The Cyber Salesman

Here is an update after a few days on the market.

A couple of popular Italian sites quickly picked up the game, and the top spot in the Games/Racing section was mine in just a couple of days 8)
I've been there a few days, and now unfortunately leaving the spot for some other game (not sure which one).
I've also been high within the top 10 of the Overall section, which means that people just browsing for any application would bump into my game.

For daily raking overview, I like applyzer.com.
It's not the best looking site out there, but I like the clearly visible arrows that show the trend (going down or going up).
If you search for "Final Freeway" you'll see that I'm going down today 8(
I paid the site the 1 EU necessary to get hourly rankings.. but it's a bit confusing (I think shows the ranks compared to the previous hour, rather than to the previous day).

Ranking is good in Japan, too. But not as good as in Italy. In Japan I touched #2 for Racing, but not #1 just yet.
..If only the App Store staff didn't elect some other motorbike game as featured, a game that has now been at the top of the Japanese store Racing sub-section few days. Even though it mostly collected 1-star ratings (the lowest possible). Power of exposure I guess !

Thankfully, my average rating is quite good: 4 out of 5 stars.
Ratings are a mixed bag. Some really help, some are enthusiastic, a fraction are expression of disappointment (some people hate the game for not being Out Run !), and some of the few negative ratings are downright unfair.
For example, some people haven't updated the firmware of their device in a while. Were they to browse for games using the phone, the App Store's application would prevent them from buying a game that requires a newer OS than they have.
However, I'm guessing that some bought the game directly from iTunes using a computer, and when they try to install the game, they find out that it's not compatible. As a reaction, they rush to leave a negative review for the game, even though the required OS version is stated in iTunes right below the game's icon.

Most reviews are good and present valid concerns and suggestions.. helpful, but it's not fair when someone purportedly leaves a lower rating only because there isn't a feature that they want.

Sales in the US and worldwide jumped sensibly the day that TouchArcade officially reviewed the game.
TouchArcade's forum has also been very helpful, with many users that keep giving suggestions and feedback.
It was especially useful today, when the first update of the game went live and a new feature turned partly broken on iPad 8(

The game is played in landscape orientation, and for this update the user could finally play landscape both ways (Home button on the left or on the right).
However, not having my iPad around (still waiting for Apple to change it), I couldn't test both orientations on the iPad (because the simulator doesn't simulate the accelerometer, and therefore one cannot see what happens when it's being rotated).
So, that was broken and I quickly wrote a warning on the game description and sent an update to Apple.
The first update only took 2 days, the new one may take more, and my only hope is that iPad users that update, will notice the warning about the iPad (live and learn: I just realized that I should have put the warning also in the Update message.. I did that now, but 200 people already downloaded the update! (granted, only a fraction of those are iPad users)).

About Sales!
It went well but they are already declining. About 4500 downloads so far. The peak day being 1100 sales, when TouchArcade reviewed it. The day after it went down to 512, and today it's 310.

From the reaction of the users, I see that the game has potential to sell much more. But the visibility is still not good enough.
I'm still waiting for a few more large sites to produce reviews that should bring more attention.

The plan for now is to add enough features to justify a price bump, and then increase the price by 1 dollar (to $1.99). Then I will start releasing a "lite" version to promote the paid one.
There are still a few things that can and need to be done.

About the price.. I can see how 99c is a stigma in a sense. At 99c some people sort of expect cute/scary/different games that play endlessly. Stuff that has 1 stage only by design.
So, coming up with 6 stages, in a way, is a bad thing because it's like putting a single digit number to the length of game play.
Also the 99c price tag may make people think that they must find a defect in the game... but this is only speculation !

Initial lack of play modes and some other things that iDevice gamers came to expect (like auto-accelerate and flexible landscape direction) are more important than one may think, and the 99c price perhaps sort of mitigates the reaction to those missing features.

