It took three days without sleep to finally ( I hope ) get it working with onboard video, but Anime Tennis Babes is released.

There are screenshots and a demo on my website :

http://www.animetennisbabes.com

I don't plan on updating anything in the game right away, but I am considering a sort of 1.5 version with anything that is commonly requested. So any feedback on the game would be useful for that.

I've already received one offer to publish it in retails stores in some countries, which was a huge ( and very welcome ) surprise. Since the offer was non-exclusive, I decided to sell it myself from the website. I'm using ShareIt since I already have an account with them, and i was very impressed with their customer support.

Feedback on the website is also much appreciated as this is the first game I've finished that I personally enjoy playing enough to want to market it properly. I'm not much of a web designer, so I've tried to keep it as simple and clean as possible.

Any other general feedback on price, etc, nags, feature limits, etc is also very welcome.

Originally posted by sybixsus
I've already received one offer to publish it in retails stores in some countries, which was a huge ( and very welcome ) surprise. Since the offer was non-exclusive, I decided to sell it myself from the website.
Can't you just give them exclusivity for a given territory, and keep your rights for ESD sales (either give them non-exclusive rights for ESD, or just give them retail-only rights)?

If you tried this and they refused then, yeah, I'd stay away from them unless they are offering a largeish advance and reasonable royalties.

[edit] Hey, the screenshots look great, I'm downloading the demo now.

Can't you just give them exclusivity for a given territory, and keep your rights for ESD sales (either give them non-exclusive rights for ESD, or just give them retail-only rights)?

Yes. Sorry if I didn't explain myself very well, but that's exactly what I meant. They only want retail rights for the territories they sell in, so I decided to do the electronic version myself. Previously I had been looking at an offer from a "sales partner" who wanted to do it all, so I wouldn't have been selling it myself. But since the second publisher just wanted retail rights for their countries, and since they seem very professional and honest, I decided to publish the online version myself.

Originally posted by sybixsus
Yes. Sorry if I didn't explain myself very well, but that's exactly what I meant. They only want retail rights for the territories they sell in, so I decided to do the electronic version myself.
Actually you were perfectly clear, I somehow managed to read it wrong. ;) Good luck with the deal.

Phil,

Congrats on finishing ATB! It's a fantastic concept and wish you the best.

Gonna go try the new demo now.

About your website..

It looks fine. Everything is easy to see, and clearly written. Though the "Free" game link is broken. The screenshot for the puzzle game page is also the screenshot of your tennis game. I'm not sure if that is correct.

Also the game is 23.49 USD so I was wondering if you ment to sell the game at 19.99 USD? This might be misleading in letting people think the game is 19.99 and then clicking on the buy now to find out it's acutally 23.49 (assuming majority of your sales will come from US customers).

Besides that great job.

I just played the demo and found some bugs.

The player can basically clip through the crowd and stand.

Also during the 3rd match the player indicator disapeared.

Also when I quit, it launces your website, but the program does not end.

Hiya John,

I've been trying to email you, but AOL keeps bouncing my emails back to me? They've been a bit funny since the mydoom thing started, but that should only happen on incoming mail.

It looks fine. Everything is easy to see, and clearly written. Though the "Free" game link is broken. The screenshot for the puzzle game page is also the screenshot of your tennis game. I'm not sure if that is correct

Yeah, I had to delay releasing the puzzle game while I got permission on the music. Now I have permission, I haven't had time to release it.

Also the game is 23.49 USD so I was wondering if you ment to sell the game at 19.99 USD? This might be misleading in letting people think the game is 19.99 and then clicking on the buy now to find out it's acutally 23.49 (assuming majority of your sales will come from US customers).

The game is $19.99. ShareIt automatically adds VAT, but it shouldn't do that if you live outside of the EU. I'll go in and make sure it's not something I've set wrong, but I think it's automatic. I may have to email ShareIt and ask them why it's doing that.

The player can basically clip through the crowd and stand.

Quite true, but I wouldn't consider it a bug. I chose not to implement collisions for some parts of the stadium because I wanted to maximize the speed for low end PC's. It has been tested on a 300mhz cpu and runs pretty well. It's unlikely it would run well if I had full collisions. I decided to sacrifice realism for compatibility.

Also during the 3rd match the player indicator disapeared.

I can't repeat that. I've played many, many matches, and I've never seen it disappear. I'll keep my eye out.

Also when I quit, it launces your website, but the program does not end.

Yep, again that's intentional. You have to alt-tab or click back into the application to get it to shutdown. It's intended to stop people just closing the website and going away as soon as it opens. Just another minor inconvenience to push people into buying it. I don't nag much in the game and it doesn't time out, so I decided I had to include some "stick" element to go with all the "carrot" elements like the additional stadiums, players, cup competitions, difficulty levels, bonuses, full length sets and matches.

Oopsy, you were right about the VAT thingy. I did have it set to add VAT to all countries ( well if they would just label these boxes more accurately so I knew what they actually meant.. geez.

Thanks for that.. The last thing I want is to put customers off by unknwingly overcharging ( not to mention having to refund customers who weren't put off :| )

The player can basically clip through the crowd and stand.Quite true, but I wouldn't consider it a bug. I chose not to implement collisions for some parts of the stadium because I wanted to maximize the speed for low end PC's.
A simple bounding box collision check would fix this and wouldn't impact on CPU speed at all.


Also when I quit, it launces your website, but the program does not end.Yep, again that's intentional. You have to alt-tab or click back into the application to get it to shutdown. It's intended to stop people just closing the website and going away as soon as it opens.
How does keeping the program running stop people from closing the website?

A simple bounding box collision check would fix this and wouldn't impact on CPU speed at all.

Actually it wouldn't. Many seemingly separate objects are in fact joined or linked together to give a speed boost, including the stadium and some of the decorative items on court. So it can only be done very broadly and without real mesh data, which is how it currently is implemented.


How does keeping the program running stop people from closing the website?

It doesn't, and you can't. I said it stops people closing the browser and going away. They have to flick back to program. They can't forget about me even if they won't open my webpage ;)

Nice babes!

However, I agree with the others about limiting the player's mobility to prevent the player from 'mixing with the crowd'! I too cannot understand why it should impact on the speed. If you can't use new invisible bounding boxes (why not?), can't you instead just not allow the player to move beyond set 2-dimensional x and y (or really x and z) coordinates using simple If...Then statements?

Originally posted by sybixsus
Actually it wouldn't. Many seemingly separate objects are in fact joined or linked together to give a speed boost, including the stadium and some of the decorative items on court. So it can only be done very broadly and without real mesh data, which is how it currently is implemented.

Ridiculous. Just add a few manual collision planes and boxes. Even a 200MHz pentium should easily be able to chew through thousands of bounding box checks per frame.