Hi!

I wrote you before about this game, and I get many useful reccomendations about how to make it more funny. I've tried to implement all of them. So, could you please look at this game again and comment it?

Thanks a lot!
Kostya

URL: www.emotionrays.com/soft/fillers.exe
Product page: www.emotionrays.com/fillers.php4

Short description:
This is a 3d puzzle game where you need to play for territory with computer opponents or friends.

I liked it.. I remember playing almost exactly the same game, "Filler", on my 386 back in the day :)

There's a small problem with your version resource in the exe, look at my attached screenshot =)

I've seen it on this board before, and I've never gotten it to run. This time it just goes to a white/gray screen and hangs there. I have Win2K, 384MB, Radeon 8500.

Hi!

So, what is the problem with resource? I've looked at the image, but doesn't understand what do you mean.

Thanks!
Kostya

There are a couple of fields in win32 version resources where you're supposed to fill in product description and company name. WinXP shows this along the icon in that view mode.
You have forgotten to fill in these, so it just says TODO: File description and TODO: Company name. Put something like Filler and EmotionRays there, it will look better :)

Not a big deal really..

I see JC3D is having trouble running it under Win2K. As I recall, everytime you posted before, I had similar trouble on Win2K. This might be something you want to seriously look at. Unfortunately, I've upgraded my machine and no longer have the Win2K machine setup, so I can't test, but it runs on my new WinXP machine.

Is this the demo that you gave us? How many levels are in it? So far I'm up to 23 with no end yet. Seems to me that might be a few too many levels for a demo.

It seems you resolved the problem I had on some levels where you start out without being able to capture anything (the only colors you are touching are already taken). However, there are still quite a few levels with that problem, and it personally kinda bugs me.

There are also still a couple cases where 2 in game menus lay over top each other, and since they are partially transparent, you can see the menu underneath it. It makes it kinda hard to read the menus when it's like that

Well, I've tried it under Win2k Pro and Win2k Server. It runs perfectly. I guess, it has some problems with Radeon 8500, but unfortunately I have no access to this video card to debug the game here and see where exactly it hangs up. I will make an executable that will log everything if someone with Win2k/Radeon agree to test it and send me the log file (I'll be very grateful for this, and I promise a free key file as a reward :) )

As for levels with no resultative first move at the start (when the enemies own the colors that you need to pick up), we leave this level untouched, because (we think) it is funny to disable COMPUTER to make a successful move, and then (when the colors will be free) make the moves and win. It is possible to win on all the levels.

All campaign levels are available in the demo version, but no multiplayer/random level are on. I don't know if it is OK, but the game sales in the same quantity as before (where only 4 first levels were available).

Actually, I have another problem with this game. The maximum sales amount for Fillers per month is 4. There are few monthes where we don't sell any copy. Althrough this game is awarded on many download sites, it has only 300-400 downloads / month. So, I want to ask your opinion, is this game have chances to be sold if I will make all necessary changes? Is there someone who agree to promote this game for comission? (50%, even 60%). We don't even dream to have a good sales rate of this game, but we just want to have at least 10 sales/month.

I've read Steve's article where he say that ANY game may be sold, if all the bugs (in game design, code and graphics) will be fixed. So, I am not sure for now that it will increase the sales, even if I will fix all the bugs.

They point is the following: if no one wants to be a publisher for Fillers, then everyone agree, that this game is bad itself, and we will not update it anymore and burry it as a dead project, that will allow us to spend additional time to the other projects, which are under development now. If someone would be interested in Fillers, then we will fix everything that is required to sell it better then now.

Thanks for reading such a big message!
Kostya

Well, if you think it won't sell, you can always keep it around and bundle it as a bonus with other games, people love to get extra free stuff :)

One more suggestion would be to get someone who is a bit better at English and have them proofread all of your in game help, dialogs, menus, etc. There are several places I've noticed this. I was just reminded of this, because I just beat the demo and the screen said something like "you is one of the best players".

Also, since I beat the game, the final screen says something about it being copyright Happy Owl Entertainment Group. Same thing with the header image in the HTML help file. Yet several of the screens in the game say "Emotion Rays". I'm guessing you changed your company name. You'll want to make sure you go through and clean that all up.

Well one of the reasons for the low downloads is likely the screenshots. They just don't look that good with the solid color squares. Not sure what can be done about that though. I saw the screenshots a few times in earlier posts and didn't even bother downloading after seeing them, and I generally download any demos people post here.

But anyways I downloaded the game this time and while it was fun for the first few levels it just felt like random chance after awhile. I realize there's stategies to it (denying other player colors, spreading as opposed to filling, etc) but there still didn't seem enough to it. Perhaps having tiles at multiple points in the start would help some but I don't think that's enough either.

Actually I shouldn't say the graphics were the main reason I didn't download the game. Another reason was that I just couldn't tell what kind of game it was. With most games it's possible to tell what the gameplay is like. I didn't have the slightest clue from the screenshots and the title didn't really help either. I'd suggest changing the title as well if you invest more time in the game. It just seems a bit too ordinary and dull.

