Completion

With Star Dancer full version completely free there is no reason not to give it a try - especially if you just want to enjoy watching space battles on your tablet or phone.

Simple install, create a quick battle, adjust some settings and watch the beautiful space battles.  I've been playing this game continuously for the past 12 months. It is not everyone's cup of I fully realise that but if you like good looking space battles on your android device there's not many better than this.

Oh...some points:

You can change the pilot chatter by placing your own numbered files in the relevant folders in your music folder (yes this game has mod capability - even for a mobile game).
Also you can adjust the music by placing your own music in the relevant folders as well.

Furthermore - the campaign is tough, very tough - the AI has a 75% chance of beating the player based on its current intelligence - most players struggle to defeat the AI but it can be beat if you are smart.

Also - you can move the camera around within the space battle environment when the game is paused - I'll let you figure out how to do that but the camera moves similar to a PC based RTS (fingers around the edge....and hold the centre to move forwards).

The game was originally designed with multiplayer in mind but very few people seem to play it multiplayer based on my game usage metrics but I'd really recommend that you at least try it once multiplayer with a bunch of friends - a five player campaign can be quite chaotic.

The current version is 1.30 and there have been numerous updates since release in October (there were a few pre release versions available prior to October when I was in hospital) but the game is now at a very stable release point and it is unlikely that there will be many further updates.

Note - the game though free has no advertising, no in app purchases - it is free in the most true sense of the word.

There is a link to my blog within the game on the tips and hints screen and here you can find out a lot more information about how the game was built, what its inspiration was, and other features I don't have room to detail here.

I am proud to say that this game is one of the best I've ever created (and I've been making games privately for myself and friends for the past 20 years or so on various platforms).

I was a little sad that the cost of a cup of coffee put the majority of potential users off playing the game - when it was paid it received about 1 download per 10 days, since going free it has received about 20 downloads per day.  As a developer who has poured his heart and soul into a game (and blood, sweat and tears!) it was mildly disappointing that the release didn't garner that much attention but I'm pleased that the people who do play it enjoy it.

If you haven't tried it then I recommend (of course I would - I'm the developer) that you give it a shot.  Note - I get nothing out of having you play the game beyond the satisfaction that people are enjoying it.

All the best, Matt.

Oh....if you want to play multiplayer and don't have anyone to try it out with I have included my email address in the game in the tips and hints section - I'm more than happy to discuss lining up a game multiplayer as long as I'm not flooded with requests (which I doubt I will be).

from Matt.

Space Battles are Fun

Love the Look

In the brief scene shown I am playing against the computer. I may have lost the battle but I got some really nice footage of the action.

One of the things about my game is that even when you lose it looks great.

My game is really more of a space battle simulator than a game and I like it that way.

Usage of My Game Again

Some usage metrics for my game (again)

My game has been available for free (fully free with no ads or anything) for a little over 3 weeks.

It is possible to identify some common usage patterns based on the players who've played the game since that time.

I will give mainly percentages since the actual raw numbers don't mean a great deal.

The main figure that keeps cropping up is a figure between 4% and 5%.

4%-5% is the proportion of users who are quite engaged with my game.

About 4% of users play the game beyond a few days.  The other 96% play it for one day only.

About 5% of users play a good number of battles.

Each day about 25-30% of users on that day give the game a decent play of about 10 minutes or more (which I consider a decent playthrough for a mobile game).

Each day about 15% of my total users ever are playing the game.  This equates to about 50 or 60 users every day playing the game with about 20 new users each day.

The typical users launches the game a number of times over the course of about 2 or 3 days.

Each day there are one or two users who launch the game over 15 times a day with the majority hovering around 5 launches per day.

My users are split fifty fifty between those who play a session more than 5 minutes and less than 5 minutes.

Most battles are watched for the full length of the battle although a handful are also watched for much longer - I had one person watch a battle almost 40 minutes once, and they watched most of the battles for a good 15 minutes - so they were massively engaged by the game.

Most users play at least 1 battle, sometimes 2.  I've had one user play 65 battles in the campaign and a number fight over 15 battles in the campaign.

The majority of users lose their battles against the AI.  I sometimes wonder if this puts them off because the game is quite hard.  The AI does not cheat but is extremely intelligent (now) and users do struggle to defeat the AI. In fact so do I.

From what I can tell from my usage metrics most users have a good idea how to play the game.  At first I was worried that they were not going to the AI behaviour screen but these days I can see that most users have no problem setting AI settings and so forth for their ships. The game seems to be used correctly by most users, they are just not very good at it and don't often try to improve their skills.

The Lite edition has suffered since making the Full version free.  Usage of the Lite game has dropped from over 2 days per person to 1.5 days per person. It is clear to me that the lite version is being uninstalled and then the full version installed in many cases.

I've had about 400 users of the full since it was released - so for 5% of them to be heavily engaged indicates about 20 users are heavily engaged at any time currently, this is about right.

My usage metrics are increasing. If we take the usage over the last 3 weeks - the number of launches of the game has almost doubled per day on average in that time and yet the actual number of installs per day has only increased by about 25% per day since that time. (Averaging 15 per day install increased to about 20 per day, but an increase in launches from 150 per day to about 300 per day approximately).  I am pleased with this as it suggests that the game is retaining users at a reasonable level.

Star Wars - The Force Awakens - Impressions

Star Wars - The Force Awakens - Impressions

This afternoon I decided to go to the cinema and watch the latest Star Wars film.

As a child Star Wars was a huge influence on me - and still is today as I found while watching the new film.

