and now a word about platforms

The Android marketplace (and the other Android compatible app stores) are all a bit different, and you are not required to have an account at the store to use your Android phone. This is a boon for some people who don’t ever need to buy stuff, or don’t want their credit card details on file somewhere, but it is a bane for the casual games on those devices. Adding that extra hurdle just to spend a few bucks on an app seems to take it’s toll in purchase numbers.

Cheers!
-B

We will also release a paid ($0.99 US) ‘iRaspberry Pro’ version with all videos unlocked.

UPDATE: iRaspberry Lite and iRaspberry Pro are now available!

(note, this is cross posted from benbritten.com)

Anyhow, it seems like everyone is showing off their clever and not-so-clever custom stands and cases for the iPad, so to day I figure I would throw mine in the ring) (plus it is sunday, and I don’t want to work right now)

When I first got the iPad, I had it propped up like how most of the stands work (ie like a picture frame sitting on your desk) However, this put it out past my mouse pad, and was a stretch to reach it. Since I mainly use the iPad to develop games, this solution was not ideal. (After about two hours of going back and forth between Unity, XCode and stretching to tap on the iPad, my shoulders were fooked)

Instead I needed something to get it closer to me. This meant getting it up above my mouse pad. This works well since the mousing area takes up a not insignificant amount of desk space, but not very much height. So I went scrounging in my big piles of junk. looking for a good solution.

Here is what I came up with:

This stand didn’t cost me a single cent. However, if you don’t have esoteric camera support gear lying about the house, then it might be a wee bit more expensive. (like, prohibitively so, maybe around $200)

You will need:

1 x Magic arm (Manfrotto makes them)

1 x Super Clamp (also by Manfrotto, altho there are plenty of other similar clamps that work just dandy)

You will also need some way to attach the magic arm to your desk (or in this case the shelf that is just above my desk. )

I have chosen the tried and true method of: find a clamp in the shed, and clamp the bastard to the shelf. However, if you are starting from scratch there are actually many better ways of doing this (for instance, maybe get two super clamps, and just use that. It would definitely look less terrible, but again, this was just what I had around the house)

The last thing you need is some spare bits of wood. I used a bit of 1×2 and some plywood.

The design is very simple, just a single cross piece screwed to the plywood (with a nice groove cut out where the charging cable fits) and a few bits on the back to give me some clamping options.

(note I am lifting the iPad so you can see the groove, it doesnt sit up like that)

(I find the top one give me lots more ‘reach’ with the arm, but is a bit wobbly. The center clamp point is more stable)

The stand works well in both portrait and landscape mode:

As you can see, it hovers right over the mouseing area. This means I can go from typing/mousing to iPad testing by just lifting my hand. Much more ergonomic! This is a perfect solution to keep the iPad in a useful position for coding and testing. At some point I might go out and spend the extra cash for a better mounting solution (either a mounting plate, or another super clamp)

Cheers!
-Ben

iRaspberry has debuted and is achieving some great downloads, 12,000 in the first three days. We had a feeling it would do well once on the App store.

It is rating well in the Entertainment catagory, getting into the Top 10 amongst several stores (Italy, Germany, Mexico, Saudi Arabia).

Lovely isnt it?

The basic upshot is that for desktop wallpapers (the one that shows up behind your icons) your best bet is to make a 1024×1024 image and the center 768×768 is the area that will always be visible.

Here are some examples I took, to give you an idea:

It is important to note that the iPad overlays a gradient on top of your image (as well as icon shadows), so if you want to be color-perfect then you will want to take that into account.

As for the lockscreen, it is a slightly different beast since it has the overlay bars. In portrait, you have the same 768×768 ’safe’ area in the middle, but in landscape that is chopped down to a slightly thinner slice of image:

Thats it! have fun, make some cool wallpapers!

Cheers!
-Ben

Here is the amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-iPhone-Games-Development-Cabrera/dp/1430225998/

Anyhow, it is a really good book, even if you are not a beginner. Here is a snippet from the promo blurb about ‘what you will learn’:

• Efficient methods for drawing in 2D and 3D to the iPhone screen
• Game-specific animation techniques with Core Animation
• To use OpenGL ES for more complex and realistic gaming backgrounds and action
• Numerous ways to add music to enhance the gaming experience
• How to give your users access to their iPhone libraries from within games
• The tools and techniques of 3D audio for creating even more realistic gaming experiences
• How to do networking right, including two-player games over Bluetooth and multiplayer games over Wi-Fi

I wrote the chapters on OpenGL, so feel free to ask me any questions you might have about them )

Enjoy the book!
Cheers!
-B

A few articles are circulating at the moment about the state of the Australian games industry. Most of them well written and helping everyone get up to speed with what’s been happening. You can read a short but well written article here on the subject: http://au.xbox360.ign.com/articles/108/1088951p1.html

I want to personally talk about the smallest of the small. The Indies in Australia who are working in teams of 1-5 people to create some fun games. These start-ups are much like my own are working hard to understand the business and nature of this era of downloadable digital gaming.

