38 replies to this topic

[iwon]

Yep and good luck in the future with ios development!
Out of curiosity, did you encounter many other problems because of your age?(besides using your moms itunes account) because i am slightly younger than you and while i do not plan on creating an app in the immediate future(don't even own studio or a mac and am actually still using the lite version of gamemaker, which i have had for several years)I may eventually want to and Im trying to do as much research as possible on the entire process. I was just wondering if you had to do anything else because of your age, outside of occasionally using a parent's name.

[nujuat]

Yep and good luck in the future with ios development!
Out of curiosity, did you encounter many other problems because of your age?(besides using your moms itunes account) because i am slightly younger than you and while i do not plan on creating an app in the immediate future(don't even own studio or a mac and am actually still using the lite version of gamemaker, which i have had for several years)I may eventually want to and Im trying to do as much research as possible on the entire process. I was just wondering if you had to do anything else because of your age, outside of occasionally using a parent's name.

No, I think using a parents name is the only thing that you have to worry about. Just make sure you (and your parents) read all the terms and conditions; you want to make sure you follow all the rules!

[iwon]

Ok that's good, and thanks thats good to know if i do decide to buy studio and buy/maybe borrow a mac and try to release a game for ios.

[nujuat]

In the four weeks of iTunes Connect data for Drawing Galaxy, it has been downloaded 11,372 times!

Do you guys find these figures interesting? I'm putting them up because I find True Valhalla's blog posts about HTML5 experiences interesting myself, and doing this is kind of similar. If you don't I'll stop

[True Valhalla]

In the four weeks of iTunes Connect data for Drawing Galaxy, it has been downloaded 11,372 times!

Do you guys find these figures interesting? I'm putting them up because I find True Valhalla's blog posts about HTML5 experiences interesting myself, and doing this is kind of similar. If you don't I'll stop

I find it very interesting! I wish more people would publish their stats

[2Dcube]

Cool game! Really enjoyed it on iPad. Did you use one of the 360 gravity engines or program it by yourself? It works pretty well.

[nujuat]

Cool game! Really enjoyed it on iPad. Did you use one of the 360 gravity engines or program it by yourself? It works pretty well.

Interesting question! The original version I made for PC used an engine I found in the YYG sandbox (it was not yours, I think it was by $pector), but then I realised it was way too slow to work on iOS. When I ported it to HTML5 at the start of the year I redid everything from scratch, including making the gravity engine myself and this is what the iOS version is based on. Because each section of drawing is a separate object I needed it to be really efficient, and I eventually found a way to make it fast in a web browser without being too glitchy.

If you are interested in how it works, I started off with using the instance nearest function to find planets, but that did not work because it was looking for the center of the planets and not the edge, and the planets were different sizes. I then tried looking at the engine I was using before and your engine off the YYG sandbox and saw they both looked for the planets by circling around the player. I made a watered down version myself but it was too slow with a lot of drawings. Then I realised that my planets were only really two different sizes. This meant if I could trick GM into thinking the center of the larger planets were the same distance to surface as the center of the smaller are to their surfaces, I could still use instance_nearest, which was working fast enough. So what I did was have all the big planets create fake planets inside them that circle around the big planets so they always point towards the player. This means that the closest planet according to instance_nearest is always the closest planet from the surface of the planet, so it works really smoothly! Apart form that, it is just a matter of moving the player outside the planet when it collides and making it jump when it has a planet beneath its feet.

Anyway, I'm glad you like it! You're really good at making 360 degree gravity games so it really means something if you enjoyed it!

[iwon]

In the four weeks of iTunes Connect data for Drawing Galaxy, it has been downloaded 11,372 times!

Do you guys find these figures interesting? I'm putting them up because I find True Valhalla's blog posts about HTML5 experiences interesting myself, and doing this is kind of similar. If you don't I'll stop

Very interesting! Also, im not sure if you ever plan to, but if you make a paid app, could you submit those stats too? Because I think itd be interesting to compare the two, one paid and one free by the same developer.

[nujuat]

One month later...

