete a whole post and then have it auto-saved blank !).

Fractal Combat 1.0 has been submitted to Apple and now I'm just waiting for the approval.
As I said in the related blog post, I hope that people will enjoy the game more than us doing it.
This "I enjoyed so much doing the game" mantra seems BS to me. If it were true, then it wouldn't be a job!

I'm definitely looking forward to enjoy positive comments of people that like the game, and I'm certainly looking forward to see how well the game sells.
I expect decent sales, enough to keep me afloat, but I don't envision spectacular sales, mostly because FC isn't your typical cute mobile game, like those that sell by the gazillion and turn into cultural phenomena.

Hopefully some major sites will find the time to review the game. Hopefully Apple will place the game in some noteworthy kind of spot like it happened with Final Freeway.
That's a really big deal and also one of the reasons why I wanted to give enough of the so called "polish".

In the meantime I keep seeing people trying to jump into game development.
I'm very conscious of the fact that things evolve and that what was the rule before isn't (and probably shouldn't be) the rule now... but what is it with all those people rushing onto some game engine to offload all the "difficult" bits of development ?

First of all and engine/framework don't do any miracles, there is hard work to put in there as well, secondly, people like that miss out much of the fun and a chance to learn some basic skills, a deeper understanding on how things work.
For example, can engine programmers really just go on with Direct3D, OpenGL and shading languages? That's incredibly limiting.

One may say that the same way that assembly isn't the norm for game dev anymore, low level programming isn't also necessary anymore. I'm not so sure.. but time will tell.
In the end, I guess that one can achieve the same things in many ways.. and for me to say that, in order to make good games, one should become a good programmer with deeper understanding of how computers work, it is probably just a selfish point of view (and I'm no electronics expert myself).. but I've got to believe in something.. have a way of going about 8)

I think that's enough rants for now !
...let's go back to waiting for Apple's review...

PRRRR

2011-07-14T02:57:00.002+09:00

As I'm approaching the end of development of the next game.. I'm staring to test the waters about PR.

That time has finally come again, when one has to switch from logic and creativity to charm and communication skills. Something that I don't like.. but that is necessary to sell games to keep the boat floating.

The first disappointments are coming already. Some sites are already ignoring my pleas to have my lowly game grace their glorious web pages. Answering a simple "yes" or "no" is just too time consuming. Chances are that Steve Job is more likely to answer to users than certain popular sites are likely to answer to an independent developer.

It's a tough nut to swallow, but there is nothing I can't do about it. Or is there ?

Perhaps the best PR investment I could have done, would have been a few thousands of dollars to fly to GDC or E3, to meet press sites and show my face.

In person, I probably have less charm than through email, but physical presence always makes a difference.. and that could help.

Still that's far from ideal.. but I need to expose my game to potential buyers, and so I need to get out of my world of logic and force myself to become a little bit of a salesman.

I hate it.. but it's just how life is.. ..so, let's suck it up ! 8)

Optimizing shaders on iPad/iPhone (iOS 4)

2011-06-26T09:33:00.004+09:00

UPDATE: The shader compiler coming with iOS 5 seems a lot more reliable. From early tests, some flaky behavior has disappeared (e.g. missing light sources are there again).
What follows is related to iOS 4...
----------------------------------------------------
In the past 2 days I dedicated some time to optimize the shaders in The Fractal.

I quite dislike the concept of "vertex shader", so I initially set lighting up to use only pixel (or fragment) shaders.

I eventually scrapped that and moved the lighting at the vertex shader level.. which gave an incredible speedup, especially on 1st gen iPad, but also on iPhone 4.
In fact, WWDC 2011 talks (I won't link it, as you need a developer account to see them anyway) on OpenGL ES seem very focused on pushing per-pixel lighting on iPad 2, almost implying that you must have been nuts to do that on any device before that.

Truth to be told, I could generally afford per-pixel lighting, because most of the screen is generally covered with a terrain with baked lighting. But when a huge monster filled the screen, the frame rate would suddenly drop.

At any rate, before switching to per-vertex lighting, I did some performance tests at the per-pixel level to better get a sense of what is slow and what is fast.
As a foreword, I have to say that conditionals and for-loops with non-constant values in shaders are considered to be a big performance penalty, and should be avoided as much as possible. But some conditionals help to keep the code (and the coder) sane.. as opposed to generating hundreds of combinations of shaders for every possible expected case.

The following tests were made on an original iPad, running iOS 4.3.3 (the iOS version determines how a shader gets compiled, as I'm compiling shaders at run-time).
These are not exhaustive tests and it's quite possible that I got something wrong. In fact, normally is the compiler that is right and the programmer that is wrong.

Looping through a list of light sources

A simple for-loop may seem the way to go:

// *SLOW*
for (int i=0; i < u_PntLightsN; ++i)
{
    [...]
}

..but in fact, it's about twice as slow as the alternative:

// *FAST*
for (int i=0; i < DE3_MAX_PNT_LIGHTS; ++i)
{
    if ( u_PntLights[i].isActive )
    {
        [...]
    }
}

Having an "active" flag per-light, while keeping the loop fixed (to 5 lights) is faster and more reliable.
That's right.. a loop with u_PntLightsN set to 2, would still only pick 1 light source (?!)
I must be dreaming ? But there is a strange work-around. When declaring the uniform variable, I tried this:

lowp int u_PntLightsN

..and suddenly I had 2 lights affecting the model again 8)

But it can be reverted by specifying "lowp" in the iterating variable too:

for (lowp int i=0; i < u_PntLightsN; ++i)

..and magically, it's only 1 light showing up, again.

So, practically the for-loop with an uniform value, other than being twice as slow, is completely unreliable ...at least in my tests, and in the pixel shader.

Back to the "active" flag. There is an important difference that will kill performance in the shaders.
In C/C++ I prefer the following equivalent form, to avoid extra indenting:

// *SLOW*
if ( ! u_PntLights[i].isActive )
    continue;

// do something

..but that's sensibly slower than the original version:

// *FAST*
if ( u_PntLights[i].isActive )
{
    // do something
}

If one considers how shading engines work, this makes perfect sense. Of course, the compiler could pick up the equivalency of the operation, but it doesn't, and it's good to keep that in mind.

