At 8/26/12 02:06 PM, Archawn wrote: Ludum Dare

I spent all of yesterday working on an entry, but this morning my computer crashed and I've spent the past several hours trying to restore it.

RIP chances of finishing

My friend's computer crashed this morning as well...was yours a Flash and Chrome-based crash?

Luckily we have the fastest internet in southeast US, so redownloading programs and games isn't too bad

I think I'm like 85% done coding this RPG, so I'll probably start trying to make my own 3 day games in practice for future game jams and LDs while I wait for my artist to exist more than once per week...Lesson learned: hardest part of game dev is getting random people on Skype at the same time

At 8/26/12 02:44 PM, MSGhero wrote: My friend's computer crashed this morning as well...was yours a Flash and Chrome-based crash?

It was actually Skype that caused the crash (or, at least, it was the first to go). I was in a call with a friend of mine and suddenly Skype stopped responding. I tried closing it, ending the task, etc. but nothing worked. Then, everything else froze up and I was forced to hit the power button. When it started up again, it prompted me to do a system restore, which I ignored because on several other occasions the same has happened and I've rebooted without consequence. This time the computer shut off--so I turned it back on and went through the system restore process, which took about forty minutes. It finished, restarted my computer, I logged on, and then Windows told me that the system restore had failed and that none of my files were changed or removed.

Oh, Windows, you capricious bastard.

I think... I can finally stop working on Closure now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoQmu1Y5qGY

Aaand I'm done with my Ludum Dare entry!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview &uid=11521

I'm having mixed feeling about making games solo. On one hand, I really enjoyed making art for the first time (or osing my art-virginity if you will), especially that magical moment when you zoom out and your work transforms from a few lines and colors to a character or an object.

However, working alone is hardly as fun and motivating as working with someone else.

There's a ton of ways I could have made this game better if I had worked harder, but I'm pleased with the result.

I wanted to make the music procedurally generated as well. I had a bunch of samples, and I was going to make it somehow choose certain samples of certain pitches at certain times, and perhaps increase the pitch or modify the sound depending on the situation in the game, but I didn't really have time for that. Ended up just making it play random piano samples on an ambient loop in the background.

SO, these are my after thoughts. Anyone else finished anything for LD?

So, while I wait for my RPG's artist and writer to exist once again, I wrote a typing game today (type the words before they pass you, no variety in words yet). Since this only took a few hours, what do you guys suggest I add (besides art, music, and title screen/game-related stuff). At the moment, I'm planning on making local high scores and more words. This is intended to be practice for game jams and stuff, so imagine a ~2.5 day timeframe left over on my end.

I'm already farther along than I thought I would get, so that's reassuring...

At 8/27/12 02:29 AM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: I think... I can finally stop working on Closure now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoQmu1Y5qGY

Sweet, can't wait for Closure 2.

At 8/27/12 10:17 AM, 4urentertainment wrote: Aaand I'm done with my Ludum Dare entry!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview &uid=11521

I'm having mixed feeling about making games solo. On one hand, I really enjoyed making art for the first time (or osing my art-virginity if you will), especially that magical moment when you zoom out and your work transforms from a few lines and colors to a character or an object.

However, working alone is hardly as fun and motivating as working with someone else.

There's a ton of ways I could have made this game better if I had worked harder, but I'm pleased with the result.

I wanted to make the music procedurally generated as well. I had a bunch of samples, and I was going to make it somehow choose certain samples of certain pitches at certain times, and perhaps increase the pitch or modify the sound depending on the situation in the game, but I didn't really have time for that. Ended up just making it play random piano samples on an ambient loop in the background.

SO, these are my after thoughts. Anyone else finished anything for LD?

Good job on that! I agree that working on something solo is not nearly as fun or motivating, but it pays off in the end to say "Look what I did all on my own!". As long as you are pleased with your creation, I'd call it a success :D

Doing art as a programmer is always interesting, especially when you don't necessarily have a history in art or animation.

I think is about time I become a bit more active in this thread. . .

I've returned. I doubt anyone noticed, but I'm announcing my return anyway :). Got caught up playing a lot of golf this summer. I thought I would drop my handicap from 20 to 10 easily, but it turned out harder than expected. It seems difficult for me to have a consistent good 18 holes. I usually do very well during the first 9, but then fall apart towards the end. Such a mental game, and I apparently have mental problems :D. Well managed to get half way to my goal regardless, so I'm at 15hcp atm. I guess I can be happy for that. Make up the rest next summer. Any other golfers here btw?

