I hate Excel.  It took me a while to get this graph.  I wanted to show the ratio of downloads to purchases, but could only manage to figure out how to do total downloads per day.

Note the trending downwards... However, although I'm getting fewer downloads, my download-to-purchase ratio is going up.

My expectation is that the game sales will turn into a trickle and eventually just kind of go away.  I'm really curious to see how the curve goes, though.

Period Statistics from 12/24 to 12/29

Trials: 3752
Purchases: 615
Purchase/Trial Ratio: 16.39 %

Merry merry!

Merry Christmas everyone!

 

It's been a busy weekend, so let's get right to it.

 

Late last week, Diana and I met up with her parents at Quail Gardens and saw the Christmas lights and stuff.  Santa was there, and Allison actually got up on his lap and had her picture taken.  She was a little shy, but told him her name and said she wanted candy for Christmas.  It was really cute.

 

On Christmas Eve day, it was beautiful and sunny, so we opened one of her presents early (a cool stomp-rocket set from Uncle Dave) and met up with Mike and Gwen and Ripley at the park.  Mike and I tossed the football.  Allison gave Ripley some treats and played on the playground a bit, and did plenty of rocket-stomping.  Good times.

 

That evening, we went to my parents house for a delicious prime rib dinner and some presents, as they were leaving the next morning for Montana.

 

When we got home, we decided that Santa's reindeer would want some carrots to eat, and Santa would also like carrots, as well as some broccoli crackers.  So we set those out on a plate, as well as a letter that Allison wrote (dictated) at preschool, and headed to bed.

 

Allison woke up the next morning at 5:30am, and I went in to see her to try to get her back to sleep.  Thankfully she did, but not before asking if Santa had already come.  We woke up to her later yelling that "Santa came!  Santa came!"  She had found two rolls of Smarties candies under her tree, and was very fired up by this.  (All this is reported by Diana… I was still in bed at this point).  She apparently lined them all up and counted them all and ate them.

 

That morning, we opened some presents, and got ready to head over to Diana's parents for more celebrating.  Allison got a new blue Cars shirt with about 20 characters on the front, which she immediately put on (and I'm not sure if she's taken it off since…)  She also got some Dora the Explorer underwear, so had to put those on right away, too.

 

We headed over to Diana's parents house, opened more presents and generally hung out and played for the rest of the day.  Diana and I snuck away during naptime (aka "quiet time", as naps don't really happen over there) and had a nice walk on the beach.

 

The next morning, we went back to Diana's parents and met up with all the Schatz's and their respective spouses and kids.  It was great to see Katie and Lindsey and baby Romy, as well as talk indie gaming stuff with Andy.

 

And now, back to work.  A nice long weekend.

 

The other big news is that my indie gaming project went live over the weekend.  Bad Golf finally passed peer review, and hit the Xbox Live Indie Games marketplace on the morning of 12/24.  I wasn't immediately able to see how many copies had been downloaded or sold, but I was able to see that reviews (just a star rating) were starting to come in.  By the end of the day, there were 20 or so reviews, the average of which was about 3.9 out of 5.

 

On 12/25, I was able to see 12/24 sales data, and found that I'd sold 60 copies (with 643 people trying the free trial version)!  This was very exciting.

 

On 12/26, the sales data wasn't updated, but my number of ratings climbed steadily up to about 40.

 

On 12/27 (today), I can see sales data for 12/24 and 12/25.

 

1757 downloads (trials)

227 purchases

12.93% purchase/trial ratio

 

The game sells at $1 per copy, and I get 70% of that (eventually, I guess).  So I've already made back my $99 investment to become a Creators Club member.  I'm sure the game won't make, like, thousands of dollars, but maybe a couple hundred?  That's kinda neat.

 

Much more importantly, though, is that I'm pretty proud of myself for finally sticking with a project for long enough to see it all the way through.  I've started a lot of game programming projects, but soon after getting some of the broad strokes complete, I think to myself "Who is actually going to play this?  Why am I doing this?  Maybe I could convince some of my friends to humor me, but what's the point of all this effort?"  Having the Xbox Live Indie Gamers system was really a big motivation, as it gave me a very real, tangible outlet to distribute the game.  That's neat.

 

I already have my next idea for a game, and I'm pretty excited about it.  I think it's a pretty original idea for the XBLIG scene.  So I'll give myself a little break and maybe start working on that sometime soon.

Sick

On Wednesday evening, after going to gym class with Yaya Carole, we noticed right when Allison came in the door that her voice was a little raspy.  The following morning, it was just a little worse, and we dropped her off at daycare, and let them know that she may be coming down with a cold or something.

