Nov 6, 2016 -- Day 648
This takes me half day to write. Today I write a bit more elaborately about my current WIP. (also writing those will also keep me in check on my game) There’s still much to do & fix. The first priority is to fix bugs & glitches! (cos’ no one likes a broken game) Then comes the other graphic fix & tweaks to make things look more nice & finished. The promotional materials part is at the low priority: I won’t find most of the time working on them when the game is not ready. Now let’s look at what’s left to do from the list there. (ready for this wall of text!) BG Retouch The kitchen BG is okay I guess, but not for a few different color themes. The judging panel BG is okay except the plant backdrops (will redraw’em). The transition “curtain” need to change the colorless title logo to a color one. Also, I may change the main menu’s egg sprites visually consistent with the actual gameplay ‘egg looks’. Fix Egg Sprites Even fixed some of my worst egg sprites, I still think many of my egg sprites looked too plain & unrealistic without the fillings & dressings. I may add a thin layer of real textures on to them, if I got time. Critic Stage Debugging How to begin this… It’s a rejoice to solve the critique overlapping problem, I’m happy. See Reaction > Respond > Rejection Barrier > Taste Reaction > Judge on Taste > Verdict These are the judging sequence. But currently there’s many inconsistencies within the sequence, due to careless coding. example: If you make a decent egg, One judge can react with unusual shock, then respond with praise & then rejects you afterwards. This is what I am currently checking. It’s very tedious but doable. ‘Taste Reaction’ & ‘Judge on Taste’ currently is very lackluster. There’s no judging on the how the fillings & dressings taste. I will add them shortly. (have to keep them simple to prevent more bugs) The REAL PAIN is the screen freezing. It happens when to each judges, the egg’s data not matching any of my hard-coded criteria which I may have missed or coded wrongly. This happens 95% on the ‘Reaction’ & ‘Respond’ parts, which are over 1000 events alone! :( Other parts are more simple & I have no problems so far. More Stats & Options While there’s nothing else to add in ‘Stats’, I may add a toggle for extra graphic enhancement in ‘Options’. I’m searching for one eye-candy effect that can make the ‘Egg look’/’Record’ screen looked more “tantalizing”. :D Landing Page I won’t take too much time making this so I’ll have to go simple .I’m using modified WordPress theme and make it look like a landing page. Nothing much to see there right now, but will add a few more visuals in the next 2 weeks. Game Trailer I’ve planned the storyboard, finished the music track, but probably don’t have enough time to make footage, let alone video editing. (I won’t make a half-assed version) So I have to postpone it after the game release. I may give you some hints & preview about the trailer next time. I come to realized that all the promotional artworks, banners, trailers, articles on indieDB, social media posts, development logs here and on my website… takes up about 20~30% of all the time making the game alone. That’s it! I must remind myself that i don’t have enough time for this long-winded post. Only 18 days to go folks! Oct 24, 2016 -- Day 635
It’s decided! The launching day will be on Thanksgiving Day! (US)(Thus, November 24) Due to time constrain, the game’s trailer will be released after the office launch. (might be a few weeks) Also, I finished the “official” poster/banner for the game. More like a banner than “official” art to me. :| I think I’ll should that one in the near future. The new ‘Screen Mood Effect’ is a simple graphic enhancement for the food reactions. Something like on the screenshot below. That’s about it, dear creators.
Next log will be BIG: showing the official arts and maybe a sneak peak of the game trailer! Stay tuned! Sept 22,2016 -- Day 603
Good day to y’all. I really want to nag a bit about my very-very cluttered ‘events’, it’s getting harder & harder to code! On the bright side, I can start to feel the game is getting near completion. (I can see the end of the tunnel now!) On the bright side, I can start to feel the game is getting near it’s ver1.0. (I can see the end of the tunnel now!) Today, I introduce you a new dressing — Olive Oil. It adds unique frangrance & flavor to your fried eggs/omelettes. Some judges might like it and and some might not. (and of course you need to play certain challenges to unlock this item!) There’s one last ingredient I want to add before the release, but will keep it as a secret now. So many bugs...Today’s topic: I’ll be talking(bitching) about some of my current unsolvable bugs.
