I am confused as hell

I've actually already done a similar thing,
With Little Dragon 3D the game was $0.99 on Android or iOS but I put the whole game up for free on Kongregate with an ad inside it telling players that the game was available on mobile devices.

In my case this didn't work so well, the free web version only has about 1k plays and I didn't notice a significant change in the paid sales caused by it.
But that doesn't mean I don't think the idea can work really well, It just didn't work out for LD3D, probably due to many other factors.

finished working on my app icon,

I've just finished a first draft of the app icon, tell us what you think!


Also, thanks to those few people who joined the testflight team, The beta build is almost ready to be sent out so stay tuned! (sorry it's taken so long)

A ball of fire
A McChicken
An old army boot
The eye of Sauron
Puck from Dota 2
A chunk of Bismuth

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned here or not, but I think on important consideration for e-sport's, if they want to be viewable by the mainstreme, is the idea of making game actions easily recognizable as what they are.

For example, I love to watch dota 2, but in dota Warlock can cast a spell on allies that places an evil pentagram thing around their feet, this is a game action taking place and this is how it's seen

How a dota player sees it;
-i know that spell came from warlock, because it's his spell and he played a small cast anim about the time the effect spawned on the player
-i know that spell is healing the affected player because I have played dota and read the tooltip

How a non-dota player sees it;
-Oh crap! that guy has a curse on him! What does it do?
-Why did he get cursed? who did that to him?

the spell, when used as a heal doesn't look like a heal, it looks like an evil pentagram curse thingy.
also, the spell isn't obviously shown as being projected from Warlock, it just kinda appears

Please don't think I'm saying Dota 2 have done something wrong here, i fully understand that in the context of dota this is a perfectly reasonable way for valve to have made this spell
I'm merely trying to illustrate the point that a game action needs to look like what it is in order for people to enjoy watching it (who aren't already hardcore players)

some examples on how this could be done, defense buffs could involve shield icons (dota 2 has done this)
effects that cause damage could always have a consistent colored effect (red maybe) and effects that heal could always have a consistent green effect for etc. etc.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on why a lot of games aren't great 'e-sports', they require far too much previous game knowledge to understand

I don't know exactly how american tax works, but I would think you just add up your net profit from these sales and declare that as personal income, then pay whatever the tax is on that amount of income, easy.

i really like the way the bullets effect the environment and enemies, the particles and such are really well done.
nice sound effects too, can't wait to see it with some characters in there

[Defcon Armageddon]

I kind of suck at naming stuff so take this as seriously as you want, these are just some ideas:

• Defcon Armageddon
• Missile Maniac
• Rocket Storm

I like Rocket Storm, that makes me want to play the game without even seeing it, ROCKET STORM!!! YEAH!

LOL! this is great, you just killed me btw, I'm 'mittens'

also, this should go in the unpaid job postings forum, not the Business parent forum

Maybe have the people who spread the game to say, 10, of their friends get the game cheaper. That way, you gain respect for making it cheaper, and they spread it. That is what many MMO's do, get the friends to get hooked as well. Although here, you are doing it mainly for free publicity. 

Oh yeah, I totaly forgot about that, i think its really effective. That is definately being added to my list of cool ideas
If I remember corretly hawken did a similar thing where people could reserve thier hawken screen namevand get into the alpha if they got 5 friends to click the hawken site and join the mailing list, it sucked me into promoting thier game for them, but i dont mind coz i got alpha and beta access in return

I've been playing a bit on my galaxy S2
The performance is great, everything looks nice and runs fine
Menus work, but the choices given confused me a bit, why do you give the player a choice of 3 ships right from the start? and in Campaign mode, why do I get to choose from about 3 different missions? shouldn't the missions be in a linear progression (where I need to win the first one to unlock the second)
Having multiple choice of mission to start on also made me confused as to which one would be more difficult etc.

Similarly, with the ships, I didn't know how the differed, since they where all about the same size and shape, I think maybe they should be unlocked as you play, and when they are unlocked then you could tell the player how that ship is different to the one they have been using so far.

