I’m back! Haven’t blogged in a while, and just wanted to post what I’ve been up to. Since our pong clone I’ve made two more games! I also changed the name of “pong” to “paddles”, just to be safe in the legal department.
The two games can be played here. Apples & Poop, and Keep Up! Both games where made using the construct 2 game engine. As a beginner programmer and aspiring developer, I strongly suggest this engine if you want to get into game design.
It allowed me to make a prototype of a game I drew up (while colouring
with my son), in about 30min, less the tutorial to get me started. After that I hosted it on my website and posted a link to my facebook.
Next thing you know all of my friends are playing it, posting high scores, and requesting it to be on app stores!
So that is my next goal. To make this game as clean and polished as possible, and learn how to put an app on a real platform, like iOS or Google Play.
The first platform I tried was facebook.
This proved to be a bigger challenge then I thought. For those of you who are just starting out in game
developement, and have never gotten an app on a platform before, you should know a few things before jumping in. If you want to make a game that runs in the facebook iframe (the window used to play most fb games) you will need to make sure that the website you choose to host your game from meets their security requirements. This could mean forking out some dough, about $80 a year on godaddy.com (where I host mine from). It’s not much if you plan on making money off your game, but it’s worth knowing if you’re just trying to get the experience and don’t expect to make money back.
This matters, because It’s not going to be your only expence if you decide to use a game engine like construct 2. Before you can publish your games on any platform and embed advertisements in them, you must first purchase a C2 liscense. An individual liscense is about a $160. So that’s $160 for liscense, about $80 for security, and my hosting service ran me about $20 for the year, + $12 for the domain. Just north of $270 to get an app running in FB’s iframe.
iOS app store will cost $99. After this you may want your game on iOS devices. This will cost you $99 to register as a developer with Apple. Again, not a big deal if you plan on making money, but something to keep in mind if your just a beginner and doing it for the experience rather then the cash moneys.
For beginners, I’d say to start out just post your games on a website. Preferably a paid hosting service rather then a free one, as it is relatively cheap, and will keep your site free from ads (that your not even getting paid for!). You can make an “app page” on facebook and invite people to join. Facebook even gives you a clickable button that will link people straight to your game, and keep track of the number of plays. As long as it’s just page and not a game running in the facebook iframe, you’ll have no security issues with facebook. And since you’re probably not getting people to by things in your game, being that you are a beginner dev, there’s nothing to worry about.
You can even take advantage of the facebook API and add login options
with share, like, and post score boards! Untill you have a descent repatoir of games, I’d stick to this model instead of shelling out hundreds of dollars getting your game onto every platform, when you only have one.
Another thing, I’ve been getting a bit better at working with html/css and continuing my learning with JavaScript. This blog may get moved to my other website, which I own the domain for.
www.danfletcherblog.ca
As my skills increase, I won’t have a need for this website as I’m sure I can make my blogs
look much more interesting when I make them from scratch. Will keep you all posted on this, and I’ll let you know more about publishing apps as soon as I get a game on a platform!
Cheers, Dan.
