Last night I released Alien Flux 1.3. If you sucked before at Alien Flux you will now be able to play it on Rookie Mode which is vastly easier - you can now complete the demo!

The FULL VERSION of Alien Flux now also features an Extreme Mode which lets you jump straight in the game at level 21. You have to complete the game on Normal mode first to unlock it.

Numerous other fixes have been incorporated but we still can't get the game to run on Matrox cards for some reason. Sorry!

Download the demo at:
http://www.puppygames.net/downloads/SetupAlienFluxDemo.exe
(Windows native version, 5.5mb)

http://www.puppygames.net/downloads/AlienFlux-full-1.3.zip
(Java / Linux version, 4.5mb, requires Java 1.4+)

I hope you enjoy the new Rookie mode (specially designed for dads & 7 year old girls ;) ) - get zapping!

Cas :)

... I get a 404 trying to download the demo at that link...

(Sorry, fixed the link now)

Cas :)

If you're already running the full version how do you upgrade to 1.3?

- S

Just install the full version over the top of the other one (sorry, I was just in the middle of sending all you registered people an email with the link!)

Cas :)

Just a few thoughts that could explain the poor sales that you mentioned...

1) The requirements for the game are a little high, but I don't think this is your main issue

2) My vid card did not support OpenGL in WinXP without an additional download from my manufacturer (ATI). And while I had no problem downloading and installing these drivers, most novice computer users either wouldn't know how, or wouldn't go through the trouble. Secondly this additional download was over 8MB, so if I didn't have a cable connection, I wouldn't have bothered and would have never tried your game. Thirdly the game failed to run even after installing the said drivers and went to a black screen after the menu and locked up the computer.

3) I tried the game on another computer and the game WAS rather difficult, but I see you've added some new modes and this may solve alot of sales issues

While my issues may be 'unique', i would think that quite a few people downloaded the game, couldn't play it, and never bothered to try again or contact you. I never liked my vid card because its done this with other games... so you could be in the clear anyway.

I hope your sales pick up in the future.

Athlon 850Mhz
128mb ram
ATI 128 GL (32 mb)
Windows XP

Originally posted by BrewKnowC
Just a few thoughts that could explain the poor sales that you mentioned...

1) The requirements for the game are a little high, but I don't think this is your main issue

2) My vid card did not support OpenGL in WinXP without an additional download from my manufacturer (ATI). And while I had no problem downloading and installing these drivers, most novice computer users either wouldn't know how, or wouldn't go through the trouble. Secondly this additional download was over 8MB, so if I didn't have a cable connection, I wouldn't have bothered and would have never tried your game. Thirdly the game failed to run even after installing the said drivers and went to a black screen after the menu and locked up the computer.

3) I tried the game on another computer and the game WAS rather difficult, but I see you've added some new modes and this may solve alot of sales issues

While my issues may be 'unique', i would think that quite a few people downloaded the game, couldn't play it, and never bothered to try again or contact you. I never liked my vid card because its done this with other games... so you could be in the clear anyway.

I hope your sales pick up in the future.

Athlon 850Mhz
128mb ram
ATI 128 GL (32 mb)
Windows XP


Unfortunately I have to agree that the OpenGL issue and the Difficulty of control/play issue are both very serious one's that will hamper sales. I would make it a priority to get the game running under DirectX as well. As for the difficulty level.. well that may be inherent in the game. Rookie mode is ok, but it doesn't really change the built in difficulty in the game. In something like pong control is very easy, just left - right or up-down. In this game its full motion aim, using the same cursor for thursting and movement. Then there's the very concept of thrust which a lot of people find very hard. And on top of that you need to master shields, and smart bombs on the keyboard.

I wonder if the game wouldnt be easier for some people if you allowed a separate control mechanism where the arrow keys moved the ship left right up and down and spacebar fired. I know that probably sounds horrible for someone use to aiming with the mouse, but for a novice game player it might be easier to get up to speed.

On the other hand it may just be that you need to target the right audience. If you hit the right people they won't have any trouble with the controls or difficulty. Not every game is a casual game after all. Some games are meant to be hard arcade shooters. What isn't clear to me is how you balance selling a hard arcade shooter with the kind of audience one generally hits downloading stuff off the net. How much overlap is there? Maybe online isn' the best place to reach the kind of people that would buy this game. I think places like gamespot, avault, bluesnews etc... are better target areas than general download sites in the case of this game. I'd definitely try running some of those indie ads on avault. They're not too expensive and it's the right audience for you.

