Recent posts by Amibtious on Kongregate

Topic: Game Programming / How Do You Pronounce...

car
var
jay-son (jason)
E-C-M-A-script
Hacks (or hax, or haxe…different pronounciations for this word just don’t seem to make sense in my own English…it is hacks)
you-int
swuff
swuck
fla (not flar, fla…as in flash)

Topic: Game Programming / Exposing your games...

Couldn’t the upgrades be on the same screen as the level select?

Topic: Technical Support / Game rating strangness

A new game just published has 71 plays but an average rating of 4.5stars.

IIRC a game needs 50 ratings to be given an average, and the only way you’ll get 50 ratings in the first 70 plays is by manipulation?

Topic: Game Programming / Show us a screenshot of what you're working on!

That looks great, although the lighting’s a bit dodgy. Appears to be almost a ‘beam’ of moonlight, but….it can’t be, ya can see the canopy, no beaming there…..and sunset at the other end? Looks odd to me.

Topic: Game Design / Hand Of God Game Design Preview

There’s a whole world of people out there, almost full of people who, sadly, aren’t English.

Topic: Game Programming / Brick Breaker Tutorial Help

Oh that’s my bad…..I’ve never used FlashPro :/

Try deleting the word private….

The point is the code doesn’t think mcPaddle exists, or know what it is/should be. I don’t know how Flashpros drawing things and making them instances works, so try defining mcPaddle in code, before the code needs to know what it is. Mebe that tutorial is all good for FlashPro, but it doesn’t look great to me because it’s vague on this point. I think it wants you to manually place the paddle on stage, but it doesn’t actually tell you to that I saw….

Topic: Game Programming / Brick Breaker Tutorial Help

That means the code can’t find a mcPaddle. Mebe a typi (mcpaddle !=mcPaddle), or mebe ya haven’t added mcPaddle yet….I suspect it’s the later because that tutorial doesn’t seem clear to me on that point. Try adding

private var mcPaddle:MovieClip=new MovieClip();

at line 14. (just before beginCode();)

Instead of manually drawing & adding it to stage.

Of course you still need to draw it & add it, and I’d have it as a Sprite rather than a MC, but check if that fixes your error.

Topic: Kongregate / Is Kongregate suppressing the rating of the Minion Master advert?

And only 4 comments that I see….that’s pretty weird yeah.

Topic: Kongregate / Is Kongregate suppressing the rating of the Minion Master advert?

That’s a lot of “plays” to not have a rating…

Topic: Game Programming / Problem displaying text when reading text file.

“a simple TXT”

If it’s UTF-8, is it possible toString is being effected by the Byte Order Mark?

Just a wild guess.

Topic: Game Programming / How to make money by making games?

I have a bookmark somewhere….hang on.

http://kaitol.com/income/

From someone who apparently didn’t ever use microtransactions, bet they’re kicking themselves.

Topic: Game Programming / How to make money by making games?

I think you may find a lot of interest here
http://developers.kongregate.com/news

This for example
http://www.scribd.com/doc/84728657/GDC-2012-Core-Games-Real-Numbers-Final

Topic: Game Programming / How to make money by making games?

Don’t recall any specific examples, haven’t heard of it mentioned in a couple of years…..could be dying out? Bet UG’d know better than me :)

In game ads (mochiads) also just sprang to mind. You’ll find a crapload of examples of that, but Kong has a deal to supress them on this site.

Topic: Game Programming / How to make money by making games?

Liscensing.

Your game is exclusive to your own site, and mebe your sponsors site…..other portals want it, they pay for the right to have it for a year…or whatever terms.

Biggest potential earners are 5/6, but…2 can be 5 figure US$ for sequel to big game. Mebe 6 figures, haven’t heard of it…but figures are headed that way.

EDIT:to be clear, games in general AREN’T exclusive….ya want them spread around….but that’s the basis of licensing…probably for developers who are trying to drive traffic to their own site, so may have expanded version exclusive to themselves and self sponsor.

Topic: Game Programming / Equipment to game creating

Oh man :(

Topic: Game Programming / Equipment to game creating

Might wanna read this.
http://www.kongregate.com/forums/4-game-programming/topics/160453-how-to-make-flash-games

And try this for your first project/to learn
http://gamedev.michaeljameswilliams.com/as3-avoider-game-tutorial-base/

Topic: Game Programming / Cost of making a game

Northwaygames is a husband&wife team, both I think coders&artists. Gameinabottle is I think just one coder who outsources/collabs for art* and sometimes sound. Protectorworld is one person who both codes and does their own art. Apologies if I’m mistaken about any of that.

*And GC2 looks goood

Topic: Collaborations / Jojn a team, make a game, earn money, get equity

I was kinda saying emotional pain doesn’t count in anything where you’d use the phrase ‘literally painful’ frivilously.

