How we got to the Android Market
About 6 months ago, I started thinking about changing my mobile phone. Among other things, my eye fell on devices based on Android OS. After comparing dozens of smartphones, I made a choice in favor of HTC Gratia. I still do not regret this choice.
After the first visit to the Android Market, it became very interesting to try your hand at developing an application. Considering that several ideas for games were spinning in my head long ago, I decided to put them on paper. After a couple of days, in front of me lay a list of 5 ideas for games.
Being a .NET programmer, I was not very attracted to the prospect of learning Java and Android SDK, given the already heavy workload. So, it was decided to find for the development of freelancers.
The plan was:
1. Make a plan of expenses with terms of development for each game
2. Gather a team of people who would be interested in participating.
3. Choose from the list the game that we will develop first
4. Create a technical task
5. Find a suitable artist.
6. Develop an application
7. Place on Android Market
8. Become fabulously rich
Given that I speak English fluently, and Pakistani or Hindu labor costs much less than Russian or Ukrainian, it was decided to use the services of a foreign resource, freelancer.com.
Placing orders for all 5 games, I began to wait for the points of the highly respected community of freelancers. The price stated by various freelancers could vary from 200 USD to 1500 USD. Deadlines were even more: from 2 weeks to 2 months.
After a simple approximation, the list was ready and I went to look for like-minded people who want to participate in the project. After some negotiations, two of my friends expressed a desire to participate. Already at the first meeting, we faced the task of choosing the game that will be developed first.
')
Considering that none of us have ever had such an experience, we didn’t want to invest our honestly earned “billions” in the first game. So, we chose the game according to the following criteria:
- Ease of development. Naturally, here we were worried about such factors as cost and time.
- Interesting. It was necessary to find a game that we ourselves would like to play. Given that the three of us have somewhat different tastes, it was not so easy to choose such a game.
- The convenience of use. The game should be easy to use. For example, I would not call 3D shooters for android easy to manage.
After not much deliberation, the choice fell on the port of the wonderful board game “Dots and boxes”.
Calling it “Dots and boxes. Battlefield ”, we went to the stage of search for the artist.
Given the huge scatter in cost, it was decided to hire the cheapest freelancer with good reviews. So we found a performer named X from glorious Pakistan.
Undertaking to develop a game within 15 days for $ 450, X became our developer.
In the freelancer system, there is such a thing as milestone. The bottom line is that, as proof of its solvency, the customer transfers a certain amount of money to the account of freelancer.com even before the development begins. At the end, the customer can confirm that the work was done and transfer the milestone to the side of the contractor. If the order was not completed, the customer cannot simply take the money. He needs to call the performer on the dispute (dispute) and prove his case. The dispute may drag on for months.
In the X rate, a 50 percent milestone was indicated, so we transferred $ 225 and started cooperation.
First of all, in addition to the specification, I sent a quick-draft project plan to Pakistani and asked him to give me a timeline for each iteration.
To simplify, I even created a simple table in google docs, where I offered to fill in the columns “Date of start” and “Deadline” for each iteration.
That was on Tuesday, 03.03.2011.
The next day, he wrote to me that he would make an assessment on Thursday, since on March 23rd they had a national holiday. Despite the fact that I asked for the deadline for all iterations, on Thursday evening I saw it only for the first one. Well, okay, I thought, maybe the rest is too early to evaluate.
After this 3-day buildup, real work began on Friday. X finally started asking questions. On Saturday, I received the first mokapy future game. How lucky I am that they have survived:
Pay attention to the above tasks for the first iteration in the project plan and find a few hundred differences. I'm not talking about the quality of the design, but only about the accuracy of the tasks described. Of the declared 3 mokaps, only one corresponds to the description of the iteration.
After spending about 2 hours explaining what was done wrong, there was a complete lull.
I decided to wake the dormant Pakistani only on Thursday. And only on Monday, 04/04/2011, the long-awaited mockups were received.
The perseverance with which Comrade X avoided the precise fulfillment of the tasks set struck.
Instead of the second mission, the first one was chosen, and it was not drawn correctly, the “side selector” still could not see the light. More or less, we figured out only with the menu.
So, the time has come to sum up: having spent 13 days from the declared 15 years on development, we have not even completed the first iteration.
Tired of this “progress,” I decided to change the development methodology and told X that I intended to monitor progress daily. So, at 14:00 a daily rally was scheduled.
I must say, it gave a certain result and, for a while, it gave impetus to our joint work. After a couple of three mocaps, far from what we expected to receive, it was decided to make the mocaps ourselves.
So, having met our friend on Sunday evening, we launched Photoshop and started drawing mokapas. By 2 o'clock in the morning, I sent X about 10 mokapov games. Also, we decided that if after a week, the game will not be made, we will part with the distinguished X and try to write the game ourselves.
As one would expect, the ice did not break, and, by the end of the week, iteration 2 was not completed.
So, after a brief dispute on freelancer, 04/28/2011, X paid $ 50 and we started developing the game ourselves.
Despite the fact that development time was only in the evenings after work and we never wrote in Java, the game was fully developed in a month and, the first version, was in our hands by the end of May.
Placing on the market turned out to be painfully simple. Paying $ 25 and filling out about 10 fields, many of which were not mandatory, our game became available on the android market.
At the moment, the game is available in the Beta version. Recently, we screwed adMob and collect statistics. We plan to launch a paid version. After much deliberation, we decided to post a paid version from August. At first, it will differ exclusively by the lack of advertising.