OK, so a month has passed, and Drawing Galaxy has been downloaded a total of 11,909 times! Thanks again everybody for helping get to this number, and if you still have not downloaded it, it is still FREE on iTunes! This is great! I haven't actually put any effort in to advertising (apart from social media) so people (and almost 12 000 of them) must actually like my game (well, at least my screen shots, icon and description )!

I have had some good comments as well. Lots of them were from friends, family and teachers (yes, my sister's geography teacher is addicted), but those don't really count, so I will just talk about the rest. I have a comment asking for a cheat website! I might make one myself eventually. Also lots of them say that they would pay for Drawing Galaxy, which gives me hope for my next app, for which I have put in a LOT more attention to detail to stuff like replay value, making it look good on all devices and getting rid of all the bugs as I go along (instead of waiting until the end and realising I can't fix the bug because it is now an important part of the game's mechanics!). Drawing Galaxy have got enough comments on the US, UK and AU app stores to get an average star rating. The US and UK ratings are both somewhere in between 4 and 5 stars and the AU rating is a perfect 5! Some though people didn't really get the idea of the game or wanted more of a story. Not really sure what story you can give to a stick figure running around planets to pick up goal flags, but I could probably think of a short cut scene at the start if I get some more people thinking that.

Drawing Galaxy has gone better all my expectations! I only really expected around 500 downloads, and that was in total (like, not just in the first month). The only thing about it that hasn't been a success is that have not made any money off it, but that is impossible for a free app with no DLC and no ads. Don't worry though, I know one of the reasons people like it is that it IS completely free with no ads, so that is DEFINITELY not going to change. So overall I am very happy with how it is going!

Very interesting! Also, im not sure if you ever plan to, but if you make a paid app, could you submit those stats too? Because I think itd be interesting to compare the two, one paid and one free by the same developer.

Yes, my next app will be 99c, so when I release that I will probably post stats about that as well. I am getting through it really quickly at the moment, but (and none of you will have any idea about this yet) I have actually been quite sick recently (and am in hospital now), so that has given me a lot of time to work on the level design (I made the actual engine in January). When I get better and go back to school I won't have as much time. But hopefully it will be out sometime soon!

[True Valhalla]

Nice job, congrats!

The way your game is not monetized got me thinking about whether a "donate" button would work in an app. You could keep the game entirely free and just allow people to donate to you from the main menu, if they liked the game. You could use an in-app purchase system to have set amounts to donate, or maybe you can let people set their own price somehow.

I've never really heard of such a setup in an app, maybe it would work

[nujuat]

Nice job, congrats!

The way your game is not monetized got me thinking about whether a "donate" button would work in an app. You could keep the game entirely free and just allow people to donate to you from the main menu, if they liked the game. You could use an in-app purchase system to have set amounts to donate, or maybe you can let people set their own price somehow.

I've never really heard of such a setup in an app, maybe it would work

There is always an option to link to one of those pay pal donate buttons that some people have on their websites. A donate button could be an idea for future games, but I probably won't put one in Drawing Galaxy any time soon.

[Greenhawk911]

Nice job, congrats!

The way your game is not monetized got me thinking about whether a "donate" button would work in an app. You could keep the game entirely free and just allow people to donate to you from the main menu, if they liked the game. You could use an in-app purchase system to have set amounts to donate, or maybe you can let people set their own price somehow.

I've never really heard of such a setup in an app, maybe it would work

There is always an option to link to one of those pay pal donate buttons that some people have on their websites. A donate button could be an idea for future games, but I probably won't put one in Drawing Galaxy any time soon.

to add to true vahalla's statement, look at temple run. they got plays in the thousands(the stage you are in) and as they get higher and high(certain that you will) people paid them to advertise their game and now imangi worked with disney. those 2 years of hard work and dedication helps. Also if necessary add updates like "the return or stickopottomous" made it up. If you game gets popular, add an 99 cent extension pack or something. you don't have to do that. AHH don't listen to me lol im talkin to much! Anyway Awesome job

Edited by Greenhawk911, 23 July 2012 - 04:40 AM.