It seems like half the posts in this thread are either people announcing that they're back or people deciding to be more active in this thread.

sounds nice. post your progress here so we can see

At 9/2/12 02:09 PM, PSvils wrote: I finally started back on my zombie game/game engine.

Awesome, I look forward to seeing it when it's done!

And lighting too...phew, feels intimidating to look at my to-do list.

I know how that feels... I have a 35" whiteboard to the left of my desk that I keep a running to-do list on. Sometimes it's so packed I have to extend the to-do list to my smaller whiteboard.

But it's THE BEST feeling in the world when I start with such a mess of things to do, and a week or so later the whole thing's empty.

At 8/31/12 05:32 PM, ProfessorFlash wrote: I've returned. I doubt anyone noticed, but I'm announcing my return anyway :). Got caught up playing a lot of golf this summer. I thought I would drop my handicap from 20 to 10 easily, but it turned out harder than expected.

good to have you back ProfessorFlash.

At 8/31/12 05:32 PM, ProfessorFlash wrote: I've returned. I doubt anyone noticed, but I'm announcing my return anyway :).

I did actually notice, soo welcome back!

At 9/2/12 02:09 PM, PSvils wrote: impressive stuff

Maaan, you work way too hard on your game engines :P

At 8/29/12 09:51 AM, Mattster wrote: Good job on that! I agree that working on something solo is not nearly as fun or motivating, but it pays off in the end to say "Look what I did all on my own!". As long as you are pleased with your creation, I'd call it a success :D

Thanks!

I think is about time I become a bit more active in this thread. . .

Here's a topic for discussion.

Steam Greenlight

Your thoughts? If you haven't heard about it, Steam's creating a new way to submit your games. Instead of submitting directly to their approval team, and getting rejected and whatnot, they're allowing the community to vote for which games get on Steam.

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm mostly pissed at how anyone with a game, no matter how shitty, has submitted and genuinely thinks his game is good enough for Steam.

There was a thread that proved my point on Steam, but it seems to have been deleted. It was a developer who made a game in a free copy of some game maker, and was complaining about how much of a failure the concept of Greenlight is because people downvoted his game. He was also complaining about how no one gave him feedback on his game.

Greenlight's not about giving you feedback, or anything else. It's purely about deciding whether your game goes in or not.

They've announced there's going to be a $100 submission fee which is really good news as it would filter out a lot of the crap. And if you're submitting your game to Steam, you should be expecting tens or thousands of dollars. And you should have already spent a lot (whether money or time) on development. $100 is nothing.

I really do feel overall positive about this. At first I thought this meant that only the popular games who have fanbases will get accepted, but the whole Greenlight thing is to help Valve sort through submissions. They'd look at the most popular and choose whether it fits or not. And either way, even if you have a great game but no marketing, then a lesser game with greater marketing may end up selling more anyway. So you're going to need to have marketed your game before putting it up on Greenlight anyway.

Those are my thoughts. DISCUSS.

At 9/5/12 08:11 AM, 4urentertainment wrote: I have mixed feelings about this. I'm mostly pissed at how anyone with a game, no matter how shitty, has submitted and genuinely thinks his game is good enough for Steam.

One of the reasons I like flash is because no matter how shitty of a game you create (and we all have), you can put it on the internet, distribute it and put it out for everyone to see; for free.

They've announced there's going to be a $100 submission fee which is really good news as it would filter out a lot of the crap. And if you're submitting your game to Steam, you should be expecting tens or thousands of dollars. And you should have already spent a lot (whether money or time) on development. $100 is nothing.
Those are my thoughts. DISCUSS.

I think that everybody should be able to create their game and distribute it. The argument that the 'crap' pushes the better games away into a void is a bad one since when we look at youtube (or even this site) we'll see that the crap goes into a void and the good stuff still becomes popular and seen by the masses.

What really is the reason behind this is that Steam has their own agenda regarding what games they want to sell and how they want it represented to the public (bear in mind that even with greenlight they're the judges after all). Its all about Steam wanting to uphold their exclusive library of games.

Nothing is holy, everything is open and connected. There is no reason for Steam to be this 'elite, big business games' only. If I want to make a simple .99$ game with 1 hour of gameplay (which is worth it imo) I should be able to without 'getting x amount of likes and maybe we'll consider publishing'.

Especially as an idie developer you should welcome openness and say yes to things that enhance creativity.

newgrounds has proven to me that a community that rates the games it wants to see can work. To be honest for an indie this is just one more avenue that can be used to help them get their game out there.

Plus with the move to Linux you could get the jump on that if you worked to port your game over.

At 9/1/12 10:04 AM, Archawn wrote: It seems like half the posts in this thread are either people announcing that they're back or people deciding to be more active in this thread.

