How to lose a potential customer: phone verifications

Yesterday wanted to advertise my games (old and new ones as well), so thought to try those blog advertising services.

I had already used their services in the past, and must say that got some positive review and traffic from the posts. So yesterday wanted to buy more ads, and went to one of the 3. Unfortunately, even if I had previously bought lot of posts from them (over $500 value), they decided that I couldn’t buy anymore if I didn’t call them by phone (of course a USA number) to verify my credit card info! (big cheer sound)

Of course, being european, I am not surely going to call someone in USA to verify my CC info. Also, what they need to verify? they expect me to tell my CC number over the phone? no thanks, is much safer to use the web! 😐

So they lost a potential good customer for a totally useless anti-fraud system (expecially in this case since I already bought several stuff from them before). No problem, I’ll go with the other 2 who aren’t so dumb to use such system (they even let me use Paypal actually!). I’m not saying which one of the 3 is, but is enough to browse their sites to find out… 😉

Planet Stronghold: Isomap

isometric view

The image above (click to enlarge) shows the town screen of Planet Stronghold. The fight itself won’t be in isometric, since I would need to rewrite / adapt the Supernova 2 engine, but I’ve added this town isometric map because I’ve in mind an interesting mix of town building and tower defense… more info coming soon! 😉

New game officially announced: Planet Stronghold

So, instead of taking 2 weeks of holidays I started working on a new game 😀

It is basically a Tower Defense game in space, but will also contain more management stuff in it than a traditional tower defense game. Today I finished the main menu (click to enlarge):

planet stronghold

I’m satisfied about it, I think gives a good feel of the game. For those “worried” about the other games, don’t worry. I’ll resume working on Tower of Destiny very soon 😉

Future titles of Winter Wolves & Tycoon Games

Today I did a plan on what to do next. Was hard since I have always so many ideas and so little time… 🙂

Anyway, here is the plan:

Winter Wolves

– working on Tower Of Destiny, a dungeon hack’n’slash RPG with first person view, character creation with party of 5 members, a general storyline, a pool of 20-25 heroes that will stay in town while you choose a party to go exploring the dungeon. The heroes that remains in town can train some of their skills meanwhile.

– thinking about doing a complete rewrite of UBM engine, as suggested by the feedback of some users in my forums. So creating first a generic engine that I can use to make both UBM2, but also a sort of “gladiator management game” 🙂 the idea could be very fun, especially if I manage to make it multiplayer

Tycoon Games

– working on a Tower Defense game using Supernova 2 engine. Not sure yet if will be fantasy or sci-fi. Imagine a tower defense game with a storyline, upgrading towers and mobile defenses like characters using special attack. Have still to decide if to do it turn-based or real-time, even if I am more inclined to do it real-time

– working on several updates for Supernova 2, like the addition of a skirmish mode, that will let the player buy ships and jump straight into the battle, without any macromanagement part. I plan also to add more ship/weapons and (probably later, next year) a sort of ship-design screen where you can design your own custom ship configurations

I am also experimenting with other languages (like Flash) and other ideas, but officially I’m developing those 3 titles/engines right now. I’m working a bit on every one, even if the game that will probably finish first will be the Tower Defense game, since I can use good part of Supernova 2 engine.

That’s all for now 😀

Supernova 2: saving in middle of the battles

I’m currently working on version 1.0.2, I’ve added the feature (requested by many people) of saving in middle of the battles. Indeed is a bit insane to play the battles without any chance to save, even if this can lead to re-trying the same battle by reloading a previous savegame 🙂

I’m also adding tons of minor improvement, not bugs but new features and in general things that help playing the game in a easier way. Expect a complete update within next week. I’m also working on the manual, but I am still unsure when it will be finished. I’ll first put it online on the official webiste, so I can update it day by day, then I’ll make it as PDF to put inside the game installation folder.

I want to thank all the people that bought the game so far, showing an impressive response. The best I can do is make a BIG update to help them enjoy the game even more. And after this big update, I’ll start working on the skirmish mode 😉