Yeah, we've got a review lined up on avault, and we get a lot of hits from Blue's. It's definitely not a trivial pasttime playing Alien Flux - it's a proper arcade game. You have to enjoy this kind of game in the first place to play it.

We're working on getting contacts in Edge magazine and the other UK rags currently so we can get more review coverage for a dedicated market. It's the sort of game that gamers play, so we need to make sure that gamers find out about it.

As for GL - well, yes, Microsoft have rather made it hard these days, but where does that leave Quake2/3/Doom etc? And of course all the directx code I'd have to write would be a) even more difficult to get right because I've never done it before and b) a complete waste of time for the Mac port (and Linux for that matter). I'm going to stick with GL only I think, as I think it will probably give me fewer headaches in the long run. Our min system specs are pretty high anyway, so we're relying on a higher percentage of users having newer drivers and hardware anyway.

Btw, I have a feeling that ATI cards before the Radeon have exeedingly mediocre OpenGL support.

Cas :)

I have the same problem with Alian Flux making a black screen when starting to play. Here is my configuration:
PIII 800 Mhz
ATI FireGL 8800 128MB RAM

The graphics card is a OpenGL workstation card geared for heavy OpenGL work so the drivers should be good. It is also just under 8 months old (a generation 8 card) and it works well with Maya that is completely OpenGL based.

I would be happy to help you debug, just email or PM me.

YHPM.

Cas :)

Originally posted by princec
As for GL - well, yes, Microsoft have rather made it hard these days, but where does that leave Quake2/3/Doom etc?

I think it's a whole different ball game for quake etc.. I wouldn't even begin to compare the two scenarios really. I think it's a mistake not to support directx. I doubt it would be very difficult for you to do it. DirectX support would have been a hassle compared to GL maybe a few years ago, but the latest version of the Direct3D api are comperable and there's really not that much advantage to the GL interface. It's not like the old days when Dirext3D first came out and the only interface was a complete nightmare. I expect that the majority of your sales will be windows/pc and not mac or some other platform. Mac is viable of course, but lets face it, at the end of the day it's a much much smaller market. Maybe only 3% or something... of the pc market. I guess you have to do what you have to do, but I suspect you're looking at not much more than a week or so worth of work if your code is currently well designed and the basic 3d stuff is all wrapped up and not all over the place.

I'll make a few more suggestions... although these are less technical. Just minor things I thought of while playing it. The first is that the invulnerability bonus is perhaps sure death for me. As soon as I get it I fly right into the fray, but I have no way of knowing that it's about to wear off, so I almost always die right when it goes. I'd like it to flash or make a sound (or both even) just before it wears off so I can get safe. I'd like the same for shields. There's an indicator of course but it's at the top of the screen and you're not always able to look at it during the heat of the battle. I'd like a little beep beep sound to let me know shields are low. Another pet peeve is that there's no indication of which fluffies are being attacked while I'm dead. I just hear the squeak but no shrinking circle. I'd like the circle all the time because otherwise when I reappear I have to fly and look for the bubbled guys and often I'm too late to save them. Also in version 1.3 it tries to center you at the point where you died. 1.0 didn't have that and I thought it was better. I'd remove that feature. Not sure why it was added.

Lastly a bug was introduced in version 1.3 - I often get some error message and an invitation to mail support. No extra info is given though. It then goes back to the main menu. That never happened with the previous version.

Well if you choose to only support OpenGL, then just realize that this is going to drastically affect your sales and probably already has. Some novice computer users probably don't even know what OpenGL is and if they have it or not, but most computers come with DX pre-installed. If you are just trying to be the poster-boy for java/OpenGL games then more power to you, but if you are trying to sell games then you need to support DX.

...is it really? I mean, I think some hard evidence is in order here, because that's a really, really major undertaking, despite it sounding simple. And as far as "abstracting the rendering" goes - the whole point of using OpenGL is that it is already an abstract cross-platform rendering API.

Now: where can we get proper facts about the size of the OpenGL market versus DirectX?

Cas :)

I'm not really sure about the numbers, but I do know that one of the biggest problems with the default Nvidia drivers on XP is that they do not have GL stupport out of the box. You have to go download the latest detonator drivers from nvidia to get the GL support. In the end it's all a matter of who you percieve your customer to be. I think there's a pretty good chance that most the cusomers of alien flux are people who know how to update their graphics card drivers, but then again maybe not.

