Isn't Vector a struct and not a class? If it's a struct, garbage collection shouldn't be a problem even when you're creating so many of it on every frame.

There is a Application.framerate, but it is for capping the game's framerate so I don't think you can use that.

I remember there are scripts that can measure the time spent on some parts of the code, as well as an FPS calculation script. You can probably use information you get from these scripts to adjust your game based on performance. They should be in Unity forum, in Scripts section.

If I were you I would put this as an option for player to adjust by themselves though.

Flash Develop + Flex SDK + Flashpunk/Flixel should be enough to get you start on making a Flash game. These are all free so you can save money and spend it on artists/graphic software instead.

There are blogs that are open on how well they're doing with their android games/app. Here are some of them

http://droid-blog.net/category/money-income/
http://www.kreci.net/tag/revenue/
http://makingmoneywithandroid.com/category/report/
http://www.ziggysgames.com/revenue

All of these seems to earn $800 or more monthly. Some even reach $2000 or $5000. Looking at what they do, it seems like they optimize their ads by using many ads service and code it so that the ads fill rate is always high.

You can also do both. Offer a free version with ads, and a paid version without ads and some goodies. For example, Pop Star, a collapse block puzzle game, offer two version that are pretty much identical. Lite version, however, only let you play 5 stages and you cannot save your progress.

Some games/apps just remove ads and offer no new features. I don't have data on how well this work though.

I've never used CocosBuilder so I'm afraid I cannot answer that question. You have to try it yourself. I also dont know when 2.0 final is going to be releaesed, though from my experience with cocos2d, rc version is already stable enough to make a commercial game.

I'd suggest to not pay attention to CocosBuilder for now, if your goal is to learn Objective-C and not making game quickly. This will help you understand how cocos2D design works. Then you can move on to use CocosBuilder later after you understand the core and basic of cocos2d.

Go with 1.0.1. I used cocos2d in many projects before. Most of the stuffs you can do in 0.99 can be done in 1.0.1, so I'd say the book is still relevant and can be a good place to start.

Finish a simple game in 1.0.1 first. You should be able to apply many core designs in cocos2d to the 2.0 version once it's released.

I did something like this before. I wrote some notes and documents about it as well, but I don't have it right now. Will look it up and come back to you with more details, but here's what I can remember so far.

There are three cases where a circle is considered to be colliding with a rectangle

1.) When any of the corners of the rectangle is inside the circle
- This one is simple. Just go through each vertex of the rectangle and test whether that point is inside the circle or not.

2.) When the whole circle is enclosed inside the rectangle
- Don't quite remember how to solve this one. Will update once I found the notes I wrote. But if you're dealing with a non-rotated rectangle, then it's just a simple check whether the center of the circle is inside the rectangle or not.

3.) When the distance from the center of the circle and one of the four sides of the rectangle is less than the circle radius
- Use a distance from a point to a line-segment formula, using the center of the circle and test against all four line-segments.

You just need to check these three tests. If any test return true, then they're collided.

Where can I get this it looks really cool and reminds me of a 16-bit silent hill.

http://www.lonesurvivor.co.uk/buy.html

[fucking everything up]

This works because the game is essentially single-player with not much player interaction outside of trading (kinda like swtor hyuk), so you're not fucking everything up by letting microtransaction stuff into the normal economy. You could really shit up a game doing this otherwise, and it's something people know to watch out for, so it's cool that they identified that it could work here.

I think this a good point. I don't think there's a PvP in KoL so most of items collecting are just for self satisfaction.

Some points to consider:

1: Stop worrying about it and just create something cool. Don't have guilt issues about making money. Don't obsess about what users you don't even have yet will think about you. Also, virtually all successful indie games are niche games.

2: The "Donate $X for next update" model that Archibald talks about sounds awesome. I have no idea why he thinks it won't work for games. It makes me want to donate right now, and I rarely donate to things. Alternative version after it's done is: donate $5 or more to download, once total reaches $X it becomes free. Donations beyond the given (individual and total) amounts carry over to the next project. It makes you feel like you're contributing to something permanent, not just throwing money down a hole.

3: Don't listen to me or anyone else. Listen to Hima, cause he's posting links to actual results. Test stuff and see what happens.

I'm flattered but I think he should listen to other people too! I only gave examples showing that making money from free content works, but the way to do it is still an area waiting to be explored. Donation for next update and donation to free the game are also interesting ideas and I'd love to see somebody try it with games 

Considering darklight's targeting a niche market, he'd want to spread that game as much as possible, in order to find those niche players he's targeting among all the user. Among all the players, those who donate could be 2% or 1%, but the point is that if it reaches enough players, that low percentage will be enough. If it reaches 1,000,000 players, even 1% is still 10,000 player.

