It's just a web address.
For example:
https://www.evolutionary.co.za/facematch.html (links to my website)
or
https://evolutionarygames.itch.io/face-match (links to my itch.io page)
It's just a web address.
For example:
https://www.evolutionary.co.za/facematch.html (links to my website)
or
https://evolutionarygames.itch.io/face-match (links to my itch.io page)
If you're making simple objects, use ProBuilder inside Unity. (Windows - Package Manager - ProBuilder.) There are tutorials on Unity learn that will show you how to use ProBuilder.
To do what you're doing you would need to keep the objects separate. So import the cylinder as a separate object and keep the cube as a separate object. That way you can freely resize both of them. If you place their transform positions on the same spot it will appear as if the cylinder is inside the cube (assuming the cube is transparent).
$12.46 since 2016 for Petal Puzzler. And that's more than any of my other PC games have made on itch.io.
You'd have to release it as a browser game so people can play it without having to install it. It probably will take someone longer to install the game than to play the game - so many of us wouldn't bother.
It's a very simple game with very simple graphics - there are thousands of those here. There's nothing that makes it stand out.
I'd also recommend you split your page. For example, put a title: English and the English instructions. Right now, it's a little confusing with both languages on the same line.
Tip: Use Bing to translate it - when translating with Bing, your instructions were clearer than the English translation you provided.
When you buy a game, you could be paying the developer directly - in which case there might be problems with the developer's PayPal accounts (they didn't set it to a business account or don't allow payments from certain countries). This is most likely why you're having problems with a particular game and you should maybe write something in the game's comments section or contact the game's support.
Or you could be paying Itch.io directly - and then itch.io pays the developer afterwards. This is most likely the games on which your payment went through without any problems .
When I have tracks that don't loop, I loop them myself. That can take hours of fiddling with the track in music player software to get the sound to continue so the player doesn't notice.
My levels can be anything from 2.5 minutes to 15 minutes long, depending on the game. One track is unlikely to cover the entire level, so I need the track to loop.
If a track stops and there's a pause before the next one starts, it breaks the player's concentration. They suddenly become aware of the change, and it could hamper the game play - especially if they're playing against a clock.
If I use multiple tracks on the same level, I need to blend them. But here the problem is to find tracks that are similar enough to sound like a continuation of the same song, but not identical, so there's variation. If there's an unexpected change in tone or speed, it could also interfere with the game play.
I can understand that a boss fight level could use its own track that is odd. But I write casual games, I don't have boss fights in my game.
Buying game assets is simply buying resources to use in your game, instead of making them yourself. It saves times and adds a skillset a developer might not have.
Tutorials and full games: Shows people how to write a game which is ideal when they're starting out and don't know how to work out certain game mechanics themselves. The idea is for them to develop their own game based on the tutorial. Here if your game is not significantly different from the tutorial or game demo, you'd run into trouble. For example, Google Play Store updated their terms to state only the original creator can publish a game demo. I believe it's because people were simply republishing it without changing anything which resulted in many clones of the same game.
You can also find games that developers started but didn't finish, and they sell the source code as is. In my experience, troubleshooting a game can take longer than actually writing the game. I'd be wary of those. If the game was complete and polished, they'd publish it, not sell the source code. They could also be selling the source code because the project became too big for them or they lost interest. Depending on how well their game is documented, it might be simpler to write a game from scratch rather than try to understand and amend their code.
A successful game development studio would either require a lot of time, or money. Few developers are lucky because their games capture the imagination. For most of us, if we don't have a large network (say like college students would have), or social media followers we need a lot of money to promote our games and get them noticed.
It's not something you'd just jump into, unless you had the money to pay a team of people to work in the studio - like graphic artists, programmers etc. But the more people you add to the project, the less likely it is you'll make a profit from the project. If you're new or not paying, you're also more likely to attract developers who are new. Inexperience can delay a project. I still make mistakes when I write games, but the difference is that now I can immediately spot them and know what's wrong - like I forgot to put in a safeguard there. Previously, it would take me days to try and figure out why something wasn't working right. That's the difference experience makes.
Publishers do buy the rights to games etc. but they tend to buy distribution rights. It's still up to the developer to support the game. There are many new publishers trying to get a foot into the market, but they've only had one successful title and game developers are wary of them - in other words, that game might have been successful with or without that publisher. One can't readily see what value the publisher added. This is especially true if you track the publisher's social media and they have few followers.
Other information:
The track should not be repetitive. Someone is going to play my game for several hours (hopefully), the track must be varied enough and long enough that they're not switching off the music after 30 seconds. I tend to take two or three tracks and blend them because I seldom find this in albums.
My personal preference is for happy, melodic tracks and the track is more important to me than the person writing the track (i.e. I will buy / download from anyone who has the type of track I like.)
You would use software like Word, and create three columns. The first column has a key (which software like Unity use), the second column has the English text and the third column has the translation. Like this:
Key | English | Russian |
NewGame | Start New Game | Начать новую игру |
I don't know anything about Ren'Py, but with Unity it's complicated to insert a translation after the game is complete. So you'd be better off offering your service to someone still developing a game, or who already has translations in their game.
Just randomly translating a game might be pointless because you can't publish it, (it's copyright infringement) and the developers might not be able to incorporate it into their original game.
Check your security settings and your storage. Your phone could be blocking downloads from "unknown" sources - and might only consider Google Play a known source. Your phone could also have run out of space / memory.
You could also try switching your phone to developer mode which gives you more options to control it.
Many of my games are cute. Have a look: https://evolutionarygames.itch.io/
Some of them are free, like all my browser games, and
Covert Dragons & Co - find the matching dragon or bird
Pizzantropia - catch the pizzas and potions, avoid the obstacles - the demo is free and it's a full game in its own right
I'm not sure what you mean about a feel good moment - that would be more like a visual novel that has a happy ending - but my browser games for destressing have that - you can turn all the faces happy (or eliminate all the angry faces).