I think that's the question you need to decide for yourself, how many sales am I loosing because of this? and then Is it enough for me to learn direct3D? (which really isn't that hard, it's as easy as GL these days)

I did try version 1.3 last night and tried rookie mode. I couldn't tell what the difference was, but I made it to level 5 instead of level 3. I did have more fun than before and tried flying around like crazy.

Is it more shields or less damage? or maybe I just got better... I did have fun with it.

What scared me is that the shooter I'm working has two control modes, depending on the scenario. I realized one of the modes is quite like AF and that gave me some doubts about the conrol scheme I was planning on. I'll have to get this part of the game running soon so I can experiment with it.

There is a game I find pretty fun called starscape that controls very similar to Epic's old Solar Winds. It's keyboard controlled, but it's still thrust oriented and I just get it. I do quite well in that game.

I'm pretty sure I'd like AF better with keyboard controls. (rot right, rot left, thrust)


Myself not being a Java expert - isn't there a non-accelerated java graphics library you can fall back on?

I would have thought the graphics of AF would be quite speedy on a 500Mhz machine even without acceleration. Is that not the case even with the Jet compiler?

Rookie mode has:
- More shields
- Slower enemy bullets
- Slower jellies
- Much lengthier mutation time
- No jelly incursion if all the fluffies die
- No angry red balls
- Half hit points for the boss on level 5

However we're thinking of axing levels 4 and 5 for the demo, because it seems to take people a long time to get there! And I'd rather people made up their minds a bit sooner :)

There's no way that Java can handle the amount of stuff we're drawing at 60FPS. It's also got quite a lot of subtle 3D in it which would have to go.

Cas :)

Rookie mode has:
- More shields
- Slower enemy bullets
- Slower jellies
- Much lengthier mutation time
- No jelly incursion if all the fluffies die
- No angry red balls
- Half hit points for the boss on level 5

I noticed the bubbles seem a lot slower... wow I must really suck at this game for you to have to do all of those things to it... just so I can get past the 3rd level.

DONT TAKE OUT LEVELS 4 AND 5!

I was just about to get bored of the game when the mother tringle showed up! Instead it made me want to see more - getting the buy now button right after destroying the mother tringle was excellent! There couldn't have been a better time to approach me about that.

If you're interested in the 7-year-old feedback:
"Wow, I'm good at this game. Can we buy it?" My standard answer to that is only if you can finish the Demo and still want it.
"Can I get a fluffy screen saver?" I said I'd mention it to you. She really digs the fluffies.
"I know a fluffy is in danger because I heard it squeak - I just follow the circles" This is so obvious, I never had to explain it. I did tell her about the and space keys.

Having the cursor snap back to the place you just died is not helpful. I have to agree with that.


Then, the issues. She played the game on my computer, then I tried to install it on hers.

She's got a PIII 550 Mhz with an ATI Rage 128, Windows 2000.

First try - no GL drivers. Download the drivers from ATI, install. She can't do that on her own; I didn't give her admin privs to her computer. Probably not an issue with most of your potential customers.

With the new drivers, it worked, but she has a 1024x768 LCD screen and any other resolution looks pretty bad on it.

Then the fun part - when I start a new game, the screen says "Loading", but it's no longer responding. The music continues to play, but I can't stop the process or switch out of it.

I rebooted, turned off some features in your options menu and it did the same thing. Powered it off.

Best friends and Miko and Molly run fine on her computer... those two are probably DX. Maybe she'll get a new video card for Christmas. Or I'll get a dx9 card and she can have my needlessly expensive GF Ti DX8.1 card. I hate it when that happens.

It would be nice to be able to select a screen resolution and refresh rate.

Ok, princec, I have a problem. While the beta version of Alien Flux ran happily on my system. This version stopped working. It could not run on win98se, nor win2ksp2 nor winxp.

Tha log file shows this "java.lang.NullPointerException" string.

What is wrong?

(I think that might have been you on the puppygames support forum?)

I have a feeling this is an internationalization bug :( It's caused by the way the compiler works, and it's greatly irritating, and tricky to work around correctly because I have to do a whole sequence of shenanigans every time I compile and if I get it wrong it doesn't seem to work on computers running other than English nationalisation settings.

