Android is a real pain - with iOS you've just got 3 resolutions (2 which are quite similar), but on Android you've got everything from 240x320 to 1280x720, and potentially different aspect ratios (As well as vastly varying performance, devices with no FPU, and all the OS versions...)

My only real tip is to avoid pixel art. If you've got a more vector-like style, with soft alpha-blended edges, things will scale down quite cleanly (with mipmapping on).

[they are not seeking support from publishers]

To me, the definition of an independent developer is pretty straightforward.  Development studios should only be called indie if they are not seeking support from publishers to finance, market et distribute their games.  While this may seem like a simplistic explanation, I think this is what best defines ''indie'' from a business standpoint.

I disagree with that definition.

I'm working on an iOS project, which to me is very much indie - Entirely self-funded, one coder, one artist, our own design.

But it's likely to be published through a publisher - as they're a well known name with a lot of experience on the platform, and should be able to do a significantly better of marketing the title that we could on our own.

But your definition, anything that gets Humble Bundled is no longer indie, as Humble Bundle Inc is basically a form of publisher. Oh, Steam is a publisher, too...

It's incredibly hard to define 'indie' these days, when indies range from amateur hobbyists making their first Game Maker game, to 'AAA indies' with millions in funding (usually from previous successes) and sizeable teams.

I don't think I'll be able to recover.  I planned my game when $20 downloadables were the norm and they had production budgets in the tens of thousands.

This is the real issue. To me, it seems that the 'race to the bottom' devalutation of indie games (well, and games in general), via the App Store, Indie Bundles, relentless Steam Sales, and so on has done more harm than the economic mess we're in.

Whilst maybe 1% of indie devs do really well out of such things (with those running the stores/doing the bundles doing even better...), it's made things a whole lot harder for the other 99%.

We've now got this tiny minority of 'super-indies', that are basically getting the majority of the 'indie game' media attention and the majority of the money.

Oh well, 'We are the indie 99%!'

I can see one case that could cause that:

aStarPathCount was <=0 when it entered the function, so it takes the else branch. And State was PreparingToDig.

The PrepareToDig() function was called, which caused:
- aStarPath.Count to become 4
- State to change to SlaveState.Move

Then it hit the breakpoint?

Rage HD is 1.26 GB (743 MB compressed) on the App Store.

And I'm sure I'm not the only person that deleted it as soon as it wanted an update, or when iTunes tried to back it up very very slowly!...

Currently working on an iOS project myself, making an effort to keep it under 20Mb. There's loads that I could do to keep the size down, but all I've really needed to do so far is leave the graphics compressed (just .pngs, jpegs if really needed), and keep the audio bitrates down.

Personally I find pitching people on revenue share agreements to be pretty....tacky. Do people really produce good work under such a scheme, and what about their reliability? They technically are working for free.

Depends on the project. If it's a serious project by experienced people, it's probably the best deal. For a revenue split to sound dodgy, you must be expecting the project to flop, rather than be excited about making it as good as possible?

The general attitude around the interwebs seems to be 'programmers start the project, and should take all the risk and pay cold hard cash up front for art'. Unfortunately, there's not that many indie programmers in a position to pay for any significant amount of high quality artwork. So we end up with lots of indie games done more-or-less alone by programmers...  a lot of very-lo-fi pixel art, and minecraft clones!

As a programmer, I'd much rather be in a revenue-split deal, as I think it would encourage everyone involved to work harder. If you're paying per hour, or per asset - there's incentives there to either rush things or slack a bit...

Of course, you don't want to invest significant time into such an arrangement unless the people you're working with have good track records for actually finishing things, and producing work of a decent level of quality.

Yep, Wednesday the 5th! If nothing is decided in a couple of days I'll assume Jug & Jester and post on the newsgroup thingy about it.

Jug+Jester again is fine with me, unless people want to try somewhere different? (It's convenient for the station, most of the good pubs are further away, towards the top end of town)

Barely counts as a word, but you can't get much worse than 'Freemium'

-- Humor is an odd category. I'd prefer to see Fun and Humor merged into a new Enjoyment category.

-- I feel there also needs to be Technical category. As programmers we can appreciate what has been achieved, but we have no way of expressing that in the scoring at the moment.

-- The scope of Innovation could be expanded a little by relabeling it the Design category.

I like those suggestions!

You've also removed 'Theme' in your example - was that intentional? I suppose it could really be mixed in with 'enjoyment' and 'overall', too. It's another odd category - as it's very subjective. You may think your game fits the theme well, others may not. Especially if you've gone with a less obvious interpretation of the theme.

I find it interesting that many of the games rated as Fun, I didn't find much fun at all.

Conclusion: My concept of fun differs from the majority of LD'ers.

Well, the rating system is 1-5 stars per category. I generally only give ratings of 1-2 if it's particularly bad/unfinished. Which leaves only 3 possible ratings to give to games anywhere between 'not too bad' and 'totally awesome!'

IMHO, the rating system could use a major overhaul, to deal with the increased number of entrants and other factors, such as 'not-much-real-coding' dev tools becoming more popular. Maybe make the scores 0-10, remove the irrelevant-for-most-entries Humor category, add a 'production values' and/or 'technical merit' category*.

