The story of the creation of the second game on Unity (or how I found strength after the first failure)
Greetings From time to time, you can see articles on developing your first projects on Android and iOS ( I’m not really an exception ), and you often want to see a sequel, a presentation of a new project, see the work on the bugs and the actual one, release an unsuccessful project and find strength on a new one. A year and a half ago, I just released my first
It turned out quite an extensive article, but I tried to dilute this matter with pictures!
Little backstory
I am an indie developer at Unity for almost 3 years (sometime since the beginning of 2015). At first, in his spare time, he studied modeling in Blender, taught the basics of programming (mainly C #, because he needed it to work in Unity) and somehow mastered the engine itself, watching tons of video clips, articles and various documentation. So, in a year and a half, I was able to release my first game on Android . It was very difficult, because to compose work and such a time-consuming hobby is quite difficult.
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Unfortunately, the first pancake of course was a lump (well, how so?). The first game brought me a little more than $ 200 to the piggy bank (although a little later I managed to sell it to create a remake, it turned out quite well). At the end, there was practically no energy for the new project, so after the release and the monthly convulsions, hoping to rehabilitate the project, I decided to take a vacation (from a hobby, alas, the work as a tester did not allow spreading the bread on the couch). So, pondering the results of my one and a half year old work, having rested a bit, I began to develop a new game. Well the truth, what to expect, since I started, you need to continue!
Well, somehow it happened in the end
Where to begin?! With an idea!
This time I decided not to repeat my past mistakes. I thought over the idea of the new game in advance and wrote everything in the appropriate document with the note “Speke: D” (thanks to testing, taught). This is actually quite an important moment, before you start developing a game, you need to think over and write down / sketch all the key points. Let's go over them:
1) The plot . Even if you have Tetris, malomalskaya prehistory notably improves the impression of the game! Start preparing the player immediately with the description of the game in the store. It is certainly interesting to fold Tetris, but if the future of humanity depends on it, then the game is already starting to sparkle with other colors!
2) Features of the gameplay . You need to think of unique ideas that will highlight your game from the rest. At the present time, when competition is simply catastrophic, it is very important to create a unique product.
Now there are a lot of interesting projects, somewhere we are offered to play with dynamic shadows, somewhere the game world can turn over completely. Come up with something of your own, something that you at least have not seen before. Be creative, squeeze out the highlight, the game should have its own distinctive feature!
Here you can help social networks. In the same Instagram or Twitter sign up for game accounts or accounts of interesting developers. Their posts will help to gain inspiration and in any case you will find something useful!
3) Graphic component . Being an indie developer, afford a triple hey project is physically unrealistic. We need to think in advance about the visual component. My choice fell on Low Poly style.
A significant advantage of this approach is the low threshold of entry. You do not need to be able to draw the most complex 3D models, because the construction of the whole geometry is based on primitives. For example, these stones can be made in a few minutes:
Everything is simple and most importantly - beautiful (or somehow not very?). The only important point is the work on lighting. Only thanks to the beautiful fog, moderately bright colors and the gentle sun you can achieve a pleasant picture. There will have to try. For example, this is how the visual component developed during the development of the game:
As you can see, not always Low Poly graphics can be beautiful.
4) Player involvement . You can just make a game, of course, but it's better that you also play it. Here you need to think about how we will keep the players. The most important factor is the amount of playing time needed to complete the game. Unfortunately, you are not physically able to create one, for example, 300 levels. But as a way out, you can offer the player to pereprohodit them.
In my game now there are only 20 levels - it is terribly small, but each level is unique, it has its own musical composition and several options for passing.
For example, in order to complete one level, a player needs to earn a gold medal, collect an artifact (which is usually hidden in hard-to-reach places), perform a special mission and defeat the enemy. As you can see, one level has almost turned into four. But here it is important that the player does not bother to repost the same thing, so this technique should be used with caution.
5) What platforms will we support ? I released my first game only on Android. It is understandable, paid $ 25 for a developer account and live in peace.
Everything is more complicated with Apple. Then you pay an annual payment of $ 99 (if you don’t extend it in a year, all your games will be lost from the App Store until you throw it into the treasury), then you will also need to purchase any device on OS X (yes, on Windows you don’t You can release an application for iOS). Also, in addition to poppy, you will also have to get a device. In this case I was lucky, there are relatives and friends who helped in solving this problem. But it is better to take some old iPhone 5s (second-hand), of course, so as not to get people by asking to use the phone.