@Bronsoner, having seen a fair few of these ’I’ve never made a game lets assemble a team’ projects come and go* and seeing you already have a team of 5…I suggest you check and double check your coder knows what they’re doing, and then remember that everyone else is useless without them. Art is very important in how your game is recieved, and sound is good…..writers…meh, I dunno. It’s useful to have a lot of people around to beta test…but without a coder the game doesn’t exist.

*The failure rate I’ve observed is 100%, for IMO two main reasons:- One getting a big team that faffs around without a competent coder…saying things like “we’ve been working on it for X months” and having no source code. Two….way over ambitious (my specialty perhaps). Start small. Whatever you’re thinking, make it smaller. If it has an acronym…TD, RTS, RPG….it’s probably too much for your first game. And then don’t release an avoider game and move straight on to your MMORPG so long as it seems ‘okay’. I know you’ve already said this in your steps, but other people have said exactly the same and then immediately forgotten it when they get a team of musicians and level designers and writers and advisors together who all want to talk about cool ideas they have for the big project. See if you can get something tiny (like an avoider game) done by the end of the month, and make your 2nd project something that can be done by the end of next month. The artist (you?) needs to work closely with the coder….everyone else needs to be cut out of the decision making for small beginning projects. Else you’ll faff. Whatever you end up deciding, cut out more than half the features and build what’s left. Anything that doesn’t result in actual asset creation is useless until you have a beta ready to test; Assets: primary-source code, secondary-art, tertiary-sounds. When you have a beta, get it as widely tested as possible and polish the hell out of it. The 90/90 rule is very real.

Also, ignore all of the above, I am as of yet a far from successful developer and mebe shouldn’t be giving advice :D

Also, you’ve spelt join wrong.

Topic: Collaborations / Jojn a team, make a game, earn money, get equity

Figuratively.

Emotional pain doesn’t count.

Topic: Game Programming / Cost of making a game

Ah, I see your point. I would note though, that most of that made-up-but-lets-go-with-it 3% are making varying amounts along the lines of being able to feed themselves/pay the rent, and doing this because they enjoy it….they’re almost certainly not earning minimum wage.
@ Portfolio….ya mean something a developer would show?
http://www.kongregate.com/accounts/nerdook

Something you’d show? How do you normally demonstrate your art? I’m thinking you don’t, and therein lays the problem…

Topic: Game Programming / Cost of making a game

It’s really not well organised. And there are a load of different ways of going about things. Nerdook makes lots of smaller games and essentially sells each sponsorship to the highest bidder, Peter Har…whatever hungarian surname I forget…tai seems to be sticking with one sponsor who supports him well in spending years just trying to make GC as good (and therefore hopefully revenuey) as possible…Ninjakiwi run their own portal, trying to cut out the sponsor-middleman, some games try to make money from in game ads via mochiads or similar, some people think having ads or an intro logo will put people off microtransactions. There’s only really one sponsor marketplace I know of (FGL), and in game ad providers generally don’t want you to sponsor a game you’re putting them in, and vice versa, there’s no industry standard for licensing, either in compatibility with sponsorships or ads, or length, or exclusivity, or price. Most Portals don’t share ad revenue, merely paying up front (or not), but Kong’s been very successful doing so. There’s certainly no set budget or wages because the distinction between professionals and hobbyists is unclear at best, and ultimately irrelevant IMO.

Topic: Game Programming / Cost of making a game

@OP
How much:
I saw StarFireGold (a professional programmer) quote 15-15kUS$ for 3-4 months, at someone looking to pay a coder to code their game. I’ve also seen them interested in joining a collab only for revenue share because they liked the art. It depends what you have to offer.

How long:
I could make a TD in…probably ~2 hours, but it’d be shit. TD5, Gemcraft lab….I think they both took more than a year. You just keep going until it’s done. And then you fix it. And then you balance it. And then you polish it. You really can’t get firm timetables, especially trying to drag together some team of amateurs. (which is almost everyone around here)

Business vs job:
Just getting making games to be a job is a REALLY big ask. A business? Give up.
Like UG says, sounds like you’d be better off running your own portal. If you can get a profitmaking portal, you can presumably have a fair bit of influence over game designs, by offering good sponsorship deals to make a sequel to your favourite flash games.

How to make games:
If you want to make games as a hobby anyways, I’d suggest you start advertising yourself as ‘artist seeking programmer’, and link to some examples of your work.
FlashDevelop is fine, but basically you go with whatever the programmer wants to use.

I really don’t think you stand much chance of making a business out of something that so many people already do for free as a hobby.

Topic: Game Programming / Free game creation engine

Game maker lite.

Topic: Kongregate / [New] Split test on the game page

I’m only seeing one decimal place on the rating. That’s bad, more precision is better. Other than that, this seems fine…I guess I’d prefer to see the description/instructions/updates at the top, swapped with ‘other games from this developer’……cos less scrolling is good. But this seems a less fucked major change than the previous ones.

Topic: Game Programming / What music do you like listening to while programming?

Einaudi, Mazzy Star, Lee Moses, Radiohead, GY!BE, Eno, Beatles, Foo Fighters & chilled trance.