eSpecialized Blog

Being new to the industry of Game Design, and having to fufill the entire gambit myself

Design->Build (programming, art, music)->Release->Advertise

Its a lot of hats for me to hold with something like this.  And its been a monumental task for just one game across 5 platforms.  I’m in the Advertise phase for SudokuGeek our (Mostly my) Video game.  The challenges at this point, well lots.  Finding people/sites that are willing to review a Casual Game,  which will in turn generate interest in the game.

I am concerned that people will think some big corporation is doing all the work.  Really Willy Nilly, Inc, is for a lot of purposes, but its all me in the game.  The other decisions such as pricing, release, where to go for developing came from my research, but my family (and me) being the directors, make the final decisions based on my research.  I thought I could move on already after advertising, but we decided to move ahead and make an iPad version of the game, this boiled down to me wanting to make the game more desirable by including all the extra graphics that would make SudokuGeek great, and the 10 thousand games per difficulty,  also to release a Lite free version that gives people a taste of the application.

The good news is, the lite version is being downloaded a lot daily.  The part that counts is keeping it out there in front of people so they would try it, and then buy it.

SudokuGeek represents years of learning game and 3D programming (2004 thru 2009), to being a final finished product in 2010 with 6 months of hard work and adding features that we thought as a group would benefit the game.  The port to the iPhone took 1.5 months.  Final polish and re-release took another month, and this included the update to support the iPad, extra graphics etc.

Whats next, well variety is the spice of life.  A 3 match game, a shoot em up, whats next, we (Willy Nilly, Inc) have yet to really solidify this decision….

If you want to help me spread the word, feel free to use these links in submitting to game reviewers. Or just share this story on your facebook or tweet it as an honorable mention.

Platforms Worth Mentioning:  iPhone, iPod touch, iPad,  XBOX 360, there is a PC version also.

Website;

http://www.sudokugeek.com

Itunes;
SudokuGeek (full) ; http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sudokugeek/id378886320?mt=8
SudokuGeek Lite ; http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sudokugeek-lite/id379828552?mt=8

Splash Icon;

http://www.sudokugeek.com/iphonepromo/SudokuGeekLogo_336x180.png

Screen Shots;

http://www.sudokugeek.com/iphonepromo/ColorBoxes.png

http://www.sudokugeek.com/iphonepromo/RoundedColorCubesRedSky.png

http://www.sudokugeek.com/iphonepromo/ZoomedColorCubes.png

http://www.sudokugeek.com/iphonepromo/planets_redsky.png

http://www.sudokugeek.com/iphonepromo/iPad_woodcubes.png

YouTube Video;

The conversion rate is high considering other developers who shared saw 2% or less.  This is basically people who purchased the product.  This is only 2 weeks after release.  You can see that not a lot of people are after Sudoku on the XBOX360.  Still the most complained about part is the menu system.. Time to redo it!

Period Statistics

From:     XNA Team <xnacgp@____.com>
Subject:     Game Approved: SudokuGeek
Date:     July 19, 2010 8:03:34 PM PDT
To:     William Thompson <wthomps@willynillyinc.com>

The SudokuGeek iPad was posted for approvals today.

I also Submitted SudokuGeek for the XBOX360.

PC XNA Version;
I will be implementing a poll/survey in the un-install of SudokuGeek XNA PC version to find out why people are having problems.

If it turns out that to many people who want it, find it isn’t supported on their hardware, and the other platforms do well, then I will implement an OpenGL version of the game,  I know XNA is really designed for newer computers (5 years old or newer).

Only a few new features to do for the iPhone/iPad/iPod versions, implement in store app purchasing, and a lite version.

Apple, and Microsoft have very long winded license agreements.  Apple’s has recently become more restrictive from what I understand, if you developed your iPhone app in torque 2d, or another game/app engine entirely and not in the XCode Objective C environment, then you may not meet the needs of the new license agreements for your app.  And you could end up denied.

I understand the want of this style.  Xcode gives the end developer full power over their app (including power consumption), which also includes how fast it draws, where as 3rd party engines do not.  3rd party engines would be less efficient than using native code, draw more battery power, and makes the devices look bad to the end user,  if you looked at my article on Battery life,  I have links there that show people whining and complaining they don’t get the battery life they think they should with games.

Long story short, you got to read those license agreements.  I read about Apples change in this months ‘iCreate’ magazine.  Now if the engine integrates into Xcode nativalely, I think those types are permitted,  ie Unity game engine is designed to stream line the drawn 3d scene,  it doesn’t interfere with Xcode (to my knowledge)..  I haven’t played with Unity so don’t quote me..