Would you be ever so kind and try switching your regional settings to United Kingdom and seeing if the game runs?

mg All comments noted :) I might remove levels 4 and 5 but keep the boss in at the end of level 3. What do you think?

Cas :)

Originally posted by princec
(I think that might have been you on the puppygames support forum?)

I have a feeling this is an internationalization bug :( It's caused by the way the compiler works, and it's greatly irritating, and tricky to work around correctly because I have to do a whole sequence of shenanigans every time I compile and if I get it wrong it doesn't seem to work on computers running other than English nationalisation settings.

Would you be ever so kind and try switching your regional settings to United Kingdom and seeing if the game runs?

mg All comments noted :) I might remove levels 4 and 5 but keep the boss in at the end of level 3. What do you think?

Cas :)

I don't think I'd remove level 4 and 5, but I think I might make the initial progression a little slower. In just 2 levels you have those spheres to deal with.. the learning curve is really high. I'd of had maybe 3 levels with just bubbles or something like that. Maybe you can put in a "beginner" levelset that doesnt do highscores.

The new version of the game sounds really fun from everyone's comments, but I just can't get it to work...

SpaceTripper does great with 3 levels in the demo - it's just the right amount because it's got that awesome arachnid boss at the end of level 3 and it takes a lot of fun hard work just to get there.

But you get through AF much faster. I might suggest adding some nag screens between levels 3,4, and 5.

OTOH, If you could have a boss every 3 levels, that might be a more exciting enticement to buy the game. Who doesn't like more bosses?


Of course for me, I might wait until it works on my daughter's machine before I buy it. I don't suppose you offer a volume discount...

BTW - the configurable controls is a great addition. I much prefered using the keyboard for thrust.


Are your fluffies sprites with an alpha channel? I ask, because the fluffy hair is so fine looking. My 3D renderer (and photoshop for that matter) produces a nice anti-aliased alpha channel. What bugs me is that the image is anti-aliased as well.

Example: If I have a pixel that is half covered by 100% blue and should be half transparent, the image produced is 50% blue and the alpha is 50%. Display that on a black background and now you have 25% blue.

The only way I can think to combat this is rendering at a much higer resolution - maybe without antialiasing at all, then writing my own routine to shrink the image and make the pixel color based only on visible pixels - so I end up with 100% blue and 50% transparent, for example.

I think Chaz renders the fluffies at very high supersampling. I'm not sure, you'd have to ask him.

The registration file (Alien Flux Registration.dat) by the way is freely transferable to your other machines about the home within a certain time frame (I forget how long exactly but it's several weeks)- no need to buy multiple copies!

I've still got this problem with some people just breezing through the demo and some people still being mysteriously stuck on level 3 after two weeks.

Here's a hint about the Spheres:

You may have noticed they only move in a horizontal or vertical way. This means if you line up horizontally or vertically with the parent before you blast them they will all fly into your lasers in pretty short order. The ones that get past you can be dealt with with your shields. The easiest strategy is to save them all up in a big group and let a smartbomb off.

Cas :)

By the way... What's that "style" parameter in the online highscores?

Stylish rescues! That's the 750-point bonus for when you rescue a Fluffy before it's been completely enveloped.

That's where Bungles comes from as well ;)

Cas :)

Ah yes... I contemplated waiting for the bubbles to start attacking a fluffie before getting it to boost my score, but I wasn't patient enough :-)

It's a worthwhile strategy up to about level 10 or so. And definitely unwise on Extreme mode.

Cas :)

What kind of support (if any) are you getting from Sun? You mention on your site that Sun showed off AF at JavaOne and GDC, did they do anything else? I'm just wondering what a "flagship for gaming" is worth to them.

Whereas I feel I might be entitled to say I've become quite good "virtual friends" with Chris Melissinos and Jeff Kesselman, the basic support we get from Sun ranges from being more or less completely ignored to being occasionally stabbed in the back :P

<edit>Ah, it would appear we're going to make some front page or other on one of Sun's websites, which is nice.

I'm trying to get some proposal together for Sun to write a proper gaming platform for Java but it's complicated and time consuming and I have more pressing concerns.

By the way, anyone getting a NullPointerException when trying to run Alien Flux - it's your regional settings! Set it to United Kingdom and it'll run. I'll be fixing this tonight...

