Hey Folks!
So just an exciting update: I'll be submitting SHUMP to the App Store tomorrow! Once that's done and the game is up for pre-order, I'll plonk the release date on here!
I'll preface this here that this post is going to be pretty dry as I don't have the time to make gifs as I usually do (Need to sleep and will be working non-stop tomorrow on essential stuff, so here's one of the iPad previews of gameplay!
In the meantime, here's what I've updated, I should note a LOT of it is just little tweaks and refinements at this point:
+ Fixed slomo: Did a full play through to make sure that slomo didn't break any of the boss bullet patterns, and sure enough, they did. Thankfully all fixed!
+ Extra noises for final bosses: Until today, the last 3 bosses had limited audio, some guns not even making noise. I've managed to fix that, using audio that isn't too repetitive or harsh. May be doing more updates post launch, such as adding walking sound effects to the roof beam robot.
+ iAP integrated: Nice and easy one, although one thing that I have paused for thought on this time around was the pricing of my game. Unlike Corporate Salmon and Narcissus, I've decided to up my price to £4.99 to remove ads. This might be a huge risk, but there's a couple of reasons for this:
1. Avoiding death on the vine: The ad provider I'm with doesn't pay out for 60 days (Apparently becoming an industry standard) so I'll be relying on iAP (And cross promo to my other apps) for revenue for two months (This I should note is also after 10 months before now since releasing my last app and a good while yet till the game actually launches).
2. Time/effort/skill invested into the project: I've invested a similar amount of time into SHUMP as Corporate Salmon, but in that time I've become more experienced at my job and therefore the content within it is higher quality and there's more content there! Corporate Salmon basically had the same level, coloured differently with variables altering things like rate of salmon, escalator speed. This isn't to downplay the effort that went into that game (And I do love it) but SHUMP has 6 zones, 20 enemy types and 14 bosses (Plus a lot of the procedural systems that went into Salmon and more!)
3. Easier to drop the price than increase: If it turns out I've made a huge miscalculation and folks aren't happy paying, it's much easier to drop the price back down to £1.99 than it would be to increase the price over time.
4. Models are changing on the App Store that I'm uncertain/uncomfortable with: The Subscription model of paying £6-7 a week without a cap for an ad free version of a game with extra features unlocked I find pretty insidious. Brings back memories of the early mobile storefronts such as
Jamster which got kids in hundreds of pounds worth of debt for ringtones: If market forces on the store mean this becomes the norm, I would set a lower fee and a cap at a reasonable amount (£2 a week, cap at £10). For now, the number of people willing to put down £7-8 a week may suggest they'd pay more for a similar priced, one off payment.
+ Reward ad/interstitial integration: I've tried to keep my ads focused around positive experiences for the player; in the final game, there's a voucher system for interstitial ads (Every 3 ads you watch, you get a free powerup, a system that continues if you choose to disable ads), the option of restoring your powerup for watching a reward ad and the ability to watch reward ads for coins.
+ Unlocked player from levelling up automatically selected in the main menu: This is a subtle one, but making the character you can now purchase with the coins in game immediately available is just a nice touch that makes the player's experience smoother.
+ Barrel rework: I took some inspiration from my other game, Break N Take and put a little lifebar on the side of the falling bombs, rather than the more organic look of having an eye on the side previously.
+ New music integration: I got the new gameplay intro in (For after exiting the shop), fixed the current issues with audio (mono, not stereo for the shop) and made sure the credits music flowed back into the main menu. Lots of little musical tweaks.
+ A LOT of audio tweaking: I did a final pass over the project in the last few days and there was a lot of issues with audio to fix! Getting the levels right between different sounds and divvying them up across channels was a task and a half! Should all be fixed now!
+ Popup button on credits: Previously, you could accidentally tap on the screen at the credits and skip the ending! Now, you tap on the screen then have to tap a specific button to return to the main menu.
+ Tweaked enemy timings/Graphics: It's pretty late in the game, but I noticed that several enemies weren't firing soon enough and their projectiles were either firing off screen or not at all! The diving enemy, beam enemy and drop beam enemy all had their code tweaked to make sure they're actually a threat (Rather than just an enemy that wanders past you!) I also tweaked the diving enemies eyes and the colouring of the spiked enemy.
+ Made robot shop keepers arms shootable: I noticed certain upgrades (2 bullets) made it impossible to shoot the transformed shopkeeper, so I made their arms shootable which means you can still land shots whilst dodging attacks!
+ Filled in collision event potholes: Even this late on in development, I've found instances where the enemies/player didn't interact correctly! The shell enemy couldn't be jumped on to be killed and several bosses couldn't be wounded by beams (Their collision was handled seperately to the other projectiles/enemies). All fixed now!
+ Gameplay trailers: This was a fun one to do! I thankfully recorded the footage I needed whilst I was borrowing an iPhone X from a friend, so the editing and capture process for this was a heck of a lot easier than previous games. All of them follow a nice formula, where a character is sleeping, the cannon falls on their head, there's a montage of gameplay ending in an explosion and cutting back to the title at the start of gameplay. If you haven't seen it already, check out the trailer above!
Phew! A lot of stuff! Here's the very small list of what I have to do tomorrow:
+ Implement Splash Screen: Katy is currently doing a vector version of the splash I designed, looks much tastier and professional (And will make it easier to adjust for different sizings for different devices). All the bosses are done but she's got the various enemies to do yet!
+ Remove debug functions and re-integrate restore app function
+ Experiment with the collision of boss bullets spawning: This is a risky one to implement so late in the day, but there's performance issues on lower grade devices I'd like to address. Currently, the game lags when lots of bullets are spawning from one spot, I think this is because of collision overlaps, so I'll be within the first second of every bullet sprite disabling their collision. I'll be testing this on the most intensive example of that in the game (The beam roof boss) then if it works there, integrate in the rest of the project.
+ Double the number of character slots: Currently I store the characters in a list, what I'll be doing is doubling the size of that list so when I update the game, peoples' lists don't break because they already exist! (Just previously empty slots). I'm reasonably sure this will work, we will just have to see.
+ Finalise icon
+ Fix bug which doesn't log voucher collected if people go through it too quickly
+ Purge uneeded assets (Back up 3 copies first!!!)
+ Final tests and playthroughs
+ Implement screenshots on store
+ Write/proof final game description
+ Fill out remaining fields on the storefront
+ Upload build/leaderboard/iAP
+ SHIP THE GAME
+ Sleep forever
Apologies if this post was a bit dry, I'll upload some gifs/footage tomorrow, I just wanted to keep you in the loop as I'm concious it's been a week since my last major update and tomorrow is going to be focused on getting it done! If I don't post anything on there before then, wish me luck!
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