Conditionals that didn't help

This is the final version that I ended up using..

// *FAST* (..relatively)
for (int i=0; i < DE3_MAX_PNT_LIGHTS; ++i)
{
    if ( u_PntLights[i].isActive )
    {
        // NOTE: CS stands for Camera Space
        vec3    posToLightPos = u_PntLights[i].posCS - posCS;
        vec3    lightDirCS = normalize( posToLightPos );

        float    NdotL = dot( norCS, lightDirCS );

        // NOTE: ooRadiusSqr is 1 / radiusSqr
        float    att =
                    1.0 -
                    clamp(
                        dot( posToLightPos, posToLightPos ) *
                            u_PntLights[i].ooRadiusSqr,
                        0.0,
                        1.0 );

        accLightCol += max( NdotL, 0.0 ) * att * u_PntLights[i].col;
    }
}

..but before that I tried this:

// *SLOW*
        float    NdotL = dot( norCS, lightDirCS );

        if ( NdotL > 0 )
        {
            float    att =
                        1.0 -
                        clamp(
                            dot( posToLightPos, posToLightPos ) *
                                u_PntLights[i].ooRadiusSqr,
                            0.0,
                            1.0 );

            accLightCol += NdotL * att * u_PntLights[i].col;
        }

The "max( NdotL, 0.0 )" at the end is gone, and "if ( NDotL > 0 )" is introduced to skip a bunch of calculations.
This was slower. Not twice as slow, more like 25% slower (I don't remember the exact figure).

Conditionals on LSD

And now, for something spooky. Here are a few variations that will all give strange results:

 // *BAD*

if ( u_PntLights[i].isActive == true )

{

}

..breaks the conditional and the second light is gone again !
Note that not specying "== true" is theoretically equivalent, but it's actually different (as in, "it doesn't work" 8).

And this:

 // *BAD*

if ( u_PntLights[i].isActive == false )

    continue;

..is, again, theoretically equivalent but it actually gives some funky shader blocking artifacts:

..which kind of reminds me of the early(er) stages of my REYES renderer:

...ahh ..sometimes I miss working on that.. but things aren't so different now, in a sense 8)

wooooo

ADDENDUM: By running the same shaders on iPad and OpenGL on PC. I have verified that the "if" conditional is indeed not guaranteed to skip the "false" case, even in the vertex shader.
So, for my point lights loop, I must set-up those lights' colors to be null.. because
if ( u_PntLights[i].isActive ) ..is only a hint !

Localize this !

2011-06-12T20:33:00.000+09:00

With a lot of external help (a friend suggesting a public domain line font, and another implementing an UTF8 decoder and the line font decoder), I finally added Japanese support to the game.

Very good.. I'm almost of the hook now.. as I'm definitely going to have to add some info/tutorials on how the game works.

I also added a nice feature on the PC build: I can freeze the game at any point and take a screenshot in 3 different resolutions at the same time. Namely 480x320 (iPhone), 960x640 (Retina Display) and 1024x768 (iPad).

This is useful to make screen shots, also for the App Store.. which requires at least RD and iPad resolution screen shots.

Taking a hires sshot and scaling after with Photoshop/Paint.NET wouldn't work, because in the transition from other resolutions to iPad resolution I actually adapt touch controls to be smaller so that their actual physical size on screen is still roughly the same (unless iPad owners have bigger hands 8).

The screen shot taking stuff is part of the oyatsukai's mobile game framework.. meaning that these feature are automatically included in the recent dev builds of Final Freeway.

The localization system is also part of the framework, but FF doesn't have Japanese font as I'm using bitmap fonts there.

I'd like to start spreading the name of the game, however I'm waiting Apple to accept my plea to wait for the game to be ready.

Apple has this policy now that once a game is registered with them, the developer has 120 days to upload a binary or else may lose the name.

It's good against name squatters, but it's also a problem for development. One needs to register a game in order to test it with Game Center.. but then he has only 120 days to get it done !

I recently got the a warning saying that I have 30 days left to produce a binary.

I could upload something right away, but I'm thinking: what's the point in sending a binary for review when I know I won't publish that one because it's still a beta ?

I should probably have done that, but instead I sent a request to Apple to extend the period.. hopefully they'll answer me soon enough.

mumble mumble

Working on FC

2011-06-06T04:31:00.001+09:00

It's been more than a month now since my last update on the blog and about the game in general.
The development to never end, but it's a lot of work really.

Compared to Final Freeway, this new game is a bit more involved. It has a Garage were one can buy, sell and equip parts. It's got quite a few vehicles and several types of parts.
All this added complexity requires extra code to deal with the logic of it all, but also a more fine tuned UI.
In fact I recently implemented a scrollable list.. all done in OpenGL and with a behavior as close as possible as that of iOS, because, after all, this is primarily an iOS game !

I've had a hard time trying to put together a decent illustration for the main screen and for the general art to use eventually on the oyatsukai.com web site and in the Press Release kit used by various sites out there to talk about the game (hopefully !).

There is definitely more work.. I'm not even in the phase of tuning the game play.. and I know that that alone will take a while.
But the game is shaping up.. and all those details (such as localization !) that don't need to be there for a cheap iOS game, will hopefully make a difference and make the game noteworthy.

What TF ?

2011-05-03T06:24:00.000+09:00

Development on the game code named The Fractal is proceeding.

As usual, there is so much more that could and should be done to have flawless reviews and mostly happy users (100% is impossible.. there will always be someone that hates the world on that day).

However this game is not going to cost more than $1.99 ..and the time put into the development has to be in line with the price.

I've spent the last couple of days to implement some sort of shadow mapping (see the dark dot at the bottom of the image). I finally got a projective shadow blob that, with some extra work, could be turned into a proper projective silhouette.. but, as I feared, the additional texture fetch required even for the simple blob (that operates on a whole terrain patch), is just too much.
I could try an alternative way, that only renders the shadow-enabled geometry around where I know that the shadow is going to be projected. But it's a lot of extra work for a hack.