The game-play I found really nice, but only when I played "The road not taken", the reason, I think, is because that level has lots of asteroids in the foreground and close in the background, having this static geometry is really important in anchoring the level in the players mind. In the fist mission I played there was no static anchor like this, so the player ship was moving around, the bullets where moving and the enemies where moving, so most of the time i felt confused and disoriented, I couldn't tell if my ship was drifting or how fast I was going etc.
But all this is cleared up when there are static objects in the background, so I would suggest throwing heaps more of those in around the place, especially in the early levels where the player has just started and has no idea about the game's physics.

on to the visuals;
I didn't have too much of an issue with the visuals, but I think the following could be improved;
objects often blended into the background, shapes where hard to distinguish, perhaps you could have an outline glow shader, make enemies all share a different colour to the background or something else like that to make gameplay objects pop out from background stuff.

Also pickups, on a small screen, look too much like enemies, they are about the same size etc.
Often I would kill an enemy but not know it because he's immediately replaces with a pickup object, maybe pickups could also have a certain color or glow or something that easily tells players that they are good and not an enemy

Last thing, the in game dialogue text was too small to read on my screen, and compared to most smart phones the galaxy S2 has a huge screen, so that may be a problem.

That's all I can think of now, good luck with the project, i found it fun and i'm sure it'll only get better!

Another idea I found to add to the list;
-Hold a competition (design a new character, best new map, funniest game summary slogan etc.)

I work with one other person, he has a second computer that stays at my place and he comes over 9 to 5 weekdays to work.

Working in the same physical location makes collaborating really easy but has negative impacts on my life outside work,
working alone i would usually work sporadically as motivation comes and goes, i'd fit in gym, fitness etc.
Working in a consistent time block I find I'm usually burnt out at the end of it and it's far more effort to fit in running or swimming. Even though I feel less efficient I think it's still better overall for the project, given the speed we can discuss design decisions and compile work (doing this online is a terrible task).

Well from pixel prospector I also read that the press is interested in new things. They don't want to cover a game that was released a month ago and was covered elsewhere, unless it's really good.

Yeah, that's true, A lot of game review sites say things like "We will be more likely to review your game if you are sending us a sneak peak of something not-yet-released" But I think that's more relevant to games that are already anticipated or have a large marketing budget. Every game site wants to be the first one to cover battlefield3, since then all the extensive marketing for bf3 drives them directly to their review. But for indie games I don't reviewers would even consider doing reviews of unfinished / unreleased titles that don't already have heaps of fame or money behind them.

Also, getting press after release may not make other press sites think "oh, well we can't cover that now, it's been done", it's more likely to make them think "oh crap, our competitors covered this game, we need to cover it too!, quickly cash in on the this while it's hot"

Still I could be wrong about all this, it's just what people have made me believe so far

So far as I know, getting press is just as hard before release as it is during/after. Since the methods of getting press don't change regardless of how finished your game is.

From what I've heard said in talks on the matter, getting hype or buzz is actually a waste of time for indies, because: if someone reads a review on your game and can't click a BUY link at the end, they will forget that they wanted to buy it in a matter of days and you will never get that sale, even though you had them hyped up to buy it for a moment.

Big name games can do buzz because they will likely have TV advertisements and posters at bus stops and shopping centers to remind everyone to buy that game when it's actually released.

I've been trying to think of cool stuff to do when releasing a game to help with sales,

So far I've thought i could try;
-Giving away free copies of the game to the first 50 people to like your facebook page
-Giving free game soundtrack downloads to all who like the facebook page (there's a facebook app called "like to download" which sets this up, apps.facebook.com/liketodownload/)
-Mailing out free posters/art prints to a few random people who tweet about the game, using the correct #hashtag

And yeah, that's all I can think of now, so i thought I'd start a thread to hear the ideas people here may have tried/thought about
Yeah Go!

I finished my intro movie thing

I might upload the video to indiedb or something later, I have to decide if that's a good idea first

drawing an intro comic/cartoon/slideshow for Stampede