Learn how to make a low poly cliff!

I'd like to create a networked multiplayer 2D mobile game that will work on iOS and Android. Given the wide (and confusing) array of technologies available today, and also the fact that I'm relatively new to multiplayer programming, I'd like some advice on the best approach for this. Here are the requirements:

App should load and perform fast and have a near-native feel on both platforms
Players should be able to make payment to the app and set odds to compete with each other and win/lose accordingly. Also they can fund the game wallet with money, and vice versa (send money out)
Gameplay is multiplayer, turn-based and geolocalised such that people can compete in different regions
Low latency on the network and very fast and fluid performance
Central database for storing and managing player details and finances
Cross-platform deployment (one code deploy to all)
Simple and straightforward turn-based gameplay with simple controls and fast responsive behaviour

I'd really appreciate some help with this from experienced devs. I'd like to know what you think is the best approach (technology-wise) to achieving this, from backend, to frontend, to storage, to scalability, to performance and to game engine/library/language choice.

Thank you.

submitted by /u/danielosii
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Any info on Steam Click-thru Rates? Average ctr, what is a 'decent' ctr etc?

Posted: 04 Jun 2019 09:35 AM PDT

I'm having a hard time finding data on average or median CTR, or what a 'good' CTR might be.

I've launched a store page for my game, and the number of wishlists and followers is not impressive (so far), but maybe having an OK click-thru rate might be a positive sign...

submitted by /u/PolychromeMan
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Fascinating profiles of some of the legends of game programming.

Posted: 04 Jun 2019 01:59 AM PDT

I came across this today and found it fascinating. A bunch of profiles from legendary game developers from the early eighties when games were developed by one person, often doing everything. A lot of similarities to modern indie game dev, particularly for solo devs. I can remember almost all of these games coming out in their heyday. I hope it triggers nostalgia for others here too.

https://www.retrogamer.net/category/profiles/developer/

Edit: Updated link to main developers profile page

submitted by /u/natacon
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Game developers who don't work it the tech industry.

Posted: 03 Jun 2019 10:17 PM PDT

Over the past few months I've been thinking more and more about jumping into the game development industry. I'm graduating college with a degree in IT and I've been studying web development on the side. I don't work in the tech industry and my skills mostly involves supply chain management.

I don't like web development but I'm getting pretty good at it the more I force myself to EAT THE FROG.

Before I go down this lonely road of being a web developer I would like to know are there people who make games while not working in the tech industry?

If so, what do you do?

I'm asking because I was thinking about specializing in supply chain management and getting every cert I can in this field while making games instead of jumping into the tech industry doing something I might regret.

submitted by /u/digihammerguy
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GameMaker Studio 2 free trial will now expire in 30 days

Posted: 04 Jun 2019 08:15 AM PDT

submitted by /u/NewAgeNeoHipster
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I made a pixel art portrait for my hero character for my dungeon game and recorded a time lapse of the process (video link in comments)

Posted: 04 Jun 2019 07:43 AM PDT

submitted by /u/razluta
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Gameplay "4 Classes" v0.7

Posted: 04 Jun 2019 07:13 AM PDT

submitted by /u/JesperS1208
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I put the names of a few "super fans" in my game, and they're thrilled!

Posted: 04 Jun 2019 09:05 AM PDT

submitted by /u/JawDroppinAwesome
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What sprite size does unity retain after build?

Posted: 04 Jun 2019 08:55 AM PDT

Let's say you import a sprite asset that's 1024x1024. But in the scene that sprite is resized to 512x512.

Does unity keep the original size of 1024 or the resized size of 512 in the build file?

submitted by /u/J_Winn
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Is it possible to export Twine2 web to Yarn Editor?

