Well with the free Android Basic I have decided to get busy. I got myself a Nook Color last night and am planning to bring Misu Misu Kaboom/Bomber Cat to the B&N App Store.
My first challenge is making the game pack into 50MB, a challenge since the game is, admittedly, huge. I’m stripping the game of many assets I don’t think are really needed or are not needed in the high resolution I included (I did overkill in some places.)
One thing that’s killing me is the levels. I have 120 levels and each scene file seems to be quite big. I can’t tell how that translates to in-game size, though. Not sure how smart Unity is storing the final scenes, but is considering an alternative to the scene model. Maybe a way for me to just use one scene and store object placement in a small file, build the levels dynamically at level load time.
Also thinking of making a bit of a level resorting for the Android version of the game. Currently the game follows the way too common Themed Level Packs. This means that a level set of 30 levels share the same theme. I’m thinking it may be less monotonous if I shuffle things a bit and toss different themes to the user across the entire game, instead of making him endure the same environment on every chapter.
If this is successful enough to at least cover the price of the Nook then I will see if I jump the thing into the Kindle. Have a Galaxy Player coming on the mail to playtest in a proper Android device too, and push the thing to the Android Market. There I’m not sure if I’ll be going ad-based or what. I know the B&N will be a paid app, at least.
(And yes, I think I’ll go back to the Misu Misu Kaboom name.)
Right now it is. The largest directory by size in my project is the scenes directory. Scenes seem to be quite bigger than I originally though. I didnt pay much attention to it since it still fits in the App Store and it’s not THAT big. But B&N has a 50MB limit and Google also has the same limit despite them allowing you to download expansions after the fact.
It was extremely time consuming, yes. First time I see the “serializing” term, but after a Google search, yea, thats what I’m thinking about. Unity has a built in feature to do that?
Yes, there was a blog post somewhere about a team and they showed some neat code for serializing and deserializing their levels. I think I have the link bookmarked back at home though.
I guess we all know the statistics that only so and so many people ever play to the later levels of a game, so for me as average joe having multiple themes in earlier levels is always encouraged and liked. Maybe that can be your key to sell more whatever (parts of the game, level packs, whatever is allowed in this weird world you’re encountering - android world )
Misu Misu Kaboom sounds funny to me, but I wouldn’t change the game’s name to that. I think you’re throwing a stick between your legs there.
Misu Misu Kaboom was the original title of the game. I changed it to Bombercat and the guys at Touch Arcade publicly slapped my wrist for doing it in their podcast. One of them asked me to change the name back.
I’m thinking the Nook store is small enough market where I can run the gamble with little risk. I can make the general Android release retain the Bomber Cat name.
BTW this not written in stone, I still may change my mind before launch, or even just merge names to “Misu Misu Kaboom: The Bomber Cat” or something cheesy like that.
@n0mad, thanks. Feedback is helpful. I changed the name hoping the rename would help, by being more descriptive, but by now the sales in the App Store have dried up. As far as my accounting department [corner in my brain] cares, this game is dead and open for dissection and experimentation. That’s what I will do.
Thinking a bit more on it, I will be re-launching the game later in the Apple App store as a freemium game with ads. The current version will be updated for people that already own it but not restructured nor renamed back to Misu Misu Kaboom, I’ll basically branch it off a bit.
I have a big outline on how to approach this, but won’t go into all the details here.
Game was not very profitable so I cant justify making a sequel.
I have a “boss” I must justify certain level of project involvement to. Something like this passes, a full sequel does not get approved.
I do have antoher big project in the oven, only reason Misu is getting a second chance is because of it being faster to test the Android watters with a port of it than to wait until my new project is finished.
Hopefully this move may give me a chance to revisit for a sequel. I would love to make Misu into an actual classic 2.5D platformer game. “Super Misu Misu Kaboom!”
As for this remix I’m planning, I am so far leaning to name it “Misu Misu Kaboom: Island Shuffle” (will replace level set box menus with mapped islands, each with a mixture of areas to keep level sets varied)
I’m really not sure this could be a reason not to make a sequel : from what I saw MMK (yeah hipsters use initials !) was really good looking, catchy concept, and 120 levels is a ton not to get bored so fast.
Making a sequel could actually trigger more interest from users who looked at appstore MMK1 screenshots, but didn’t make the jump to buy. If they see a MMK2, it might add more credibility into the brand, show them that you are determined to produce finer and finer iterations, therefore install more trust with potential buyers. The only trick would be to make MMK2 look different enough to prove in a few screenshots that you stepped up your game (no pun), but not too different from MMK1 to remind anyone who saw episode 1 a while ago that it’s a sequel (most non-buyers would have forgotten the title by then, especially if you’re changing it).
Just make sure you go over the colors and their contrast/brightness
Hope you keep sharing all your thoughts and process - very interesting read everytime !
edit: I’m not a big fan of the colors of the assets/background elements of the current game. They look very dark and threatening, which I fear might also be the opinion of other average customers out there. It just doesn’t capture the typical appeal that other apps display.
You might want to look into Serializing all of the Scene data.