Cas :)

Hey Cas -

I finally downloaded AF tonight and gave it a whirl. I'm quite impressed. Very smooth and polished. You can't even tell it's a Java game (which is a good thing). It's sure not the Java I remember using (back in the 1.2 days).

I was curious about the Sun support because I remember reading something about Sun pushing Java for games. I don't remember seeing AF in that article, it was mostly about some kind of Grand Prix racing game. I got the impression that Sun was funding the effort.

Although Sun is more likely to be irritated that you're using a JNI library instead of Java3D and JavaSound.

Sun finally realised that Java3D and Javasound don't cut it for games and after two years of badgering, mainly by myself and some others, they've released an open source binding to OpenGL and OpenAL as part of the Game Technologies Group initiative. It isn't quite what I need (I need the LWJGL because it has no dependencies on AWT) but it's exactly what Java needed to become viable for games. With OpenGL and OpenAL officially supported by Sun in Java these two technologies now have an exceedingly promising future. With any luck the Sun Java gaming push will be quite strong, but it needs a few high-profile high-budget high-scoring AAA games now. That'll basically ensure OpenGL's future far more certainly than Carmack can. Ho hum.

Cas :)

Popped a new version up:

http://www.puppygames.net/downloads/SetupAlienFluxDemo.exe

See if that fixes any problems with it not starting up.

Cas :)

Yaahooo! The internationalization trick did it! I have finally put my hands on your game. It's amazing. I really love it. Just my type of games (*sigh* i'm afraid i won't be a good puzzle designer). I'll check if your update fixes the problem soon.

Now I have to finish the demo. First I was very good at ripping fluffies, but it's definitely not the goal :) I'm much of a hardcore gamer and did it to level 4 rather quickly. The game is really difficult, but i like the challenge. Getting to level 5 steadily took some time and remapping thrust to the keyboard.

I will need a little workaround for my wife, but I'll definitely add another sale to Puppy Games' booze fund :)

Excellent work! I've noticed the game being a bit jerky once in a while on my GeForce3 Ti though. Garbage collection?

I would suggest doing something about the difficulty selection dialog. It's annoying to pass through it each time you start the game. Maybe adding "[x] Don't ask anymore" together with an entry in options would help?

Great news for both of us :D

Suggestions noted, but I think it might be better if you explicitly know what game you're playing in case someone else comes along and changes it unexpectedly...

I have in the end just uploaded a demo which finishes after 3 levels so save a few K and tempt wallets sooner. I think you can pretty much figure out if you like the game by level 3, my reasoning goes. I know it's actually quite mean, but it shows all there is on offer in those three levels without giving away much. Well, that's the theory - if it doesn't work I'll reinstate levels 4 and 5.

Cas :)

Perhaps this deserves it's own thread, and perhaps I should read a good marketing book, because I'm a complete novice at this.

But the most important part of marketing (after increasing demand for your product, of course) must be measuring your success to determine what is and isn't working and how to spend your marketing resources... (suddenly, it occurs to me that I am down the hall from a whole bunch of marketing people... I should do some brain picking. Then again, we work(at my day job) for a huge toy company- you can't watch a cartoon on tv without seeing 10-20 commercials for one of their products. So their marketing is probably a whole other kind of science.)

Anyway, my question is, if your game has been out for less than 3 weeks, and it's been on download.com for a few days, and you're making a change now, how will you tell if it helps or hurts you? I don't know if you put the boss in level 3 for the demo, but my intuition tells me that seeing that boss is going to be important for making sales.

I think if you cut down the demo to 1 level, people may make their decisions even faster. And if you have 20 levels in the demo, that's enough game that few people would want to pay for the rest of it. It would be nice if there was kind of calculus you can apply to find out where the point of balance is (the point where you make the most sales), but the point where you get the most people hooked is going to varry from game to game. It's got to be tested.

So there's a need to increase your sales by changing your tactics, but there is a need to measure which changes are working. But of course you want to increase sales right away.

Seems like I need a trip to the book store...

So far, all week I've seen AF on the front games page of download.com, which must be great for you. Over 3000 downloads since Monday. Just today a non-indie (thq) game replaced it.

Until I see something that convinces me otherwise, I plan to post to download.com on Thursday to get the most out of that first weekend.


If you don't come out in the top (new) section of download.com, then being new doesn't help you there, does it?