Haha that does seem true. I am sure many of us never left...
It's always been about the discussions and WIP projects!

I have nowhere relevant to post this, but I just wanted to say that I made the A10 splash animation for Knightmare Tower on the front page right now, and then only found out when it came out that the game is 60FPS, not 30. And I'm not allowed to fix it, and it really bugs me, cos I thought it looked really good.
So-... I'm sorry, internet.

At 9/5/12 08:11 AM, 4urentertainment wrote:

At 8/31/12 05:32 PM, ProfessorFlash wrote: I've returned. I doubt anyone noticed, but I'm announcing my return anyway :).

I did actually notice, soo welcome back!

At 9/2/12 02:09 PM, PSvils wrote: impressive stuff

Maaan, you work way too hard on your game engines :P

At 8/29/12 09:51 AM, Mattster wrote: Good job on that! I agree that working on something solo is not nearly as fun or motivating, but it pays off in the end to say "Look what I did all on my own!". As long as you are pleased with your creation, I'd call it a success :D

Thanks!

I think is about time I become a bit more active in this thread. . .

Here's a topic for discussion.

Steam Greenlight

Your thoughts? If you haven't heard about it, Steam's creating a new way to submit your games. Instead of submitting directly to their approval team, and getting rejected and whatnot, they're allowing the community to vote for which games get on Steam.

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm mostly pissed at how anyone with a game, no matter how shitty, has submitted and genuinely thinks his game is good enough for Steam.

There was a thread that proved my point on Steam, but it seems to have been deleted. It was a developer who made a game in a free copy of some game maker, and was complaining about how much of a failure the concept of Greenlight is because people downvoted his game. He was also complaining about how no one gave him feedback on his game.

Greenlight's not about giving you feedback, or anything else. It's purely about deciding whether your game goes in or not.

They've announced there's going to be a $100 submission fee which is really good news as it would filter out a lot of the crap. And if you're submitting your game to Steam, you should be expecting tens or thousands of dollars. And you should have already spent a lot (whether money or time) on development. $100 is nothing.

I really do feel overall positive about this. At first I thought this meant that only the popular games who have fanbases will get accepted, but the whole Greenlight thing is to help Valve sort through submissions. They'd look at the most popular and choose whether it fits or not. And either way, even if you have a great game but no marketing, then a lesser game with greater marketing may end up selling more anyway. So you're going to need to have marketed your game before putting it up on Greenlight anyway.

Those are my thoughts. DISCUSS.

I'm on Greenlight! I had a tonne of stuff to say as it was actually coming out and happening over on this forum!http://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8052-steam-gree nlight/
Long story short, it's kind of a shakey service, and I agree with you that I read a bunch of interviews as it came out and seeing other developers bitching really annoyed me. One guy was like "It hasn't drawn traffic to my game at all! In fact... I had to SHOW PEOPLE my Steam Greenlight page just so they'd know!" Ugh god dammit...

I think the hundred dollars is a crappy knee-jerk response.

speaking of steam closure's up now
http://store.steampowered.com/app/72000/

Interview with Tom Fulp

Wanna ask the creator of Newgrounds, Tom Fulp a question? Well you can! The Interviewer is putting the power in your hands to ask the questions. Just click above!

Also yes, Tom Fulp has given permission to do this thread.

At 9/7/12 02:47 PM, I-smel wrote: I have nowhere relevant to post this, but I just wanted to say that I made the A10 splash animation for Knightmare Tower on the front page right now, and then only found out when it came out that the game is 60FPS, not 30. And I'm not allowed to fix it, and it really bugs me, cos I thought it looked really good.

Yeah, at 60 FPS it finishes way too fast. What a pain that you're not allowed to fix it.

At 9/7/12 03:02 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: speaking of steam closure's up now
http://store.steampowered.com/app/72000/

I'll grab a copy tomorrow, looking forward to playing it.

At 9/7/12 03:59 PM, The-Great-One wrote: Interview with Tom Fulp

Wanna ask the creator of Newgrounds, Tom Fulp a question? Well you can! The Interviewer is putting the power in your hands to ask the questions. Just click above!

Also yes, Tom Fulp has given permission to do this thread.

Sweet, I asked how he feels about people who grow so much in what they're doing that they dissapear from Newgrounds, like Ed McMillen or Egoraptor, Hotdiggedydemon, and all the other people who haven't made a noise for a year. They're on Youtube and twitter n facebook, they're still making stuff and talking about it every day, but even Dan Paladin doesn't share those videos of him working on BattleBlock on Newgrounds. I see em on Twitter every week.

