damo,
Hm I like that idea about the health... I think I'll do it sort of like golf though, like in golf you have a par 5, or par 9 or whatever for each hole. Well I'll simply choose how many shots you're given for each level when I design them. This could make for a lot more diversity in level design.
And yeah as Ortu said, I was talking about if you pay for AdMob or whatever to promote your game. Once you've bought AppGameKit and a Google Play Developer Licence you need not pay anything more.
However it can be very difficult to get people to discover your game. A fresh game on Google Play will almost never get downloaded without any effort because people will never find it.
There are basically 3 ways to get users to discover your game.
1. App Store Optimisation, where you research what keywords people look up and use those as much as possible in your description and even your title. ASO is important in getting users to find your game, but it won't have a huge effect in getting users to find your game initially, since Google's internal app ranking algorithm won't have any data for your game, and as such won't rank it highly.
2. Submitting to review sites. There are 2 types of sites to submit to, free and paid. Most sites have both options. The free ones are washed out with hundreds of submissions, and it can be very difficult to get anybody to review it. The paid ones generally cost between $50-$300 for a review. I've never tried one, so I can't say how much traffic they generate.
3. Advertising Campaigns. There are several networks you can use (AdMob, ChartBoost, TapJoy, to name a few). Most use a pay per click method*, where you pay around $0.05 each time somebody clicks on and ad for your game. This is a reliable way to generate views for your game. If users consistently install your game and generate a profit, then advertising is a good idea. If you get a low view/install ratio and users don't generate much profit, then you'll just end up losing money.
So if you don't want to pay money to get users to discover your game. You're basically limited to ASO and getting lucky with review sites.
That's what I was experimenting with with my other game. I wanted to get a lot of app exposure without spending cash. And it worked. Really really well.
I didn't do any ASO at all, didn't do any advertising, and didn't submit to a single review site. I've had 9,000 views. If I had done ASO and worked on my marketing, that would probably equate to around 900 installs, which would snowball the views and installs too.
Hope that's informative
*Some use a different method, where you integrate their network into your own game, but instead of getting paid cash when people click on your ad, they will serve an ad for YOUR game in return.
So basically everytime you advertise somebody else, they will advertise for you. This is essentially the same as running your own advertising in your game, but it won't cost you anything.
The downside is that it's entirely useless if you don't already have users lol
Anyways I've successfully added sticky blocks now! They were much more difficult than you would think lol. You would think it's as simple as checking for physics collision and adding a Weld Joint, but the problem is that since the player can travel really really fast, it will hit the object and bounce off within a single frame. This means that when you detect collision and create a weld joint, the player wont actually be in collision with the sticky wall and he'll end up floating in the middle of space
I tried a lot of different ways of getting it to work, from trying to set the sprite position based on the offset of the physics collision, to using GetSpriteDistance and moving it back.
Finally I hit upon the solution. I simply do this:
SetSpritePhysicsVelocity(player.id,-GetSpritePhysicsVelocityX(player.id),-GetSpritePhysicsVelocityY(player.id))
for l=1 to 10
update(GetFrameTime()*0.1)
if GetSpritePhysicsCollision(player.id,walls[k].id) then l=11
next l
This will loop through up to 1 full frame in physics, but with the player going exactly backwards, and stopping as soon as it collides. It will cause a very slight jump (1/75th to 1/750th of a second, depending on how far it bounced), but I don't think that will have any noticeable effect on the game.
That's the engine complete, I'm gonna work a lil bit more on the graphics, then design the UI for the game, then start on some levels! I should have something to show for it soon
Cheers,
EB