I've got to say that only 1 month to the day after release we weren't seriously expecting a deluge of conversions, partly because of a) bugs b) improvements and c) a lack of reviews but we've got to the stage where all 3 are addressed more or less.

But even so we can only really start measuring when we've got statistically significant results. With an incredible 16 sales out of about 10k downloads now it'd be tempting to say we've f*cked up royally somewhere and it's a load of rubbish but we know that's not the case. The problem is, I've got time on my hands in which I could be doing something technical, but no way to effectively measure its success.

This dire situation is a direct result of all the help that Steve P. and others have given the community. The sharp-of-mind will notice that despite being our first game, AF is doing 95% of the things that a lot of other shareware games took years to figure out. A history of Steve P.'s Dweep shows us just how far ahead of Dexterity we were on the first day of trading. We already had the nag screen format worked out for us by a hundred other shareware developers; we already knew how to sell the benefits of the full version; we already knew how to make the full version a compelling purchase; we already knew what price the game would have to be to sell well; we already knew a great deal about how a website needs to look to sell games; we already knew that we can't just sit and twiddle our thumbs and think we already know everything but that we've got to constantly improve over and over; we already knew that the game is for others to play and that we have to take all the feedback about difficulty very seriously etc etc etc etc.

A friend of mine (Matzon, occasionally lurks round here I think) wondered today why we've only managed 16 sales in a month when that would be when a retail game of the same calibre might expect to sell 10k copies or more. I speculated that the hype surrounding retail games begins a whole year in advance of the game, and it's kept on the boil with interviews, screenies, betas, news, etc. for so long that it becomes ingrained into everyone's unconcious and by the time it finally gets released you're already convinced that you want to buy it. My theory is that with Alien Flux, we're basically a year behind an equivalent retail release. Our job now is to make sure we keep it on the boil, keep it in the news by releasing little fixes and the odd new feature every month, and bring people to our website via all sorts of skullduggery. We won't really know how the conversion rate is doing for at least 6 months, as many people have alluded. It's a nail-biting and frustrating time, with a daily check to swreg.org to watch the sales orders not coming in :D

Cas :)

It's been said before, here and other places, that shareware games don't even hit their stride until the second year.

Here's the question then:

How does one keep the game in the spotlight for that long without annoying people?

We can't very well keep sending press releases out or we'll be universally ignored when we actually come up with something different.

Cas :)

Kai-Peter does a pretty decent job with his forums I’d say.

One other solution is to begin increasing the visibility of your title gradually over the course of its development. Katsu's Journey has taken longer then expected ( ;) ) and we now have been building momentum on our site for over a year. Just recently traffic has started to jump significantly and we've been getting a flurry of new visitors and newsletter signups. The interesting thing to note is that we've added very little to the page in the last month or two.

I don’t pretend to understand why this stuff happens, but It does seem to indicate that time is a critical ingredient. Also, I’m not sure if you want to be "in the spotlight" for a full year. Frankly I don’t think that's even possible. What I personally would prefer is a steady building of my games brand and the network effect of positive "world of mouth" comments spreading out to attract new customers. I think this is the type of “attention” Kai is fostering with his little forum community. I think it’s a great approach.

Posted by princec
Great news for both of usYes and no. I've downloaded the updated version and it doesn't work. :( It creates "Alien Flux.log" with zero size and doesn't create "Alien Flux_err.log" at all.

One more thing. The previous version did manage to change gamma. This doesn't. Changing locale to UK still brings it back to life though.

Posted by princec
I think you can pretty much figure out if you like the game by level 3, my reasoning goes.I think cutting the game down to 3 levels is a big no-no. Even if you push mother tringle to level 3 I still don't think it's a great idea. I would concentrate on improving the advertisement of the full version. The benefits listed are quite vague IMHO for casual gamers. The screenshots are too small.

Posted by princec
With an incredible 16 sales out of about 10k downloads now it'd be tempting to say we've f*cked up royally somewhere and it's a load of rubbish but we know that's not the case.You are too fast (it’s good for your genre of games though :)). I would settle for 3 to 6 months to fix most bugs, compatibility issues, etc. It’s the second year my screen saver is online and I still get some mysterious and weird compatibility problems once in a while. And it’s a screen saver, not a complex game like yours. Summing up, compatibility problems count. Bugs count. OpenGL issues count. Minimum hardware requirements count. Target audience counts. Controls count. Difficulty counts.