So, basically, on iPhone 4 and iPad, the terrain must have nothing more than fog. No lighting, no nothing.. or else it's almost impossible to run at 30 fps.
There are more general optimizations that can be done.. but there is no guarantee that that will help, and I may leave after the initial release.
It was good nonetheless to have the basics of shadow mapping implemented in the engine, just like the dynamic terrain lighting that I added during my vacation in Italy. Those are extra features that I can eventually enable on devices with enough power. Hopefully the iPad 2 and almost surely on eventual PC and Mac OS X version.
Incidentally, there currently is a native OS X version, too. It still not polished for the final user experience as it lacks the proper support for keyboard, mouse or whatever controller, but it's there and could be something for the Mac App Store.

Next on my list is improving explosions (possibly with actual flying debris), fix some things with the terrain and then move forward on the game play.. which is going to be simple, but it still requires work on balancing it.

...then hopefully I'll be able to finally release the game !

Quake and Doom

2011-03-22T15:30:00.001+09:00

Since the last post, a few things have changed for me 8)

I'm now in Rome since couple of days ago.
Previously I was in Osaka, where I stayed while waiting for a flight out of Japan.

A big quake rocked the north-east part of Japan and it was definitely felt in Tokyo.
That went well for me, as I came out only with a few broken dishes and cups, and a big scare.
Right after the big and long shake I mailed my relatives to let them know that I was fine.

What happened later however proved to be more unnerving.
As aftershocks (some of them quite strong) kept going every 30 minutes, the nuclear power plant in Fukushima started misbehaving.
Problems got visibly worse, day after day, and I eventually decided to leave Tokyo.

I tried to be calm and rational for a few days, hoping for the power plant to improve, while trying to keep my relatives calm.
The foreign media did and is doing a disservice by overblowing the situation in Tokyo.. and in the end I just couldn't counter the power that the media reports had on my relatives and friends, which were all very worried for me.

The reason why I ultimately decided to leave Tokyo however was based on the Japanese media reports.
The periodic press conference kept bringing more and more bad news.. and it was clear that the people in charge had no idea of what was going to happen next.
That, added to the fact that TEPCO, the energy company that owns the power plant, is famous for its lack in of security and its willingness to cover up its wrong doings, gave me more than one reason to stop trying to hope for things to suddenly get better.

So, I left Tokyo and I can finally relax now, but only partly, as my home is still there, and I need to think forward for when I'll be moving back in in a month or so.

One thing that has been bugging me is the reaction of some people to all this. There is who considers people that left as weaklings that can't take a little heat, people that leave in the moment of need.
Those are the foreigner macho types that feel that flying away is a bit like betraying the country.
That would make sense if it weren't for the fact that, there is really nothing I can do by being in Tokyo, other than using up the electric power that is now so scarce.
Also some Japanese friends of mine did exactly the same thing, by moving at least their wife and kids to the south of Japan if not outside of the country altogether. In fact, I'd argue that Japanese have a better view of things, because they had their TECPO-moments in the past, and know how little transparent the company is.

Given the situation, between the aftershocks, some power cuts and the nuclear power plant. Some Japanese employers went form giving a week vacation to rent hotel rooms, or rent office space to the south of Japan (mostly Kyoto and Osaka), where things are a lot calmer now.
Unfortunately, some other employers were rather evil and put pressure on people to stick around. My girlfriend had only 2 more weeks of employment left with her company, and she was told by her female boss that "she was like a soldier leaving in times of war"... eheheh give me a break, bitch !

Luckily, my position as an independent gave me complete freedom, and that's definitely nice. Would I be in the middle of some game project being a lead or something like that, the pressure to keep going would have been stronger.
As an employee, there is often this pressure to get things done which pushes one to work later hours, as if making games was really a matter of life and death.. bha !

Another movement that sparked from the whole situation, is that of the science-oriente pro-nuclear people. I suspect that most of those people are generally used to think of themselves as better informed in matters of science, and react to the overblown drama reported by the foreign media, with strong arguments that severely downplay the gravity of the situation.

I'm definitely someone that loves science, that's basically my religion.. but one has to be practical and accept the fact that nuclear power is much to intractable in the current state of things.

The "smarter than you" types, tend to come up with comparisons by which a banana gives you more radiations than this or that. And so, those that leave Tokyo are just "general populace", the average Joes that get scared for nothing.

Apologists will go as far as saying that in the grand scheme of things, nuclear power plants save lives. Save miners' lives, save the world from pollution, and so on and so forth.

I honestly think that what you see is what you get. This nuclear accident has been a big facking mess, and it's not just people's hysteria. It's a bad bad situation, with some sort of doomsday machine that went wrong at every step of the way and it's been very hard to tame... and we're talking about a power plant that has been turned off !

As I mentioned in another, instance, I think that any machine that doesn't have a real "off" switch, is inherently evil. And if something can go wrong, then it will go wrong. This is the mindset that every programmer learns to live with and it applies to everything.

I leave you with an interesting debate.

Does the world need nuclear energy?

Next game shaping up

2011-03-11T01:05:00.001+09:00

It's hard to find the time to update the blog nowadays.

Not because I don't have any free time, but more because my time on the web is spread bewteen forums, mailing lists, Twitter, etc.

The next game is shaping up. It was supposed to be another tacing game.. but that's moved behind, as I found someone locally to help me with another title.. and it's always easier to work on something together with someone that is at least around the same city 8)

Talking about the new game.. here are 3 videos:

- http://vimeo.com/20823868
- http://vimeo.com/20823889
- http://vimeo.com/20823610

They are pw-protected and the pw is "drogato".
It's kind of silly to have something password-protected only to reveal that on a blog ! ..but it's to avoid indirect traffic, as the game is really not done and I don't want the videos to spread too much.

The game as seen on the video is recored using FRAPS at 30 fps. It runs well at 60 on my PC, but on iPhone 4 and iPad it runs between 15 and 30 fps. Unless one has some smoke from an explosion covering the screen.. then the frame rate drops into oblivion.
I'll have to optimize those explosions.. PowerVR is very good at avoiding overdraw, but with translucency, overdraw is inevitable, and that kills these mobile GPUs.

