Games One game a month! personal challenge

[LucaMs]

the latest drama with the Play store messing up the similar apps section has really hit my downloads hard and also my confidence. Life was great, but now my downloads have bombed, so I feel very down about the whole thing.

This is a good reason.

 

[Peter Simpson]

I've become very lazy on my game dev work. I set targets, then miss them.

You're a family man with a full time job that you commute to by train every day, you have a young family and a baby if I'm not mistaken (even though I probably am in this case), mortgage to pay, wife to keep happy, nappies to chance etc etc etc. It really does not surprise me that you miss the odd target or two You are probably really tired when you get home from work, and don't you get up really early in the morning, something like 6am.

Andy, if you miss a target or two then so be it, as long at you get the work done sooner or later, that's what really matters...

 

[andymc]

Well.... that is all true, except the commute bit, that's gone now, now I've got a half hour drive instead. But you're right, I have a lot to juggle. Right now actually I'm up around 5.30AM as my 10 month old keeps waking up around then (I blame the early sunrise).
I do get a few hours a week in total, mainly during breaks at work, that's why I'm working on simple games, so I can complete one or two tasks each tiem I work, which makes it feel like I'm making progress.

 

[LucaMs]

Premising that I am not (nor have ever been) a great player...

Sometimes I start playing a game and for a month I play once a day, practically every day. Then I get fed up and leave it for months, maybe years, maybe forever.

This could be due to my age not exactly very young or to my character; but if it were due to boredom?

I want to say that maybe you would be able to earn more by expanding your successful apps, adding levels, difficulties or other, rather than start new initiatives.

I would do this test first, then I would dedicate myself to new projects.


Anyway, good luck

 

[LucaMs]

my goal is optimism and success.

My optimism:

 

[JakeBullet70]

@LucaMs, you always make me laugh!

 

[sorex]

Andy,

Didn't you write this before to spit out a game each month?

Too bad days and months are so short to come up just with an (original) idea not to mention implementing it.

Good luck with it and keep us posted!

 

[freedom2000]

Just a quick update, expect my first game from this challenge very soon, it's kind of cheating as it's "yet another space invaders clone", but it's called "Many Mini Invaders" so there's load of aliens, multiple saucers at once, and many more bullets and bombs flying around the screen.
I may do a vote for the next game to work on, right now it's:

1. Missile Command
2. Asteroids
3. Frogger
4. Pacman
5. Defender
6. Robotron

I'd love to also work on remakes of Paperboy, Battlezone, Rally X, Donkey Kong, Karate Champ, Pole Position.

A few years ago (well a lot of) I used to play Moon Cresta
It's not on your list...
But I like as well frogger and pacman !

 

[andymc]

I've got some changes to make, but I'm planning to push this up to the play store either late tonight or tomorrow.

It needs new sounds effects and a few tweaks but otherwise it's good to go. Yes I know it's another space invaders clone, but they do well, so why not?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5k9t2vlwqp9qi4t/result.apk?dl=0

 

[Sandman]

Yes I know it's another space invaders clone, but they do well, so why not?

Yeah, go for it.


I tried the game, well done! I kinda missed having a pause though, perhaps I just missed the button?

Is the difficulty typical of this genre? Compared to some games (Flappy Bird would be an extreme example), this has a very forgiving level of complexity.

 

[andymc]

there's no pause button, yet. I keep being asked for one, but it's one of those boring features I never get around to. Pressing back will pause the game, so it's not a big job to make pause a real function.

It is easy, but I could make it harder, by having the aliens drop down faster, and also be more accurate on where they drop their bombs. I could also make the saucers drop a spray of bombs when over the player.

 

[Sandman]

It is easy, but I could make it harder

Perhaps that should be a separate game? And make it so hard that people have to struggle a bit to even stay alive the first 30 secs?

 

[andymc]

I said I'd release it, so here it is! (in Beta)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/...rdid=uk.co.coffeeinducedgames.invadersclassic

 

[Peter Simpson]

I said I'd release it, so here it is! (in Beta)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/...rdid=uk.co.coffeeinducedgames.invadersclassic

Hey Andy I like it, I like a lot in fact. Dare I say it, I probably prefer it to you previous one as I find hitting invaders multiple times to turn them white before destroying them a nice twist on the original game too. I also like having many more invaders to destroy a great idea too

 

[jnjft]

I like it very much, too!
One thing - if an invader gets down to your ship or beyond, your ship is not destroyed and the level never ends.
Thanks for sharing this great app!

 

[Peter Simpson]

I did notice that the lowest ships go through the shield blocks, but I killed them before they got to me.

But the game is still in beta and being developed so I didn't mention it...

 

[Computersmith64]

I like it. I especially like the powerups (& the frequency of them), but one annoying thing is that if you get a triple shot powerup then get a double shot one immediately after, the double shot one cancels out the triple shot one. What would be really cool would be if they were combined - so for as long as they are both valid you get a five shot powerup!

- Colin.

 

[ilan]

how is your personal challenge going?

 

[andymc]

Hi @ilan not great. Life is getting in the way. But there is hope. My youngest keeps waking up all night, he's teething and we'r both tired all the time, I've also had a lot mroe work on at my day job, so B4A work has taken a back seat.....however....

His teething seems to be getting better, my wife has gone back to work, giving me some time in the evenings as she now goes to bed earlier, and my day job has calmed down a bit. So I now have some hours to work.

I have been having some trouble, thinking "is this worth it? what if no games do any good, what if no one downloads them?" and not being able to decide what to work on at any one time as I've got too many ideas and too many bugs and features to fix/add to my old games.

 

[eps]

Have you put your games on the Amazon App Store? or at least one of them? This can provide added installs.