We tried to use Thunderclap. Even among team members, it was hard to get buy-in to actually *use* it. This was an established company with a sizable fan-base, and we saw little returns from it. These were early Thunderclap days though, so more people might be willing to look at it.

It... can't hurt, though? That's a wild guess, maybe it can. But if you've got people willing to support it, might as well try.

In the United States of America mockery is permitted..

Which isn't to say people don't still get sued for it. The barrier to sue someone is pretty low, and even obnoxious lawsuits cost money to handle.

I went pretty far with Visual Basic. Granted, these were DirectX 7-era days, and there was literally nothing easy to work with back then, but I found it palatable. It has the benefit of being part of the .NET suite which is still being maintained and updated.

My first language was QBASIC. Fun as a learning exercise, but it mostly teaches you bad habits that take a while to unlearn. Not sure how the other BASICs stack up.

Game looks real pretty, and I like the idea. Why not livestream the event in addition to tweeting?

This looks fantastic. Though I'd say you might want to increase the speed ramp - it seems to start out a bit slow.

[Update 17: Getting Close Now]

Update 17: Getting Close Now


The task list is complete. Every feature that's going in is in, all the metadata is setup, all the extra information is in place.

So what's left?
A couple high priority bugs, a few performance tweaks, more testing, and generating promotional materials (mostly screenshots). Probably 2 days of testing/debugging and 1 day of asset generation and I'll be ready to submit to Apple.

Looking forward to getting this game out the door.

Have a gameplay video:

[Update 16: Metadata and Me]

Update 16: Metadata and Me


Setting up data in iTunes Connect now. Unfortunately, it's a rather large chunk of work:
- iTunes Connect requires screenshots for all your in-app purchases. Not great if you have 50 of those.
- You have to setup localized information. Which for 10 languages and 50 purchases means 50 x 10 bits of data entry.
- iTunes Connect is a bit click-heavy, which expounds those problem.
- Don't even get me started with screenshots for... 6 different platforms.
-

It's a good start!

Here are some random assorted thoughts:
- I'm not a huge fan of "exhaustion" mechanics in games. Maybe that's personal taste, but your meter in particular seems to jump around a lot, and you never seem to be in a position where it matters that much (except once where you backed away instead of swinging your sword).
- I don't think you need the camera rotation unless you plan on doing something fun with it. Just seems a bit superfluous right now.
- I like the combat; looks pretty responsive and simple while still providing some fun.
- I'd spend some time on the UI, especially the top HUD. Right now it's a big mess of colored bars that are hard to decipher.

I like the concept, will be interesting to see how it works in practice. Are there any challenges aside from the stalking creature, or is that the only major threat? Can the Operator see multiple screens at once, or are they confined to a single screen with "channels" to switch between to see the various security cameras?

Do you keep all the gore in there between playthroughs? That's a really nice touch.

[Update 15: Errata]

I like this, follow.

Right on, thanks!

Update 15: Errata
Just a general status update, no fancy pictures with this one:
I've knocked all the bugs off my list. Will be testing pretty regularly between now & Apple submission (still about a week away), but I think things are pretty solid.

Also all the translations are finished, which is pretty awesome. The game is coming out in 10 languages. Portuguese may come later, that's yet to be determined. My first time wrangling so many people, and it went surprisingly smoothly. It's weird to think that on such a small game, there 13 people were involved at some point.

There are a few bulky tasks remaining. Nothing particularly hard, but it turns out that setting up the language support for so many languages in iTunes Connect is just bloody time consuming.

I lied. Here's an upside-down bear we made for a promotion but couldn't end up using for its intended purpose. Might still try to sneak it into the game.

Thanks!

The artist went more for a construction-paper type feel for the background to get the characters to pop out on top. (the sky in all those videos is a bit outdated... the artist made a much nicer textured sky that works a lot better in-game).

The title there was actually my choice - I directed her toward something a little more vectory and clean. There were a couple passes in a crayon / more primitive look, but I thought they made things look a bit unpolished.