The game play is fairly easy, and that's frankly how I like it. It will have to improve though: some "exciting" achievements for Game Center/OpenFeint, more missions, maybe somewhat more aggressive enemies ?

How about a nice background story ? That's a bit more difficult for two reasons:

1) Better no story that some superlame cliche story (like 99.9% of the games... I hate cliches !!)
2) The font I'm using is hand made in a text file. So, making a Japanese translation would require me to hand-make my own Japanese font !!! (I think that I'll try to do a few characters, just to get an idea of the pain involved).

Here is an example of how a 'J' and a 'K' are defined:



=J

. . . . 0

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

4 . . . 1

. 3 . 2 .



=K

0 . . . 3

. . . . .

. . . . .

4 . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

1 . . . 5

Anyhow, there are still quite a few things to add to the game.. but there is more than the videos show. There is an actual game flow, UI and Game Center integration working, and the controls are not bad on iPhone (though I'll need more testing).
It could be worth $0.99 with a few changes and improvements, but I don't want to rush it too much, and I'd rather make something that I'm confident that I can sell for $1.99.

..we'll see how it goes !

woooo

New Android Market. What's in it for me?

2011-02-05T03:56:00.001+09:00

Much to my surprise, the Android Market finally earned a proper web interface that allows to purchase games from a web browser and without having to browse with an actual Android device !

This is a great step forward, and now there is even a rumor that Google will implement a fixed pricing system like Apple's App Store.. so that game prices won't look like numbers taken out of a currency exchange ticker (Final Freeway for Android is 105 yen, but shows as anything between $1.25 and $1.29 ..depending on the current Dollar/Yen rate).

There are a few things that we did (using the plural here as it's not just me working on this) to improve sales (which are still very low) but apparently none of them brought any results so far:

- Small 125x125 banner in a couple of sites (Android sites, but not strictly gaming sites)
In only a few days, 275,000 impressions, 300 clicks on the banner.. but no improvement (easy to verify, when you're only selling 3-5 copies of the game per day anyway).
I tried to have the banner redirect to http://oyatsukai.com/final-freeway/ and then directly to http://market.android.com/details?id=com.oyatsukai.finalfwy ..but that doesn't seem to make a difference.

One thing to say is that with the latest user review saying: "Refund !!!", more than one potential customer may be put off 8P

- Added OpenFeint and made it to the New Releases screen
This also seems to have had basically 0 effect on sales. (link here, may require reloading, as it rotates).
As I said in a previous post, apparently new releases are really for games that are new, not new updates that add OF integration. So, if that's an exception for us, then it's definitely one that we welcome.
Without saying too much, I think that we may have had a chance to go into the "OF Picks" if we had OF integration going for iOS as well.. however, the minimum space required by the OF stuff on iOS is 3 MB for universal apps (iPhone and iPad).. and that was going to break the 20 MB barrier for download of the game over 3G connection.. which I really want to preserve (I want people to be able to download the game on the go, when there is no WiFi available).

- Changed the display name to "Final Freeway Racing"
There is still no racing category in the Android Market.. but there is a search feature, and I figured that if one searches for "racing" then it's more likely that having that in the title will show the game earlier in the results.
This actually worked, as the game went from the 9th page to the 5th page of results. But this didn't help either.
Maybe things will change in a few days, but searching for "racing" and then scrolling 5 pages is still too much.

- Asked for more (read: ANY !) reviews
So far, the only review for the Android version of the game that I know of, is that from a Japanese web site.
That brought some business (incidentally.. still less than 500 actual copies sold).
I've made a request for review to pocketgamer.co.uk but, I received no answer so far, and I can see from their site that they are looking for "Android writers" and that their ad banners in the Android section are not very popular.
I was kind of hoping for PG to perhaps acknowledge the game, since in the past I did a sponsored (paid) feature with them. Paid or not.. they already talked about the game and how the Android version should come out.. it wouldn't hurt to actually follow on that 8)

I also did more requests to other sites that seem popular... and it would be great if any of them would finally pick the ball and give the game a little space.

..I mean, if you see some of the stuff that is listed far above FF in the Android Market.. surely we deserve a little more visibility.

It's a tough world, but I can't really complain. All this marketing a PR stuff is part of the business, and while making games is fun (as in: painful but fun) selling them is what ultimately really matters.

ole'

Who needs to sleep?

2011-01-28T10:00:00.000+09:00

It's 9 in the morning.. the Sun is shining through the window (I tried to sleep but I couldn't). This winter it's "good weather" all winter long.
In almost10 years that I'm in Tokyo, it must be the first year that hasn't snowed yet... and I'm not pleased!
I can't stand it when people claim that snow == bad weather. It's not true ! Snow is fun and cool.
Snow also makes you live longer.. Sun cooks you up and makes you age.

About development... the new game is being developed pretty quickly. But I'm not yet ready to show any screenshots to the greater public 8)

On the Final Freeway side, we released a version with OpenFeint, but that didn't get it into the new releases listed in the OpenFeint site, because those are only the new games that also come out with OF.. so, doing an update to introduce OF seems to be not ideal as far as exposure goes.
Nevertheless, there might be a chance to be featured somehow, provided that I also integrate OF for the iOS version.

So, now I'm working on that, but, it may turn out to be a problem if OF does indeed take as much space as they say. The game is already almost 19 MB.. and the limit for 3G download is 20 MB.
I really want to be below 20 MB, because at $0.99 Final Freeway is an "impulse buy" and you don't want to require a WiFi for that.

Now, for something completely different. I have my defects and pet peeves.. one of them is intelligence, or lack there of.
I find myself more and more irritable whenever I watch TV, filled with so many real and fictional characters, where most of them are just basically very stupid and proudly so.
Japanese TV is no exception, and I constantly see people that are total imbeciles or that portray idiots, and that's a sad thing.
Humanity could evolve a lot faster if more people would actually care to use their brains. Japan TV is bombarded with wiz kids that play golf, transvestites that are popular simply for being so, baseball players, cute girls with the brain of a little bird and cool-looking (freaking looking really) dudes.
That is not to say that TV in other countries is any better.. but I expect always more from Japan 8)

If one compares the level of intellect that goes around the academic circles, and the level of idiocy that one sees in everyday life or TV, then the gap is really huge.
BBC news programs are often intelligent, but news reports are boring, clean, methodical and superficial... perhaps they are just a reflection of world politics..

