next »

[Pixel Noise]

Shared/Voted - best of luck! It's obviously a tough time to get through Greenlight, so if it doesn't work out, don't panic. And if it does, great! 

[RetroNeo Games]

Thanks very very much for that, PN!

[RetroNeo Games]

Well it's almost two weeks later and we've been busy as all get out!
In building the demo, we've neglected (or haven't had a minute to begin) contacting press.
So at present our Greenlight results look like this.



After one week we were at 303 votes, but the second week has only given us another dozen or so. Organic traffic has completely dropped off. Actually, this happened after about 12 hours, but traffic from our own friends and communities did move over the duration of the first week.

To get things moving, I got a few friends to translate the page into Russian, Portuguese and German, just to see if organic traffic from those regions would pick up. It didn't at all. It would have been useful perhaps if the translations had been in place on day 1 to better capture the organic traffic that Steam's algorithms sent our way, but the translations don't appear to have generated any of their own traffic.

I didn't want to release before we had a demo ready, as I said, but Valve announcing the shutdown of Greenlight very soon forced our hand. A new demo (less feature-laden than originally desired) is almost complete and with that in hand I'd be happy to contact press and hopefully drive a bit more traffic, but we all know how difficult it can be to get press talking about a Greenlight campaign.

Thanks for reading. If you're interested in the game, we're currently taking a limited number of €5 preorders on the Sons of Sol website.

[InterGalactic]

Well it's almost two weeks later and we've been busy as all get out!
In building the demo, we've neglected (or haven't had a minute to begin) contacting press.
So at present our Greenlight results look like this.

After one week we were at 303 votes, but the second week has only given us another dozen or so. Organic traffic has completely dropped off. Actually, this happened after about 12 hours, but traffic from our own friends and communities did move over the duration of the first week.

To get things moving, I got a few friends to translate the page into Russian, Portuguese and German, just to see if organic traffic from those regions would pick up. It didn't at all. It would have been useful perhaps if the translations had been in place on day 1 to better capture the organic traffic that Steam's algorithms sent our way, but the translations don't appear to have generated any of their own traffic.

I didn't want to release before we had a demo ready, as I said, but Valve announcing the shutdown of Greenlight very soon forced our hand. A new demo (less feature-laden than originally desired) is almost complete and with that in hand I'd be happy to contact press and hopefully drive a bit more traffic, but we all know how difficult it can be to get press talking about a Greenlight campaign.

Thanks for reading. If you're interested in the game, we're currently taking a limited number of €5 preorders on the Sons of Sol website.

I feel you man, I'm in your same shoes I also launched my campaign way earlier than I wanted to, a lot of features were just not done yet!

Do you happen to know when they will shut the service completely and if so will my campaign be lost?

Have you tried to contact many youtubers?

Anyways, great to see a fellow dev and space top down shooter! And your game looks great for the most part and your clean vector style is quite refreshing to see, however the ships look a bit clipart-like. Perhaps give them a more stylized look would go a long way, and play with their lighting / bloom etc.

[RetroNeo Games]

Hey Leon, thanks for the advice. We're deliberately going all sprites and no lighting though. Just trying to stand out visually.
Voted for your game there. Best of luck getting through!

In short, nobody (including Valve) know when they'll shut down Greenlight, what the fee will be for Direct, or what they'll do to people still on Greenlight when it's done.

I suspect (and hope) that they'll stop taking submissions on a date and then clear most of what's left through. However, they did say that anyone left when it ends will get their $100 back, so that's... something. You can put it towards the $5,000 you might need for Direct.

Have contacted some YouTubers but nobody big. Some say they'll play when I've the new demo, so that's cool. I'd better make it soon, though.

[InterGalactic]

Ok cool thanks. Also forgot to mention I voted your game as well before.

In terms of youtubers, do you think even the small ones are worth it?

The bigger ones don't really reply to me, but the small ones do. However their recent videos hardly can get 100 views even organically.

[RetroNeo Games]

Thanks for the vote!

See, small YouTubers actually answer you and two or three have played my game, but only a couple dozen views. Are you wasting your time? No, but you're not getting much out of it.

Emailing the big guys, you're almost certainly wasting your time, but if just one likes it and plays it then it was totally worth your time.

The sweet spot is in the middle.

I think you have to invest your time in the small guys though. They can become bigger in future and remember you. They are also watched by the bigger guys sometimes for interesting content. And if just one small channel viewer is a publisher or press guy, then you're laughing.

Most efficient use of time is probably to contact channels with subs in the thousands, but not above half a million.

[RetroNeo Games]

Well we've made a big chunk of progress towards the vertical slice demo. Audio, and some work with the Fungus plugin were a big part of it. Now that that much is done and implemented into the old demo, we thought we'd push an update to it as a half-way point to the full vertical slice.

You can download the new demo here. The link in the op of this thread has also been updated.

There's a readme in the folder, but I'll just post the most recent updates here. It's quite a significant update, with addition of character creation, and a full-on change of the game's name:

Version 0.2.4
* Changed game name to "Sons of Sol", dropping "Crow's Nest"
* Added Character creation
* Added logo to main menu
* More ways to activate main menu
* Added Greenlight logo
* Added animated pilot heads
* Changed music and most sound effects.
* Fixed issue with freighter radar signatures sometimes showing up white.
* Added speedometer (at the bottom)
* Added red outline to nearby asteroids as a collision warning.
* Added 1HP to player Health
* Sounds: many many many changes. Most in-game noises changed.
* Added an image for the freighter captain
* Made the 'advance dialog' prompt more obvious.

