I'm not using any of these, so just my theorethical thoughts.

I think I would go for some sort of "phplist", set up on your own mail server. I was comparing the numbers of the various mail services and the pricing makes no sense to me. So far I have 200k emails total of various people who played/tried my games collected. I would need to pay $800/month for that number of subscribers (no matter if I send anything or not), which is way beyond my budget :D
You might say "if I have hundreds thousand emails I will be so rich it's not a problem". You won't OK, maybe my situation is a bit unusual since I make F2P (so my numbers of players is inflated x100 :D) but still, in a long run self serving solution seems the only way...

I think developers think Steam is about discoverability and completely overlook the player's convenience.

Many players *will not* buy a game unless it's on Steam (I'm one of them). Why? Because when you have it there, you can install it anytime on any machine, it will auto update each time soemthing new is released, you can uninstall it and it will not persish (the link will just change a colour). And above all the convenience of having all your games in *one* place (I even bought some cheap games I already own, just so these appear on my Steam list of games). Not to mention the super convenient and clear interface (compare it with the horror Desura interface, brrr!) It's super convenient.

And don't forget about niches, sure, it's very nice if your game appear on the front page, but there are players like me who browse the "strategies" category to hundred-something place.

More about stylized art. Recently I had a conversation with an extremely casual player. He said to "not go for realistic art", to quote him more properly it was something like "yeah, good graphics is great, but there are so many of these, make it something simplier, of course it still needs to look decent, but...", which got me surprised since I thought that only more mature/hardcore players would be tired of AAA 3D. I get the feeling there might be an overall shift to stylized art preference in the human race as a whole :D

1920x1080 (HD), then upscale it for higher resolutions. The thing is 1920x1080 is "maximum famous resolution" :D And it's guaranteed to stay that way for a while (for marketing reason - the famous "HD" modern television resolution)



Also some quick stats for the morst popular resolutions at the moment of writing (I haven't checked any theories, just got these from one of my gaming websites):
1. 1920x1080   (19.93%)
2. 1024x768   (17.17%)
Significant: 1366x768 and 1280x1024

I have seen several games like these (strangely, I can't remember their names :D). The key is how you handle dungeons/adventures. For example, my fascination with these games always ended whenever I click "go adventure/enter dungeon/end turn" and the game turns into an arcade where you go with around with those heroes you hired and PERSONALLY have to slay monsters. Come on, decide, am I the head of the guild of heroes who is to boss these punny heroes around or the hero himself...

The rectangles are plantations (coffee, bananas, corn, cotton), below these have an orange "efficiency bar". As you see the background of each plantation is a lighter colour of the province (which looks very nice / is clear - makes the plantation look tied to the location, not like some movable unit).

1) I need an advice, how to use colours there? These plantations have different background, so I can't draw any "ground" I guess. At the moment I used only black (and brown). But what about the crops? Should I draw yellow banana, black/brown coffee, white cotton? Or make it all black/grayish?

2) How exactly draw these plantations (again, the background is "transparent", so I can't draw any ground there)? Some field with an icon of a crop? Or maybe a small building too (like now)?

I could also use any other, related, advices as well.


Note: I can bar certain colour of provinces if it helps (like no yellow province for exampe).

I recommend allowing browsing without registering.

I'm a coder too.

I think the best is not to try to become a real artist, but to become a supplementary artist. To complement the art made by the real artist. To get the skill to do the easy/trivial things. For example, it's a nightmare trying to explain the artist what shape and colour of a button you want and then wait for it (because you will change your mind a lot and would need to experiment), learning to do it yourself is a great timesaver.