Of course, one can't always be a thinking robot.. and I'm all for having fun.. in fact, I think that a prerequisite for being funny is also being intelligent. But on the other hand, a brain should be kept functioning and media should really try to promote more intelligence over being a kid that hits a ball with a crocked stick, or with a freaking bat !

I realize that I'm talking like a teenager.. or that I'm beating a dead horse. But I guess that I need to do it 8)

Another thing that bothers me is Einstein quotes. They are very popular.. and people read them and think "he was such a genius, he was so forward". Which is probably true in that sense as well.. but when it comes to math, we're stuck at e = mc^2 ..which is not very much math at all !!
We're all happy to read Einstein's quotes (assuming that they are all true), but I don't see too many people reading his papers ;) ..meaning the actual real contribution that he did to humanity !

I can't really blame the next person however... as I find myself unable to do that myself in most cases.
That little math and physics that I used to read (beyond the graphics-related papers) was mostly on the trains on my daily commute.
Now that I don't have a commute, I find myself missing a setting to get distracted from programming and from Internet. Especially now that I don't have a nice monthly salary and that I feel the self-inflicted pressure of having to develop and release new games.

..oh well. The chance to relax will come in time !

Sometimes, I see some show on TV about jail and I think "If I ever ended up for years in jail, maybe I could focus on physics" ..or could I ? It's more likely that I'd simply turn crazy 8)

wooooo

Android: so far, not so good

2010-12-27T12:16:00.003+09:00

On December the 19th, Final Freeway for Android was finally released.

I personally didn't work much on this edition, though I did my share of work to adapt the game for some needs of the new platform and to post a proper press release this time around.

The press release was quickly picked by a few sites and on December 20th, we had a 53 sales.
These relatively high sales were probably because the game was in the list of the new releases. Things are not so good now, where sales average to 10 copies per day.

I can see the problems with Android as a viable platform. It has been discussed more than once. So, I'll try to cut it short..

The market sucks..

There are no promo codes to give out to get people and sites to try and review the game
You need to have a phone to check out the market and there is no standard web interface (other than a QR code to photograph)
It's hard for good games to stand out. A few days after the release, the only way to find the game in the market is to explicitly search for "final freeway".
Cost of games is a silly dance with exchange rates.In Japan the lowest price one can set is 99 Yen, which is more than one US Dollar ! So, a Japanese developer can't possibly set the price to $0.99.
Also, games cost random-looking numbers in every other country other than your own. In contrast, in the iOS App Store one simply choses "Tier 1" and has the game sold for USD 0.99, EU 0.79, JPY 115.
Google Checkout system gives customer names and ZIP code of every purchase. Not sure how many customers know this, but surely this can work as a deterrent for the more privacy-conscious customers. Sure, you can trust me.. but it's hard to make an habit of buying apps from a different company or individual every time, knowing that every seller gets some of your data.
The return/cancellation rate is horrible. As of now, out of 185 downloads, 25 were returned (plus 8 failed purchases). That's a 13.5% return rate. The same game on the iOS App Store has a return rate of 0.23% !

Piracy is really bad

The licensing system is annoying to customers and worthless against pirates
Google-hosted Blogger sites run amok with pirated Android games.
Reporting Bloggers sites to Google has had 0 effect (typical Google apathy). Reporting the links that host the downloads usually works... but it takes 2-3 days for that to take action and only takes 10 minutes for the pirates to upload again... a losing battle.
As an example, see this ~~"nice" site~~ (Update: the page with Final Freeway has been removed by Google. The site stays however) that even asks for donations for its "services"... When I found it, I left a commend along the lines of "This is an illegal download. Please, support the developers 8)". The reply I got was: "Davide.. fuck you!".I replied again and so did a couple of friends of mine, then all comments got erased..
It's telling that Gameloft is trying with its own private market for Android
It's telling that Rovio distributes "Angry Birds" free but ad-based (perhaps it's what Google really wants: to further its ads business)
Take this one site alone: 920 illegal downloads.. against the 152 successful legal purchases that we currently have. That's a ratio of 6 illegal downloads to 1 purchase. 600% piracy rate already on one site alone.. multiply that for the several few out there (a search on Twitter reveals a wealth of download links..) ..and sales start to look more like a drop of drinking water in the sea.
See also the blog post Android Piracy Heat Map (Japan rocks indeed 8)

A lot has been said about piracy and I personally agree that one should not count one download as one theft. I understand that people want to try a product and that sometimes costs are prohibitive. But all that downloading activity is certainly not bringing any business to us.. and the game costs $1.25 ..if you don't have a dollar, you don't have a smart phone.

Overall, I'd say that the whole Android apps ecosystem is fucked. Google loves to play the card of the friendly, open company that doesn't lock phones.. but while doing that, it doesn't propose a compelling market experience for the users nor an healthy market for the developers.

It's too early to make a final judgement, but I have to say that so far things are pretty bad. We sold 152 copies in one week, and now average to 10 copies per day.

But the game is not bad. It sold on tens of thousands of copies in the App Store with little or no publicity (not even a press release) and 4 months after the initial release, it still sells about 130 copies per day.

Our multi-platform framework is there, and porting new games to Android would be much easier now... but if things don't change, I'll not bother porting new titles to Android even if that only meant to recompile the code, because supporting a piracy-laden platform is bad for the mobile market as a whole.

..while I'm still hoping for a break.. at least to repay the basic cost of porting the game.

wooo !

Collaborative games

2010-12-15T05:28:00.000+09:00

One of my early pet projects for my previous employer was a simple network 3D viewer.

The idea was to try to make a collaborative tool for artists or level designers.
What the project could do was very simple: spawn 3D objects somewhere and see each other moving around.
Unfortunately I didn't have time to continue on that and it never evolved beyond that level.

Nowadays, the success of Minecraft is obvious and it reminds me again that collaborative editing effort is somewhere into the future of developing games.