But I think nothing is lost. I compare AF to PomPom’s games as they are targeted to the same audience and make more than 16 sales per month :). If I remember, BingPog told they had a lot of sales from game magazine ads. That is, you are still to find the way to your customers. There’s a lot of work to do. Tweaking all the aspects and tracking results is a must.

Posted by princec
We can't very well keep sending press releases out or we'll be universally ignored when we actually come up with something different.Press releases won’t do it. Word of mouth, newsletters, cross selling, affiliates, bundles, etc. are the way to go.

Posted by princec
A history of Steve P.'s Dweep shows us just how far ahead of Dexterity we were on the first day of trading.Hehe. And where’s your time limited bonus? And what about a level editor? BTW, your money back guarantee is almost lost behind some other words.

Posted by princec
It's a nail-biting and frustrating time, with a daily check to swreg.org to watch the sales orders not coming in.Everybody came through that. It’s a temporary disorder :) One day you won’t bother to check how many sales you get that day.

Hey Cas,
I just tried to leave some feedback about AF on download.com and both times it apparently didn't take, so you may want to investigate and make sure you're not missing out on your well-deserved good ratings!

@princec: nice looking game, smooth gfx and very inviting "buy" buttons :)

Originally posted by princec
We already had the nag screen format worked out for us by a hundred other shareware developers; we already knew how to sell the benefits of the full version; we already knew how to make the full version a compelling purchase;

Hmmmm... You know I can't agree. I'd say this part is actually quite broken. Many of the in game marketing aspects are done very poorly. These sorts of thing are actually quite subtle, and while it may seem like you've got it tied up and pretty much like all the other games, in reality I think it could be much better.

For instance... just as one small example. When I finished playing your demo I wondered "How many more levels will there be if I buy it? 5? 10?" I had no idea. Now you might think it's sufficient to write that on the incentives/puchasing screen (say "30 more levels!") that isn't very compelling. On the other hand if you were to have different galaxies/areas in your game and a little map that shows your progress every 5 levels heading towards the end of the game, players would have an instant easily identifiable progress meter which not only tells them how they're doing, but also tells them where they haven't been and how much they haven't seen. It's right there in front of them, clear as part of the gameplay and not something they might or might not read about on some ad-page.

I never said it was perfect ;) And that's the trick, which has been recounted over and over again... it's never perfect! There's always room for more improvement. I like the progress meter idea. Reminds me of some 8-bit games by Llamasoft. I think I might add a second page to the nag screen as well so I can get a bit more detailed about the benefits and the guarantee.


Cas :)

>I never said it was perfect ;)

Sure I know. I just wanted to throw some constructive criticism your way.

>And that's the trick, which has been recounted over and over
>again... it's never perfect!

Of course. I think you're on the right track though, insomuch as you're proactively fixing and improving it.

>There's always room for more improvement. I like the progress
>meter idea.

Well I think it might be good. It's just one way of possibly presenting the player with some visual in game feedback. A sense of progress aside from score or level #. And it serves the double purpose of clarifying registration benefits.

>I think I might add a second page to the nag screen as well so I
>can get a bit more detailed about the benefits and the
>guarantee.

I would try to make the benefits of registration clearer within the game itself rather than present people with pages of text and screenshots. I suspect a lot of people don't really take the time to read the nag screens. (even with those little timers, although they probably do help) - Still if you can make it obvious to the player that there's some cool worms coming up without them having to read about it or sort of see it in a screenshot then I think it would be much better. Reflexive uses in game playing demos to achieve this, and I suppose that might be a good way for you to approach it as well, although there are no doubt all kinds of clever ways to do it that I haven't thought of.


- S

Posted by princec
I never said it was perfect And that's the trick, which has been recounted over and over again... it's never perfect! There's always room for more improvement. I like the progress meter idea. Reminds me of some 8-bit games by Llamasoft. I think I might add a second page to the nag screen as well so I can get a bit more detailed about the benefits and the guarantee. I think it's a good idea. Another thought has come to my mind. While pulsating "Maybe Later" button may provide a good "feeling" about developer's modesty, it instantly grabs attention. I'm afraid too many people will just never put their eyes on "Buy Now" button. Making only the "Buy Now" button to pulsate may be a bit extreme, so you may consider the following:

* Make both buttons pulsating
* Make both buttons static
* Leave "Maybe Later" pulsating but move "Buy Now" close to it, but place it on the left side (as people read from left to right)

How's this?:

Make each button static until the mouse is over it.
Make each button pulsate when the mouse goes over it.
When the nag screen loads, set the cursor position over the BuyNow button initially thereby making it pulsate while the "Maybe Later" button remains static. This won't seem excessive since the user just sees it as a result of the mouse happening to have been over that particular button at the moment.