I was playing around with WebSudoku’s puzzles to see how they compare to what I have.

My concern here is that something is up or abound.  I get a ton of positive feedback on my PC version of the game, but wondering why not many converts from Downloaded to purchased. I’ll have to get some sort of review from people on this.

I finished the iPhone version, and am about to post this new version of SudokuGeek for approval on the app market.  On the iPhone competition for Sudoku is fierce, but its looking more and more like people may have moved on, or lost interest?  So I am looking for insight as to whats happened?  Are to many free Sudoku’s out there that people lost interest in video game format versions?  Or is it lack of diversity, puzzles to hard so people don’t generally buy them, or lack of features?

In any case, I have to get out there and find out what people who play sudoku are looking for in their sudoku grids, because just throwing up a game I really enjoy doesn’t mean everyone else will.  Although tons of feed back and positive re-inforcement has me optimistic.

Onward and upward. Play Testing for the XBOX version finished, perhaps in the next two days I will get time to get it up into approval mode.

Not much done this week sadly.

I’ve decided to repost XNA XBOX SudokuGeek for its play testing and then final approvals.  I’ll do that in the next day.  All I have is about an hour of re-testing before resubmitting.

We got our business cards, unfortunately I am not a very upfront person,  I can still hand them out, and ask people if they play sudoku.. I don’t feel comfortable with this, but doing this business has some aspects of moving outside my comfort zone.

Sudoku on the iPhone has a few features yet to implement.  Zooming, Notes creation and display, and falling cubes into the sudoku board.  We decided to re-work the main menu, I became a little bad in pulling my weight on a decision. So maybe reconvene of designing the menu system is in order.  I am wanting to mix the UIKit elements in with the OpenGL screens.  Evidently it is possible, but I have to learn how to do it.  No one offers simple solutions for this,   one guy at the GDC 2010 has a white sheet on this. But I cannot get at it for the moment (I didn’t register).

Google Adwords,  I had planned to learn more about this.  I think the PC Version deserves to get out there.   Our live traffic map, only shows a few spots (for weeks now) of where people have accessed our site from.. So its safe to say its not on anyone’s radar. I’ll spend some time learning how to work adwords to our advantage, and also how I can submit to PC magazines for review.

Onward and upward; Very kewl article about Steve Jobs in this months Success Magazine.  In reading what Steve Jobs said,   he doesn’t look back at what could have been, he just spends his time looking forward to what can be the best, making products  what they want to have and use.  And then they (Apple) get it done.

Ok, so as of today, I have a much better playable PC version of SudokuGeek.  Just released this day May 8th 2010. On the main Menu, it has the version info displayed on the lower right hand corner.

XBOX360 version will take additional testing. It will be a while anyway, so just hang on tight.

Well I’ve been working on the XNA version today. I didn’t make the 5PM EST..  Why,  well with what I fixed and added features, I introduced a new bug that is hard to track down what is causing the issue.

Only 2 render engines work out of the 3 right now.  BasicEffect fails to display anything now, and this was with just modifying plasma saver settings as best I can tell.. After I made a few more changes, it fails to render at all now (even with plasma saver off).

My brain is not working well today, really slow. Hard to think through where the issue starts.  I might have to bag it today and come back another day to fix these issues.. That is not ideal for me or the company, but we are relying on my brain at the moment.

On other news, my dad said that my moms boss is very excited about SudokuGeek, very kewl news!

I’ve been working solidly for several months now.  Time to take a full day off.

Yesterday mom and dad came over with their iPad’s, iPod touches.  I was able to give them a preliminary build for the ipad and ipod.  Very kewl.. Mom got very excited about SudokuGeek and how great it looks on the iPad!

After they left, even though I shouldn’t have, I got the iPad version working just like the iPod version does.  I have yet to do the skybox, and menu system.. At the moment, Sudoku is completely playable on the iPod touch,iPhone,iPad systens.. This also includes MAC OSX and the PC OpenGL versions.

I have yet to finish upgrades to the XNA XBOX360 version. I plan to do that tomorrow and re-test and re-release it for play testing and then eventual submission.  The PC Version will follow tomorrow too with several worthy updates, it should be available for download by 5pm EST.

All in all, looks like my time making SudokuGeek is nearly complete for these platforms.

I’ve found the most difficult issue is with switching keyboard styles.  The iMac has the smaller style keyboard, which messes me up when switching back to the PC.

Cya everybody!