A month after release

Its been over a month now since release, and I've learned the following things:

- By posting advertisements on several game and Starcraft-oriented message boards, I was able to get a nice amount of unique page hits to the game's web page (+550)
- There was a good amount of interest in the game's screenshots. Since I changed the images several times in the last few weeks, so its hard to get an accurate count, but the total number of image clicks is around ~450
- The download count was very low, around ~40-50 total downloads.
- A few weeks ago I added the ability to track how often people were playing the game (which can be disabled with a command line flag). From this I learned the following:
- Most people quit after a short period of time, after 3-20 minutes and just a handful of games (~1-3)
- One really nice person in Texas played for a whole 3 hours (!!). Thanks whoever you are!
- There was a good amount of game starts without game ends, which means the game may have crashed (or been closed forceably). In the future I need to be more careful to test on several machines to catch potential crashes.

The most important thing I learned here is I can attract a good amount of people with enough advertising, so I just have to make the game more interesting and more pretty so more people want to download, and play longer (:

To that end, I've decided to do some 3D programming. I'll discuss that in my next post.

Game review: Wonderland

Wonderland is a (originally Japanese?) free 2D MMORPG, and as you expect they make their money by having for-pay items (Not sure if they are actually making money, though. The web page seems to be copywritten since 2006).  I'll give my opinion about the game, although keep in mind I've only played a few hours.

- Download was pretty long and had some problems working on my Fiance's laptop.

- Character creation is a bit on the overly-simple side, with only a few choices like your element (earth,wind, etc.), and your mix of 5 stats (str, int, etc.).

- At the beginning of the game you start in a non-multiplayer area that serves a warmup for the game. At first it was confusing (since I didn't see any players there), but overall it was a nice idea, and contributed to the story of the game.

- You aren't forced into any story (except the intro where your boat is shipwrecked). This is ok for those who just want to level-up like crazy, or randomly explore (both which I enjoy), but I think it would be nice to give you a little more story up-front. I'm not sure how the popular MMORPGs do this (FF11, WOWW, etc.). I loved exploring in Ultima 7, but at that game there is a nice series of events that pull you into the game's world (and are forced) before you begin exploring. This decision to focus less on story may be a purposeful one in order to work within the game's budget, given it is a free game.

- The areas full of people trying to sell their wares, or at least show-off their houses, are a bit annoying, and hard to navigate through. I imagine this happens in other games as well, but making those areas more clearly marked off would be nice.

- The overall atmosphere of the game is cute, with very nice graphics and happy music. However, I feel it is a bit 'too' cheery sometimes. This can be a good or bad thing, depending on your target audience. If its a younger age group, this may be a perfect atmosphere. 

- The attack system is very similar to that from old Nintendo RPG games (or even newer PS RPG  games), where you have several different options in turn-based combat. I don't mind turn-based (as long as the tactics are interesting enough), but I think allowing your player to move around on the battle field adds a necessary level of depth, especially for new games.

- Having and fighting with your own pets is a nice feature, and the social messaging options (show hearts, musical notes, etc.) are nice.

- I remember playing a game similar to this a few months ago which had a nice full-screen map of the entire land, which made me curious to explore the various corners of the world. This game has a map of the nearby area, but I haven't found a way to show a larger-scale map.

- I haven't played long enough to judge this well, but there seems to be alot of interesting items and things you can buy to customize your house. This is to be expected, since the game makes its money this way.

- Some of the super moves seem a bit unrealistic (like a car running over the enemy). I guess this is good for the younger/less serious crowd.

- Since I'm struggling with my game's graphics, the most impressive thing about this game is the graphics quality. 

3D vs 2D

Back when I first started programming, pretty much everything was 2D. Since then, I have seen the gradual 'infiltration' of 3D technologies, watching frame rates increase and approaching truly 'photo-realistic' images. 

I haven't done too much extensive development with 3D, although for my next project I may try tackling something fully 3D (or an online flash game). The reason for my resistance to 3D development is there seems to be so much extra work required, especially regarding content-creation. 3D models, textures, shaders, animations,etc. - everything seems to take much more time to develop, and performance is even more of a factor than before.

And in terms of interface, even some of the newer 3D games suffer from camera-rotation problems, or other annoyances that hinder gameplay. Also, even if the state-of-the-art 3D still isn't close to true 'photo realistic', we have along way to go there as well.

On the other hand, if you do everything right the cinematic enjoyment factor can be increased many fold. And in many cases you actually save development time and add an extra dimension of interaction of the game.

In any case, 3D is here to stay - but I still wonder if its possible for a one or two person team to make a better quality 3D game, when compared to a 2D game (given the same amount of time). 

A few months ago I spent a bit of time evaluating (free) 3D engines, but nothing seemed to work straight out of the box, and look pretty. Too much to expect, I guess. I'm sure if I pick one and work with it I can customize it to my needs, but comparing that to the ease-of-use of the Allegro library (mostly 2D) there is still a big gap.

Oddly enough, all of the unit and building graphics are first made in a 3D program (recently, Blender), and then rendered to 2D sprites. I have the feeling that if I had a good 3D engine that was easy to use, I could convert ARTSG to 3D in a few weeks time. But does that engine exist? 

Hmmm..