When the first statistic appears, I will gladly share it with you.
After the first visit to the Android Market, it became very interesting to try your hand at developing an application. Considering that several ideas for games were spinning in my head long ago, I decided to put them on paper. After a couple of days, in front of me lay a list of 5 ideas for games.
Being a .NET programmer, I was not very attracted to the prospect of learning Java and Android SDK, given the already heavy workload. So, it was decided to find for the development of freelancers.
The plan was:
1. Make a plan of expenses with terms of development for each game
2. Gather a team of people who would be interested in participating.
3. Choose from the list the game that we will develop first
4. Create a technical task
5. Find a suitable artist.
6. Develop an application
7. Place on Android Market
8. Become fabulously rich
We make a plan for spending on each game and collect people
Given that I speak English fluently, and Pakistani or Hindu labor costs much less than Russian or Ukrainian, it was decided to use the services of a foreign resource, freelancer.com.
Placing orders for all 5 games, I began to wait for the points of the highly respected community of freelancers. The price stated by various freelancers could vary from 200 USD to 1500 USD. Deadlines were even more: from 2 weeks to 2 months.
After a simple approximation, the list was ready and I went to look for like-minded people who want to participate in the project. After some negotiations, two of my friends expressed a desire to participate. Already at the first meeting, we faced the task of choosing the game that will be developed first.
')
Where to begin?
Considering that none of us have ever had such an experience, we didn’t want to invest our honestly earned “billions” in the first game. So, we chose the game according to the following criteria:
- Ease of development. Naturally, here we were worried about such factors as cost and time.
- Interesting. It was necessary to find a game that we ourselves would like to play. Given that the three of us have somewhat different tastes, it was not so easy to choose such a game.
- The convenience of use. The game should be easy to use. For example, I would not call 3D shooters for android easy to manage.
After not much deliberation, the choice fell on the port of the wonderful board game “Dots and boxes”.
Calling it “Dots and boxes. Battlefield ”, we went to the stage of search for the artist.
What is the current game in Pakistan?
Given the huge scatter in cost, it was decided to hire the cheapest freelancer with good reviews. So we found a performer named X from glorious Pakistan.
Undertaking to develop a game within 15 days for $ 450, X became our developer.
In the freelancer system, there is such a thing as milestone. The bottom line is that, as proof of its solvency, the customer transfers a certain amount of money to the account of freelancer.com even before the development begins. At the end, the customer can confirm that the work was done and transfer the milestone to the side of the contractor. If the order was not completed, the customer cannot simply take the money. He needs to call the performer on the dispute (dispute) and prove his case. The dispute may drag on for months.
In the X rate, a 50 percent milestone was indicated, so we transferred $ 225 and started cooperation.
First of all, in addition to the specification, I sent a quick-draft project plan to Pakistani and asked him to give me a timeline for each iteration.
To simplify, I even created a simple table in google docs, where I offered to fill in the columns “Date of start” and “Deadline” for each iteration.
That was on Tuesday, 03.03.2011.
The next day, he wrote to me that he would make an assessment on Thursday, since on March 23rd they had a national holiday. Despite the fact that I asked for the deadline for all iterations, on Thursday evening I saw it only for the first one. Well, okay, I thought, maybe the rest is too early to evaluate.
After this 3-day buildup, real work began on Friday. X finally started asking questions. On Saturday, I received the first mokapy future game. How lucky I am that they have survived:
Pay attention to the above tasks for the first iteration in the project plan and find a few hundred differences. I'm not talking about the quality of the design, but only about the accuracy of the tasks described. Of the declared 3 mokaps, only one corresponds to the description of the iteration.
After spending about 2 hours explaining what was done wrong, there was a complete lull.
I decided to wake the dormant Pakistani only on Thursday. And only on Monday, 04/04/2011, the long-awaited mockups were received.
The perseverance with which Comrade X avoided the precise fulfillment of the tasks set struck.
Instead of the second mission, the first one was chosen, and it was not drawn correctly, the “side selector” still could not see the light. More or less, we figured out only with the menu.
So, the time has come to sum up: having spent 13 days from the declared 15 years on development, we have not even completed the first iteration.
Tired of this “progress,” I decided to change the development methodology and told X that I intended to monitor progress daily. So, at 14:00 a daily rally was scheduled.
I must say, it gave a certain result and, for a while, it gave impetus to our joint work. After a couple of three mocaps, far from what we expected to receive, it was decided to make the mocaps ourselves.
So, having met our friend on Sunday evening, we launched Photoshop and started drawing mokapas. By 2 o'clock in the morning, I sent X about 10 mokapov games. Also, we decided that if after a week, the game will not be made, we will part with the distinguished X and try to write the game ourselves.
As one would expect, the ice did not break, and, by the end of the week, iteration 2 was not completed.
So, after a brief dispute on freelancer, 04/28/2011, X paid $ 50 and we started developing the game ourselves.
If you want to do something, do it yourself.
Despite the fact that development time was only in the evenings after work and we never wrote in Java, the game was fully developed in a month and, the first version, was in our hands by the end of May.
Placement on Android Market
Placing on the market turned out to be painfully simple. Paying $ 25 and filling out about 10 fields, many of which were not mandatory, our game became available on the android market.
At the moment, the game is available in the Beta version. Recently, we screwed adMob and collect statistics. We plan to launch a paid version. After much deliberation, we decided to post a paid version from August. At first, it will differ exclusively by the lack of advertising.
When the first statistic appears, I will gladly share it with you.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/125363/
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