Of course, some ideas should never be stretched too far. For example, programmers tend to believe that procedural solutions can make artists less useful, or possibly even irrelevant (!), while some may see Minecraft and the Phun physiscs sandbox as a recipe to make any kind of game.

Of course most actual games will always need skilled artists as well as programmers.
But it's still important to push forward this sandbox kind of idea.. which personally has always fascinated me, and that is becoming so much more relevant now.

I wish I put more effort into this before, but on the other hand, I admit that I could never predict what people would be able to do by simply stacking blocks together.
I see editing tools as very sophisticated instruments able to give all sorts of features and user-interface goodness, levels of undo, etc. Instead, with Minecraft, people seem to be able to build incredible structures without even using copy & paste !
This is a bit like writing a novel using something with less sophistication than Windows Notepad..

I honestly still don't quite understand this myself.. is and how much planning and trial and error goes into building such structures (there are some tools to import and export data.. but in most cases it's just people stacking blocks one by one).

All this also confirms my theory that "big pixels" are here to stay.
As much as screen resolution improves and, more generally, computers allow to blur digital with analog, easily distinguishable discrete elements, be that pixels, Lego blocks or virtual 3D blocks, are still useful and attractive.

When I see Minecraft, I also think about Second Life.. which in a sense had better graphics, but the bar for editing the world was still too high, and so it left its users busy buying and selling and simulating sex (which is apparently the main driving factor of the game).

So, Second Life's inability to grow was due to the hedonistic tendency of the game. Which ultimately is less rewarding than the ability to express creativity and develop things.. even if they are made of big blocks.

mumble mumble

Testing Final Freeway on Android

2010-12-01T17:58:00.001+09:00

Final Freeway for Android has entered in beta testing a few days ago, and it hasn't been easy.

Though the Android platform code is being completely handled by somebody else, I had to intervene to fix or rethink a few things about the quirks that come out when mixing different devices and OS releases.

As a general rule, the "low" and "mid" level Android phones tend to present a worse experience than iPhone 3G.

Frame rate is a problem and while it's true that phones such as the Nexus One have to deal with more pixels (800 x 480), it's also true that, for arcade games, frame rate is more important than resolution.

Then there is "touching".. multi-touch is not guaranteed to be there. What was possible with the very first iPhone, is not possible with some of the Android phones still being sold.

In some cases, one cannot reliably have two virtual buttons on screen to be pressed at the same time.. see this video as an example. This seems to be an actual hardware limitation, and one just has to live with it.

Frustratingly, in some other cases there are lingering bugs in the OS that, on some phones, will sensibly decrease performance for the simplest action of all: touching the screen !
I'm talking about a minimum of 100 ms of time wasted simply for touching the screen, this means that when touching the screen, the maximum frame rate possible is less than 10 fps. Not a very good prospect for a racing game..

The only solution I can think of, is to have the accelerator pedal automatically pressed down by default and prevent or warn against the usage of touch-based steering.

It's a major fack-up that has been noticed at least since April 2009, and properly reported since at least April 2010. And two months ago the bug has finally been assigned to someone.. oh, hello ?!

Sometimes, Google apathy towards the user experience is really astounding.

Nevertheless, the game runs like a charm on the Galaxy S and, hopefully, will run as well with the more modern phones.
Still, this complicates things.. because the risk is out there for customers to get angry at the game, when it's Google that is at fault.. what a bunch of Java programmers !!

woooo

Update this blog !

2010-11-07T16:36:00.000+09:00

It has become more and more difficult to update the blog.. as my Internet activities are spreading thin through message boards, Twitter and mailing lists.

Nevertheless, I don't think that "blogging" is dead. Perhaps the word is fading away, but that's only a good thing.. because in the popular culture that's often synonymous with "next generation journalism". You see those bloggers appearing on CNN to give some opinions.. ..fack that ! How are they exactly blogging if they are live on CNN ?! Plus they are talking about politics..

Speaking of blogs, I hate how so many people write long long posts, splitting them into chapters with titles. Doing so is suggested in some "blogger's manual" somewhere (blog posts that suggest how to make blog posts !).. but it's also pretentious and not so useful.
What instead one should do, is to synthesize information. For example, when I write a blog post, or even a message in a forum, I re-read 1, 2, 3 times, fix the obvious errors and potentially remove whole chunks of text that I think are just too discursive.

Some people enjoy reading long blog posts, and even suggest them.. I have little patience, and I try myself to get to the point out of courtesy towards the readers (ironically, all I wrote so far probably goes against what I just said 8)

As far as current events go.. Final Freeway is still selling enough to be a relevant income. I don't know how much this will last, and when exactly the sales will drop so that I won't be able to pay the minimum living expenses.. but hopefully by then I will have another game out.

I'm currently working on two games. One is another racing game (same engine of FF) but with bikes (and similar to another old arcade ;)
The other game gets its inspiration partially from Zarch (video), originally made for Archimedes, and ported on the Amiga as Virus.
Well it's going to be quite different in a few ways.. and part of the inspiration also comes from the fact that recently I got to try a cheap RC helicopter.. and it was so fun and challenging to make it fly (in fact it eventually broke.. but lasted more than I expected !).

The problem with the Zarch kind of game, of course is that the fun of it is in the complexity of the handling.. but most iPhone users want something dead simple to handle !
So, I will probably add an easy mode and a hard mode, where controls are drastically different. Hoping that people won't pick the easy way, because that's the silly choice to make 8)

Last but not least, I'm now collaborating with actual artists.. so, no more programmer's art.. at least not much of it 8)

Finally telling it

2010-10-13T14:09:00.000+09:00

Reading the past few blog posts, I realized that I didn't mention in an actual post that around September 3rd, Final Freeway started being featured in the App Store.
I did mention that in comments to another post, but it's worth mentioning it in a post, too.

I was first in the "New and Noteworthy", that lasted for a while (3-4 weeks ?).
Clearly the game is not so new anymore, but luckily it's still featured in other short lists, and that definitely helps to get exposure.