I think now I pretty much know the basic features that people want, and once those are in, I can also get rid of the 99c price.
Between code changes, adding new stages, App Store review delays and review sites, it's probably going to take another month before the real prime time!

woooooo

zzzzzzzz

Final Freeway in the App Store now !!

Yeahhhhhh !!!!

At last, it's available in the App Store.
It took only 8 days from upload to sale, if one excludes the first botched binary which I retired 6 days into the waiting for review queue.

What can I say.. the game is out there. It's not a AAA or AAAA or AAAAA title.. but it's simple and fun and it's the kind of game I like to play and hope that many people will agree with me 8)



I used to spend so much money in the arcades.. well, it's not the same without a steering wheel and without the girls to impress (girls ? In the arcades ?!)

Anyhow.. if you have an iDevice and the time and the money to spare, please give it a try 8)

Enjoy !
Davide

App Stories

I submitted my game for review on the 12th. Then on the 19th I "developer rejected" and re-submitted a new binary.
By most people account, that means that I went all the way back to the queue and now I may have to wait the average 10 days starting from the 19th (new binary submission) and not the 12th (original submission).

We'll see how it goes.. maybe I shouldn't have sent the update. Though someone apparently has rejected 4 times and the approval only took 10 days since the first submit.
Based on that, my hope is that resubmitting during the "waiting for review" status doesn't really affect the length of the process.
Having to wait is a big pain, especially in my situation, where the rate of success of the game (using only positive terms here ;) will determine my next moves.

The update was about supporting natively the higher resolution of the iPhone 4 and the iPad. Which I don't have myself. So, I had to rely on the simulator view and a couple of friend to test things remotely on those devices.

I also realized that by my project's settings I was automatically forcing the need for iOS 4. However, my game  is meant to run well on lower spec platforms, such us iPhone 3G.. and any non-masochistic iPhone 3G owner that saw what was coming (funny but realistic video), must have steered clear iOS 4 for the time being.

In the meantime I read some news about the Android Market, which apparently is broken in more than one way when it comes to paid applications:

- The market is filled with crapware (illegal ring tones leading some charts)
- Each provider has its own market place
- Payment is still undefined: Google's own Checkout coverage is poor and PayPal may become an alternative way for payments
- Selling in other countries for a developer means dealing with that country tax procedures (Apple instead does that for you)
- Google is getting sued by Oracle for how it sneaks around Java (indirect compilation): Sun was closing an eye, Oracle bought Sun with the intent of giving a black eye ;) (..another reason to dislike Java !)

...I don't see Google going very far with this. Google is very good at setting up a large amount of hardware and make it run algorithms, however Google is terrible at dealing with humans (that's us !)...

On the Apple side however...  it seems that (until the news broke) the App Store director was a crapware developer himself !
Seven whole "applications" dedicated to subjects such as animal farting and long pissing simulation (+ automatic farts, for the same low price of $0.99).
I don't even have words to express the irony of all this..  with Steve Jobs making such a fanfare of quality control and then hiring some crapware developer to sort things out in the App Store.
Incidentally, the guy was also following porn stars and escorts in his Twitter account...  which is completely fine by me.. but it becomes controversial the moment in which one starts holding a certain position and needs to give a certain image (his boss Steve Jobs is furiously against porn, at least in the Apple products.. sigh !).

..and I'm still Waiting For Review ;)

There is individuality in store for you

I don't even know what is going to happen with Final Freeway, but as I'm waiting for it to be accepted for sale, I've already started working on a prototype for the next game. The project title is TheBurner, and that should give an idea of what it may be about ;)

I've also taken a day to review the arrays situation in RibTools !
It's something that was in the back of my mind for months, and I'm glad that I could I finally pick it up and do some progress there.
Working on compilers is still a very fuzzy experience to me. Implementing a virtual machine is a lot more logical, but with arrays now, things are starting to get complicated.
For the sake of simplicity I did so that arrays are allocated globally for a shader. Which potentially wastes memory, but it allows me not to worry about allocating them on the fly as they enter and leave scope.