Wow, I really think this is wrong. If you have a mass market game, then going free-to-play to reach as many people is possible is a good idea. [then ask for money in whichever way you prefer, eg donations / microtx etc]. If you have a game with niche appeal (I'm guessing hex-based strategy game for the OP), then you should charge MORE not less, as you will get far less people at all interested in the type of game - but the ones who ARE interested are much more willing to pay a premium for this type of game (they really like it, and there are far fewer games of their niche to pick from).

It is not wrong, as I have already given examples in the same post. Of course, what you just said isn't wrong either, since I believe I have seen a niche game that charges quite expensive  for little content as well.

It comes down to, given resources you have, which strategy suit you better? You could say that niche market are willing to pay more, but how would you reach the niche target in the first place? Of course, you could make a demo, but would that be enough to make the niche target like your game?

My reply was meant to show the alternative that many might never thought about it. Many think that if the digital content is free, there is no value and people wouldn't pay you or you can't make money from it. That is not true. Dwarf Fortress is definitely for niche market. Sita sings the Blue and Nina's comic Mimi and Eunice ren't really mass market either. Yet, these people make more than $1,500 a month from their free contents. The game can be free and you can charge for something else.

Actually, we can even mix your strategy in here. I agree that you can charge the niche market more, but the game can be free while you charge quite high for something else. Maybe people who donate more than a certain amount will gain access to your dev blog and get to see all of behind the scene work. Maybe they gain an early access to the next update, or get to beta test the game. Or they could vote for which feature they want you to implement first. Maybe you can setup a forum and has a premium section that you provide faster support, posting exclusive content, etc.

Just finished the game today and I promised that I'll come back with feedback, and here I am!

!!!! MAY CONTAIN SPOILER !!!

I love this. I love how scary it is regardless of it being a pixel-art game. The atmosphere is terrific and it makes me paranoid on every move I make. The details you gave to this game is really impressive, from the choices of food you can eat and the effects of your actions. ( Using drugs, giving drugs, etc...) I'm really impressed and I find myself really enjoying this game.

The only part I don't like is the way the story is told. It is frustrating. It's the same 'You know the answer', 'You know me', etc. I know you want to keep it a mystery, but everything is so mysterious and surreal that it becomes quite annoying. And after all these mysteries have been built up, the ending was a let down and anticlimactic to me. I sat there watching the ending and I was like 'That's it?'

I share the same opinion on the level design as well as the top-view-to-side-view translation issue. I was stuck, not knowing what to do or where to go once, when I had no more ammo nor flares and I have to go through a bunch of thin men in order to get the generator key.

I've searched and found out that there are three endings so far, none offer any good explanation or any supporting evidences that are enough for player to interpret anything, so I'm a bit disappointed. I've heard you might add more endings, and I really hope you do and give us a finale that this great game deserve.

With that said, I'm a big fan of horror games and this really satisfied my hunger for a great horror game. I'm looking forward to your next game and if you need any support or donation, I'll be glad to help in anyway I can

Thanks for an awesome game!

Have you tried coroutine? http://lua-users.org/wiki/CoroutinesTutorial

If you find coroutine difficult, then the only way to do it in lua is to have a native update call to lua update and reduce red property each frame.

There's an overhead if you have many lua interpreter running. If you have many objects, it's better to have one lua interpreter  and pass a set of objects to it and let it process every object in one go.

I think it's important to know where do you want to go with this, since, as Jack said, there are many ways to tackle this problem. Are you trying to make a scriptable effect system?

Here's a LuaInterface tutorial on exposing and using C# class in lua
http://www.godpatterns.com/2006/06/more-scripting-in-lua.html

I wouldn't recommend doing anything complicate. Registering function is already convenient enough and can do a lot. Of course, this depends on how complex you want your cutscene to be. Good luck!

Thank you! I found it. You're right, it's a currency.
http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Mr._Store

While strictly speaking, this is micro-transaction, I feel like they only use it as mean to say thank you to people who support. The whole game is still accessible freely for everyone, donator or not. And most of these items are just for showing off.

Interestingly, the idea of in-game reward seem to be what players asked them to do, so it's more of an example of connecting with the fan and give them a reason to buy, I think.

On a side note, I used to play KoL as well, and I was introduced to it by my Prof. She even gave me her items 

Is this all done with registering functions? For example, would creating an entity in LUA be done by calling a C# function from an entityfactory, or is possible to create a C# class in LUA by registering the class type or something?