Some developers mention being featured as a huge event.. and it's true that it sensibly improves the the sales. That event made me very excited and made me want to continue on this path, but it hasn't quite made me rich.. more like it repaid me well for the months that I spent without a salary 8)

Early exposure of the game on popular sites made the sales transition look smoother than for some other games which sometimes sit somewhere for weeks selling little or nothing until Apple notices them.
Still, 2-3 days after being featured I went from a lowest of 310 copies (falling from a peak of 1100 copies due to a the TouchArcade review) to slightly more than 2300 copies for one day.. which is a lot ...but it quickly dropped from there.
About 5 weeks are past since being featured, and last week's sales averaged to 650 copies per day (between the slower days in the middle of the week and the Saturday and Sunday highs).

I fear the day that the game will be cleared of all the featured spots on iTunes.. but at the same time I think that I've somehow made one winning decision that has been helping me to stay afloat regardless of being featured.
That decision being: iPad compatibility (making an Universal app, in Apple devs-speak).

Staying around the top charts of iPhone/iPod games is not as easy. It's very crowded there.
Of course iPad can run iPhone/iPod games, but they look ugly (small or scaled) and iPad users certainly want their new shiny device to be used at its best.
It also helps that my game is cheaper than most iPad games, which are often iPhone games re-sold in their "HD" incarnation.. making a few power users angry as they need to buy the iPad version of what they already have on the iPhone/iPod Touch.

Unfortunately there is no way to tell how much of the sales truly are from iPad users, but being in the top of the charts is an indication, and the game has been floating around the #1 spot for iPad racing games in Japan and USA.
Actually, the game touched many #1 spots in most countries even on iPhone charts, but for many of the countries being #1 racer or even just #1 game it may mean that one person bough a copy of the game on that day 8)

One negative thing that came with being elected into the "New and Noteworthy" list was that, like some other developers noticed, the game was automatically removed from the Racing category itself.
This was probably a bug with the process.. and I'm sure that being high in the Arcade category has more value than for the Racing category, but I'll never know how much of a difference that made.

In order to choose again to be also in the Racing category I had to post a new update, which could have been a dummy one, but I decided to go ahead and have actual content for a proper update instead (also to avoid upsetting people with meaningless updates).

I'm now waiting for the 1.4 update to be approved. That update should add a bit more fire to the sales for 1-2 days.. but eventually I have to start cranking new games.
Simply updating helps to keep sales going and gives me an opportunity to implement features to be reused in future games, so it's good.. but not as fun (and painful) as making a new game 8P

woooo

Geek you !

2010-10-01T00:41:00.000+09:00

The word geek has become so overused. It's basically now the domain of the web people.
Geek has become synonymous with "web person": someone that codes in PHP, JavaScript.. but more increasingly someone that doesn't even code.

I've seen people boasting left and right about their geekness and then get all excited for some basketball game... are you sure you're not just a homie in disguise ?

Needless to say that most of this comes from the States.. where people are easily excited, personalities are born overnight and posing is not a crime 8)

I say Bullshit !

Be whatever you want to be.. but don't go around saying how geek you are, implying that you are some sort of wizkid... show me some code instead.. and if you can't program in assembly you're not a programmer just yet !

In the meantime, I'm happy again to simply call myself a programmer.

Our man from Italy

2010-09-23T20:53:00.000+09:00

A quick and long overdue update..

Where was I ? (who cares ? 8)

Sales have ben going fairly well but going down nonetheless.
An update with 2 additional stages and some play modes is almost ready to be submitted. Testing has become a pain to do.. mann.. the same game again and again !
But it can be improved and there are still millions of potential customers out there, so it makes sense to improve the game and try to reach more people.
Updates are apparently really the way to go with iPhone games, as long as one doesn't release an unfinished POS and hopes for people to buy into it, with a promise for a better future 8P

In any case, I'm now in Rome.. for a very intense one-week vacation: between shopping with my girlfriend, meeting parents and friends when I can, looking at the sales of the game slowing down and working on an update.. it's a lot harder to do things when you aren't closed in your apt for most of the day.. which is ultimately the secret of productivity !

..time for a shower now, let another day begin !

wooo

Progressing: updates and marketing

2010-09-08T03:44:00.000+09:00

Trying to find the time to develop.. especially the boring stuff... meaning the UI !

To add different play modes, I had to change the game select screen. Boring and somewhat ugly looking too.
I need to find a good artist, but nobody can recommend one to me.
Anyhow.. hopefully by tomorrow I can start working on the "Time Trial" mode.

At the same time I need to keep an eye on the market.
Sales started falling already ! So, I need an update and some exposure quickly.

A site to which I requested a review a few days ago, finally came back to me offering ads space.. surprise surprise 8)

Considering that sales are dropping, I may as well try that. At the current rate of sale, the ad space for one month would cost me like one day worth of sales.
If the ad can make me sell over 1000 extra copies in the month it lasts, then it will be worth it.
Any less than that, it will be a loss... but I don't expect that.

Anyhow, there is nothing decided yet... we'll see how it goes !

zzzzzzzzzz
pooff

The Cyber Salesman

2010-09-02T22:43:00.001+09:00

Here is an update after a few days on the market.

A couple of popular Italian sites quickly picked up the game, and the top spot in the Games/Racing section was mine in just a couple of days 8)
I've been there a few days, and now unfortunately leaving the spot for some other game (not sure which one).
I've also been high within the top 10 of the Overall section, which means that people just browsing for any application would bump into my game.

For daily raking overview, I like applyzer.com.
It's not the best looking site out there, but I like the clearly visible arrows that show the trend (going down or going up).
If you search for "Final Freeway" you'll see that I'm going down today 8(
I paid the site the 1 EU necessary to get hourly rankings.. but it's a bit confusing (I think shows the ranks compared to the previous hour, rather than to the previous day).

Ranking is good in Japan, too. But not as good as in Italy. In Japan I touched #2 for Racing, but not #1 just yet.
..If only the App Store staff didn't elect some other motorbike game as featured, a game that has now been at the top of the Japanese store Racing sub-section few days. Even though it mostly collected 1-star ratings (the lowest possible). Power of exposure I guess !

