I have sent Apple my very first App...

[Sokurah]

Isn't that ironic? When you're not making games, ideas are just popping up. I want to make THIS, or THAT, it's going to be THE BEST game EVER!

And then when you actually start doing stuff... when you're free to do it your way... erm, what should I do now???


Imagination/freedom is a double-edged sword really. Or more correctly, we have to be constrained in some way in order to be creative.

Correct, however - only people who makes games knows how much work goes into it, what's possible, and what you can do in a certain amount of time.

I have friends, who don't make games, who'll say "well, just do this and that" and they're just talking out of their asses and it's almost always either a case of this "simple" thing that is 1000% times more complicated than they think, or a mega idea for a game with eg. a chicken who goes in search for a egg...or some similar superficial idea that has so little detail that it would be an insult to real ideas to call it an idea.

Yes, making games isn't easy.

[ampos]

Or after 2 weeks of work, you show them your work in progress and said "you have just done this, nothing else?"   

[matchy]

Since we are on a rant, mine is when graphic artists think they are interface and game designers. 

[Cliff3D]

I wish I had an idea for a game. I'd get right on it, but good ideas are hard to come by. 

Why not make a Repton (boulderdash) style game? Repton - on the BBC Micro at least - surpassed the original because of the addictive music and well-designed levels plus very responsive action 9the controls were VERY responsive without requiring the player to be pixel-perfect). I loved the early Repton games

Or take an old vector-based game 2D and make it 2.5D with glowy echoes, a step beyond the likes of "Echoes" or "Geometry Wars" - taken one evolutionary step a step further. I kinda like Scramble to taking Scramble and enhancing it to 2.,5D and glowy or 3D even might be interesting.

Or...

Ideas are easy. Good ones, however, are harder. Perhaps look at which arcade games did really well on releqase ages ago and are worthy of being inspired by to produce something much more modern?

[Ian Price]

Why not make a Repton (boulderdash) style game? Repton - on the BBC Micro at least - surpassed the original because of the addictive music and well-designed levels plus very responsive action 9the controls were VERY responsive without requiring the player to be pixel-perfect). I loved the early Repton games

I'm actually the opposite - I love BoulderDash, but can;t stand Repton. To me the basic simplicity of the elements and their physics are what made the game sublime. There were so many possibilities.

Sokurah: Back on track - I agree with Cliff3D - ideas are easy (I always have too many!), it's having the motivation to get those ideas out of your head and running on a computer that's the real problem. It's not like you lack the skills - your recent output has been superb. It's post-game lull setting in. Create a game, await feedback, get only some or none and BAM! motivation takes a battering.

[Kitty Hello]

OT: What's the difference of BoulderDash vs Repton?

[ampos]

Damm Apple... 8 days after sending, and they reject my app because I place the word "soon" over an extra-options buttons, and they say "no beta apps".



I removed this text, changed app description and sent "v 1.0.1" with some minor bugfixes. How long will take this time? Another 8 days? I will lost Halloween season... 

Argh! They reject *again* my app (1 day after first rejection), because:

1.- beta app. The same "soon" option. But I removed it, how the hell has made it to the final ipa? I have not the IPA I sent them, but I am almost sure it was not there. Maybe in the cache of the testing machine they used? or my xcode cache? Damm Apple...

2.- Icon. On the final GLB compilation, GLB though his icon was better than mine and put the glb icon in the xcode folder instead the mine. Hell.

2nd submision. I unzipep the ipa before sending to check the gfxs, and everything seems to be right.

[Ian Price]

[matchy]

  dude, Snowland would have been awesome for Halloween. 

[ampos]

dude, Snowland would have been awesome for Halloween. 

I know... 

I must say that Apple review my 2nd submit in just 1 day. Maybe I got it reviewed (and approved!) for tomorrow. 

Anyway, I will concentrate my marketing efforts for Xmas season, in December. So, although "in AppStore tomorrow" I will not promote it on my knowns apple sites, but on Dec.

[Cliff3D]

Personally I think Snowland would fare much better now if held back for release until December - see Kitty's comment elsewhere that the first day or two of release sees whetehr a game SELLS or slinks into the undergrowth - I PERSONALLY would hold back and give it the best push I could in December.

OT: What's the difference of BoulderDash vs Repton?

Mostly subtle - on paper there isn't much difference that I've noticed (I would have to get Boulder Dash on a PC again, and at present it is on 5.25" floppies some 200 miles away from my current location). It's like the difference between manufacturers of chocolate - some people really love Cadburys, some (like my wife) prefer Galaxy, while others couldn't care less (either loving all chocolate, or none).

