Christmas Stacker
Posted by: TomFriday, December 25, 2009
Hey, just updating to let everyone know what's been going on, and there really hasn't been much. OTHER THAN:
- I made a new game, Christmas Stacker
- Got a new website back in July, Gamers Earth
- Finished another game, and am looking for a sponsor
First, about the new game. Christmas Stacker was a quick project to see how good I get a game in about week, and how much revenue I'd be able to get from it. Lately, I've noticed that Physics game for a lot of money in the flash game market. So, what I did was think of a popular style of flash physics games, and that style/theme is stacking. Basically, what you do is get a list of shapes, and you try to stack them all and keep them on the screen. So I grabbed Box2D and QuickBox2D and made this game real quick, 9 days, and then got some Mochi Ads and stuck those in there. I then put the game on Kongregate, and Newgrounds. Following that I set like 1,700 emails trying to get it spread around. I also added it to Mindjolt.com on December 23rd, and then the game went live on the 24th! That's the fastest I'm sure anyone has gotten their game on Mindjolt! Did I forget to mention that I did some self-sponsorship with my Gamers Earth website?
Looking at that, you'll notice that I have 2 sources of revenue now. I am getting revenue from Mochi Ads, and I am getting revenue from my site, Gamers Earth. I had some great results from the in-game ads, and the traffic to my site. You'll see the stats and a more in depth post on New Years.
Now, about GamersEarth. Gamers Earth is a website I bought from a guy who lives in New York. He was floating around the MochiMedia forums, and spamming a lot, then he decided that arcades are not his niche. So, he ended up selling the Domain to me for $310. He bought a custom template for it from TheHiveDesigns.com, and the site uses the ArcadeTradeScript Arcade Script. The site has great SEO, and a good amount of games. The Alexa was pretty good as well, too. It was 209,000 or something like that. It's gotten a bit bigger, but that's because I haven't been updating daily, and creating my own descriptions for games that I add to my site.
When I first got the site, I didn't know anything about marketing, and running a business, but I've had about 6 months worth of learning, and now I'm starting to understand how things in this market, and business. And, I partly have Talk Arcades to thank for that. Talk Arcades is a website for arcade owners to talk about business and ask questions and such. From there I've learned a fair amount about arcades. I also understand the phrase, "It takes money to make money."
Through MochiMedia, I signed up for their 'Self-Serve Advertising' deal. What I get to do is make a 300x250 pixel image that people will want to click to go to my website, and set a budget, areas of the world to target, and specific genres of games I want my ad to show up through. And for the most part it was pretty successful, But I'm pretty sure I lost money. Nice enough though, I released Christmas Stacker and it was pretty well taken by other arcade owners and I made more than I spent on advertising. I'll talk about this more in-depth in my New Years Post.
The new game I made is a platformer, and I was just letting you know that I have a new game coming out, so be ready!
-Tom
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How to make a platform engine in QuickBox2D - Part 2
Posted by: TomSaturday, October 03, 2009
Read Part One of the article, it covers some of the basics, and explains a few things.
With the release of QuickBox2D 1.0 I figure I should update my game engine articles. I won't actually update the first one, but instead I will provide updated versions here, with links to download the files (source).
One of the best things about the new QuickBox2D is the addition of QuickContacts.
var contacts:QuickContacts = sim.addContactListener();
contacts.addEventListener(QuickContacts.ADD, onAdd);
contacts.addEventListener(QuickContacts.PERSIST, onPersist);
contacts.addEventListener(QuickContacts.REMOVE, onRemove);
function onAdd(evt:Event):void{
if(contacts.currentPoint.shape1 == main.shape || contacts.currentPoint.shape2 == main.shape){
if(contacts.currentPoint.normal.y >= -1 && contacts.currentPoint.normal.y < 0){
grounded = true;
}
}
}
function onPersist(evt:Event):void{
if(contacts.currentPoint.shape1 == main.shape || contacts.currentPoint.shape2 == main.shape){
if(contacts.currentPoint.normal.y >= -1 && contacts.currentPoint.normal.y < 0){
grounded = true;
}
}
}
function onRemove(evt:Event):void{
grounded = false;
}
QuickContacts is a class that uses the b2ContactListener class that comes stock with Box2D. If you remember, we actually modified that class so we could detect if we were touching things (this way our character could jump). With this addition, we won't actually need to modify that, AND we won't have to make that global class. We can just do all the code on the timeline.
On the first part of the series, someone commented saying that if you add an object that does NOT have a zero density, that game would get pretty messed up. Well, he was right. That was because in the b2ContactListener, when we checked to see if we were grounded, the class was actually checking every single object against each other. Meaning that any object with zero density was being checked, and since it was sitting on the boxes right, it would set our grounded variable to true.
One more addition to the platform engine is the ability to make platforms that you can jump through the bottom, this isn't really new feature, but it's pretty nice. To be honest, the code that actually makes it so you can jump through the bottom of platforms was originally taken from a snippet on Actionsnippet.com, the creator of QB2D. So, thanks Zevan.
I also made numerous fixes to the code from the last version. One of these fixes include changing direct modification of gravity, to setting the main character object to sleep. I would change the gravity to 0 when the main character was standing on a platform, specifically on a slope, so that the character wouldn't slide down. However, it turns out to be a better plan to set the object to sleep. Why? Well, if you push one of those non-zero density spheres off a platform, it won't actually fall with the old system, whereas the new system fixes that.
Test the QB2D Engine
Download the source
What should I add to the new version? Suggestions?
Tom
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