New developer looking for feedback

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by Hirshmania!, Jun 18, 2015.

  1. Hirshmania!

    Hirshmania! Member

    Jun 18, 2015
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    Hello all! I'm a new developer learning to code from scratch. I just released my first game and would really appreciate some feedback. I think it's a fun game and at the moment it's very simple. I think it has the potential to become pretty cool so if anyone has ideas they'd like to share regarding anything they'd like added to the game that would be awesome! The game is free to download below:

    Pothole! by Hirshmania! LLC
    https://appsto.re/us/AiqT6.i

    Thank you!
     
  2. 1stSPIN

    1stSPIN Well-Known Member

    Nov 15, 2014
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    Own 1stSPIN
    China / Canadian
    I will give it a try.
     
  3. 1stSPIN

    1stSPIN Well-Known Member

    Nov 15, 2014
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    Own 1stSPIN
    China / Canadian
    Tried to upload and it asked for 8.1 IOS. We just got a new iPad so I will have to ask someone here to fix this then try your game and I will let you know what I think and my son thinks and I will post a comment.

    I believe the developers here should all do their part and give you a little of their time and post an honest comment on your game once they have given it a test drive around the block. Keep on trucking and if some of the comments are not what you want to hear don't worry, just keep on pushing. Keep in mind Apple is going to give you a few hundred downloads from players around the world so you will be able to get some data on downloads, retention etc.
     
  4. Eli

    Eli ᕕ┌◕ᗜ◕┐ᕗ
    Staff Member Patreon Silver Patreon Gold

    This is less of a game and more of a Hello World app. Icon, art, gameplay, app description, it's all bad. Releasing stuff like this is fine, of course, as it's your first time out... But consider the quality bar people are expecting is so much exponentially higher you'd need to use scientific notation to describe it.
     
  5. Hirshmania!

    Hirshmania! Member

    Jun 18, 2015
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    Thank you so much for your kind words of encouragement! Like I said I'm brand new at this, started learning a few months ago by finding various tutorials online. I certainly hope to be able to continue improving my skills so hearing what you said was definitely good for my psyche.
     
  6. 1stSPIN

    1stSPIN Well-Known Member

    Nov 15, 2014
    605
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    Own 1stSPIN
    China / Canadian
    Keep on pushing. You have to know that there is no one here who can pick a winner coming out of the gate, most are after the fact I told you so. Your goal is simple, do the best you can with each game and you will be rewarded. The good news is the public out there will make the final decision:)
     
  7. blueDot

    blueDot New Member

    Jun 24, 2015
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    Nice first game, Hirshmania! - I am also considering building games for IOS . Can you share a bit more about your process ? how long it took to build ? some download stats ? I also noticed that you are using ads , is that better than in-app purchases. Anyway if it's not too much to ask let me know
     
  8. Hirshmania!

    Hirshmania! Member

    Jun 18, 2015
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    Thank u so much, blueDot! I'm not sure what experience u have coding, but at the end of this post I'll list the online resources I used (all free) to learn how to at least go from having no coding experience at all to having the ability to create very simple games. It took me at least 6 months or so to get to that point, but depending on how much time you're able to devote I'm sure you can learn much quicker. "Pothole!" has been on the AppStore for a week and I've had about 60 downloads. I'm only using banner ads because it would be very difficult to justify in-app purchases in such a simple game. Banner ads are nice because you get paid for every time one appears in your game, not just for clicks. It's a very tiny amount of money, but in theory can accumulate into something substantial if you get a lot of people playing. In-app purchases are what really can bring in cash, and the reason Game of a War now has Kate Upton as a spokesperson.

    Anyways, this is the path that I’ve taken thus far to learn how to code. I can’t claim it’s the best path, so certainly feel free to explore what else is out there. This is what I would recommend you look at, in order:

    1) http://www.codecademy.com/en/tracks/javascript

    This is a fantastic interactive tutorial to learn the fundamentals of “object-oriented” programming and Javascript. I really can’t recommend it enough, as it’s easy to follow and because it’s comprised of several interactive mini-lessons that are quick to complete, you only need a few minutes of free time in a given sitting to progress towards completing it. Javascript is what is used to code Android apps, but it’s extremely similar to Swift, which is what is now used to code iOs apps. I’d recommend starting with this rather than a tutorial on Swift because I have yet to find any Swift tutorials that work the way that this one does.