I'll also soon have to decide what to do next with "my life".
I'm frankly tired and disappointed of working as an employee. I really really don't want to work for 3+ years on another project that gets cancelled or that maybe comes out and you are told that the market is bad, etc etc.

I've been at home for 4 months now.. busy working and hardly going out. Partially because I'm more an indoor kind of person, partially because I was just so busy and partially because Japanese summer is relentless.
Two days ago I went to put the trash out. It was 4:20 AM and it was hot and humid !! ..Gasping to run back indoor, where the air conditioner is running 24/7.

Being able to skip Japanese summers has always been a dream of mine and having the freedom to finally do that is a great feeling ! 8)

But I can't go on for much longer without an income. Tax is pounding even if I'm not working. In Japan one pays taxes in advance, based on last year earning.
So, after 2 months of not working, I had to start paying taxes..  to that I must add the rent of the apartment.. for a grand total of $3500 per month.. just to stay afloat 8)

But I'm very determined..  I realized that what's most important to me is to work on something that other people can touch. This is why I liked to make games in first place... but I was always forced to work on somebody else's grandiose ideas and business plans (or lack thereof).

This doesn't mean that I only want to work on smaller less ambitious projects.. it means that I'm not going to sell my time that easily anymore. I don't want to waste my time after some dubious project or, worse yet, for an employer that may stow away my work in a locker, because of contractual obligations or plain short sightedness.

If I don't step up and promote myself, no company out there will do it for me.. especially no Japanese company that can't tell a prick poser from the real deal (it's a common problem, but seems worse with Japanese companies hiring foreigners..)
So, I'd rather be struggling to pay the rent and taxes than being another mindless soldier in a war of managers 8)

Waiting For Review

On August the 12th I finally uploaded the binary for Final Freeway (see the new screenshots and promo clip 8).

The status automatically went into "Waiting For Review" and it will probably stay so for a few more days, as it seems that recently the whole process has been taking 7-8 days.

A week to get the game reviewed and published isn't really that long. What I fear though is that this build may get rejected for reasons that I couldn't foresee, and then I'd have to fix it and wait for another week again.

Interestingly, it still seems that quite a few bad applications are getting through. So, I'm guessing that the review process is sometimes just automatic, and there is also no effective system to validate user reviews.

Another thing that has been worrying me is piracy.
Hard to believe that anyone would bother to pirate a $1 game.. but the system is in place, people jailbreak their phone, go to some site and grab anything for free.

This makes me somewhat angry. I mean, I understand a starving student that can't afford to buy 3DS Max or Visual Studio, or even a $60 game. And I understand the convenience to get something online.
But with iTunes it's all online, many apps have a lite version for trial and many (pirated) games would normally cost just 99 cents !
Pirating those is downright mean. Worse yet, some pirates make money out of it by selling access to cracked apps.

It's a "fack the system" and "why should I pay one dollar?" kind of stance which unfortunately goes to hurt the countless smaller developers involved with iPhone development.
Sure, a pirated copy isn't always a loss to the developer, but I'm pretty sure that in most cases it does little to help actual sales.
Again, we are not talking about overpriced crap from big greedy corps.. we are talking about often underpriced games that sell for "spare change" kind of money.

Anyhow.. enough with the negativities !

Let's wait and wait... ;)

When an upgrade is a downgrade

A couple of weeks ago the cable TV company called me to pretty much tell me that I had to upgrade to a new system.. as my box was still analogue and it was scheduled to go out of service pretty soon.

So, yesterday I got this new box, with apparently tons of new channels. An on-screen browser and HDD recording.

And, what a sorry piece of shit that is !!

Before, I had a simple remote control and I could flip around those few (usually worthless and commercials-filled) channels.

Now I have this space-era remote control and a seemingly larger list of channels made of three digit numbers.. but switching between those channels is a chore.

Many are not included in my promotional "Big" course. So, I get lots of dummy channels I have to drag myself through.