Total, with all this magnificence (and the amount is no longer a little accumulated), begins acquaintance with the "charms" iOS. Bonuses start with Unity itself. On iOS, it will not be possible to crash the project in one click. It is necessary to install Xcode, build the project for Xcode, from it already to do assembly on phone. And it will not work to take any iPhone and check on it. It will be necessary to make Provisioning Profile in apple developer, add devices to this Profile (by filling in the corresponding UUIDs) and only then you will be able to upload the build to the device.
It seems not difficult, but everything is relative. So, if you decide to gather your strength and try to embrace not only Android, but also iOS (and it's worth it, they say there is 4 times more profit compared to Android, you see, instead of $ 1, you will earn $ 4 <there was a crying emoticon >), then be prepared that Apple will have to pretty tricky.
Still a bit of pictures, tediously read the solid text
6) Monetization and its integration with the game . Pretty sore moment. I’m certainly not like EA, I won’t sell the game for $ 60 (who buys it) with in-game purchases for $ 80, but in any case, the question needs to be worked out in advance.
In the first game I used a bundle of free stripped down + full paid versions of the game. This time I decided to use: free + ads (Unity Ads) + in-game purchases. Yes, I, as a player, do not like advertising myself, especially when you didn’t have time to press START, and I’ve already watched 3 videos of advertising video. Then I decided to be careful. Made two indexes (5 wins and 10 losses). As soon as one of these criteria is exceeded, then when entering the menu a message will be displayed that they say, friend, there is no energy, you need to either watch the advertisement or skip it. After viewing an advertisement (or coin passes), these two indices are reset to zero and everything starts to be considered new.
Thus, a player can re-level at least a thousand times, an offer to see an advertisement will appear only when the main menu is opened.
Of course, any purchase disables advertising, by the way about purchases. Somehow, running along the Play Market, I came across one interesting game in which the player at a certain level is offered to buy access to the following chapters as follows:
Friend! Do not be afraid! Choose any price, I will endure everything (and below possible price options)
- is free
- the price is small
- the price is average
- the price is slightly higher than the average
- very high price, developed, are you abaldel?
In fact, the player could either continue to play for free (will be accompanied by an advertisement), or buy for any convenient price. I really liked this idea, I decided to implement such a thing in my project.
So, think over the monetization in advance, so that in the final result it merges perfectly with the game and does not cause burning in the area below the developer's pelvis, because Vasya (Vasya, forgive me, I use the name as a common noun!) Did not immediately think about it, and now he will have to rewrite the floor of the project from scratch.
Dilute the scribbling with another screenshot from the game
7) Localization . Usually newbies make the game in two languages - English and Russian (alas, I'm still new). Slightly higher is the gentleman's EFIGS set (English, French, Italian, German and Spanish). In fact, this is a great option for the start, but alas, at $ 150-200 (depending on the number of words), you will have to fork out for translation, although a little later, I will try to look for something in freelance as I do a bit of promotion. Perhaps it will turn out to find a less acceptable option for the price.
In general, it is difficult for me to say something about localization, it was written quite well in the March article , at least I was able to draw a lot of useful information for myself.
8) Interaction with services (be it Play Games for Android or GameCenter for iOS). Here you need to decide in advance whether you’ll support leaderboards, achivki or not. On implementation on both platforms, everything is quite simple.
With iOS, for example, you can use the GameCenterPlatform and Social class out of the box. Everything you need is there.
Android is fine too. You need to download the official Google plugin on GitHub and actually run on the GitHub page, and go over the settings guide.
What I liked about Google is the ability to save gameplay in the cloud. Alas, Apple does not provide such an opportunity (free of charge), but because There is no time to learn how to write plug-ins for iOS, and I want to use its buns, I had to purchase an iCloud KeyChain plugin, with which you can very conveniently save all progress to the cloud.
In other words, go ahead, embed achivki, leaderboards, saving to the cloud, notifications, sharing in the social network (by the way, I didn’t do this, but the thing is good, it can work as a word of mouth, useful for games that have a Chlendzha effect (like , man, I scored 45 thousand points here, weakly beat?)).
9) Study of the mobile games market in a similar category . I have already given the example above, when other games help to find interesting ideas and mechanics. Indulge yourself in small breaks in crawling on Google Play (or the App Store). You can run right along the tops and reel on a mustache, why are they there (that feeling when you do not have $ 15,000-30,000 to promote your game). In any case, it will allow a little distraction from the development, look at the world as it were, remove the pink veil of magnificence from yourself and see the flaws hidden to the eye.