It's a pretty good start. Here are some thoughts:
- I really like the background and what you've got going on with that faint grid.
- Consider giving your camera dragging a sense of "momentum" such that when you release, it floats a little before stopping. Right now it doesn't seem fluid.
- It's really, really hard to see the black hole. Maybe it's the video quality, but if you hadn't told me it was there I would've missed it.
- Your gray buttons seem like stock buttons. I'd find a way to give them a little more umph.

I do love me some Act Rasier...

Your logo is pretty solid.

Visually, I have no idea what that enemy is. ... is it a machine with a bird head attached to the top? Or some kind of spaceship? I just don't know.

[Update 14: Bug Fixing]

Update 14: Bug Fixing


Just hard at work fixing bugs. Not really a glamorous update, but it's indicative that my game is getting real close to being finished. The list in the above picture contains all the bugs I've fixed thus far: there are still about 10 open bugs. At this point, new bugs get added every time I play, but luckily they're getting added slower than I'm fixing stuff. Still on target for a release in early July.

I love platformers where you can shoot in every direction while moving. Reminds me of Abuse. Visuals look neat, and the bullet ricochet tactic was fun to watch.

I think you could do something to make the characters stand out from the backgrounds more, as right now it all kinda blends together and the action gets lost.

When Google up and decided to stop supporting Eclipse because the cool kids were on Jetbrains, I decided to stop bothering with their platform until it matures a little.

To be fair, Eclipse was rubbish and somehow got *worse* as it matured. I just had to use it for some Unity plugins recently, and it was single-handedly the most painful experience I've endured in development since... I had to get the NDK working... in Eclipse. 

Back on topic:
Honestly, if I were going cross-platform these days, it'd be a hard sell to get me to use anything but a game engine like Unity. There's such an obnoxious learning curve simply to get truly comfortable with the setup in iOS and Android - you can certainly start projects simply enough, but once you have to start fiddling with Activities and UIViewControllers and texture compression and the like, it quickly becomes drudgery. And then that stuff changes - I can't count how many times Apple has changed how autorotation works to the point where when a new OS comes out I count on something exploding in my face. It's just an unfortunate chore.

Take a look at Unity's update order:
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/ExecutionOrder.html

It's pretty informative, though doesn't go quite into the detail you're looking for in regard to physics.

There was a small company floating around the East Coast Games Conference that did exclusively gamedev for hire. They didn't create original games, just took on contract work. Seemed to work for them pretty well.

I've been contracted to make a few small products for other people. Not large or even medium-scale games, but stuff in the "game" realm.

As DireLogomachist alluded to, it's... not cheap. But it happens.

[Update 13: Translators, Optimization, and Another Milestone Down]

Update 13: Translators, Optimization, and Another Milestone Down
The last couple weeks have been crazy.

First I locked down a ton of translators - more than I intended. So Rocket Rascal will be coming out in 11 different languages. (Possibly 10 - one may fall through). It means I'm spending a little more than I'd like, which is distressing, but here we are.

Second, I focused most of the last week on optimization. The game was running unacceptably slow on iPad 3 and iPod Touch 4th Gen.



The 4th Gen is my min-spec device. I was realistically never going to get it to run at 60 FPS, but 30 was the target. I managed 23-27 average, which is non-ideal, but I've already spent more time than I wanted and I'm not finding places to make huge strides without completely reworking the game. Unity's statistics show it only has a 1.3% market share, so I doubt I'm cutting anyone out of my player base. I mostly wanted to ensure that devices I don't have to test (iPad Mini) would be acceptable. This is a task that I'm going to revisit for a little bit every day between now and ship.

One day I'm going to write a lengthier post on all the optimization shenanigans that I went through. There was some cleverness in there.

Third, the milestone is complete! I sank more time into optimization and didn't get as much time to do some visual touchups. I'll hit some of those in the next milestone (bug fixing).

So yea. The game is a little over 2 weeks out from an Apple submission. That's pretty chill.