galactic civilization 2

Leave a reply

Today my copy of Galactic Civilization 2 (Galciv 2 for the friends) arrived. I tried the demo some weeks ago and was impressed about it so decided to buy it. I bought it as always from www.play.com because the price was quite lower than the one listed in their official website… 🙂

After playing it for several hours, I can say I’m pleased. The game has lot of replayability and depth, even if I would have preferred a “real” battle – not just the CPU doing everything for me. The first time I saw it, I was quite disappointed, I must admit! the game is still cool, no doubts about it, but if you thought to be able to play cool intergalactic strategic wars like in the Master of Orion series, you’ll be disappointed!!

Overall a very good game, that could have been perfect (for my tastes, of course) with a turn-based battle on which you move each single ship involved in the battle.

usm2 visual basic editor?

usm2 editor

Yeah seems crazy but… today I wrote a small editor in VB for usm2! I save the data, as always, in CSV format so isn’t a big deal to read it from mac/pc transparently. Why I made that editor? because I’m making the interactive match of the game, and I wanted a flexible way to organize/edit the various event. Before I had to type manually a line like:

5,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,champions!,,Temporary Event,0,Temporary Event,0,Temporary Event,0

quite easy to make errors! now instead I have all checkboxes, radio buttons and textfields – much more intuitive. Took me 4h to make (most time spent checking the VB manual, wasn’t using it since 3 years!) but probably will save lot of time and potential bugs later.

So now I can start to fill the data… I don’t know yet if I’ll make the editor available to public since is quite “raw” but once I refine it a bit… why not? people would be able to create their custom in-match events. So if you want to have an event like:

“the french player goes nearby the italian… and he gives him a powerful headbutt!”

you can add it! 😀

dealing with publishers mini-guide

Too many times I’ve heard developers complaints because they were ripped off by some bad publishers. I’ve decided to write this short guide for anyone interested in dealing with publishers, hope you’ll find it useful.

  1. Inform yourself about the publisher’s background and past deals. Ask in forums, ask the publisher himself for past references (people he worked with in the past or games he published). If he never made a deal before, doesn’t necessarily means is bad, but surely isn’t very encouraging. If he is reluctant to give you any contact with previous people, stay away – he has no reason to avoid you contacting his past clients!
  2. Ask for advance royalty. This is so common but still many newbie developer don’t know about that. NEVER make any deals based on royalties AFTER the game is published. Ask immediatly and advance royalty. The form may vary, 50% royalty advance now and 50% later, etc, but always ask money BEFORE. After all, what’s the problem? you have a product finished, ready to sell (or maybe already selling well from your site), so the publisher knows what he pays for.
  3. Put fixed dates in the contract. This should become much more popular than it is. What does it means? it means that there’s no longer “XXX dollars after 30 days the game is relased on country YYY”. Unless you live in the country where you are licensing the game for, how you know IF/WHEN the game is actually released there? So, instead, put fixed date like “xxx dollars to be paid no later than 10th of december 2007”. That way you’re SURE you get your money!
  4. Check for tricks. Most common tricks consist in the “bug” clause. Something like “if a bug is present on product X, we are entitled to ask all advance money back and you’ll never see any money”. Seriously. Has happened so many times! Publisher/distributors pretending there is bug XXX (maybe even non-existent) and asking all money back as compensation. Always sell your products “as is” basis.
  5. Product price changes. This point is more about personal tastes. If is ok for publisher to sell your game regardless of the price, skip it. What I’m talking about here? I’m talking about the fact that most publisher, retail or online, will / can lower the price of your product for promotions, etc. So while you’re still selling it on your site for 20usd, they sell it for 9 euros, 6.99usd and so on. Guess where the potential customers are going to buy it?

Ok that’s all. Those are, in my opinion, the five most important points where people should be careful. Of course there are many other things to be careful. Always take your time and read the contracts they propose you at least three times! better, have it read by several people!

Empires and Dungeons

Today while browsing on internet I found a nice game from Niels Bauer, called “Empires and Dungeons”. It is a sort of mix between dungeon exploration and military conquest, in the style of Civilization or better the old Heroes of Might and Magic series. It has lot of features, like resource management, units/structures building and battles with various options.
The tutorial is very well done explaining every single step, so even if you aren’t exactly an expert of strategy/rpg games, you’ll be able to understand how to play it. Was really a pleasant surprise for me, always looking for more games of this kind.

Well done! 😉

the newbie indie first steps

Ok I want to have a bit of fun so I decided to write the:

typical average newbie indie developer first steps into the business!

Note: the following text is probably exaggerated a bit, but is based on real facts! I’ll call the developer Joe Smith.

  1. Joe looking for porn sites finds by accident one of those new blogs/sites that claim online business is the new golden age and starts to read it. Obviously he finds a reference to the famed Pavlina articles and goes to that site to read them.
  2. Joe starts to get interested by the sales figures. 100k/year here, another 50k prepay there and then he thinks “wow a tetris clone can make me 25k$ / year? pfui is a joke”
  3. he obviously joins indiegamer community and announces he is going to change the world with his first game
  4. he ignores any advice given there
  5. he realize that even making a simple tetris clone isn’t so easy, and his initial “short 2 weeks game project” takes in the end 6 months
  6. he announces his game to the world, expecting 100 sales overnight
  7. after 3 months and 3 sales (of which 1 refund because “the game made my kid cry for 1 week”) he starts to wonder what’s going on
  8. he is very angry and posts on indiegamer, “oh wtf, why my great exceptional original game doesn’t sell?! any suggestions?”
  9. after wasting money in PR servies or adwords without any sales improvement, he realizes that yes, there are people earning 100k, but like in any other industry,the remaining 99,9% earns less than a street-sweeper
  10. after 1 year of no-sex, his wife leaves him to go living with a famous black pornstar in a caribbean island

Ok hope you had a good laugh. That’s what happened to myself too, except for point 10 luckily! 😀