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[Zizka]

The whole font is my other laptop which is busted. I only have part of it:



Once I recover it, I can send it your way. Sorry about that. What a pain. I think I might have sent a version to programmer once, I'll have to check.

I have this font too, maybe you could use it?:


 

[teefal]

After five days of rest, I woke today with a new plan for finishing Tidepool by year’s end. Each weekday, I’ll put in two development hours and one Let’s Play hour, with no work on weekends and a week break every five weeks .. hopefully, a better balance between rest, billable income, and Tidepool.  A full sixth of the schedule was trimmed.

Given this new schedule, I'll release Alpha 4 in July, Alpha 5 in October, and Beta 1 by New Year's Eve. Three months of work spread over eight.

Today during our first Let's Play Tidepool episode in months, Isabel drew three new characters for her gotta-find-em-all game she's working on.  





Subscribe to our channel to see new episodes.

[teefal]

Just checked our google rank for "Tidepool", the name of our game (and our registered trademark) ... old website #39, new website #44.

I redirected the old website to the new, so hopefully the ranks will combine and put us higher up. The last time I checked google rank, the new website was on page 9, so the last few months moved us up 4 pages or so.

[teefal]

Starting Tidepool dev again after two months away, ten hours a week till the end of the year.

I'm 2558 hours in, or 21 months. In that time, I've written 90,000 lines of well-abstracted code, which printed is 1611 pages.

Tidepool now has 211 players, with 630 plays. Our mailing list has 1449 people. Twitter has 688 (@teefal) and 234 (@playTidepool) followers.

[JobLeonard]

Woah, that's quite a bit of dedication

[teefal]

Yeah, feels like it when added up. While it's going on, it feels like guilt time, because it's all time I could have been billing.

[quantumpotato]

Yeah, feels like it when added up. While it's going on, it feels like guilt time, because it's all time I could have been billing.

You have savings you've been going through? Props for working so well on this.

[teefal]

We did have savings   Now I'm splitting time with billable.

[teefal]

Number of elementary schools in US (2012): 101,185 total, with 73,000 public and 28,185 private.

Cost to mail a letter to every elementary school in US (bulk rate): $49,355

Sales if 12 parents or teachers in 20% of these schools subscribed to Tidepool ... $6 million.

12.3 million 3rd/4th/5th graders in US (2014).  Sales if 2% were subscribed to Tidepool ... $6 million

(subscriptions are optional, and will cost $25 a year after we reach beta)

[teefal]

Tidepool book chapter #27 ... the case for crystals (thoughts are welcome)

Crystals are the in-game currency in Tidepool, which power stories like batteries. Players earn crystals by gathering gems that spawn hourly or by completing challenges within stories. Players can also give crystals to each other as rewards for stories they like. Gift giving is optional, but encouraged in the design.

Players can also buy crystals with real money to save time. Some players will buy yearly subscriptions that earn daily crystals at a reduced rate. Others will buy crystals as needed. Most will pay nothing, relying instead on gem gathering, story rewards, and player gifts.

Charging money or even imposing limits on an educational kids game will be controversial to some people. Others will want one price up front, as with Minecraft or LittleBigPlanet. While I know the phrase ‘free to play’ has a bad reputation, I’ve given this a lot of thought and think I’ve got a solution that’s both useful and fair.

Using crystals as currency has immediate practical benefits. Most games have some kind of progressive reward in their design, some progress bar or other that needs filling, as this encourages people to keep playing. Authors will want more crystals so they can build more elaborate stories, with premium bits from other players.

Crystals also teach economy, which is valuable in itself. Watch a kid play Minecraft in creative mode for a while, and you’ll quickly see the downside to no limits as they build towers to the sky or several hundred horses. Tidepool has limited resources, so kids must ask, “Do I need that many horses? Can I use their crystals for something else?”

Since the best way to earn crystals is from players that like your stories, authors will aim to make the most appealing content that uses the fewest crystals possible. This teaches the difficult concept of ‘return on investment’ in a fluid and relevant way. Kids will want to improve their stories so they attract more players. This teaches audience awareness.

Most of all, we want to teach that crystals are best when given to others. Tidepool’s voluntary crystal rewards are a terrific way to say, “Great job. Keep going.”  As people give to you, you’ll likely give to others. Our goal is to reinforce this timeless truth, so that someday kids will give to charities and crowdfunding campaigns.

And speaking of charity, most of the money raised by Tidepool will go to vetted educational groups, either as corporate donations or directly within the game itself. These “foundations” can sell crystals they earn for real money, which means you help their mission by either giving them crystals or choosing to buy from them.

Immuexa, the company that makes Tidepool, will make most of its money from yearly subscriptions. Our goal isn’t to get rich, but merely to grow our game and serve its community. Hopefully such an approach will encourage support from our players.

[teefal]

Hi everyone,

This morning, we release Tidepool 0.3.2, the first new version in three months. Aside from bug fixes, I’ve added a few features related to crystals, the in-game currency. Learn more from my screencast (see below) or download and try yourself. You can read about crystals in my latest book chapter (see above).

After a month to recover from Kickstarter, I’ve resumed work and hope to post smaller releases every week or two, always on Saturday morning.