    2) https://developer.apple.com/swift/resources/

    This is where you will download Xcode. If Swift was the English language, Xcode is Microsoft Word. You will use this software to create your code.

    3) https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/Swift/Conceptual/Swift_Programming_Language/GuidedTour.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014097-CH2-ID1

    This is Apple’s Swift tutorial. If you go through the javascript tutorial first, most of it will be extremely familiar to you. Otherwise you could probably start with this, but I would think the learning curve would be much larger. This doesn’t ease you in and hold your hand like the javascript tutorial does. When you do go through this, you should download the “.playground” file associated with it, and open it in Xcode’s Playground environment, which will allow you to look at this interactively, as it was intended. If you get frustrated or bored by this tutorial, don’t hesitate to move onto step 4, as it’s partially redundant to this one with regards to what you’ll be learning.

    4) http://www.raywenderlich.com/74438/swift-tutorial-a-quick-start

    This is the tutorial I used to write my first simple iOs app, using Xcode. It will first go over the basics of Swift, but with the goal of using what you learn to make a simple app. It will then teach you the basics of Xcode and how to link your code to things like buttons and sliders that you can visually click and drag in Xcode to lay out the user interface of you app.

    5) http://www.raywenderlich.com/84434/sprite-kit-swift-tutorial-beginners

    If you interested in making games, this tutorial teaches you Sprite Kit, which is just something you import into your code file that allows you to use special commands that streamline the process of adding images, animation, physics, etc. to games.
     
  9. Destined

    Destined Well-Known Member

    Aug 11, 2013
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    IMO use a multi platform engine rather than swift.
     
  10. beardysoftware

    beardysoftware Active Member

    Jun 18, 2015
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    I would have to agree. I wrote the game I'm working on in swift (mainly just because I wanted to learn swift), and now I'm kind of regretting it. I ended up liking the game more than I thought, and would like to port it to Android, but it's pretty much a complete re-write to do that now.
     
  11. Hirshmania!

    Hirshmania! Member

    Jun 18, 2015
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    I've actually never heard of a multi-platform programming language. Thought either objective-c or swift needs to be used for iOS?
     
  12. Destined

    Destined Well-Known Member

    Aug 11, 2013
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    There are lots of them. Unity is the most popular and exports to pretty much everything (I even use the same code for my wii U as I do the iOS and Android!).

    Other popular ones include Coco2d and MonkeyX but there are plenty more.

    They basically export the project to the native language when you build, in the case of iOS objective-c, which is actually just what swift does anyway. Swift is never going to take off a serious development tool because of the lack of multi-platform build options.
     
  13. Rogue

    Rogue Well-Known Member
    Patreon Bronze

    Feb 9, 2011
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    Games Developer
    Brisbane, Australia
    Both Android and iOS can run C++. We actually don't use an engine for our code and just make a wrapper class native for each platform (so a java wrapper on Android and an Objective C wrapper on iOS) and the core game is all in C++. This means we do all our dev on Windows and just port any code changes regularly to the mobile platforms (and OSX). This also future proofs us incase we want to port to other platforms later (either in the immediate future or many years down the road).

    Anyway, as you are still learning to code, I would recommend an engine. Perhaps Unity or Coco2D is better suited to your needs. If you are feeling brave though, it is entirely possible to make a cross platform game with nothing. Fun Fact: When I was learning to make games 12 years ago I used OGRE3D as a rendering engine.
     
  14. q8phantom

    q8phantom Well-Known Member

    Apr 26, 2013
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    Game development
    Kuwait
    Unity3D FTW

    Start using Unity3D, I suggest you get some ready art assets pieces from the Unity App Store, keeping the game graphics higher quality from the begging will make the development much more enjoyable specially if you are a beginner, you don't need to make all the art pieces yourself, you can get some free or low priced assets to make a prototype or even a full game, then you may join a professional artist to make a game together (better chance if you have really interesting prototype)

    Best of luck to you!
     
  15. phongtt

    phongtt Well-Known Member

    Mar 2, 2012
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  16. Hirshmania!

    Hirshmania! Member

    Jun 18, 2015
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    I appreciate all the advice!
     

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