It MAY well be "what you were subjected to first" syndrome - as I encountered Boulder Dash far later than Repton, I prefer Repton. Perhaps ian played BD first and so prefers that. The only counmter I have to that is that my wife played BD first (probably on the C64, long before she met me) and she prefers Repton - but that could be simply because, having got together with me, Repton was much more aqvailable for years.

I've tried the PC Repton remake and, personally, I haven't enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed the original BBC versions - either on a BBC or under emulation. The update somehow makes it feel (to ME personally) like a cheap clone rather than the original. I don't know whether it's the updated graphics, the updated sound, or the gameplay - I suspect there is a subtle gameplay difference in gameplay, in the way the character responds to keypresses. But I'd have to investigate to find out and... yup, 200 miles away!

[Ian Price]

Yes, I did play BD before Repton - on CPC and C64. For me the physics of Repton don't feel quite right. I never got the rush from Repton that I get in BoulderDash. Repton seems much slower in all respects and I HATE the graphics! I also prefer the sound in Boulderdash.

It's horses for courses. Although if you only played the pc version, I can understand why you enjoyed Repton more. You need to play the original BD on Atari, C64 or CPC - they rock (literally!).

BTW All the later official BoulderDash games (after Construction Kit) suck monkey balls. They are all horrible. The most recent example on the DS was an abomination. So it's only the first 4 games I enjoy (and the last one is the Construction Kit). I spent many, many months of my life with the Kit. One of my very first remakes was of BD (RockRush) in Div Games Studio. I included only the features from the first three games.

[Sokurah]

Why not make a Repton (boulderdash) style game? Or take an old vector-based game 2D and make it 2.5D with glowy echoes, a step beyond the likes of "Echoes" or "Geometry Wars" - taken one evolutionary step a step further. I kinda like Scramble to taking Scramble and enhancing it to 2.,5D and glowy or 3D even might be interesting.

Aww man, I'm pretty sure that when I've finished the 3 glowy-vector games I have in development I don't want to see another one of those for a long while.

I never played Reption but I love Boulder Dash - but I wouldn't want to remake it...or anything like it. There's so many of those games already. I'd love to work with more traditional pixels for a change, but I would prefer to do something that hasn't been done to death already.

Sokurah: Back on track - I agree with Cliff3D - ideas are easy (I always have too many!), it's having the motivation to get those ideas out of your head and running on a computer that's the real problem. It's not like you lack the skills - your recent output has been superb. It's post-game lull setting in. Create a game, await feedback, get only some or none and BAM! motivation takes a battering.

Thanks for that little comment in the middle there.

Yes, it's not always easy to find the motivation to continue working on something, but at least when there's a WIP there's something to do. It seems like I always have a bigger problem coming up with ideas for something that hasn't already been remade 100 times before, and if possible - a little bit original. I'm not so good with originality.

But I have been thinking about possibilities for a few days now and I have an idea for a game. It won't be original and it'll be inspired by a couple of existing games, but it'll be original. I'm going to run the idea past a few people to get their feedback and ideas, because right now it's just an idea and not fleshed out enough to become a game yet. Let's see what happens...in 6 months time.

[Cliff3D]

It's horses for courses. Although if you only played the pc version, I can understand why you enjoyed Repton more. You need to play the original BD on Atari, C64 or CPC - they rock (literally!).

BTW All the later official BoulderDash games (after Construction Kit) suck monkey balls. They are all horrible. The most recent example on the DS was an abomination. So it's only the first 4 games I enjoy (and the last one is the Construction Kit).

Alas, I've never had a C64 that I can recall, and haven't had much experience of the others either. So I've probably just played the "sucky"port

I'm mildly tickled about the construction kit comments though, because the soul got sucked out of repton with its construction kit too - I can't recall whichj release it was (may have been as early as repton 3, though I THINK it was later) but it suddenly became a sludgy, unresponsive cheap clone of itself IMHO

I think one thing we can easily agree on is that some people can differ in taste without getting into arguments like the wars that rage between Apple / Microsoft "fans" 

[Cliff3D]

Aww man, I'm pretty sure that when I've finished the 3 glowy-vector games I have in development I don't want to see another one of those for a long while.

Sorry! I'm both new and unobservant. Let's forget I ever suggested glowy lines eh?