Since the start of this year I’ve come to form a few opinions on subjects related to small Indies. Here are my thoughts on what small Indies can do right now and how they will fare in the next few years.

Small Indies should seek small business support

I’ve just completed a short small business course with NEIS and I couldn’t stress enough that anyone who’s thinking of or already just started an indie studio should look into this course. I found it well worth the 6 weeks of my time. It does require a number of conditions to apply though:

• Applicant needs to be on newstart allowance through Centrelink prior to applying.
• They must be over 18 years of age.
• The business can’t exist before taking on the course. So no prior ACN or registered business names for the business pitched.

It’s not easy to get into. But having the help to write out a consistent business plan and receive some fortnightly payment assistance can mean all the difference in the first year of your business. I know that if wasn’t going through NEIS had to continue relying on Centrelink payments that I would have to start dividing my efforts between my business and finding an alternative source of income. My NEIS payments allow me to focus 100% of my time to my business.

There is also talk of small business support through some of the local industry associations. Although we’ll have to wait to see that materialised before it can be explored further.

Business and Pleasure – Meet it half-way

By this title I don’t mean that a start-up should go straight to work-for-hire. I do believe that Indies of a small size should focus efforts on their own intellectual property projects. But these projects need to have a number of sensible business questions considered against them, such as:

• SWOT analysis. Is the project viable to produce by the studio to a reasonable time and quality?
• Target Market and marketing plan: Who are your audience? How will you tell them of your game? Why will they buy it?
• Profitability: Given the platform and genre of game your making, how many sales or transactions can be expected to be made? Will it cover the cost of development and advertising?
• Monetisation Plan: In what ways will the game make money? A one-off purchase? In-game cash shop? Subscription?

Speaking from experience over the last year of working on my own projects I admit that I’m guilty of not considering these important business questions before starting on a project. I know that it’s quite easy to get wrapped up in a project you really want to create without considering if it can even be made to sell.

My advice to other small Indies is taking a half-way point in deciding what your project should be. The project should be something the team is excited to develop. But it needs a proven audience and business plan as well.

Government funding just got harder

The government announced a week ago that it’s halving the funding given to Film Victoria for games related funding. This will last for 2 years.

In my opinion, what this will mean for small Indies is that funding will become even more competitive and harder to obtain. The funding committee will more than ever scrutinise every element of an application, from not only the proposed projects business plan but to the experience of the team and the studios prior history. My concern as a starting indie business is that this will effectively cut all applications from studios like my own that have yet to produce a highly commercially successful product.

I know if I was in-charge of funding with only $1,000,000 to distribute over 2 years amongst dozens of applications and tens of millions of dollars in funding requests, I would be investing my money into established studios with a proven level of reliability and not unproven start-ups.

From a start-up business perspective it means that we can’t count on external funding to pitch and develop projects that would otherwise be unviable under our own support. It means that as small Indies we may need to create a few smaller money-maker successes before we can focus on the type of projects that the studio may want to pursue as part of its original goals and ideals. There’s nothing wrong with this outcome but it does tighten the options available to us.

Funding is something we can never truly take for granted. I’m happy that it still exists and Film Victoria as an entity are nothing but supportive.

Overall though this opinion is formed from my pessimism and paranoia. It could well be the case that the dynamics that these funding bodies operate and judge projects will not change in the slightest.

Facebook and iPhone

Facebook and iPhone are huge markets with a small barrier of entry. It also means that these markets are extremely satiated and hit driven.

For small Indies the opportunities arise from the low financial barrier of entry. The threat of course is that everyone else is doing it. The game you create must take in all the most popular qualities of the most popular games of the genre and work with that to create a product that’s both unique enough to get media coverage but simple and familiar enough to be associated with other successful projects.

Again, the business viability of the project must be considered. Flukes rarely occur on these marketplaces anymore. Unless they where engineered beforehand to do so. If you make an iPhone or Facebook game without a solid marketing plan then you’re a fool!

Getting on Steam

Steam remains to be the target for a few indie developers including myself. Steam has most definitely opened itself up to Indies and smaller games over the first half of this year. But it’s my belief that you must have a product near completion and playable before you even approach steam for distribution.

It’s most definitely a case of the developer needing the product to reach a level of completeness and market awareness before steam is approached. Otherwise you’re simply wasting their time.

Steam based products are also larger in production values then your typical iPhone game. So some form of funding will be needed to make a typical steam game.

Indie progress for the next 2 years

We are seeing more indie start-ups than ever before due in most part to new low barriers of entry via the downloadable market.

Here’s my prediction on how these start-ups, including my own will probably fare:

Many small indie studios have and will continue to crop up. Out of them many will fail over the first 12-24 months due to lack of funding, lack of profit due to financially unsuccessful projects or a disbanding of the team.

However, a number of these studios will survive the first few years of operation. The games they will produce will be polished and have some business considerations attached to their conception.

Some studios will intentionally stay small while others will slowly grow to take on bigger and more sizable projects. Both will create reputations of being able to deliver original quality products.