There are many, way too many little glitches around. But since they do very little influences to the gameplay I may give it a pass. I hope you’ll excuse them. The biggest problem is the hangings on the judging panel. It hangs mostly before and after the ‘visual critique time’. That’s because of some codings. But it’s so hard to hind it, and many cases i can’t even understand why it got hung…sadness. The 2nd biggest problem is the saving system. Sometimes it gone a little haywire. (and freaked me out) I’m very-very cautious to add more of those ingredients, because” more ingredients = more codings = more chances get bad codings. 1 new fillings/dressings = 300+ events added I’m so not a good coder, The more coding, the harder to find the bugs. It’s not good since only myself can understand my codings. I think i really need to take some to focus around the codings… Aug 24, 2016 -- Day 590
Sorry for the held off again. I was sick (seriously). About the game’s fun-factor, I didn’t have much idea around it.
An idea of ‘point gauge’ system once cross my mind, but I don’t see any purpose on having a ‘point gauge’ system If 1st: the game is not hit-point related & 2nd: I don’t want players to buy/spend anything. I know there’s quite a lot mobile games that uses point gauge. Those are built heavily for “in-game monetization”. I don’t wanna go there. In conclusion, I decide to not adding any new elements! (yet) But instead, use a better looking ‘In-game Achievements’ to add fun & variety to the game— That will be the case! Hopefully next week, (if I get much better), I’ll show some of the achievements to ya! Aug 5,2016 --Day 571Current: Post-beta ver 0.80.5
After 1 month of hiatus, (also dealing with my blog site problem) I have returned to continue my game development. This will be my 5th development stage: ‘Web-Release’. It’s already near complete, what’s left is to polish the game. Mostly it will be on making the game more accessible & attracting… which means improving some graphic to make it more pleasing, make it more ‘fluid’ to the gameplay, Fixing a bit here and there. There will be no more fundamental changings. In my own opinion, the game is somewhat incomplete on the fun factor & is needed some additional elements. This will probably to be thought over & confirmed in later blog posts. An outline of the plan is done & this is the checklist: In the mean time, I also optimize my game file size to the extreme! Thanks to the online image resize service TinyPNG, I can compress the images to about 30% of their original file size, with little noticeable image quality loss! Also I changed all my music tracks form stereo to mono, saves half of the sizes. All in all, I am now able to export the game (html) from over 60mb to about 30mb! Very nice!
Next week, I’ll be re-touching some backdrops, adding something and also changing the color palette to a more “pastel” feel! :) June 23, 2016 -- Day 534After the end of Beta hosting on June 20, here's my report & evaluations. FeedbacksSince my Google analytics no longer show the stats correctly, so I use the old trusty web-counter. This time I traced numbers of unique visitors... (should've use 'number of visits') It's merely about 70 unique visits... over the hosting period of 3 weeks... I wasn't pushing my advertising hard enough. And sometimes it's just too hard to notice my promotional posts on social medias. Feedbacks I got only a few but constructive comments (thanks to some of your praises). Their critiques are basically:
Fortunately these are not very hard issues.
Nobody says anything about the art/music, which kind of sad for me. I guess they really are not impressive enough... Oh well. A Reflect On My PromotingI don't know but... I wasn't very keen on promoting the game. (At that time I was busy pushing to ver0.8 update...Maybe I am a bit tired.) Well honestly, I did lose some degree of motivation. The passion was not there. I felt very reluctant of the promotional updates. It was not a good energy & attitude... :(
I'm still passionate in my work though. By the way, I did not make any teasers or trailer videos for this beta release. But I will definitely make one game trailer! I really hope I will - at that next time - really pushing myself out of comfort zone and go a bit more beyond what I did before, on advertising & networking. That's about it! I will update the plans for game development on next month. May 14, 2016 --(retreived from dev's forum posts) Finally, 'Fry Me Omelettes' is now ready for another period of hosting release! The date of the game hosting is confirmed starting at MAY 30 till JUNE 20. The game will be hosting at play.snoutycreations.com New additions of the game are listed below: (as from previous version Pre-beta 0.59)
New Menu Look, 'Challenge' ModeA more 'finalized' look of the menu screen. New 'Records' & 'Stats' are some the newest features of this version of the game.('Records' & 'Stats' will only popped-up after your 1st play) 'Play' the previous 'Random' mode, now becomes 'Casual' mode. Alongside, comes a new 'Challenge' mode, for players to fry certain types of eggs/omelettes! The 'Egg Look' ScreenA very exciting new feature-- where you'll get to see a beautiful top-down view of your well-made egg dishes right before the judgement! It's a total EYE-CANDY! 'Stats' & 'Records''Stats' reveals basic to interesting data about the wins, loses, time played, averages, favorites, and so on. There's also a 'unlocks' tab to view unlocked items.