Figure I'd mention it on here considering Closure's on Steam now, and this is the thread for people who've been here for years. Like if you're the person who owns Newgrounds do you... try and fix that? Or do you focus on newcomers? Are you totally not worried about it? I'm stressing about that n I'm not even Tom Fulp!

Everyone in this thread should go and support Newgrounds.

It's the least you could do for the website that's likely shaped your lives and careers.

Where'd ya hear about that?

At 9/8/12 06:25 PM, I-smel wrote: Where'd ya hear about that?

http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1317780/

Apparently it wasn't supposed to go public just yet, but someone leaked it somehow. Liljim said on page 8:

At 9/8/12 07:31 PM, liljim wrote: I might be missing something here, but I don't think that feature was ready to launch - so there will be problems with it. It's really encouraging to see that so many people have already donated and I'll speak on behalf of everyone on the staff and thank those of you who have already contributed!

Please be patient though - like I said, I think someone may have stumbled across the URL and it's gone public without any of us intending it to be, so expect whatever problems there are with it to be worked out over time.

At 9/8/12 06:12 PM, Archawn wrote: Everyone in this thread should go and support Newgrounds.

It's the least you could do for the website that's likely shaped your lives and careers.

I haven't been here THAT long, but yeah we should do that. For Luis.

Meanwhile, I've confirmed that my artist and writer for my RPG are both still alive, so I'll hopefully have something to show soon :S

At 9/8/12 03:41 PM, I-smel wrote: Sweet, I asked how he feels about people who grow so much in what they're doing that they dissapear from Newgrounds,

I still enjoy newgrounds, its just I can't really make a living off of flash games anymore since I actually have bills to pay now, and sponsors don't pay enough and ads don't make enough.

At 9/9/12 01:42 AM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:

At 9/8/12 03:41 PM, I-smel wrote: Sweet, I asked how he feels about people who grow so much in what they're doing that they dissapear from Newgrounds,

I still enjoy newgrounds, its just I can't really make a living off of flash games anymore since I actually have bills to pay now, and sponsors don't pay enough and ads don't make enough.

SPEAKING OF SPONSORS.

As I'm wrapping up my first sponsor-worthy game, I was thinking about the process, which I've never been involved in.
If I go directly to sponsors would they want me to name a price?

Also, for anyone that's had a game sold, can you link to the game and how much money you got from the sponsor? I tried looking at some post-mortems for some popular flash games, but hardly anyone mentions how much they got. Are you not allowed to, or is it just taboo?

At 9/9/12 09:52 AM, 14hourlunchbreak wrote: If I go directly to sponsors would they want me to name a price?

Yes. From my experience every sponsor (that is interested ofc, that's 2%) will reply to you something like "nice game, how much you want for it?". And if you give them the 'im not sure' kind of answer, they most likely will not reply back to you. Ofc it will be the same case if you price it too high for them. So pretty much you can never win with the sponsors, they got so many games offered to them they can just pick the cheapest quality games they get offered. The sponsorship scene used to be much better like 5 years ago, probably cuz there wasn't so many developers back then. Today if you make a good game (good, not great) you will be fighting for scraps (talking like 200-400$ price range). It's sad :(.

At 9/8/12 03:41 PM, I-smel wrote: I'm stressing about that n I'm not even Tom Fulp!

But you're still Tom, and that's all that matters!

what what

On a more serious note:

At 9/9/12 01:42 AM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:

At 9/8/12 03:41 PM, I-smel wrote: Sweet, I asked how he feels about people who grow so much in what they're doing that they dissapear from Newgrounds,

I still enjoy newgrounds, its just I can't really make a living off of flash games anymore since I actually have bills to pay now, and sponsors don't pay enough and ads don't make enough.

That's the thing. I've always seen Newgrounds as a community, not just a flash/movie/game/art portal. I mean I'd probably still visit it everyday if they removed the game and movie portals. It's like the epicenter of creativity of the internet. It's the place that has nurtured and encouraged talents and innovation. The amount of lives Newgrounds has influenced, or even completely altered is astounding.

I mean just recently, after like 2 years, the writing forum has put together and published in a real, hard-copy book, a collection of short stories and poetry whose quality is jaw-breakingly amazing (in my amateur opinion). I mean the fact that this push, this collection, this work would not have happened without Newgrounds is interesting to think about. To think about how many things wouldn't be without Newgrounds, it's bigger than I ever imagined. But it makes me sad to see it not be regarded as such. I mean, NG frikking pioneered the whole user-submission system (if I'm not mistaken) that tons of sites do now. And I could be wrong, but as far as I know, Tom was one of the first, if not the first, to try making games with flash. Back when it didn't even have variables apparently.

