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Show HN: My First Commercial Game Is Now Online
- jonbro 15y agoI don't know how feasible this is, but a demo would be totally awesome. I am guilty of just having a demo video myself, and I think that it really cuts into my sales in a ton of cases.
- ido 15y agoYeah I will add one in the coming weeks. Didn't think a 5 euros game needed a demo, but apparently it does.
- sebmck 15y agoPeople pirate 99c iPhone apps. No matter how small the amount people are weary.
- MortenK 15y agoAny game or app for that matter can benefit from a demo, trial or similar. Even though 5 euro is not a lot, it's still money. As there is so much low-quality stuff out there, customers are sceptical about buying something they haven't tried out to some degree.
- LukeFitz 15y agoLooks pretty good to me! The only thing I would say is that whatever font you're using on the front page (Times New Roman?) looks a little tacky.
- ido 15y agoThanks! What do you suggest I use instead?
- ThomPete 15y agoGeorgia or if you feel adventures (phun intended) you could try and use some of the fonts at typekit.com to get a more dungeony feel.
- paulnelligan 15y agomaybe just a smaller font size would suffice ... it looks tacky because it's the same size as the headings
- ido 15y agoHow about now?
- Andrex 15y agoNo no, canvas yo!
- amourgh 15y agoLooks pretty.What tools you used to develop it?
- ido 15y agoHaXe mostly.
- StavrosK 15y agoWait, so can you now generate JS, Flash and C++ versiond of the game automatically (or, at least, easily?).
- ido 15y agoKinda easily...It requires some extra code.
- StavrosK 15y agoStill, very nice! How did you like the language?
- ido 15y agoPretty good! It's like AS3 but with a bunch of stuff added and some of the rough edges polished.
- aparadja 15y agoCould you go into a bit more details? I'd find it very interesting to hear about a fresh real-world experience with converting a HaXe game to another platform. Are there many places where the same code should work but, for some reason, doesn't? Or have you knowingly made some parts of the code platform dependent, and simply need to port/independentize them?
- ido 15y agoFor example some of the flash API is still missing from NME (a lib for the c++ target) & the performance (and more importantly bottlenecks) is quite different on different targets. Not to mention all the browser limitations you have to work around if you use JS...
- CJefferson 15y agoI find it a little strange that you say I should buy "at my own risk" the experimental linux version. Just a little demo, so I can check it at least works, would add some confidence.
- ido 15y agoYou are right - will be adding a demo in the next few weeks. Still so much to do!
- felixhummel 15y agoA "Send me a mail as soon as the Linux version is stable" would be nice.
- ido 15y agoThe problem is that I'm not sure it's even possible to get it running properly (e.g. with hardware acceleration) on every flavor of linux out there. It's a real can of worms that one...
- streptomycin 15y agoIf you need certain drivers for it to work, just say that.
- lobo_tuerto 15y agoIt is valid to target certain Linux distributions, so you can limit your scope to the ones with most exposure to desktop users. Ubuntu comes to mind...
- ido 15y agoHrm, might do that. It already works in wine as well, just a bit buggy.
- MicahWedemeyer 15y agoCongrats! I don't know exactly how it works, but maybe you might want to contact the Humble Bundle people and see if you could get in on that somehow?
- benologist 15y agoDo a version in Flash! Flash games can spread all over the internet and do insane traffic which you can use to promote the full/paid version.
- ido 15y agoWay ahead of you ;) Currently in negotiations with a large portal.
- benologist 15y agoAwesome. You should ping me - ben at playtomic.com - cause I know all the major portals and can drop you some intros. Negotiations will be a lot better when you can say "X offered me more.".
- ido 15y agoPinged! That is very generous of you, much obliged!
- ck2 15y agoWhy do I have to horizontal scroll on a 1024px wide browser window? Need some margin: 0 auto; somewhere. (webpage is based on 1300px width??)
- ido 15y agoYou are right! Will fix.
- EgeBamyasi 15y agoLooks nice, looking forward to a Linux demo. But that hideous image scroller on the bottom hurts my eyes :[
- moconnor 15y agoPaypal payments just aren't working, I tried twice. Might want to look into that. Do you deliberately hide the price on the front page?
- ido 15y agoNo I'm not - kinda had to throw the website together quickly & I recently changed the prices a bit. The paypal bit is handled by FastSpring and is sadly beyond my control :(
- fastspring 15y agoFastSpring here. What's the problem?
- ido 15y agoI guess you should ask moconnor for that: apparently paypal payments didn't work for him.
- moconnor 15y agoCouldn't purchase with paypal - first time the paypal site showed a generic "we don't know" error (didn't note it, sorry), the next time after signing in to paypal I got further, but was told that the payment had been rejected and the error message didn't know why either.
- moconnor 15y agoCute, I like it. My feedback: * I love the streamlined nature - auto-sell duplicate items, auto-equip. There's a couple of little niggles that go against this when moving, such as having to let go of <left> and press it again to collect an item from a chest (wouldn't a short delay also be ok?) and moving around corners feels a little awkward; I think I expect holding <left> and <up> to walk up until the next left is free, then go left, but it doesn't seem to work quite like that. * No save / resume? Really? I get the old-skool thing, but resuming where the last game left off (without save/load, death is still death) would be a nice courtesy.
- ido 15y agoYeah, that's on my todo list- there is just so much stuff to do! Thanks for the input!
- Udo 15y agoThanks for making this, it's awesome to play! :-) One major thing, though: it sucks that there is no way to save or at least resume a game.
- 3pt14159 15y agoYou need a web designer asap. I actually had to read around to find out how to buy the game, that is terrible.
- grannyg00se 15y agoGreat website. You have a one pager with all the information required including a video and screenshots and two BUY NOW links. Nothing more is needed, and nothing less would do. I think you nailed it there. Oh yeah, the game looks pretty good too.
- ido 15y agoThank you :) I think there is still room for improvement, but you gotta release 1.0 at some point!
- b14ck 15y agoI love games like this, brings back fond memories. Congratulations on your launch! I just purchased a copy :) I'm looking forward to playing it!
- JeffL 15y agoCongrats. On Chrome, when I click to the right in the screenshots, eventually all screenshots get shifted over to the right by half a screen.
- acavailhez 15y agoI just spent one hour playing your game, love it ! (will play again) The casual fast-paced rogue-like style is very neat ! I've never seen something quite similar Not having to care about picking items up and choosing the best one to equip is very clever. It weirded me out at the begining but it really helps to build a spirit to the game. The magic system, while not being the most intuitive thing in the game, also participate to the ambience. Bravo ! The major caveheat is really the absence of auto-saving and resuming a game. I already lost 3 characters beacause the game crashed, I've read here that it's in your TODO list, and I really think it should be your top priority, it will very fast get on players nerves. Superb game anyways, shall I hint you contact the people behing TIGDB (The independant Game Database) ? I would love to leave a kind review here :)