On the other hand, 'Records' screen lets you flip through & view up to 20 of your most recent egg-dishes! This is one of the BEST feature yet! That's all about it, folks. Don't forget to visit & try it out! Thank you! ;) May 10, 2016 --(retreved from dev's forum posts) Game Completion's about 77%
Thanks to fellow forum members, a long major issue have been solved. 'Egg/dish record system' is now fully functional without errors. Only a few things left to do to reach 80% (complete beta) Also, new critic sprites ;) The egg variation sprites will be the main focus, along with other minor retouches & bug fixes. I will need to make near a hundred of different variations/forms of the egg. :| Next few weeks I'll be working on some BG retouchings, drawing the top-down-view egg variations, and also working on the dreadful critique sequence bugs (due to messy coding). It's going to be tough. And also, the date of the next beta online hosting is confirmed! I will post a more elaborate info about this beta release, soon.
Mar 29, 2016 --(retrived from dev's forum posts) Game completion's about 72% Only screenshots & GIFs today!! take a look at the new added fizzle animations when frying the egg. Also, working on some of the top-down-view sprites. Here's some of the work: Still need more than a month before I can put out a beta version online. ;)
Feb 1, 2016 --(retrived from dev's forum posts) Oh gee... I kinda 'neglected' the forum for a while. But that doesn't mean I've halted my project. (just take my time slowly, but a bit too slow.) Anyway, I should be updating my game WIP as usual from now on. (1~3 posts per month) On the 'egg-look' drawing part: Here's how it turns out so far... The 'fluid' like ketchup is made possible using this wonderful effect plugin by @Animmaniac . https://www.scirra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=184&t=74372 I've postponed this drawing work lately: I must say that I'm not satisfied with some of my egg drawings & i might redraw them later. Now at the moment, i'm coding the part of 'Record'-- a new system to view your recently attempted eggs/omelettes. I like how it looks so far. That's about it. Y'all have a good one! ;)
Aug 28, 2015 -- Day 230
The online pre-beta demo hosting had ended on August 24. Here is my short evaluation. (or report) Online Advertising & Promotions So far during the hosting period, I do social media linking, posting promotional banners, to 6 Google+ communities. 5 Facebook Groups, 2 few picture & a couple news updates on IndieDB, update postings on Scirra's forum, and a post on 'PlaymyGame' subreddit. It was about twice the exposure than last time, but isn't much effective. (still sucks) The Visit CountFirst off, Google Analytics didn't work on my site's visit counts, unlike last time... So I use hit counter instead. Sorry guys, no pretty Google analytics. The number should be a bit lower as It didn't filter out my own visits. I figured that actual visits (not counting mine) were probably around 160~170. (compared to about 90 on the first hosting) A bit disappointed cos' I failed to meet my goal of 300 visits for this demo hosting. (even with an extended week!) That indicates that my "online promotions" during the period is not as effective. (and also not enough) Yet this is a good thing, as now I know clearer that... promotion requires more than I imagined. :) More effort (at least 3x times) should be put in promoting the game next time. The FeedbacksThis time I got even fewer feedbacks online, no negative ones, but also no constructive feedbacks whatever. I did have a few insightful feedbacks when observing my family members playing the demo. One thing's for sure, is the first 2 critics are too easy to pass, and the girl critic too 'picky'. (which I intended) I need to make Irwin (the 2nd critic in the middle) a bit more challenging, and also constructive. (critique-wise) Other feedbacks such as not much stuff can be added into the egg, or music a bit 'bland', will definitely be improved in next released version. Also, bugs and glitches such as 'overlapping critiques' & 'screen hangings' are present in the demo. I'll have to fix those too. 3 other things needed to be adjusted in game :
Teaser Video View CountAlso, I got a game teaser video prepared on YouTube, hoping to boost-maybe a little-- of my game's popularity. It was posted about 10 days before the beginning of hosting. In the end, I got almost 90 viewings. I guess the video is FAR from "getting noticed". A Reflect On My PromotingsFrom this experience, I believe that I just didn't work hard enough. I kinda knows that my game didn't impress much people, or, this type of game genre is NOT attracting most web-gamers. So I guess that: besides the promotion/advertising, I'll need to work on making the game even more attractive, by making a more attractive trailer, and also adding more NICE features into the game. Pay attention to how the competitors design their games-- is important to improve my game's overall quality. I think 'making it pretty, wowing the crowd,creating the buzz' would be the motto of my next promotional approach.