Posted: 04 Jun 2019 08:41 AM PDT

For a dialogue heavy game, would love to be able to modify and edit stuff on the go, then export back to yarn editor, then to yarn spinner for unity integration.

submitted by /u/0rionis
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3D Game Tutorial in C++ from scratch - Part 10: Creating 3D Engine - Transform Matrix - SourceCode on GitHub

Posted: 03 Jun 2019 01:26 PM PDT

submitted by /u/PardDev
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Runtime spline-based level editor in Truck the System (Links to free commercial use source code in comments)

Posted: 04 Jun 2019 11:41 AM PDT

submitted by /u/JorgenFreeman
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Publisher Pitch Doc from 1998 For Unreleased FASA Game, Shadowrun: Assassin

Posted: 04 Jun 2019 11:19 AM PDT

submitted by /u/MrTalida
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Found this video on YouTube and I think it's a pretty good summary of Vlambeer's development method. I think I'll give it a try.

Posted: 04 Jun 2019 11:08 AM PDT

submitted by /u/AntiqueGearGames
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Mobile Marketing: ASO for Beginners

Posted: 04 Jun 2019 07:18 AM PDT

I posted this on LinkedIn because I run into a lot of big companies and actually rather successful devs and am infuriated how overlooked this part of Marketing is. Since this then is public knowledge anyway, it might benefit someone here too.

App Store Optimization is something that many companies and indie developers ignore, for different reasons. They might not know the competition, they place paid advertisement atop of their strategy because they have figured out their LTV and can keep the User Acquisition Costs below, or they shy away from the associated language hurdle that is fundamental to success.

Let me show you how it is really not all that difficult, the last 20% of expert knowledge can wait until later. I will focus on keywords in this article, and save graphical assets for a later article.

Step 1: Build a keyword stack

Keywords are the essence of your ASO, and by keywords, think more of phrases that a user would search for. For the sake of this primer, I will use phrases for everyone's favourite sport, football. Now let me give you a productivity boost: Classify all your brainstormed into 5 categories, it will help you along the way:

Keyword Categories

User your native language when building your initial stack, you likely have way more linguistic capability in it and you can come up with a lot more words than when thinking in other languages. This is even more true for composite phrases, combining multiple words into one common search phrase.

Example Composites

Next up: Translate all your phrases into as many languages as possible. While English is understood worldwide and partially even searched in by non-natives, the majority of players look for search terms in their own languages first before defaulting back to English. Moreover, there are cultural differences to adhere, such as the infamous football vs soccer case between the US and virtually the rest of the world, but also different expressions for the same word. Look at just German and Russian to highlight the implications of language and grammar: Localisation Examples

Step 2: Research the traffic

So by now you should have a list of 100-200 words per language which gives you a very solid base (called a semantic core) to work with. Let's move on to validation of the words: Do people actually search for the terms you have identified? Luckily there's tools for that! I would recommend AppFollow.io for this; a sleek UI, category filtering, a great price-value ratio. But please, feel free to make use of trial versions to find your optimal tool!

Note: Nearly every tool uses an abstract score to estimate the traffic, even Apple does this for their Search Ads. Some more sophisticated tools like AppAnnie offer to buy in to a package that gives you super-detailed data based on the amount of connected apps, harvesting data of their customers - which can be dubious in it's own right - and aggregate it for usage for those who can whip out 4 digits a month. In my experience, this is rarely worth it if not sparring at the absolute top flight with serious Top 50 Grossing ambitions.

Now, let's throw the keyword phrase list into AppFollow, and you'll be presented with a list like this: Keywords in AppFollow

So what does this mean? The Popularity Score shows how often users actually search for this phrase, and within a locale, it's quite comparable: If two search terms have the same popularity in the same language, they have roughly the same volume. However, across different languages (or rather: locales, as US, UK, AU, CA are vastly different), the volume will differ tremendously despite having the same score.

The amount of apps gives you a quick glance what your competition level might look like. As a voice from practice, on iOS everything below 750 is really worth looking at because you might be able to climb into top 10 easily provided the app is actually decent and you convert well from store page to an installation.

You are also seeing that the more short and generic the term is, the more popular it is, but also the more competition you'll be facing. This comes in handy when you think about your overall Marketing strategy, where you will check the required amount of installs in total you'd need to surpass your competition in every store location. If you (rightfully) doubt that you cannot beat certain competition titles, you see now why you initially divided your keywords in those 5 categories: Themed keywords are converting MUCH better than generics, and composites can be drafted specific enough to narrow out other apps, which propels your app higher.