I'm not really sure what it is, but something about the thumbnails of the screen shots doesn't even compel me to click them and see the 'full' screen shot. And if I'm not compelled to even see the blow up of the screen shot, then I'm definitely not going to download the demo. I think it may be that when all the small colored squares are shrunken down into a thumbnail, it looks kinda 'pixely'. I'm not trying to sound harsh, I'm just trying to explain MY thought process as I was looking at your game. The website looks very nice though (better than mine ;))

Well, kosty. I finally got around to checking out Fillers, and I want you to know that I blame you for those lost hours of productivity last night! :mad: Seriously though, you've got a good concept here. :) I would take the tips offered earlier about having an English-speaker review your game to fix some grammatical errors. And I'd also take the suggestion to decrease the number of levels available in the demo. You'll probably see alot more success with it if you just give the player a good taste of the game. But as it stands now, it feels like you're practically giving the game away for free. At least, that's the feeling I got when I could just play and play without stopping (and believe me, I did ;) ).

Good game! Keep it up.

Hi!

Well, thanks everyone to spend your time playing this game, and for answering my questions. I agree that some texts inside the game may contain mistakes, and they need to be edited. I also can decrease the number of levels in shareware game to 10 or even less. But I am not sure that it will increase the number of downloads of Fillers game.

That is what I am trying to say. If I am unable to promote this game (I have about 100 visits to my web site / day, and only 5-6 downloads of Fillers), then why I need to spend my time on it? :)

Thanks a lot!
Kostya

Originally posted by kosty
I also can decrease the number of levels in shareware game to 10 or even less. But I am not sure that it will increase the number of downloads of Fillers game.
No, it won't increase the downloads, but it will almost sure increase your conversion rate.

If I am unable to promote this game (I have about 100 visits to my web site / day, and only 5-6 downloads of Fillers), then why I need to spend my time on it?

OK. Be my guest then, and move right on to your next game. However, what makes you think people are going to flock to your site for your next game? If it's number of downloads that is really your problem, then thats where you need to work. Send out some press releases, see if you can get some reviews on sites like DIY, make sure your on download.com, and stuff like that. There were suggestions here to improve your screen shots. I'm sure that would help to convert more visitors into downloaders.

Hmmm... if you're getting a very small number of website visits, I doubt your problem has much to do with your game...

I only have 1 screensaver and I get many more visits to my site than what you say you get to yours. And, IMHO, the screensaver market is even more flooded than the game market.

What I did was:

1 - I went to the ASP website and got their list of download sites:
http://www.asp-shareware.org/users/searchsites.asp

Then I went through all of those I could and submitted my software to each and every one that I could manage. Tip: Get PadGen and fill out a PAD file -- it GREATLY streamlines the submission process for alot of sites that support PAD files. To do all of these takes time (it took me 2 or 3 days), but if this is your first time to submit, I'd go ahead and do 'em all. It's very hard to predetermine which sites are effective. Some sites I thought wouldn't be effective turned out to be highly effective and vice versa. After your first product is out on these sites, you can review to see which sites get good results and just stick with those if you want.

2 - I submitted my app to Download.com (upload.com). This costs (I think) $70, but it is worth it. I got something like 400 downloads from them the first day I got listed. And that's actually not that much compared to what a game can get.

3 - I submitted to a handful of other well-known download sites such as tucows etc..

For games, you have even more options too. There are game-only download sites that you can use that I could not with just a screensaver. Adrenaline Vault etc.. I'm not sure, but I think the-underdogs.org might take shareware games too... Anyway, you're sure to increase your hit count if you just spend a few days focusing on submitting your software to every site you can think of. I have confidence that you can get MUCH better results than you're currently having.

Hope that helps.

Very interesting game concept. One of those things that initially seems like it's mostly luck, but then you start to catch on to deeper strategies as you play.

I personally don't see the levels that don't give you the chance to capture any squares on your first turn as a problem. After all, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to capture any squares on any given turn. That's just how the rules work.

There does seem to be a serious bug in the gameplay, however (or else I'm missing a significant part of the game rules). Occasionally, when I take a turn, a large chuck of various-colored tiles will turn my color for no apparent reason. For example, I'm yellow and I click blue. All my yellow tiles turn blue (as they should), but a big chuck of tiles adjacent to mine will also turn blue, even though they were a random assortment of colors to begin with. This also occasionally happens on the AI's turns.

Originally posted by Martoon
There does seem to be a serious bug in the gameplay, however (or else I'm missing a significant part of the game rules). Occasionally, when I take a turn, a large chuck of various-colored tiles will turn my color for no apparent reason. For example, I'm yellow and I click blue. All my yellow tiles turn blue (as they should), but a big chuck of tiles adjacent to mine will also turn blue, even though they were a random assortment of colors to begin with. This also occasionally happens on the AI's turns.
It's the tiles you have isolated and can no longer be reached by other players. It saves you pointless moves at the end of a game.

Originally posted by mkovacic
It's the tiles you have isolated and can no longer be reached by other players. It saves you pointless moves at the end of a game.

Doh! That makes perfect sense. Guess that should have been obvious.

I tried the game on win98, P4, S3 32mb. The performance is low. I do not know why. Most puzzle gamers have slow machines. Maybe this is why your conversion rate is low. Before starting a new game you can analyze the situation and that would help a lot.

ergas

About the screenshots on your site... You might want to try cropping an interesting part of each screenshot and using it as a thumbnail (maybe a bit scaled down too), that would prevent the "soup" of colored dots effect some of them show ATM.
You could also make the thumbs a bit bigger, and maybe reduce the numbers of screenshots to 4 or 6.