Author: psyric

Delays and Stuff

~ psyric

Unity3D and the newest flavor of XCode don’t play nice so I am unable to push any new updates at this time. I’m plugging away at Guinea Ninja little by little. Currently I’m tackling the AI for the second boss. I actually have 3 titles on my plate right now. Guinea Ninja of course, there is a side scrolling dodge based game that should be ready for release within the month, and last is a contracted project. I’ll post more details as they become available. For now, enjoy a picture of the ham ham biker boss.

Android License!

~ psyric

Since I now have access to Unity’s Android development license I am able to push games out to the Android Market! I’ve got all my accounts in order so Invader Swarm is on the Android Market and soon I’ll make it available on the Nook Color as well.

Invader Swarm: Last Stand

~ psyric

Invader Swarm: Last Stand is up on the app store.

This was a side project that ended up becoming a full blown game. I was dabbling in procedural content generation and top down “Shoot’em Up” script logic. One day I realized that I had enough core content to build a solid game out of.

The nice thing about the core logic is that Invader Swarm is a flagship so to speak. Last Stand is just the first of possibly many “Episodes” that can share the same core look and feel with different gameplay. My wife already has an idea for “Invader Swarm: Onslaught” which would be a game built around the idea of a prequel to Last Stand. The idea of a tower defense game where you are trying to fight off the hoards of enemies using your armada… the same aramada that is said to be destroyed in the story of Last Stand.

Last Stand is a simple time killer, but from what I have been told by the people that have bought it so far an addictive time killer.

Visit the dedicated page here.

Guinea Ninja

~ psyric

Well Pow Pow is on the back burner. My wife asked me to have a game released by her birthday that we have been talking about for a long while. Guinea Ninja will be a tap-tastic combat treat. So far the basic enemies and game play mechanics are in place. In the next few days I’ll post some screenshots.

Here are some examples of the game art I’ve put together so far.

 

The pink and blue are used so I can do quick color replacement to get some variety out of the assets.

Oh and I managed to make $1.70 in sales of Mem Spark so far. Hopefully I can earn enough to throw down for the Android licensing as I don’t like that I’m excluding those devices as I have a Galaxy S myself.

MemSpark Fixed… I guess

~ psyric

So the program itself wasn’t broken. I must have changed something in the build settings that messed it up because today I sat back down and hit “Run” to be rewarded with a crash, exactly as the Review guys experienced. I reverted my build settings back to a default state and changed the few that I knew needed changed. It ran. To be extra sure that everything was working I exported the archive and installed it Ad Hoc on my iPad, taking XCode out of the picture entirely. It ran just fine. Hopefully it get approved this time.

Broken Heart

~ psyric

Well my app was rejected. With just cause of course. Apparently it crashes on load for them.

The error logs they sent me shows that they were testing on a device identical to my iPad that I’m using for testing. This means that XCode Run vs XCode Archive must be creating different binaries or something.

Well hopefully I can recreate the issue by trying to install the archive through iTunes. What doesn’t sit well in my stomach is that I’ve got the app on my iPad right now. It was installed by the “Run” command in XCode. It works perfectly. I don’t like feeling like I can’t trust XCode. I would expect the binary created by Run to be the same as Archive, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Spendin’ all your money on me…

~ psyric

Q: Why charge for your games?

A: It seems a goodly number of people wonder why a small timer like myself would charge 99 cents for a game that they feel should be free. The short answer is “Startup Costs and Licensing Fees”.

Lets look at what it cost me to get Mem Spark ready for review on the app store.

  1. Apple Dev License: $99 – yearly
  2. iPad2 (Testing Device): $829 – one time cost
  3. Assets (Images, Sounds, etc): $85
  4. Unity3D iOS: $400 – one time cost
  5. State Business License: $100 – every 2 years
  6. Business Bank Account with Minimum Deposit: $1000

That comes to a startup total of $2513. Remember that not only does Apple® take its share but there are also taxes to consider. This means that at 99 cents I’m going to see around 51 cents per sale. This means that 4,928 people will need to purchase Mem Spark in order to break even.

Q: If you make back your costs will you then drop Mem Spark to be free?

A:  Probably not. After the initial costs have been covered many of them won’t spring up again for a year or more, if at all. This means that the next title will be cheaper to produce and any profits made from Mem Spark can go into purchasing higher quality assets for my next title OR go back into improving Mem Spark.

Q: So even after you’ve paid off the cost of development you’re going to keep charging us for Mem Spark?

A: That isn’t completely true. My reason for charging for apps is to fund the development of future apps. As I release new apps I intend on lowering the cost of older apps so long as there is enough sales coming through to fund the next project.