[nujuat]

to add to true vahalla's statement, look at temple run. they got plays in the thousands(the stage you are in) and as they get higher and high(certain that you will) people paid them to advertise their game and now imangi worked with disney. those 2 years of hard work and dedication helps. Also if necessary add updates like "the return or stickopottomous" made it up. If you game gets popular, add an 99 cent extension pack or something. you don't have to do that. AHH don't listen to me lol im talkin to much! Anyway Awesome job

Thanks. But at the moment I don't really want to charge anything for Drawing Galaxy including DLC and stuff. However, that doesn't mean I'm not working hard on my next app, something I can make money out of. I'm excited on where it could go, but I really don't want to get over excited, or I'll get disappointed if it does less than really well. But still, even with this new app I'm making sure that you are getting really good value (with lots of levels and replay value) so that you will never think it is a waste of 99c, and I'll add updates to this app (but probably free ones) in that so people don't get bored when they beat the game.

I guess the aim of Drawing Galaxy was just to get an app on the app store. Now I'm going to take what I've learnt and make something really good!


EDIT: On a different topic, but definitely nowhere near worth another post (plus it's against the rules), Drawing Galaxy has passed 120,000 downloads!

Edited by nujuat, 24 July 2012 - 10:20 AM.

[PhiL Blunt]

I would consider the feedback from others regarding monetizing DG in the future, in my opinion you should really take full advantage of the games success. You cant guarantee your next app will see the same level of exposer. Congrats to you though

[nujuat]

I would consider the feedback from others regarding monetizing DG in the future, in my opinion you should really take full advantage of the games success. You cant guarantee your next app will see the same level of exposer. Congrats to you though

You're right. I can't expect my next app will do as well as DG. I still don't really want to make money out of DG though. I don't really know why... I just don't

Anyway, if my next app sells absolutely nothing, a publisher has seen some of my HTML5 games and is interested in buying them, so I should be able make money off that, which would be nice. I just have to be careful not to get ripped off

[icymx]

Very nice app. The graphics could do with some work though, but hey, it's great that it's free and I congratulate you for getting 12,000 downloads

Edited by icymx, 22 August 2012 - 12:04 PM.

[knockedout]

What a humble guy, congrats! I'll surely look into your future works

[icymx]

I wrote a review:

Drawing Galaxy was a very fun game to play, with great level design and unique gameplay to accompany it. It was hard to put down, and new obstacles were introduced all the time to keep the gameplay fresh.

There were also a huge number of levels, which is really where this game shone. The difficulty curve was almost perfect, and there was a large amount of replay value.

However, if there was one thing I didn't like about the game it was the graphics. Perhaps it was the non-retina display on my old iPod, but there seemed to be a lack of colour, as well as not enough shading. The planets were hardly recognizable as planets, and the stick-figure character could have been animated better.

Additionally, sometimes the player would "snap" from one location to another instead of moving smoothly. This detracted from the gameplay, and made it difficult to determine whether a jump was safe or not.

However, the positives outweighed the negatives by far, and overall this game was very enjoyable. Good job - 4/5!

[nujuat]

I wrote a review:

Drawing Galaxy was a very fun game to play, with great level design and unique gameplay to accompany it. It was hard to put down, and new obstacles were introduced all the time to keep the gameplay fresh.

There were also a huge number of levels, which is really where this game shone. The difficulty curve was almost perfect, and there was a large amount of replay value.

However, if there was one thing I didn't like about the game it was the graphics. Perhaps it was the non-retina display on my old iPod, but there seemed to be a lack of colour, as well as not enough shading. The planets were hardly recognizable as planets, and the stick-figure character could have been animated better.

Additionally, sometimes the player would "snap" from one location to another instead of moving smoothly. This detracted from the gameplay, and made it difficult to determine whether a jump was safe or not.

However, the positives outweighed the negatives by far, and overall this game was very enjoyable. Good job - 4/5!

Thanks!

It has been around 2 months now since Drawing Galaxy was released, and it now has 13,769 downloads. Yes, the rate is going down. But still, over 13,000 is not bad, IMO. Oh, and thanks again to everyone who has helped DG get to that number!