Yes, my friend, also noticed that there had been no pictures for a long time.
10) Plans for promotion . Perhaps another sore subject.
There was an indie developer. For a year he worked hard on his project, woke up early, went to bed late, did not eat, did not drink, and valued everything with play. And then came the great hour - the release here is waiting for us all. But the developer was stubborn, he wanted to make a release himself. Down with the publishers, down with the robbery, I want everything myself and that's it, the hedgehog (I had to write the hedgehog because I didn't know what to stick into rhyme)
So, many indie developers get into a situation where it seems that the work on the project is complete and it is time to think about progress (although again, you need to think at the idea stage so as not to catch the effect of surprise, like me). You start to remember how much time and effort was spent on all this and the question itself arises: will the publisher or we fight with our own forces?
As you already understood, the first project I fought on my own: D. I liked it, I will try again.
I will reveal this topic in the next post in about a month and a half, when the results of the game progress will be visible. I do not want to be unfounded, I want to back up my words with graphs, so excuse me, the most interesting remains for later :). In twenty two words - I will use social. networks (targeted advertising on VKontakte, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), Google AdWords, reviews on Youtube, an article on w3bsit3-dns.com and of course numerous writings on forums and other resources.
Do not rush to release!
Before the release, be sure to try out the game on your friends. It is better to do it at all during development. This process will allow us to find problems with the complexity of the game, usability (sometimes some things that are obvious to us will not be completely understood by the players). Alas, after testing it was necessary to greatly facilitate all levels. It ate a lot of time, so you need to give play as early as possible (an adequate build, of course, it’s better not to stick out a dry hack with the “Start” button).
Also, closer to the release, I highly recommend trying out open beta testing on Google Play. A good man advised to make an open beta test and try to knock on Early Access (category on Google Play) by sending this form .
Here I will light only the Open beta launch date field. It is necessary to indicate the desired date of entry in Early Access. It is advisable to specify a date somewhere + week ahead (better - more), so that Google has enough time to study your game and make a conclusion whether to send your creation in Early Access or not. If successful, you will be sent an email on the date specified in the Open beta launch date . I unfortunately did not send anything. Well, so, if you break through, you can get a lot of organic traffic (sometimes you can get to 50k).
Total, on October 6, I made an open beta test of the game. During this time, without any investment, it turned out to recruit a little more than 1,400 testers. Yes, this is a drop in the ocean, but in any case, at the time of launch, I at least will not have less than 5 installations (perhaps this will move my position from 126,223 places to 124,873 in the top of new applications, <there it was necessary to insert a crying smiley again> ).
And once again we dilute the scribbling with a screenshot from the game. If anything, this is the final time, I will not
What are the advantages of open beta: users left a lot of useful feedback. I changed a lot in the game. Some people even contacted through the mail and painted everything on their account should be improved. This is very useful information, the main thing is to listen to it competently and useful tips to implement in subsequent updates.
Among the shortcomings - many resources will find an open beta test for the official release. As a result, the beta version gets to the sites, which may not be the desired result, as they say, not without a fly in the ointment. The feedback is also sadly enough implemented. There were many reviews, each answered almost in 5-10 minutes, but unfortunately only two people responded via mail. Therefore, if there is an opportunity, it is better to integrate feedback directly in the application.
With regards to Apple, here you can conduct beta testing via TestFlight, but it won't work to open it. A group is created there, testers are added there, an invitation is sent to them and only after that they can download your build through a separate TestFlight application. Useful if you need to send the game to friends.
Of the minuses - even in TestFlight, you need to wait for Apple to test the application. Although it is not so big, 4-6 hours were usually taken by the test in TestFlight (by the way, my release build was checked for 22 hours, rather quickly, this is not 2 weeks, as it was before).
Total
On this note, and I would like to complete the article. I hope for someone it will be an inspiration and will allow you to find the strength in a new project. As for me, it’s too early to talk about the results, in the promotion article I’ll tell you exactly how I promoted the game and what happened as a result.
I am very glad that I found the strength and was able to finish the second project. If you have a similar situation, do not be afraid, take the will into a fist and forward to create new worlds. The main thing is to remember your mistakes and strive to prevent them in the future.
Thank you for mastering such an extensive text, see you soon :)
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/342884/
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