But what makes me even more sad:

At 9/8/12 06:12 PM, Archawn wrote: Everyone in this thread should go and support Newgrounds.

It's the least you could do for the website that's likely shaped your lives and careers.

..is seeing this. I started feeling something was weird back when Tom said he stopped sponsoring games because they didn't have the budget. And when Tom made that newspost about whether they should take "Venture Capital" or stay independent, and they chose the latter, I started getting worried.

Now I'm not saying Newgrounds is going to go bankrupt or anything, but just think about how much better Newgrounds could be if they had more staff and more money. If they could offer more contests, if they could get involved in more events, if they could pioneer and innovate with more features.

I see Newgrounds as having the potential to be the creative pool of the internet. To influence so many more and in much greater ways. To create history even. And I think chasing a vision like that is hard to do when you're worried about how you're going to pay next month's bills.

My vote went to taking investors into NG. Sure, you'd have investors who may have certain opinions about your content or whatever, and I don't know that much about how these economics work, but I don't think they'd really assert that much control or would want to ruin Newgrounds.

Kongregate got sold and it's doing fine. And I think large capitals with these sort of things are crucial. I read that Youtube was beginning to lose money before they were sold to Google.

Tom wrote once that he had a vision for Newgrounds' future, and he hoped this redesign would take them closer to this vision. They're still going through the bugs of the redesign. And having a bigger staff is one thing, but again, I think having to not worry about financial issues is a pretty big other thing.

I'd really like to get people's opinions on the state of things.

At 9/9/12 09:52 AM, 14hourlunchbreak wrote: SPEAKING OF SPONSORS.

As I'm wrapping up my first sponsor-worthy game, I was thinking about the process, which I've never been involved in.
If I go directly to sponsors would they want me to name a price?

Negotiating is a game. It's basically "He who names the price first, loses". Because if the sponsor names the price first, it may be higher than what you were expecting, so he's lost some money, and if you name the price, the sponsor may have been willing to pay more.

You have two options really. Either tell them you're inexperienced, and can't really judge the monetary value of your game, and ask them to make you an offer. They'll most likely start off with a low offer, and from there you try to raise it.

Or you give them an offer higher than what you're looking for. So they drop down to around your target price.

Also, for anyone that's had a game sold, can you link to the game and how much money you got from the sponsor? I tried looking at some post-mortems for some popular flash games, but hardly anyone mentions how much they got. Are you not allowed to, or is it just taboo?

People just don't like talking about how much money they make, but there are a lot of post mortems out there that mention prices. Here's a nice collection:

http://www.radicaldog.com/blog/?p=94

At 9/9/12 11:22 AM, ProfessorFlash wrote: they got so many games offered to them they can just pick the cheapest quality games they get offered. The sponsorship scene used to be much better like 5 years ago, probably cuz there wasn't so many developers back then. Today if you make a good game (good, not great) you will be fighting for scraps (talking like 200-400$ price range). It's sad :(.

It's not necessarily sad. It's true that there are a lot more developers now, and it's true that the bar of quality has risen, but that's an overall good thing. It means people are making better games.

What that means for the individual is that you need to raise your own bar of quality and try to make better games. A "good" game by iOS standards could flop at $500 or something, but that same game may earn $3k or more in flash, just because the bar of quality of mobile is much higher.

What I can say for sure is that there's still a lot of money in flash games. The money is now being shifted towards the top tier of games. A friend of mine just told his game some time ago for $20k, and there are still deals on FGL every other month that go upwards of that. A ton more money is also being made from micro-transactions, that being much more lucrative than the ad/sponsorship model. (Although riskier, as you need to develop a game keeping in mind that you expect people to pay for it)

And I leave you with this article about microtransactions:

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ColmLarkin/20091008/3257/You_
Should_Be_Making_A_Premium_Flash_Game.php

Oh there's plenty of stuff Newgrounds could change if they're ever under the thumb from investors.
They could introduce buying credits to spend on games, replace half the Featured Games and Movies with sponsored links for free-to-play MMOs, post what medals you get to Facebook, take Artist News off the front page, ban people for swearing-... Audio and Art only get like 1% of the hits that games get, so from an investment standpoint, why are you spending time and money on that, right? I'm basically naming what every site similar to Newgrounds has already done.
Seeing Kongregate and how much it basically looks like the Flash Game Licensing website, that's personally the best example for why Newgrounds SHOULD stay independant.

But yea, on the other hand looking up Newgrounds on Alexa is fucking depressing.