[traisane]

I think you need to start with smaller youtubers and work your way up. We did that and we have managed to reach some streamers with 100k followers. It just takes time. Try to look for streamers who like similar games.

Good luck with your game!

[RetroNeo Games]

I think you need to start with smaller youtubers and work your way up. We did that and we have managed to reach some streamers with 100k followers. It just takes time. Try to look for streamers who like similar games.

Good luck with your game!

Thanks for the well wishes, traisane! And I fully agree with you. - Kevin

[RetroNeo Games]

So this is what made me smile today.



Our thanks to everyone who voted in the campaign!

[Pixel Noise]

 

[RetroNeo Games]

Cheers PN!

Just a quick update to say that after a much needed holiday (vacation as some of you say) we're back and eager to push forward.

Sons of Sol will be demoing at State of Play in Dublin on April 5th, and at Reboot Develop in Dubrovnik on April 20th - 22nd.

We look forward to seeing people there and getting live feedback from players.

[RetroNeo Games]

It's been a couple of weeks since the last update, but that's not because nothing happening. On the contrary, a lot has been happening, as we've been getting the game demo polished up to take to Reboot Develop in Dubrovnik next week to demo on the indie floor, and hopefully to pitch, too!

We've been fixing bugs, of course, but the main thing is playing with the enemy AI behaviour, health and movement speeds. One big complaint from first time players was that the first enemy in the demo would fly off the screen too fast. This is because their turn speed was slow (deliberate, so that the player can get behind them). Upping their turn speed has meant that the enemies pretty much stay on screen once they arrive (unless you afterburn away) but now you can't get behind them. We hope it makes the demo a bit more understandable. In the main game enemy fighters will have different stats, so it's not like we're cutting a feature, just showing a different behaviour in the demo.

A second complaint was that your wingmen steal all your kills in the end. Well if you order them to cover you (part of the tutorial, so you have to) then they'll do that, and kill people trying to kill you. You can give other orders, but almost nobody I watch playing thinks to do that, since there's a lot to get used to in just a 10 minute game that's quite different to other space shooters.
So now I'm thinking of tweaking behaviour so that once your wingmen get the enemy's attention, they'll just fly back to you, instead of finishing the fight. This seems like a stupid move for a combat pilot to take (turn their back on the enemy) but this might be one of those times, at least in the demo, where gameplay and the player are more important than the simulation.

The new build isn't up yet, but will be in the coming days. I have 3 more days of work before I fly to Dubrovnik, so expect a build up in about 3 days.

Later!

[RetroNeo Games]

Well, I'm off to Reboot Develop in the morning, and as promised I've uploaded a new demo with a lot of the feedback from previous playtests implemented. I won't link here because they're forever breaking, but it's linked in the original post on this thread.

Also, because there have been no GIFs in a while, and I've no new ones, enjoy this one that serves to remind all that getting the carrier and strategy layer into the game is the next big goal. The demo more than polished enough for its purpose now.

[RetroNeo Games]

Man, Reboot Develop was a lot of fun! Met some great people, got some great advice and contacts, and had a nice holiday to boot!

Here's a shot of the game being demo'd at our "booth".



Tomorrow I'm off to London for the BAFTA Guru sessions. Once I'm back next week I finally have no more trips on the calendar and hope to get a good run of uninterrupted work (as if..)

[RetroNeo Games]

One trip to London later and I'm back! There are now no further interruptions on the calendar (for the forseeable future) so hopefully we can pick up the pace on development again.

During the week we got debris in which will be a nifty element to the explosions from larger ships. GIFS coming soon.

For now though, this weekend, I had a bit of a renovation to the home office, swapping out my tiny old study desk that I've had since I was in secondary school for a fairly expensive sit/stand desk!

See? You can sit at it...


...or stand at it!



One thing I overlooked is that, even though there's more desk space now, my old desk had 2 very handy drawers. Now I've about 100 loose items (some useful, some not) littered around the desk and a spare chair (that's no longer spare). Now I've gotta figure out some drawers and where to put them.

The important thing here though is that this should allow me to save my back from bad posture while I work, because I won't be stuck in a chair all day. I can (and should, but probably won't) switch it up every 30 minutes or so.

[RetroNeo Games]

As promised, here's finally a new GIF (they take a lot more than 5 seconds to record and save good ones, I'm sure you know).

So this is the new enemy shuttle. For about 1 second it's alive and well and its turret gun is firing on the player ship.
After that our missile takes away the last of its health and destroys it leaving a husk.
If the husk hits an asteroid (oh look, here comes one now. How convenient for the GIF, ay?) the husk will be smashed to smitherines.



Might work on the timing of the explosion and break up a little more, and the sorting order of the particles can be wrong at times even though everything is on the Default 0 layer and sorted by Z depth. If anyone has had this trouble with Unity particles before I'd be happy to hear solutions. Sometimes far away debris chunks render in front of the player ship/asteroids (Z=0 level) and sometimes nearer particles disappear behind asteroids when they shouldn't.

[KPas]

I like genre, style and top down view!

I tried the combat-demo, met no bugs - and need exercise.

Often the screen gets too small, because my targets (or attackers) are offscreen, so I would probably welcome some automatic zoom.

Good luck!

[RetroNeo Games]

Thanks very much for the feedback. An auto-zoom is something I'm considering, but when I tried before I found you lose track of the action and your direction more quickly than you might think.
You also start to see the asteroids spawning in, or notice an obvious gap if I stop them spawning. Not certain if the fix is worth the new problems, but I'll certainly try again.
Thanks for the feedback!