Then make the Overall score a weighted average of the other scores. (Weighted so that 'fun' counts more, 'theme' counts a bit less, 'coolness' counts for a small but not insignificant amount)

And change 'Coolness' so that everyone can realistically max out that score by rating and leaving comments on maybe 20 or so entries. As nobody can really play and honestly/fairly rate 500+ entries in 3 weeks.

Anyway, that's just random thoughts...

This time, my game (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?uid=207) came #14 in Graphics, #28 in Community, #41 in Fun.... but only #70 overall   (Partly because I had no audio, though)

The problem I find with collab and splitting 50/50 is that the programmer since he is the tester and coder tends to make the game his way, Like I tell him no double jump, yet he ads it, I tell him I want him to move faster and he doesn't do it. It's just a big pain to work with someone who doesn't follow the idea that we defined from the beggining, yet hopefully I will be able to work with someone who is.

If you're trying to micromanage the coder, or get him to code 'to spec', it's not really a collaboration, it's more of a manager-subordinate relationship.

On small projects, you've just got to work with a coder that you can trust to make things 'feel right'. Sometimes they'll have very good technical reasons for changing certain things. With your example, he may have already tried making the character faster - and realised that allows him to jump too far, or not see far enough ahead - then reverted it.

Also, be realistic. You won't find a coder that'll make an epic MMORPG on the basis of some concept art and a design doc...  But if you've got a good idea for a relatively simple project (e.g. 2D platformer or puzzle game), and some pretty art, you'll probably find a competent programmer without too much trouble.

(As a coder, finding good artists to work on a collaboration is rather tough, unless you know one IRL, or are willing to work with someone very inexperienced. Those with the skills/talent generally don't want X% of possible future revenue, they want cold hard cash up front!)

I have found that money is less of a concern than I thought it would be, if you have any savings at all and don't plan for your first game to take years to complete.

Once thing that can be quite a financial hit though, is software and hardware. Especially if going the mobile route (iOS/Android).

In the preparation for my current period of indie-ness, I did splash out a fair bit making sure I'd got all the software (legally!) and hardware that I'd need to complete the first project. That included:

- Visual Studio 2010 Pro + Visual Assist
- Photoshop CS5
- Genetica basic licence
- Airplay SDK indie licence
- iOS developer fee
- Wacom tablet
- FRAPS licence
- 3 used iPod Touches from eBay (have got one of each generation now)
- Shiny new iPad 2
(Already had a Macbook and fairly decent desktop PC)

And if I want to do Android, that's going to be costly, as I'll need a few devices with assorted specs...

Of course, it's possible to make games using entirely free software, and just a basic PC. But when your most valuable asset is your time, it seemed worth the investment in the right tools.

But I'd saved a decent amount - could manage 12-18 months of indieness before needing income - but it's currently early days, still seeing how things will work out. After a little under 2 months though, I'm approaching the end of my first iOS game, quite happy with progress so far.

I don't yet have much desire to go back to big team politics and enforced crunch. Likely to end up back there when the savings run low, though...

I definitely underestimated the 'living alone, working alone' factor though. It's quite a lonely existence.

(But right now it's friday, and pub-o-clock!)

IMHO, avoid WebGL (and definitely avoid HTML5 Canvas). They're technologies in their infancy, with signficicant problems to overcome before they really go mainstream.

The safe bet for a future web-based platform is still Flash. With Stage3D (Molehill), Flash will become a powerful 3D platform, and an even better 2D platform. And stand-alone Flash apps seem to be increasingly popular, too.

For non-web-based/high-performance, especially on mobile devices, you still can't really beat C++, as long as you're experienced enough to design in some portability.

XNA has seemed like a dying platform since Creator's Club became 'App Hub'. It's a bit of a shame, as C# is a nice language - but the lack of portability, and inability to even support PC-Xbox portability entirely (e.g. networking) has always let XNA down a bit.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. They have a beer tasting, so that means no food at all and no option of sitting inside. Maybe Gatehouse is best?

Gatehouse map

Inspire map

Gatehouse is fine with me, doesn't look any further from the station than Browns (Inspire is nice and convenient, though)

Another good meetup See y'all in September in Coventry.

I'd somehow become convinced that tomorrow night was the 1st of Sept, making it the first Weds of the month. But it's not, is it...

So who's coming on Wed Sept 7th, and which pub are we going to?

Yeah, don't worry -- Molehill is in usual Adobe fashion stupidly crippled in many ways. For one thing, pixel shaders can ONLY output colour, so no depth-sprites or anything else that requires per-pixel depth calculated in a shader

When I played with it a few months back, the more annoying thing seemed to be limited data types - having to create separate vertex buffers for floating-point XYZ/UVs and for packed 32bit RGBA colours...  (rather than having a nice vertex struct, with mixed types)

I'll be there, as usual 

Woo, totally excited now. So from what time will there be people at CB2? I'll probably be arriving in Cambridge about 12, but I don't mind hanging around and seeing the city.

There'll be at least a few people there by early afternoon, if not before - I'm expecting to arrive at around 3pm

Looking forward to it, too - got to spend tomorrow making sure my laptop's all set up ready for jamming again

Are any/many interested in a pub/curry night on either Friday or Saturday?

A little reminder... remember to bring your own towel!

Probably best to travel light, too - it doesn't look like there's any one room we've got for the duration where we can leave things?