When I picked her up, her voice was considerably more raspy, and she started developing a fever and a ragged breathing.  She was never really struggling to breathing, but it was clear that her airway was constricted.  That night, she had a very strange barking cough, which we unofficially diagnosed as croup.  The idea of taking her to the emergency room crossed our minds, but as long as she was sleeping peacefully (and able to go back to sleep easily if she woke up), we figured that wasn't necessary.  (We remember the words of Doc Mick, and his description of what an emergency baby looks like compared to a non-emergency situation).

We took her to the doctors on Friday, who did a throat culture and then basically said "She has what we doctors call _A VIRUS_" and sent us on our way.  Call back if she turns blue or develops green runny snot.

I stayed home from work on Friday, and we just hung around most of the day.  She was pretty low energy, no appetite, etc.  But thankfully, she takes after her mother and is a wonderful patient.  And unlike her father, who is a miserable sick person.

I pulled a mattress into her room and slept in there on Friday night.  She woke up every hour-and-a-half or so, choking and coughing, but would go right back to sleep.  But by the time midnight rolled around, I got the impression that her breathing was clearer, and that her fever was going away.

Saturday looked up a bit.  More energy, better appetite, able to run around a bit.  I slept in her room again that night and she only woke up a few times.  Sunday saw continued improvement.

In terms of getting through those bad nights, I think Diana and I work pretty well together.  If Diana wakes up in the middle of the night, sometimes her brain can go into high gear and she has problems getting back to sleep.  My brain doesn't have a high gear, so I usually can take care of whatever problems there are and crash again.  Conversely, I'm not much of a morning person, so once Allison is up for good at 7am or so, I'm totally happy to sleep for a few more hours.  This worked to great effect on Friday night, when Diana slept for something like 10 hours straight (almost unheard of), while I was up every 1.5 hours.  Then I slept in until 10am, which worked well for me.  Win win.

Today is Monday, and her illness has transformed into a sinus infection with lots of snot.  The doctor wanted to see her again if this happened, so she's got another appointment tomorrow.  I suspect that she'll be prescribed antibiotics as a result, of which I'm growing more and more concerned.  I'm certainly no expert, but I'm hearing from multiple sources that the idea that "green snot = antibiotics" is outdated.  So we'll see what her doctor says.

Although she's gotten better and better, I have yet to see that healthy shine in her eyes.  She's still a little droopy.

My mom is taking care of her today, bless her.  I'm excited to hear how that all goes.

Dev notes for Bad Golf...

In case you're into this kind of thing... which I can't imagine you are...




9/30/2010
---------

Bad Golf will be a combat golf game for one or more players.
Single player will simply be 2D side-view golf game (like Stick Golf for the iPad)
Multiplayer will be a race... players will get points for lowest shots as well as time completed.
While you're chasing your ball, you can also briefly stun other players.


DONE:

Dynamic start/end positions for each hole -- done
Water hazard -- done
Sand Trap -- done
Link holes together to form a course -- done
Sound effects (swing, bounce, hole) -- done?
Putting -- done
Course Select Menu -- done
Timer -- done
Shot Count -- done
Out of bounds sensors -- not needed
Combat -- cancelled?
Menus -- Player join -- done
High score list -- done
Pause screen -- done
Fix overlapping power meters in multiplayer -- done
Power meter visibility if near edge of screen -- automatic
Trial Mode / purchase options -- done


----------------------

TODO:

Multiplayer
    Logical Player Index -- done
    Gamepad / keyboard -- done
    Signed in gamer, permissions, etc -- ...?
    Race points/results


Title Safe Area -- done
Lots of levels -- in progress
Backspin / topspin -- no
Title screen -- done


----------------------------


Course ideas:
The Antrap (all underground course with little "rooms")
In The Clouds (all "sky island" kind of things
Rolling Hills (traditional golf course) -- done
Spooky Island (zombie/scary theme)
Inferno (rocky/fiery)
Ice Planet (rocky/icy)  -- done
Wild Jungle (Indy Jones)


10/1/2010
---------

Added green and cup sensors
Added shot cooldown
Fixed up player state machine
When the ball hits the sensor, it drains into the cup.  Yay

10/4/2010
---------
Water hazard, sand hazard, and temporary sounds

10/5/2010
---------
Refactored Input class for future benefit

10/6/2010
---------
Animated water
Sand trap graphic
Basic Course Selection screen (thumbnails, scrolling)