I suspect they made it this way so that people get annoyed by having to move through blanks, and finally decide to buy some super package filled with channels they'll never watch.

The three digits input also needs to be done in the channels menu. One can't simply press 3 buttons and go to the damned channel.. that would be too easy.

Now the best part... Today I tried to record a movie. Then I decided that I wanted to stop the recording. But I couldn't find a way to do it !

During my attempts, I pressed record again, at which point the freaking box started recording the same movie again. That brought me to a limit beyond which one cannot even see other cable channels !

From the recordings menu, a right-click-like "sub-menu" button brings the option to delete a certain item. But only if the recording has completed !

The sub-menu on an program that is being recorded has no effect whatsoever. That seems to me like a strong sign of broken interface design.

Eventually I had to hit the "reset" button on the box.. which forced the system to an instantaneous reboot 8)

...this is why Apple is so succesful. It's not like they know something others don't know.. it's that they actually have a system in place where the user experience is a major element (at least on average).

Sure, those other big electronics companies employ a lot of smart people.. but the development direction and environment are wrong.

Internal bureaucracy eventually makes it impossible even for skilled interface designers to actually come up with something that is user-friendly.

The box is made by Panasonic where a friend of mine was an interface designer at.

Ironically, my friend is now leaving Panasonic and Japan altogether, among other things, because he realized that his effort into improving the user experience was being obscured by internal power struggles.

So, there you have it.. large companies that live in a world where bureaucracy and selfish interests of internal factions turns them into big stupid corporations.

mumble mumble

Marching on.. racing on

Since the last preview video of Final Freeway quite a few things have improved.

There is no video yet, but here is a bullet-point list 8)

- Added music (!) ..three cool sound tracks
- Added some sound effects
- More meaningful difficulty levels (not just the amount of traffic)
- Better controls (both visually and in terms of options)
- More non-player vehicles variety
- Some rendering improvements (vehicles' shadows, sorting)
- Improved frame-rate (GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR was really slow on my 3G, GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST is much better)
- Cleaned up the menus and UI widgets in general
- Created a limited distribution for beta testing (and had 2 friends test the game)
- Created app icons at various sizes (as required by Apple)
- Created a splash screen (this is required too)
- Created a cool looking ending (not done yet, but the concept works and most of the art is there)
- Added a progress bar for initial loading
- Added proper code to handle incoming calls. Or, more generically, for when the game loses focus.
This one was tricky.. I spent the good part of a day calling my cellphone from my home phone to test every build 8P
Note that there is currently some sort of bug in the OS that requires waiting and retrying to acquire the audio (ouch !).
- (last but not least) one more stage is under development.. by a generous and most respected fellow (Mr. Rasty ) which has also been testing the game on iPhone.


As for the new vehicles.. I sadly had to give up on making new car sprites out of pictures, and instead went for pre-built 3D models to render in 3DS MAx.
With pictures, it was just too painful to take pictures at different angles with all the variables (setup, lighting, models of different sizes).

Many said: "can't you just have a setup like this and that.. a rotating table, a green screen".
In theory it seems like one only has to get a couple of things right. In practice it's just dreadful.
It doesn't help that I don't have an actual lab with some proper tools and materials (whatever those would be), but certainly things are a lot more difficult than they seem.
Notice that even when being able to take nice pictures at consistent angles, one still has to go in Photoshop and cut out the model from the background and then doctor the images to make it look more like a real car and less like a toy.

Cutting a small model from a background in itself is quite time consuming. I got good at it now (Photoshop's Quick Selection Tool is really great), but it's nothing like setting up a camera in 3DS Max and have all the frames nicely rendered with the alpha cut out, and then feed those to ImageMagick to create the sprite animation matrix... no Photoshop involved.. yeah !!

Now back to coding, where coding really means doing lots of different things and write some code too (^^;)

Oh, I almost forgot.. I've handed the game around at some gatherings and I've been getting really good feedback.
People truly seem to enjoy it. It's not perfect.. but it can definitely be fun.

cool cool