How to make a Facebook social game. Hi and welcome back to my blog! This time I’m going to talk about the process of making a very basic social game as a Facebook app. It’s my hope that if you know how to make a Flash game and have a little bit of PHP/database experience by the end of the article you will be set to make your first Facebook app.
This is a technical article covering the implementation of some of the core social game subsystems and not intended to be a discussion about moral justification of social game mechanics or even about how to design a social game – I’ll leave those aspects to game-designers and the media The game I’m going to be making is called ‘Pet My Kitty’. Click to play the live version of the game on Facebook Pet My Kitty In a nod to the now defunct mock-social game, Cow Clicker Pet My Kitty will have an absolute minimal set of functionality necessary to operate as a social game: Interactive mechanicDatabase persistenceAbility to purchase an in-game itemInvite friendsSocial marketing incentive Figure 1. A Simple System to Patch your Game Content.
This article explains why it’s important to have your own patching system, and describes how to implement a simple patching system modeled after the Quake3 file-based patching process. Why have your own patching system? For modern game developers, the most popular avenue to sell games is through one of many digital distribution services like Google Play, Steam, XBLA, and the Chrome Web Store.
Besides marketing games to their users, these distribution services generally handle the lion’s share of transferring game content to customers on developers’ behalf. For games that need to update frequently, however, the content hosting process from such distribution services can be problematic. For example, some of the services can introduce significant costs in patch creation, or delays in issuing updated builds to users.
For multiplayer games, delays can let client builds get out of sync with server builds, with no way of triggering an update directly. Reach your users directly Applying patches. The 9 common mistakes every indie game studio should avoid. Ichiro Lambe has learned a lot of hard lessons since he founded independent studio Dejobaan (AaaAAAAAaaaaA: A Reckless Disregard For Gravity) over twelve years ago. At a talk at the Indie Game Summit this week at GDC China, Lambe whittled these down to the nine common pitfalls that most indie studios are in danger of facing. Lambe notes, dryly, admitting that he's fallen into some of the same traps with his indie titles: "People see games like World Of Warcraft or Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare… and [believe] they can create an MMO in 9 months.
" Being overambitious with scoping is a classic indie failing. So why not pick a smaller game? Lambe suggests that when you have a game in your heart that you simply must make, you can sometimes over-reach technically or conceptually, because the idea isn't scoped correctly. His advice: "Step back and consider all the other games you might create" - but don't necessarily go for a grand slam first. "But let's do something different. Welcome to OpenGameArt.org | OpenGameArt.org. MochiLand. Indiegamedev - The Front Page. GameDev.se - spelutveckling på svenska. Developer Community.
Ludum Dare. Ludum Dare 29 Theme Slaughter!! April 10th, 2014 1:16 pm With over 3000 themes suggested by the community, how do we make that more manageable? With this! It’s like hot-or-not for Ludum Dare themes. Click the graphic above, and keep clicking until you can click no more! Next week we kick off Warmup Weekend (April 19th-20th), and begin main Theme Voting. Special thanks again to Sorceress for preparing the theme list for me. I’m in! April 14th, 2014 3:44 am Sorry for the choppiness. Anyway, I’m in! I’m in as well April 14th, 2014 12:34 am 2nd time LD for me. Will be using C++ and probably the SFML library. Good luck everyone! My third Ludum Dare! April 13th, 2014 9:11 pm Hello, This will be my third ludum dare and I am exited! This time I am making an accessibility first approach, complete code designed to run in browsers. Language: Javascript/HTML5Editor: Sublime?
I have just tried Phaser and it looks really good. Have fun and make great games. LD 29… I am IN! April 13th, 2014 8:53 pm As customary, In! Make Games - Finishing a Game. Touch To Start. Making Money With HTML5 – Update & Preview This is a quick post to announce that I’ve updated my book, Making Money With HTML5. The revision (version 1.5) introduces an overhauled design, some updated content and statistics, and new images.The upcoming major revision (version 2.0) won’t be ready until May 2014 at the earliest, so I’ve decided to publish this minor update in the meantime. Continue reading for more details. Continue Reading Read More » Online Income Report #022 – February 2014 Each month I publish a fully transparent income report which documents my online earnings. These income reports exist to demonstrate my progress, share my experiences, and motivate others who want to make money online.Check out my online income report for February 2014.
Continue Reading Read More » Aeon Chapters – Development Log (Update 005) In June 2013 I announced the sequel to Disillusion, one of my older games that found some unexpected success. Ten Tips for Becoming an Indie Game Developer. Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 12, 2012 Post-Mortems on indie games always seem more interesting to me than post-mortems on big-studio games.
It may be because they are just less conventional overall, or that the post-mortems I read of mainstream games usually conform to the Game Developer Magazine “5 things that went right / 5 things that went wrong” formula. I dunno. I really enjoyed Sophie Houlden’s post-mortem of Switft*Stitch, and the things that really hit home for me were the following comments: “Swift*Stitch is my first finished commercial game, and probably the only game I’ve spent more than a couple of months on that has actually been finished. Suffice to say, I didn’t have the skills to finish a game when I started it. Followed by this (the bolding is mine): “… I finally managed to become the kind of person who can finish games. This has to happen with every developer. It’s kind of a mindset thing – and again, something I struggle with. . #1 – Commit. . #3 – Become organized. PixelProspector – the indie goldmine. Gamasutra - The Art & Business of Making Games.