Keep in mind that this is an untested alpha version, so There Will Be Bugs. If you’re an existing player and have trouble, try uninstalling Tidepool and deleting the Tidepool data directory in your home folder.

See you ingame!

Tim

[teefal]

(response to deleted post)

But how do you really feel?

I do know most of this, fyi, having worked in the software biz for more than 25 years, and at an ad agency before that. I'm usually lead architect and project manager, directing web and UX designers.

Most projects need the client to be happy, which means pretty visuals up front, so we engage those devs early. Given a choice, I do the visuals LAST, since it allows the mechanics to evolve without wasting money on retasking.  Easier to say, "make this pretty" once than ten times.

In software, there's always the "right" answer and the "right now" answer. Keeping to the latter is more agile and cost effective, which is crucial in a self funded project.

Till now our players have been young kids and teachers who care less about UX visuals. I myself hate the look and can do much better, but till now have prioritized functionality and the schedule.

That said, we are starting to build community, so perhaps it's time to put the shine on. Improved visuals are scheduled for Milestone 6 (we're in 4), but maybe that should change.

Thanks for the feedback.

[teefal]

Then there's this.   Replace "only a test" with "only an alpha" (in the old school sense)

[teefal]

Put more simply, each month of this project has been:

1. Get something useful working.
2. Make it pretty and polished.
3. Bill hours to make money.

Pick two.

Also, we built the game engine from scratch, so there's gonna be wrinkles you haven't seen in Unreal or Unity for a while.

[teefal]

No need to get defensive. I was meaning well.

Good luck!

No, it's cool. I do "teardowns" all the time, usually on other designs I want to replace.  

This morning your phrasing got under my skin (screams amateurism ... one afternoon of fooling ... desperately cries out).

I'd have gotten the gist without the drama.

[JobLeonard]

Well-meaning does not excuse poor phrasing.

[JobLeonard]

And now you're insinuating we're thin-skinned cry-babies. Classy.

[teefal]

Should have been more tactful but I thought an open conversation could be had. Apparently not. Really sorry to have usurped the thread. Fixed. Everybody can sleep tight now. Nasty phrases won't be bugging you again Smiley

Cheers!

This post will evaporate in 3, 2, 1...

Quote from: JobLeonard on Today at 05:46:48 am
And now you're insinuating we're thin-skinned cry-babies. Classy.

No, you're reading a malicious intent into my words that simply isn't there. No need to continue with your little double bind. You already successfully bullied me out of the thread.

Cheers!

Nenad,

My intent wasn't to bully you away. I debated about whether to post that cartoon, mostly because of the overly-strong punch line, which I didn't mean to direct at you.

Otherwise, I did try to engage in conversation with you, telling you of my background, where I was at in the process, and most importantly suggesting that maybe you were right and that I should prioritize UX sooner rather than later. Your post had me thinking about this all day.

And yeah, the strength of your words did hurt, but on another day, I'd likely take them in stride.

[oahda]

I like that comic. I feel like that a lot. But I also know can be a bit too focused on critiquing these things myself when talking to others about their work, so I try to keep that in mind, both to try and stop myself from doing it too much, and not to be too annoyed if others give me such suggestions themselves. It can be difficult not to ventilate every little idea on one's mind sometimes, even if they're about things that aren't currently relevant. Might still be useful to make a note for the future, tho.

UX/UI can do a lot, tho. I just got a new day job as a programmer for a game at the start of this month. I was supposed to be implementing minigames, but now it looks like I might primarily be doing UI, because of how much they liked what I did with it in my minigame, and how much more alive it was compared to the UI of the other minigames implemented by the other programmers so far. Plus lack of consistency between minigames that I might get to fix up now.

But this is all pedantry, of course. I like the artsy fartsy stuff. I like going wild with fanciful animations and stuff in my interfaces. You might not. And I do understand how it could feel very distractive from the more important goals of the project, especially considering how much work you have to do in a limited amount of time.

Just some random thoughts here, so don't read too much into anything I've said. Theyse are not suggestions. "Ventilating every little idea on my mind", as it were. I'm not sure I actually have a point. It's up to you what to do in the end. If I were you I'd probably also put UI graphics on the bottom of my list. UI user-friendliness is a different thing, tho. If anything is unclear as to how to use the UI, that's a bit more urgent. Don't know if that's the case with Tidepool, tho...

I'm just thinking since this is for kid, a lively and funny UI might be good. I'm also working with kids' games now, sort of. Educational stuff.

You'll figure it out! c:

[teefal]

Thanks Prinsessa,

It's been too long since I focused on what I *liked* doing. I'm usually the one focused on business drivers and flattening risk and thankless but necessary tasks, largely because I'm the one reporting to the client, and because it's easier to find/motivate team members to do fun things than thankless things.

Just the other day in my billable project we were assigning tasks and I wanted to do the fun thing, but took the dreadful thing (dealing with itext pdf nonsense) because it was better for the project.

It would be fun to make Tidepool's UI more kid friendly.  But improving multiplayer performance and fixing glaring bugs and doing the big ticket items such as zoomable map loom larger.

I'm still on the fence about it though. Maybe the Kickstarter failure has given me time to just have fun.