10/7/2010
---------
Select Course menu
Better power meter graphics
Power meter positional bug fixes

10/8/2010
---------
Invisible walls added
High score module added/tested
Hole timer
Hole score counter
List of hole times/scores ready for high score list
Beginning of Course Summary screen

10/11/2010
---------
Course results screen shows after each hole and end of course
High scores started
New Course template created

10/12/2010
---------
Unlockable courses (including crazy XML overwrite file bug resulting in >> at the end of file because of true/false)

10/22/2010
---------
Back from Maui!
Fixed screen fade in and out
Menu background screen
More controller selection stuff
Water hazard +1 graphic now changes color matching player


10/27/2010
----------

Took a bit of a break...
Eryn has helped with some concept art, and I really hope I can hit him up for more work.
I need to get cracking on creating final draft, playable levels for him to color.

10/28/2010
----------
Fixed multiplayer power bars stomping all over each other

11/04/2010
----------

I was able to borrow an XBOX from work, and got the project to build and deploy to the Xbox!  Pretty damn cool.
Working on creating courses (Rolling Hills and The Anthill)
Updated menus/gameplay to only allow input from certain controllers in certain situations
  (Like, only the person who paused the game can restart it, etc)
 
11/05/2010
----------

Constrained water being drawn ONLY in the water rectangle.  What a pain in the ass.  Now maps don't need
so much land bordering ponds.


11/13/2010
----------

Rolling Hills and Ice Planet are pretty much 100%.  I don't like The Anthill much, but might try to salvage it.
I really feel stuck with art.  I need a title page, a better scoring page, etc.  Ugh.
Fixed some small bugs.

11/16/2010
----------
Last night, got curious and decided to fool around porting to XNA 4.0.  Finished up the process today.
The upgrade was generally smooth.  Some confusion regarding the particle engine content stuff.  Then changing
around all the alpha values to comply with pre-multiplied alpha.

XNA also broke the third party high score component I was using, so I switch to EasyStorage and save my own data.
Luckily, switching systems wasn't that big of a deal.

I now save high scores and unlock data in the course description.  I can then use that data on the course select screen
to show course records as you scroll through.  This really negates the need for a separate High Scores screen, which I'm
thankful for.

11/19/2010
----------
Big progess...  Tweaked the course results screen.  Created a new splash screen.  Heavily tweaked the controller select screen.
Everything is working really well.  I feel like I'm 99% complete with the actual game/menus/everything, and just need to make some courses
and artwork and I'll be 100% complete.  I found a really nice image for the Main Menu, which I need to attribute, which means I'll need a "Credits" screen, I guess.

11/30/2010
----------
Three full courses and graphics.
Everything works and works well.
Need four player testing (this weekend).
Need to create par values for each course.
Then I'm... done?

12/7/2010
---------

Well, I think I'm finally all done.  Tested 4 player multiplayer, worked fine.  Created another course (Ant Hill) to make it four total. 
Added some particle effects for rain/snow and hazard splashes (dust/water).
I submitted a release for playtesting, and got a good comment out of that, regarding bringing up the "select storage" screen.
So I bought a USB thumb drive and tested that myself.  I think it works well now.
I think I'm going to call myself done and let 'er rip!  Wish me luck!

12/9/2010
---------
Wouldn't you know it...  I submitted my game for playtesting, and someone had a good suggestion about when to bring up the "memory select" screen.
So I moved it, and that ended up breaking the automated loading of saved game data.
SO... you could play the entire game, unlock courses, and save the data, but the NEXT time you played, the data wouldn't load properly, and it would
look like you were starting fresh. Dumb.

I didn't discover this until AFTER submitting for peer review.  But I pulled it down and now have to wait a week to resubmit.  Bummer.

I'm a game developer!

Well, I've officially submitted my game for peer review to the Xbox Live Indie Gamers area.  That means that other people test it out and look for bugs and pass/fail it.  If it passes, then it gets published to the marketplace and people can buy it online from their own living room.  This is all very exciting.

I've spent $99 for the Creators Club license (you have to be a member to create games), as well as $12 for a USB flash drive for testing.  I'll be stoked to make that money back.  A small, secret part of me hopes that this sells thousands of copies, but I just don't see that happening.  But a boy can dream.

Wish me luck!

Bad Golf

Here is my official preview video for Bad Golf... I've released the game as a "playtest", so other people can give it a try before actually getting released into the wild. I think one guy has given it a shot so far and provided some good feedback.

Yay.