Also, not all art was created equal. Some stuff is impossible for a coder (without turning into a full blown artist) while others are quite easy (like anathomy and human animation, it's basicly math and remembering some harcoded numbers, definitely something a coder can do :D)

Things I recommend learning:
- coulours, absolutely critical to master it, even if you have an artist, you still need to decide on font colours and such (how many times I have seen RGB(255,0,0) as red font in games, its' soooo super ugly and incompatible with the rest of the game art). Try to think in HSI instead of RGB.
- GUI, it's a mixed skill, because it requires also understanding of the gameplay, ergonomics and thousand other stuff an artist will probably not know. So, if you can do that part yourself it would be best.
- tiny icons/art, I don't know, maybe that's just me, but I noticed my 8x8 art is at least decent and sometimes pretty good, anyway, doing these small pixelart pictures yourself is probably reasonable

Also, as Ashaman73 said, stylized art is the way to go for a coder

Does this mean that if you click on one half of the tile (a triangle), something different will happen than if you click on the other half (i.e. select different regions on the map)?

Exactly.

I want something like this:
http://www.google.pl/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fscreenshots.de.sftcdn.net%2Fde%2Fscrn%2F58000%2F58798%2Feuropa-universalis-7.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Feuropa-universalis.softonic.de%2F&h=525&w=700&tbnid=7Jpds8wT2zGnCM%3A&zoom=1&docid=6tjCVfMR4n844M&ei=cixlU5fHMeXC7AaJz4DABQ&tbm=isch&client=firefox-a&ved=0CGEQMygLMAs&iact=rc&uact=3&dur=481&page=1&start=0&ndsp=20

- There are no graphical tiles, just colours.
- Each half triangle is a full right "tile" (you can click on it, it has the same set of properties as a full tile, etc).

It has nothing to do with tile transition, at least not in a traditional sense.

A standard 2D grid map. Now, I wanted to add "corners", like half of the grid "tile" is used by one tile (green) and half by another tile (red). Note, I want this division logical, I'm not talking about visuals. Each grid "tile" could be either a single tile or two triangular tiles. As you see below, the triangular tile/subtile is in two versions (2 & 3) depending on "direction of the division" .



How to store it in memory?

Note:
- memory usage, etc is irrelavant
- the most important is my convenience as a developer
- note I wil also need to make a level editor for this (option to put the triangle/half tile)


At the moment I can see 3 ways:
1) make a standard 2D grid (one tile per grid) and treat half tiles as special cases
2) make the map made of triangles and store also "direction of the triangle"
3) make each grid 4 small triangles (like X)

"Good" is subjective too, and it depends on the demographic you're pitching to.  Would you say Flappy Bird is good?  I most definitely would not, but I'm not the target audience. 

Based on my own subjective measure of "good", if you want examples, just take a look around these forums.  There are plenty of good games (to me) that probably could do a lot better commercially if they were only put in front of more eyeballs, i.e. marketed better.  So yes good game/product+good marketing+other good business management = success 

I meant "good" in a pejorative sense. There are tens of thousands of good games and no one need more of these. If you made a good (read: mediocre) game you need to resort to heavy marketing or no one will notice your game (because there are so many good games). But if you make an awesome game (Minecraft, Castle Story, Prison Architect) you don't need marketing (of course you need at least to post about it/etc, do the very basic stuff), people will share it with others on their own.

Maybe check what "universal" art assets are popular?

http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Finding_graphical_tiles (here is a bigger list)
http://pousse.rapiere.free.fr/tome/tome-tiles.htm (and of course the ultimately most ever famous Gervais tileset :D)

Personally, I feel it makes sense for RPGs only (sufficiently standarized) and I would try to make a paid extension to an already existing free pack.

In the context of this topic, Notch did market Minecraft by starting a devlog very early in the development, in which he also included a playable demo, right here. It's a good example of how to drum up interest for your game from the start. This is something you can do even if you're not making the next Minecraft.

I just meant to not waste so much time on promoting, not to ignore it completely (going from one extreme to another is a way to nowhere in most cases). To use most resources on production not marketing. But you of course need to make a demo, a few screenshots and post about it somewhere so people have a chance to find your awesome game :D

I would say "probably not". I have been doing localization in some of my games, and so far results were unimpressive. The problem is acquiring players. Just because your game is in a non English language alone won't make any difference, you also need to find a way to find the players who speak that language. And if you don't know the language yourself how can you promote it?

Second thing, there is *WAY* less non English players that you think. Most (or amost all) serious gamers know English already. Just because it's not their native language does not matter (that much).

