End of summer. Back to Work

After mentioned in the previous post, I haven't been able to do any programming over the last two months because of work and family commitments.

But, today I've got back to work, I've gone over and restarted the overhead shooter/spy game for Android using processing.org. 

I've redone collisions with the tilemap and setup the starting position of the player properly as defined in the level editor.

Update

For anyone who actually reads my blog, you will have noticed that I've deleted two blog posts, that's because I was going to create a small 'Track & Field' like olympics game for Android phones, but I have been busy in my real life and ran out of time.  To the right you can see the progress I got to.  I only managed to semi-complete one event (the 100m), where the player had to hit buttons on the screen as quickly as possible to run.  So this looks like it's one for the archives of failed or uncompleted games (for which I have many folders and games on my hard-drive).

So, I won't really have anytime this August to continue programming, with starting a new job, so my plans are to programme whenever I can.

I think I'll continue my top-down shooter, and maybe when I have free time create a proper design for the Grand Prix management game for Android phones.

So, in regards to sionco.com and my games development, these two months have been and will continue to be disappointing due to me having no time.  I hope that at the end of August I can really get back into things.  As, also the revenue from ads in my games has really slowed and I'm just about making enough to pay for the months food shopping.  (whereas for one month before, I had enough to pay rent, the bills and have a nice amount left over).

Ads, Update. What's happened Leadbolt?

I had a create last month last month from ads, using mainly leadbolt, and a bit of admob.  During the second half of the month I was making between 40-80$ (30-65 Euros) a day.   This was mainly from Spain using my The Penalty of Ramos or (el Penalti de ramos) joke game.

But this month (even though it started well), I have only been making between 2-6$ a day and it looks like Leadbolt don't have many advertisers anymore, sometimes there aren't even any ads available in the country (at most there is just one)
As shown here, I'm not the only one to experience this.

I have enjoyed making money with Leadbolt and they are a business with a focus on making money, they have seemed to be a respectable one.   However, as well as moving to the 'easy to learn' and multi-platform monkey programming language, I'll probably be phasing out Leadbolt ads from current and future games.

 Any suggestions for good advertising networks?

NaGaDeMo Game Update

Today, I've been working on my top-down spy/stealth shooter game that I'm hoping will eventually be available for Android phones, flash and Windows/Linux PC's. 

It was meant to be finished for National Game Development Month (NaGaDeMo), but I think because of learning a new language and a few problems I've mentioned previously, the best I can hope for is a demo level of the game.


Today, I have managed to do a little:

• Enemies and objects (such as crates, chairs, ...) can be added in the editor
• The Player now collides with objects as well as the tile map
• The Player can shoot bullets
• The Bullets now can collide with  the tile map and objects
• Fixed various annoying problems with the editor, and added a new menu, to make selecting the tile and objects you want easier.

Here is a screen shot showing the enemies, objects and bullets now in the game:

And here is a screenshot of the incomplete level editor which I'm using to create my levels:

 

In regards to graphics, I've only added a chair to the objects, which can be seen in both screenshots above, I think I'll leave the graphics untill I' need some time out from coding.

NaGaDeMo - No Go

It looks like I'm not going to get my NaGaDeMo game finished.
I haven't had a lot of time to continue making the game as I've been quite ill and haven't been up to it.

Today, was my first day back working on the game, and I've spend most of the day learning monkey and editing the level editor.  So haven't made much progress, game wise.

This week I'm going to be busy as well preparing for a two week trip in July, so it doesn't look good.

But as said in the last post from last week, I'll aim to try and get at least a demo level done by the end of this week. But to do that I've got the following things to do in 3 days:
Create basic enemy movement/AI
Create more tiles and graphics,
Create objectives in the levels (such as destroy computer / get documents / reach point A / rescue hostages).

I will try and update more this week.

NaGaDeMo Game Update: Collisions and Prospects

Today I have started on collisions with the map.  It's taking me longer than I expected because I'm still getting used to Monkey (although as mentioned before, because of my experience with BlitzMax, I am liking it a lot).

The screenshot doesn't show much difference, and the collision isn't perfect yet, but it show the man stopping when there is a wall in the way of where the user has clicked and the man.

As said before, I'm going to program the game in the free version of Monkey (which let's you compile full HTML5 games), and if I complete the game, I'll then buy the full version and release an Android version of the game.   But, to be honest I don't think I'll have an Android version before the end of the month or even a full version of the game.  I do hope to have a demo ready, with at least one full working level.

Não Cry Ronaldo Um jogo para Euro 2012

Eu criei um jogo de piada rápida chamada Não chore Ronaldo.

No jogo você tem que parar as bolas, cartões amarelos e Messi de se aproximar de Cristiano Ronaldo, ao deixar-lhe de beber seu leite.



O jogo está disponível para celulares com Android móveis aqui na loja jogo google:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sionco.nolloresronaldo

Tenha um riso e se divertir enquanto você assiste Euro 2012