login | register

Sneeze's Blog

26th Aug 2010 - 12:41	Busy!
I've been busy with lots of miscellaneous things lately. Some android things - I've just got a new phone, an X10 mini, and so I've been playing around with that a bit. I've also been doing a bit of work for Dread Good - a little bit of website scripting and setting up email. This has the added bonus that it's not too hard for me to set up email for other domains such as redtowergames.com. This weekend is Infest, which I've been to for a few years now. Quite looking forward to it, and hopefully it'll be a useful break from which I can come back and get on with the myriad of things I really need to get on with - games to write, android apps to work out, etc. Plus I'm hoping that september will return to a slightly higher income. Anyway, it's all very busy - lots to do before I can relax and take a weekend off!
Comments (0)

12th Aug 2010 - 10:49	IF, Android and other musings
I've been quite into writing another IF work. I don't really want to talk about it too much since I'm planning it as a competition entry and it's supposed to be secret. But it's meant I've put a few improvements to my engine - although it's not too bad in the first place. I'm fairly happy that it appears I can just write a new game, without too much effort - in fact, all it needs really is replacement text, and all the tweaks are done with inheritance. I've also been looking at Android. Unlike the iphone, it seems that it's not impossible to develop an application for android on linux, although it's not as simple as for other phones. I think it's reasonable that I can write a game or two and get it into the Android store, so I'm tempted to have a go with colourshift and possibly pentrix. As a bonus, I'm due for a new phone soon, so I've been wanting to move to an android phone, too :) Money at the moment is truly terrible - we're talking $15 a day from Mochi. This isn't particularly due to fewer impressions although they are dropping a little, but due lower costs for adverts. I have a feeling this is a seasonal thing - I can't remember offhand how it was at this time last year, but I have a feeling it's always lower in summer, and I'm fairly sure it'll be higher in september. So my plan at the moment is to hold off releasing games properly until then, although I may keep them on my sites. Anyway, all in all there's progress of sorts, although it's not very quick.
Comments (0)

6th Aug 2010 - 15:45	Interactive Fiction
Today I've not really done much work in terms of writing games, but I've been thinking over the last couple of days about interactive fiction. I've been meaning to find a way to advertise the Quest for the Lost Sheep on websites that actually might like IF, but not got around to it. There are a few sites, one of which is the Interactive Fiction database, so I've added the Quest for the Lost Sheep there. There's also a few competitions that I am quite tempted to write a game for - the Quest took me less than two weeks, and that included writing the command parser, so I shouldn't have too much trouble writing another one, and I tend to do well in competitions. I had a nice review of the Quest on the IFDB site, too - interestingly they mentioned that it was quite suitable for beginners, which is perhaps what I was aiming at (after all, flash gamers are not really text adventure players). It'll be interesting too see if there's any other reviews. I also wonder what people think of adware - in some ways it's a bit pointless, since there's so few people, but you never really know I suppose. And if it's tens of thousands of plays, perhaps it's worth it. I suppose provided people don't get deeply offended by it, then it's probably worth carrying on with.
Comments (0)

3rd Aug 2010 - 14:50	Releasing things
I'm really not all that good at releasing things. It's partly that I'm a bit shy about showing off to the world - I know my games aren't that bad, but I know they're not the best in the world and they'll get a bit of bad feedback. Most of it I can just ignore - my polish level is a lot higher now, which helps. The other problem I have with releasing is the effort it takes. This is surprisingly high - I need to update several of my own websites, writing descriptions and the like, as well as deciding which other websites to push it towards. This is compounded by the fact that my internet connection is not very quick. It's fustrating to have to wait! The problem is that around my house it's not all that easier to get a better connection, even if I wanted to. Anyway, SJ4K is out, which is a useful bonus. I'm quite happy with a few aspects of it - I quite like my preloader, for one thing, and it feels pretty reasonable. But I have wasted a lot of time agnoising over it and there might not be that much income from this particular one. I've been hoping I'll get a move on with some other releases - I need to put Pentrix on Kongregate, as well as release Divide and Conquer properly. I might wait till tomorrow though, since those will both drive traffic to Red Tower, and SJ4K goes live there then... Oh, and the money so far this month is appalling - back to the bad old days by the look of it. Hopefully some of my recent games will pick up a few more impressions though. Pentrix isn't looking too shabby - it doesn't get picked up all that frequently, but seems fairly popular on the sites it's on.
Comments (0)