Money
Games don’t necessarily make enough money to pay a team. If you look at the speech of the small studio that won an award in the UK, they mentioned that they didn’t make enough money from the first game to make a second game.
Control
In the game I wrote most recently, I didn’t like one of the puzzle games. I decided to change it, thought of a new idea, implemented it, tested it and was happy with the change. This took me perhaps 5 hours. Now imagine a team member had written the puzzle game and was proud of it and unhappy that I wanted to change it. We would need more testing, input, and in the end one of us would be unhappy. It would slow down the game by several days and create conflict.
Empire building
I make a good entrepreneur because I’m a self-starter, motivated to get things done and have many ideas. Simultaneously, I make a bad entrepreneur because I just want “enough.” I would be really happy if my game sold 3,000 copies. Others would keep going for more sales – if they sold 3,000, they’d want 30,000. If they sold 30,000, they’d want 300,000 sales etc. The latter group will get more people onboard, start a studio and grow it. People like me, will outsource the parts we don’t enjoy and keep doing the rest ourselves.
Career choice
I’m passionate about developing games – it’s fun for me. If one of my games became successful and I built a team the nature of my job would change. I’d become a manager and would no longer be a hands-on game developer. Alternatively, I’d have to appoint project managers and then the whole process would slow down. If it took me 3 months to deliver the next game, it would then take me 6 months because of the extra communication, documentation and collaboration processes.
And then it goes back to the money – if the game made enough money to sustain me for 3 months, would it make enough money to sustain an entire team for 6 months?
Using assets that other people made is fine. After all, whether you employ them to make the asset, or buy it in store doesn't make any difference. The same applies to free assets. It's only developers who frequent these stores that will recognise the assets - and itch.io tends to be a community of developers (so this might be the wrong place to ask).
Where it becomes a problem is when you buy a demo of a game, and release the game as is. Google Play Store blocked this because they were getting 1000s of listings of the same game. They've now stated that only the person who created the demo may publish it on the Google Play Store. It was this behaviour that gave asset flipping a bad name.
Yes, Poser and Daz Studio . Most of the graphics I use in my 2D games are rendered in Poser software. That gives them a 3D look, while being 2D.
Those of us who are vendors at these stores, must model the 3D objects for resale by hand. Here polycount is less important because people are rendering the 3D objects, or making animation videos, rather than using the 3D in a real-time environment like games. If I had software that could let me make unique products, like making it off a 2D image I could draw, then it would really speed up my production time.
Vendors making content to sell at places like the Unity Asset Store, and Itch.io, may also be more willing to pay for this type of software, because they could also speed up their production times.
It depends on the game development software you're using.
For example, inside Unity you can use ProBuilder to make 3D objects - you can learn using Unity learn.
Otherwise use free assets - available here, and also in the software stores like Unity Asset Store until you've mastered the game development side, and then worry about learning modelling.
You could search the forums and you'll see many threads explaining it. It's also in the FAQ. Basically, you need to pay the fees associated with the transactions. These are fees charged by credit card companies and PayPal. (Itch.io doesn't charge anything, but they do take whatever you give them off the top - not after the fees).
When you request a pay out, there are again fees involved to process the payment charged by PayPal etc.
Having a license won't help you combat piracy. People who steal games and assets, know that they're doing it, and don't care.
The only issue where you'd need a license is to let people know if they're allowed to use your assets commercially - i.e. put it into their own games. You could write it in the description, but that's risky for the users. If they have a "readme" file they download with the asset, users are better protected in case there's a dispute.
If you report a game to Itch.io / Google, it's up to you to show it's your game and a license alone won't help you. You'd need screenshots perhaps of the game in your software, and of the publishing date that shows you published first.
(+ do what redonihunter suggested by putting in links to your itch.io pages or website etc. in the game itself)
Yandex is a search engine like Bing, Google and Duckduckgo. They also offer (or used to offer) other services like music streaming to the Russian-speaking market. You would find your game only by typing in a specific search term - possibly in Russian.
Some of my games are translated into Russian, so I get some traffic from Yandex. But it's random - much like all search engine traffic when you're mostly unknown.
Most likely indie game developers won't pay for testing because they (a) don't have a budget for testing (b) can get it for free from people here who offer.
If you extensively played a genre of games, say puzzle games and you could give advice on specific aspects of a puzzle game, or suggest improvements, someone might pay for that. The price would depend on the person's financial status and country they live in, rather than the skills you bring to the table.
Which analytics?
I can see how many people play my browser games on my website through Awstats.
Awstats shows how many people accessed a certain file which is needed to run the game (under Page URL - Top 25). That stat equals how many people started to play the game.
I can also see under the heading Top Downloads, how many times the sound files (as an example) were downloaded (it's automatically downloaded once they open the game).
Awstats is normally included if your website hosting includes a control panel. Find it under "metrics"
I wrote a few games about emotions - if you're sad or angry. I find if I'm holding in an emotion, the games help me to release it. So use them as an idea for your own game. For example, if you're feeling sad, write a game about consoling someone. If you're angry, write a game about getting even - or a game like whack-a-mole and pretend the mole is your ex. Or do the opposite and write a game where you must make everyone happy.
https://evolutionarygames.itch.io/dry-the-tears
I believe Unity has done an overhaul of their web browser backend in their latest beta version. Perhaps this is an issue they addressed.
I prefer to use Clickteam Fusion for web games - but with this particular game I encountered a bug in Fusion, so rewrote it in Unity (it was quicker than rewriting it in Fusion to overcome the bug). All my other browser games are written in Clickteam Fusion.