Thankfully, my average rating is quite good: 4 out of 5 stars.
Ratings are a mixed bag. Some really help, some are enthusiastic, a fraction are expression of disappointment (some people hate the game for not being Out Run !), and some of the few negative ratings are downright unfair.
For example, some people haven't updated the firmware of their device in a while. Were they to browse for games using the phone, the App Store's application would prevent them from buying a game that requires a newer OS than they have.
However, I'm guessing that some bought the game directly from iTunes using a computer, and when they try to install the game, they find out that it's not compatible. As a reaction, they rush to leave a negative review for the game, even though the required OS version is stated in iTunes right below the game's icon.

Most reviews are good and present valid concerns and suggestions.. helpful, but it's not fair when someone purportedly leaves a lower rating only because there isn't a feature that they want.

Sales in the US and worldwide jumped sensibly the day that TouchArcade officially reviewed the game.
TouchArcade's forum has also been very helpful, with many users that keep giving suggestions and feedback.
It was especially useful today, when the first update of the game went live and a new feature turned partly broken on iPad 8(

The game is played in landscape orientation, and for this update the user could finally play landscape both ways (Home button on the left or on the right).
However, not having my iPad around (still waiting for Apple to change it), I couldn't test both orientations on the iPad (because the simulator doesn't simulate the accelerometer, and therefore one cannot see what happens when it's being rotated).
So, that was broken and I quickly wrote a warning on the game description and sent an update to Apple.
The first update only took 2 days, the new one may take more, and my only hope is that iPad users that update, will notice the warning about the iPad (live and learn: I just realized that I should have put the warning also in the Update message.. I did that now, but 200 people already downloaded the update! (granted, only a fraction of those are iPad users)).

About Sales!
It went well but they are already declining. About 4500 downloads so far. The peak day being 1100 sales, when TouchArcade reviewed it. The day after it went down to 512, and today it's 310.

From the reaction of the users, I see that the game has potential to sell much more. But the visibility is still not good enough.
I'm still waiting for a few more large sites to produce reviews that should bring more attention.

The plan for now is to add enough features to justify a price bump, and then increase the price by 1 dollar (to $1.99). Then I will start releasing a "lite" version to promote the paid one.
There are still a few things that can and need to be done.

About the price.. I can see how 99c is a stigma in a sense. At 99c some people sort of expect cute/scary/different games that play endlessly. Stuff that has 1 stage only by design.
So, coming up with 6 stages, in a way, is a bad thing because it's like putting a single digit number to the length of game play.
Also the 99c price tag may make people think that they must find a defect in the game... but this is only speculation !

Initial lack of play modes and some other things that iDevice gamers came to expect (like auto-accelerate and flexible landscape direction) are more important than one may think, and the 99c price perhaps sort of mitigates the reaction to those missing features.

I think now I pretty much know the basic features that people want, and once those are in, I can also get rid of the 99c price.
Between code changes, adding new stages, App Store review delays and review sites, it's probably going to take another month before the real prime time!

woooooo

zzzzzzzz

Final Freeway in the App Store now !!

2010-08-27T06:21:00.000+09:00

Yeahhhhhh !!!!

At last, it's available in the App Store.
It took only 8 days from upload to sale, if one excludes the first botched binary which I retired 6 days into the waiting for review queue.

What can I say.. the game is out there. It's not a AAA or AAAA or AAAAA title.. but it's simple and fun and it's the kind of game I like to play and hope that many people will agree with me 8)

I used to spend so much money in the arcades.. well, it's not the same without a steering wheel and without the girls to impress (girls ? In the arcades ?!)

Anyhow.. if you have an iDevice and the time and the money to spare, please give it a try 8)

Enjoy !
Davide

App Stories

2010-08-21T16:10:00.000+09:00

I submitted my game for review on the 12th. Then on the 19th I "developer rejected" and re-submitted a new binary.
By most people account, that means that I went all the way back to the queue and now I may have to wait the average 10 days starting from the 19th (new binary submission) and not the 12th (original submission).

We'll see how it goes.. maybe I shouldn't have sent the update. Though someone apparently has rejected 4 times and the approval only took 10 days since the first submit.
Based on that, my hope is that resubmitting during the "waiting for review" status doesn't really affect the length of the process.
Having to wait is a big pain, especially in my situation, where the rate of success of the game (using only positive terms here ;) will determine my next moves.

The update was about supporting natively the higher resolution of the iPhone 4 and the iPad. Which I don't have myself. So, I had to rely on the simulator view and a couple of friend to test things remotely on those devices.

I also realized that by my project's settings I was automatically forcing the need for iOS 4. However, my game is meant to run well on lower spec platforms, such us iPhone 3G.. and any non-masochistic iPhone 3G owner that saw what was coming (funny but realistic video), must have steered clear iOS 4 for the time being.

In the meantime I read some news about the Android Market, which apparently is broken in more than one way when it comes to paid applications:

- The market is filled with crapware (illegal ring tones leading some charts)
- Each provider has its own market place
- Payment is still undefined: Google's own Checkout coverage is poor and PayPal may become an alternative way for payments
- Selling in other countries for a developer means dealing with that country tax procedures (Apple instead does that for you)
- Google is getting sued by Oracle for how it sneaks around Java (indirect compilation): Sun was closing an eye, Oracle bought Sun with the intent of giving a black eye ;) (..another reason to dislike Java !)

...I don't see Google going very far with this. Google is very good at setting up a large amount of hardware and make it run algorithms, however Google is terrible at dealing with humans (that's us !)...

On the Apple side however... it seems that (until the news broke) the App Store director was a crapware developer himself !
Seven whole "applications" dedicated to subjects such as animal farting and long pissing simulation (+ automatic farts, for the same low price of $0.99).
I don't even have words to express the irony of all this.. with Steve Jobs making such a fanfare of quality control and then hiring some crapware developer to sort things out in the App Store.
Incidentally, the guy was also following porn stars and escorts in his Twitter account... which is completely fine by me.. but it becomes controversial the moment in which one starts holding a certain position and needs to give a certain image (his boss Steve Jobs is furiously against porn, at least in the Apple products.. sigh !).

..and I'm still Waiting For Review ;)