If Indies continue to learn and evolve from each product they create and learn from their mistakes then success is a matter of persistence. Our small size and low cost of production allow us to survive the mistakes we make in ways larger companies can’t. If we continue to trade away an immediate stable job for a gamble on a fulfilling business then we just might give Australia a new set of indie studios able to employ staff. Taking on mid-sized projects like steam based multiplayer games and ultimately be a part in re-branding Australia’s reputation as a development house that focuses on small to medium sized quality games.

I think that’s worth working towards.

First to talk about are my efforts to materialize an indie game studio and to shape it into being an entity that is considered professional and not in fact an unemployed designers idea to create a job for himself.

For the last 6 weeks I’ve been attending a small business program called NEIS. NEIS is an abbreviation for New Enterprise Initiative Scheme. It’s an initiative created by the Australian federal government to help people form all walks of life to start their own small business. Whether it’s fashion, a bakery or game development. At the core of this course is you, the business hopeful sitting down and writing a detailed business plan.

This has been a fantastic experience for myself. While upon reflection it was ludicrous to go into the indie game development space without a viable business plan, I nonetheless started work on Mole last year without considering the games platform feasibility and target market. With these considerations now in mind for my new projects I know that the games I produce from here on in will be scrutinized for their financial feasibility on top of their creative merits.

The other benefit of completing NEIS is that starting from June onwards I’ll be receiving payment assistance from the government for a period of 12 months. It’s intended that I use this money to live on a baseline while I develop the games and products required to make the business self-sufficient.

Overall I’m glad that I took on the NEIS training and look forward to spending the next 12 months utilizing it’s provided resources to the fullest.

I can also say that April has really turned out to be the month of paperwork. Additionally to NEIS I submitted a funding proposal to Film Victoria for a slice of the Downloadable Games Intuitive funding pie.

From talking to those who follow the funding closely I know that Film Victoria has received dozens of applications over this round of funding. I know that competition will be high but I do nonetheless feel a sense of accomplishment over my application as I spent the time to not only explain the proposed game project itself. But to also explain how and why it can be financially viable. While my business plan doesn’t include the funding money to make my business viable, getting that funding will most definitely help my start-up to get working on a solid social-game project.

It’s interesting that both the NEIS and Film Victoria funding application came about the same time. I’ve used both to feed into each other. I hope my many hours of hard work with all this documentation pays off. I’ll find out the result of that application in July.

The last piece of news that I wanted to cover is that Mole – Quest for the Terracore gem will be going through a big art and content update very soon.

Working with Ben Britten, we want to basically reboot the release of Mole. Giving our customers and current users a free upgrade to further improve and impress reward customers.

There are a new slew of features coming to the 1.2 update of Mole. I’ll be writing up an official press release and announcement within the next couple of days. But to summarize what our customers will be receiving within he next few months:

• Rare collectables to be found.
• More medals to be earned.
• Power-ups!
• A brand new level.
• A completely redesigned menu and in-game GUI art style.
• Mole – Quest for the Terracore gem will be getting a name and icon change.

Stay turned for more information.

And that’s basically what’s been happening in the March and April period for me. With NEIS all but wrapped up and the funding application sent out I’ll be spending the next few months rolling out the update for Mole and some other upcoming stuff.

Until next time,

Chris Watts

Thanks to Multimedia Victoria (ICT Trade Events and Exports Assistance Program) for assisting my attendance.

What Happened

At 5:58 EST, I got an email from our webhost telling me we were using too much CPU. As they do on shared hosting, they immediately disabled (what they perceived to be) the offending script, which in our case was the entire API directory. Turns out, doing that kinda breaks the entire site.

Ben got a tip an hour into the downtime and emailed me. I missed both emails cuz I had just headed out to dinner and had my phone tucked away. I got back around 8 and restored the API directory which put the site back online immediately and resumed recording scores.

To be clear, this only affected the web server — all escapeFactory games are designed to work regardless of the reachability of our Leaderboard API. The apps themselves retain scores locally, but unfortunately all attempts to send scores up *to* our server during this time period failed and were not recorded. (More than likely it exposed some dummy code LOLcat usernames, too.)

Why Did It Break?

As of today, Mole is free for the week of GDC. In Lunarpages’ world, that made us a victim of a “Sudden Burst of Popularity“, which in turn exposed my (ahem) “Badly Written Script or Plugin”.

Every API call runs a SQL query that was only a little costly at 1000 records but an utter deal-breaker at 200,000 records. It was a junior mistake on my part, and one hidden deep that would have stayed hidden except for the sudden popularity of “Mole” today. An unnecessary subquery was causing our response time to slowly creep up over time. By the time I got to it, we were averaging over 5 seconds per API call. No wonder our CPU was topping out our limit. I refactored quickly and response time per call is happily back sailing under 0.03 seconds.

Going Forward

At this point, everything appears to be under control. The API as a whole is really efficient, and I think we bought ourselves some time having smoked out that rude subquery.

We’re clearly on the verge of outgrowing our little experimental phase where shared hosting stops making sense, which is frankly a great problem to have.