I think it's pretty important to point out in this thread that I now hold the #1 highscore for Normal play at 929750 -- so you can all just eat my dust ;-)

- svero

Posted by svero
I think it's pretty important to point out in this thread that I now hold the #1 highscore for Normal play at 929750 -- so you can all just eat my dust ;-)Well... Then I don't see a reason to buy the full version until princec ban you from the online highscore table :p I now see why people don't buy AF in zillions. Svero is scaring all the sales away :)

Bloody hell! Nearly a million points and you've thrashed bedelf! I wondered who'd be the first living human being to score a million.

Now show us what you're really made of in Extreme mode :D

Cas :)

You know I really think I could easily reach 1 mill... but I was afraid I'd crash the game so I got sloppy at the end there :-)

Extreme mode won't be happening. I was forced to uninstall after I'd finished the game and got my highscore position. It was seriously starting to threaten some of my ship dates. Maybe I can reinstall it after I ship a few more of my own games... fewf...

... ahem ...

(points to highscore list)

:)

Boooyah!

And that's my final entry for a while. A little coffeebreak turned into a two hour slugfest. My productivity has been severly affected by Alien Flux - damn you Cas, damn you all to hell! :)

I do find though that after level 25 or so it now feels like it isn't getting any harder. I started committing suicide on level 35 because I couldn't see it ending once you're in the groove of the game (at that point I still had close to 20 lives left). How much longer does it go? Is there an actual end?

So yeah, you could say I like the game. ;) So far my favourite indie release in 2003.

Well I've gotten to level 5, though I need to play it again. I feel the urge to narrowly miss some fluffies :) Hey Prince, isn't it a bit strange to find so many of the developers here buying your game. I don't know your sales figures, but it looks like a good chunk (of 14 sales). So far I count me, svero, midnight... Maybe there is something in your game that appeals to game developers :)

Hmm!

You know, the reason I play games is to avoid doing work. I rarely ever play them these days just because I feel like playing a game... this mental outlook on gaming has probably worn off on Alien Flux somewhere along the line. I even play it myself to avoid working on it. "Just testing. Again." etc. Hehe. Although I've got my brand new Dr Blob's Organism (http://digital-eel.com) now to waste time with, and Mutant Storm if I'm feeling particularly perky.

AF gets very slowly more difficult after level 20 on Normal mode. If you really want to show your manliness, skill, courage and cunning you have to prove your worth on Extreme Mode. This starts off at level 21 difficulty, and gets harder much faster. If you ever complete extreme mode I'll eat my hat*. Anyone who has completed the Normal mode should be playing on Extreme I think.

Cas :)

* ok, maybe I'm exaggerating about actually eating it, coz it's a £300 quid Arai helmet. I might lick the dome or something.

Originally posted by princec
Anyone who has completed the Normal mode ...

Ah, so it has an end? What level? (and please don't tell me 35) :)

Technically the "end" of the game is level 20, when you've defeated all four bosses, and we stop giving you "designed" levels. It then starts to get more difficult in normal mode, and you get randomised attack waves.

In Extreme mode you get randomised attack waves from the start, and many of the aliens are subtly more vicious. They also immediately start getting harder. The bosses are considerably harder, with twice as many hitpoints. But extreme mode is pretty bloody extreme. Just try level 99 for example. (It's not hard to figure out how to do this :P )

Cas :)

Originally posted by Midnight
... ahem ...

(points to highscore list)

:)

Boooyah!


What? A measly 132200 points? It's just lucky for you I uninstalled that game. (lucky for me too since I don't want Twilight to go bankrupt in the absence of any development being done.)

Originally posted by svero
What? A measly 132200 points? It's just lucky for you I uninstalled that game. (lucky for me too since I don't want Twilight to go bankrupt in the absence of any development being done.)

Right.

Likely excuse.

:rolleyes:



(I'm just kidding, just in case that wasn't clear)

It's back to coding for me too now. My fluffies better take a self-defence class or something, 'cause I won't be saving their hides for a while! :)