29th Jul 2010 - 13:09	Annoyances
I'd finished off SJ4K on saturday, and all was well. I set up the profile on Mochi, and waited for approval. Nothing happened, so I waited longer. Today I decided that it was time to send them a message to chivvy them, but before that I might as well make sure I was missing anything first. It appears I was; the icon hadn't been uploaded. It appears that when I used a greyscale icon, the upload silently failed. Very fustrating, since the SJ4K release is holding up my other releases. Other than that, I talked to a friend about sorting out some artwork for some of my games yesterday. It's always been one of my sticking points - I'm just not good enough at artwork and layout, and it makes my games look at lot worse. Obviously this matters less with some games, but it severely limits my options! Hopefully this will bring some graphics for a tower defence game, initially - I've got the engine written, so it's just a matter of sorting out the details. On that note, I've got two other projects waiting at the moment - Spaceman 2, and Cave Challenge (or whatever I call it). The latter is shorter and something I'll do soon. The former... I have the code in place to split out the original spaceman game into multiple games, but I know it's quite difficult to do some of the coding... or at least time consuming. If my week isn't filled with computer repairs, I should be able to get on with some of this stuff!
Comments (0)

27th Jul 2010 - 15:01	Stuff
So I've put together SJ4K properly, but Mochi are being a bit slow at approving it. It'll go up on red tower later this week, and then to the world at large later - I've got a lot of distribution work to do at the moment too. I've also had a lot of repairs work, which is quite fun really. I've made more from repairs this month than my websites, and I've barely touched my bank account all month (most of my repairs income is in cash). I quite like the repairs, it gives me a bit of variety in life and gets me out of the house. I also have a feeling I'm getting quite well known - two out of three of my last jobs have been word of mouth, and a few before that were returning customers. With a bit of luck this might turn into something that gives me a proper income - this month is about 1/4 of a decent wage so far. So this week so far has been a bit of a write off for programming (I've also been -very- tired) but there's more to come on that front. Plus I should write a patience game - I think I can do Rouge Et Noir Patience with the engine i have, so that may be next.
Comments (0)

21st Jul 2010 - 12:41	Must post more often!
I really should post more frequently. It helps me focus on my work, which is handy. Anyway. I've got a new patience game: Deauville Patience, which is long overdue - I've really not been good at getting on with patience games, and this was perfect; an interesting game, but also using only components I've already written (although used in a different way). Other than that, I've been putting together the SJ4K spot the difference game. It's mostly done (although I do need to write a check mode since there's some differences that aren't quite right) and I've decided to see how much difference not having music makes - I have a feeling that it's not really all that important, but it's sometimes hard to know. The next project is a revivial of an older game again - I'd written half of a 60 second version of Cavern Flier, where you have to fly as far up a tunnel as you can with only 60 seconds to play. It was lacking music, though, and this is a game that needs it for the atmosphere, so I put it on hold. However, I have the music now, so I'm going to restart this; it doesn't need too much more work, so hopefully I should be able to get that done relatively quickly. Anyway, there's some progress.
Comments (0)

8th Jul 2010 - 13:20	Slow and not all that steady
I've been truly rubbish at getting on with things lately. Divide and conquer, Pentrix and the SJ4K puzzle game have been finished for months, but I've only just got around to releasing them at all, and even Pentrix + hasn't been released properly despite being on red tower games for a month. Anyway, for some reason Coloushift has had a brief resurgence in popularity so I've decided to get on with it all. I'll release pentrix properly on newgrounds after this, and put it up for general release. I've got Divide and Conquer on Red Tower Games for tomorrow, so hopefully that'll pick up a few extra plays for that reason. And in a week or two I'll add SJ4K to the mix and see where that goes - that really generates hits for Busy Slacker rather than here, but there's some benefit. I've got a couple of other projects on the go at the moment, but they're all mostly quite stalled. I've been given graphics for a sucessor to Spaceman, though, and that might be a good place to start, although I possibly should also finish my arena battle game first! That appears to be morphing into an adventure game in the style of spaceman, and that might be the way I take it. In other news, the money is terrible at the moment. Since the start of July, the effective cost per thousand ads has dropped massively in the UK and I'd dropped to about $20 a day for a short while. This seems to be picking up a bit again, but we'll have to see how we go!
Comments (0)

18th Jun 2010 - 12:44	More feedback wanted
I've got a version of Divide and Conquer together at last, so any feedback would be useful. You can try it here (link not guarenteed to exist forever!)
Comments (2)

14th Jun 2010 - 17:12	Not a bad day
I feel like I've done useful things today. Nothing big, just lots of little things that I needed to get on with, such as getting icons done for divide and conquer and sorting out games for red tower games. Course, there's always more that I need to get on with, but I suppose it's always nice to feel like things are moving on.
Comments (0)