Yes, that's pretty much it. For your cutscenes, you could have a class that is responsible for executing a given lua script. Maybe calling the script's update method every frame, while providing a way for the script to control the character and whatever you want to control (camera, sound, characters, etc.)

Correction:
Kingdom of Loathing is not based on donations, it's microtransactions (buying virtual goods via real money). At a first glance it is a subtle difference, but a huge one in reality.

The only item you get is Mr. Accessory, and you have to donate at least $10 to get. I wouldn't consider this as microtransaction, more of an action of giving player a reason to pay. If they were promoting and selling this more, like more items though real cash only or trade-in money for in-game currency, then I'd consider it a microtransaction and wouldn't put it in this list. The price isn't even fixed and you pretty much pay whatever you want.

If you have any information that contradict this ( Like, they sell more digital goods, they encourage people to spend money for virtual items, etc.) I'd love to see it to update my data.

[Sita Sings the Blues]

I've heard but can't confirm that one of the better models is where you sell you game for a minimum price

say ($1 to cover fees/bandwidth) than allow for donations from there. as the buyer is already putting in that credit card info right then and there, so it's a good at the counter buy for them.

I've read the opposite, actually. From the book 'The Economy of Free', there is a big difference between free and $1 or even $0.99. If it's free, it's more likely that people will download and give the game a try than having to pay money just to see if they like the game.

Considering darklight's targeting a niche market, he'd want to spread that game as much as possible, in order to find those niche players he's targeting among all the user. Among all the players, those who donate could be 2% or 1%, but the point is that if it reaches enough players, that low percentage will be enough. If it reaches 1,000,000 players, even 1% is still 10,000 player.

Of course, this model takes time and it will work if your game is good enough and people share the game to their friends or people they know. But it could work. Here are some examples, that I've collected from researching about this model.

Sita Sings the Blues
An animation by Nina Paley. It's released for free on the internet. She makes money from donation, selling DVDs and merchandises, and profit sharing from broadcasting - even though the cinema are not required to pay her money to play her film.
http://questioncopyright.org/sita_distribution/results
Slides regarding money she made are around 42 - 44

They are also nice enough to share almost every single detail about their financial gain from the project
http://questioncopyright.org/files/finances/civicrm-summary.txt

Dwarf Fortress
You've probably heard about this. These are articles that talk about them, as well as the income report from bay12 team themselves
http://afteractionreporter.com/2010/05/02/donations-to-dwarf-fortress-devs-top-16k-in-april/

http://www.thedrmnews.com/games/a-donation-model-can-work-dwarf-fortress-makes-profits-despite-being-freeware/

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=9d8b64b8da3930cb1ad1bdb10ff8e6b4&topic=50848.15

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=9d8b64b8da3930cb1ad1bdb10ff8e6b4&topic=106206.msg3149794#new

Kingdom of Loathing
A browser-based, mmorpg game. Released in 2003 and had never charged people money for playing game. They get money purely from donation or selling merchandise.
EDITED: Their donation can be considered as a less strict form of micro-transactions. The gift for a donator can be collected and traded for premium items.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Loathing
http://forums.kingdomofloathing.com/vb/showthread.php?t=122646
http://store.asymmetric.net/

I have more on these, but they are musicians so maybe this should be enough for now.

Trouble with air is the end-user having to install the runtime (like .net), unless they have fixed this?

I thought he meant using AIR to compile to native mobile target.

I'm in a terrible mood right now. My boyfriend is now sub par with communication and that has had me ticked (I sent him an email expressing my concern) and then my mood began to spiral down and I tried to contact my friends that were online and guess what, they ALL ignored me. I also noticed that one of my friends who was supposed to be doing some editing for me has given up on that and decided to marathon tv shows. I'm starting to believe my friend who says, "the only person you can trust is yourself." Going to bed early hoping that tomorrow will bring something pleasant. I know I should really be talking to my friends about something like this, but like I said, they're busy ignoring me for some reason.

Hugs. Also, you might want to exercise, jog, or run. Do something to keep your mind away from thinking that you're being ignored or alone. It works for me. 

Thanks for the tutorial, Serapth! Looks simple to follow just like your SFML tutorial.

Vita, here I come 

Despite not knowing much in javascript except for its basic syntax, I experimented with enchantjs and got a simple game running in a few hours. It also work on iPod touch 4, iPhone, iPad and Android. Whee!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1062793/TestEnchant/popStone/index.html