Step 3: Craft your texts

This is the bread and butter of ASO: Out of your keywords that are equipped with traffic data, you will identify those that give you good traffic, give you a high position due to inferior competition, and are specific enough for conversion - that means, that the search result is actually relevant to the player. Conversion is the single most important KPI in this strategy! A converted player coming from a relevant keyword is very likely to have all the right attributes that you optimize for in your Paid Marketing campaigns - revenue, session times, k-factor, all the sweet juices that keep your business running.

Now, avengers, assemble! Take the highest worthy 2-3 keywords and form your title and subtitle. Beware that you must not stuff keywords randomly, you will be punished by the platforms sooner or later, with update rejections and eventual removal of your app listing. Let's check a title that is probably discontinued in marketing efforts, and didn't do much about ASO in the first place: Imgur

11x11 will do nothing for them, as it is just a brand title, but Nekki has added Soccer Manager which is absolutely on point as to what the app is about. In iOS, you have 30 characters, so in the US-English listing, I would probably expand a little and change it slightly: '11 x 11 - Soccer Team Manager' splits the 11 so it can be indexed, it has an added keyword component which now indexes for soccer manager, team manager, soccer team and the entire phrase, as opposed to just soccer manager.

The subtitle 'Build a team of top 11 players' is a bit bland, even though it describes the app well. That being said, there a a few craft mistakes in here: You are already indexing the 11 from the title, 'build' as a search term would refer more to, well, Sim City type of games, and should be replaced by 'Draft', top 11 as a composite is a clear shot at the behemoth by Nordeus that is however called Top Eleven (as a word, not numbers). With the title change suggestion, you'd free up the keyword real estate of 'team' and exchange it for something more converting or high-traffic component.

The placement of keywords in title, subtitle and keywords give certain weight to how strong the keyword will play a role in indexing and ranking, as the algorithms strive to identify brand names and rank them highly, whereas subtitle takes a secondary role and keywords are treated as fillers. Reviews are actually indexed and the main reason, why most apps will never get good rankings on generics like 'best, good, great' and other attributes because those apps with a very high review velocity and volume (looking at hyper-casuals here) will out-scale you. Keyword Weight

In Google Play, indexing works a little bit differently and there are a lot of more parameters that decide on app ranking, from review velocity to revenue and retention stats which is a little much to cover in this primer. That being said, bring your best words into title and subtitle, and stick to short concise full texts without much clutter - classic SEO rules apply in Google's platform, with keyword density, text placements and formatting all playing enough roles to squeeze out the last couple percentages of conversion and subsequent rankings.

That's it for now; now go and grow your app to the next stage! (Or reach out if you need help!)

submitted by /u/Syndane_X
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What are the advantages of using Pyxel Edit for make tile sets?

Posted: 04 Jun 2019 05:04 AM PDT

At first, I thought the advantage would be that I could use Pyxel Edit to create my own tile maps, but now I'm realizing I can just do that in Unity. With that, it seems like I could just create tiles in Aseprite and make the tile map in Unity. Am I missing a point here? Is the main advantage of Pyxel Edit being able to paint a tile and see what it will look like as apart of a tile map in real time?

submitted by /u/yakkin127
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System Recommendation

Posted: 04 Jun 2019 07:09 AM PDT

I currently own no computing system, laptop or desktop or whatever. Tried researching online but I've gotten more confused as to what hardware specs I should look into when making the purchase.

I'm currently thinking of getting a laptop for game programming and development. Was wondering if someone could give me some advice as to what screen size (13", 15", or 17"), ram, GPU, etc, would be considered minimum requirements.

I'll be working solo so I'll be doing programming, character designs, rendering, testing, etc on my own time.

Also, I'm fairly new qto all this so any and all kinds of advice would be greatly appreciated.

P.S. I'm looking to get a laptop instead of building a desktop due to moving reasons. As a college student, I move dorm to dorm, and work on campus a lot instead of out of my room.

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Tuesday, June 4, 2019

Learn how to make a low poly cliff!

Learn how to make a low poly cliff!

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