I think there are some cases where localization for an indie makes sense (for example I still do it for some of my games), but these are exceptions.


TIP: If you go for localization use GetText, it's insanely easy and convenient.

I disagree (I'm in the Seth Godin's camp :D). The key is the product, not marketing. Especially nowadays, where traditional mass advertising is not working anymore.

Take a look at Minecraft, was any marketing needed? No, it was destined to succeed due to the original idea and insane demand for this kind of game.
Also, I'm hearing about "awesome games that failed due to marketing" all the time, do you have *ONE* example of such game? Because as I see it all gems (OK, maybe except some niche of the niche thingies) were discovered sooner or later.

Also from the other side, usually when I read "I sold 5 copies of my game" topics I frequently notice these games were match 3 or minecraft clone of some sort or traditional tower defence without any twist, etc. The failure of these games was not caused by marketing, it was caused by the product.

I think only good games require heavy marketing for survival, awesome games don't need it.




BTW, I recommend reading some books of that guy, quite inspiring and contrary to traditional beliefs http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/

Graphics. Arcade games need to be beautiful, this one is not.

I would try to find an artist and go for 50:50 split (since it is doing soo porly it would be too risky for you to pay for art upfront and an already finished game is an appealing thing to an artist), then redo the graphics completely. I would also probably release it under another title (the marketing value of your current marketing efforts is zero it seems and you probably got some bad impressions over graphics).

The game is going to be priced at $10, so it doesn't make sense to put the pre-order at higher price ( I guess ).

Make the regular price at $20 and after a few months make a discount to $10.

The description is confusing, I have no clue what this game is about

I rewrote it a bit to make it more clear, hopefully. "The game is Zelda-like, features a mixture of puzzles, action and adventure gameplay but focused more on puzzles."

[/quote]Much better.

Turning a player mode on: Does it mean I will be saving some "prince boy" then? Wouldn't it be more thematic if the main character was a boy/warrior? What's the main storyline in one sentence (for example Zelda has it "Link goes to rescue princess Zelda"). At the first glance I can't find any *strong* theme for the game, just some baloon and random/boring going around for some unexciting adventures... Generally, the word "adventures" is much weaker than "slaying a dragon", "rescuing a princess", "hunt for pirates treasure". Maybe be more specific in the description?

I feel the pictures are quite nice, but the story of the game might lack (which is strange because the story is the easiest/cheapest to fix).

The description is confusing, I have no clue what this game is about (mechanics wise). For example you wrote "A 3D action adventure game" and "The game is going to focused on puzzle solving". How action and puzzle solving is compatible (you mean like arcade style jumping on platforms while solving some intellectual puzzles)? And this whole "adventure" it could mean anything

The "Funding, where your hard earned money go?" is too wordy, simple "All of the funding are going to be used in improving art." would be sufficient. Don't forget, fewer words = better

BTW, the art is nice.


Rewards:
- to my observation anything below "A DRM-free digital copy of the game" is meaningless (almost no one go for these)
- add more high tiers, invent some crazy titles for those people in credits
- consider making a "limited deluxe version - with a cute ribbon on the princess head! - available to $100 founders only and only during crowdfunding"
- to my observation, "making you an NPC" tier always has fans

If I was handling things as a soletrader would that simply be a case of...

• Collecting the money in my business account.
• At which point I could transfer it to my own personal bank account.

Disclaimer: I'm not a citizen of UK, so everything I say is general and need to be checked with your country's legislation!

As a SoleTrader you don't have a business account (well, you can but it's in fact your personal account). Your whole property are considered your "business assetes". Also if your "company" goes belly up you lose everything you own (house, all money, etc) + get possible new debt. LTD shields you from all these (but it's more complex).

I'm not sure, but handling employess seems much easier in LTD. If you go SoleTrader route you probably should make some "contract" with the rest of your team (them being other SoleTraders).

Also, don't forget the *volume* of income (possible VAT if you reach certain thereshold). If you all act as separate entities you can avoid it (if you don't get too much volume).
(note: don't mistake income with profit)