That's about it. I will continue my game's WIP around October. (would like to take a break to do other creative stuffs.) :) I will be coming back for more update soon! Peace & Love! Aug 3, 2015 -- Day 205
Finally after 135 days of my 1st demo release, the 2nd demo has being hosted (quietly) as of yesterday. Why so quietly? Well, the demo is QUITE buggy, and I'm ashamed. Just a few days ago, I thought I can finally relax a little bit. Man, the truth is, I overlooked the critique part of the game. The frustrating thing is the judging sequence gone all bonkers, and I still don't know what causes it. I guessing it's something between the critiques and the coding hierarchy I made. I know I could just postpone it to fix the problem, but I just couldn't do it.
I've post it publicly for more than a month. Also further postpone the date from 25 to Aug 1 (not to mention that I delayed it one day more) and also the game to that certain date for 2 weeks. I HATE to eat my own words. :( Oh well, I might as well stop whining about it and get into --fixing the problem! My main goal of demo release is to get as much people to know and be impressed, and having the anticipation for the further/final version of my game. Now that the bugs are overwhelming, I don't want to spread it- yet. I will try to fix the all the main problems so that I can be proud to share the game to others again. Thanks, and love. July 26, 2015 -- Day 197
The last 2 weeks I spent most time preparing the website (for game hosting), my first game trailer, and one "okay" draft music track. Making music is not an easy task either. My lacking of music knowledge & understanding of music theory slowed me down. Thanks goodness I'm not completely a "music -idiot", now have I'd been messing it for a while, I'm starting to get a hang of it. (I think I'm more tent towards a "melodic" type of music.) Game TeaserYes, I also made a game video--just a 'teaser'. It's now online in YouTube, you can also watch it on the game website now. I'll be brief about the process of making my first game video. For an addition of 1 week for making 1 video, I want this video to be only a short, yet funny teaser video. I try using the least efforts to maximum impact, but also with some quality into it. (I won't settle for mediocrity) I planned out around than 10 "scenes" and work onto it deliberately. By focusing on what the most important aspects from all scenes. The content it's quite direct & simple. (and somehow funny) The video basically is to get people who are (or sort of) interested to play my upcoming game demo, building awareness, fan base, and so forth. Moving on... The Demo Hosting WebsiteSince nothing much needed to be said about the game's title screen & option, I'll pass that one for another time. Now... the hosting website.
The gaming demo will be hosted on play.snoutycreations.com on August 1. (1 hope no technical problems will occur) I redesigned it a more calm looking interface. Hope you like it much better than the previous one. (If you did play the 'alpha' demo back then in March) The website may not be suitable to view in phones and some browsers like IE, though. That's about it! Thanks for reading! July 7, 2015 -- Day 178
This is kind of 'a-mentally-exhausting' week. Just announce the game's 2nd demo release date. I felt there's a sudden urgency going on & got little bit of mental block. Now I feel I wasn't progressing fast enough. I feel as if there's much-much more work to be done and I just couldn't realize the most of them. It's interesting that once the deadline is on schedule, things just got SERIOUS. So this week, I will try solving the problem about the 'ketchup trace' not duplicating onto the critics' plates. (If you don't know what I mean-- go checkout the log on June 13 (day154)) Like in real life, some fillings are needed to cooked first, otherwise they're still under-cooked. You can also place the egg first if you want. Just try and experiment yourselves. The right one, you can see that Ham & Veggies are from different bowls, but you can mixed them into the egg. In the meantime, like the egg, the fillings also can be cooked. FYI, the fillings that are not sticking onto the egg will not be served into plate. One more thing, do you notice the fillings are a bit "transparent" over the egg? That is because it's "soaked" into the egg. In addition to the fillings, the eggs can now be defined if it's still watery or completely solidified, if you place the filling early it'll 'soak' into the egg nicely. If not, it'll looked like it's placed on top of the egg, and some picky critics will notice it. Those are very good tips for you if you do play the 2nd demo! (not available) Also, here's some screenshots of how the game looks now. So that's it for now. I will post one more development log before the demo release. It will be about the opening screen & options, and also about the website hosting the demo.
Love ya & See ya! |