My parents and family would be well aware of the number of times I had watched the original series as a child, to the point that I could retell the script to myself during long commutes to school and back each day.  I was a fan of sorts - with an almost perfect recall scene by scene, word by word of the original movie.

The prequels of the late 90s, early 2000s have been forgotten. I never watched the animated series either and can pass no judgment on them as neither good nor bad.  As one of the original fans, I had effectively gone into hiding when it came to modern Star Wars.

With Star Wars a relic of my past other films had taken on the mantle of the epic hero's journey motif - particularly the Matrix.

The new film shares a sense of welcome nostalgia of the old plus the introduction of the new to the series.

Before seeing the film I had heard many of the spoilers, I knew what happened in parts of it and I had heard many times how it was a rehashing of A New Hope.

I disagree that it is a rehashing of A New Hope.  What it shares in common with it it shares in common with all hero's journey stories - which A New Hope was also.

And it does it well.

I had heard it said that the space battles and light sabre fights were less spectacular than previous films.  I do not think it matters - they were incidental to the plot due to the nature of the new heroes.

For me, the thing that best captures a Star Wars film is that emotiveness of the hero's journey plot devices.  The original had it, the Matrix had it and the new Star Wars films has it.

This plot device is one that captures my imagination still. The idea that there is a destiny of discovery that the lead character must go through to become a figure of legend. The events and action that takes place such as space battles, laser fights, and so forth - these are secondary to the true nature of the Star Wars film.  The key to Star Wars is, and always has been, the narrative of growth from backwater nobody to mysterious figure of legend via facing one's own personal demons.

That is what makes a film 'Star Wars' in my opinion.  Tie Fighters and X-Wings are mere window dressing - though very delicious window dressing that still has appeal after all these years.

The film has flaws, no doubt about that.  But they are forgiveable in my view.  I wasn't the only audience member who audibly laughed at the temper tantrum thrown by one of the main antagonists in the film.  Some of the characters are quite weak - both in appearance and demeanour, some of the action scenes lack weight and force - but as mentioned these weren't what the film was focusing on and I can forgive it that. It captured the key I spoke of earlier quite well.

My thoughts about the films to come I will share.  There is a certain predictableness about this genre of film that is inescapable - it is their destiny after all.

I would imagine that episode 8 will focus on the training of Rey in the ways of the force.  There will be a massive failure on her part in facing her own demons - at least initially although this failure will in fact be what readies her as to face her final challenge in episode 9 (most likely dealing with the shadowy bad guys).

My other thought pertains to the philosophy of the films.  There is a sense in my mind that they will travel down a slightly Eastern path of indicating that there is always struggle between light and dark and that the quest to find balance involves recognition that the struggle is eternal.  There will be no final banishment of the dark side but most likely a recognition that it will always be there - just as there will always be champions of light to take the fight to them.  The sense will be that the force itself is a force of balance.  A balance of unstable equilibrium where at times the light has ascendancy and at times the dark.  Very similar to the struggle of order versus chaos in Moorcock's world.

My final comments are about some of the art inspiration and scenes from the new films.  My mental associations and linkages that I make with imagery and signage is still present to a limited extent.  There were two scenes in the film that to my mind were extremely reminiscient of a series of artworks in a CG Challenge Art Book from 2005 that I own. This is to be expected since science fiction has similar motifs throughout its history. But the similarity was quite stunning. I won't post the imagery here but if you have access to the following material the references are here:

"CG Challenge Grand Space Opera, Icons of Galactic Civilization and Conflict" by Ballistic publishing, first published 2005.  A piece of artwork by Hodong La called "Warfare and Harmony" reminds me very much of one of the scenes from the film (the Star Destroyer wreckage in the desert). Another piece of artwork by Fred Bastide called "Helix Rugens One" (namely the ship) reminded me very much of the speeder that Rey pilots early in the film.  This is to be expected though since science fiction works always inspire one another and share a lot in common.

A few other thoughts.

The sound and music that is often associated with hero's journey type films, whether it be the original Star Wars,the more recent Matrix films, or the latest Star Wars generates within me some of the strongest emotions in film.  There is something special about seeing a character experience growth and recognition about those age old questions 'Who are you?' and 'Where am I going?' It always tugs at my emotional core each and every time and despite its manipulativeness I cannot help but admire it.  The new film succeeded very well on this front.

Tablet Screenshots

Tablet Screenshots

In July of 2015 I purchased (for testing purposes) a very cheap low specification tablet from my local K-Mart outlet (at 6am in the morning mind you).

It is a no name brand tablet with a very low speed processor (quad core) and low memory (512MB).  

Recently I have played my game on it (quick battles only) in offline mode (I refuse to connect this tablet to the internet for the simple reason that the hardware itself has built into its OS an advertising scheme that means everytime a new screen opens advertising pops up even on applications that don't include advertising - such as my game).  

The tablet is not great but is pretty good for under $100 - it plays the game though the load times are quite long which is to be expected.  It has a few issues with sound - the volume seems too low, and behaves differently than the audio volume on my Samsung devices (phones).  But then audio seems to behave differently on the LG phone I own as well (different entirely again - volume settings seem to be linear on some and logarithmic on others).

Having a larger screen to play with however is beautiful.  On the low spec tablet my game downscales textures and reduces the quality of the background nebula so that the game will run fluidly on a low spec device however they still look pretty impressive.  I have attached below a series of screengrabs from my tablet. In each of them I have played around with the camera settings a little to position it in a nice spot.

Here are the screenshots. I really like this game.

You will note I have mainly focused on two of the factions in the game, I really love the ships on those two factions (which are the factions in the lite version as well).

AI Flight Behaviours - A Learning Machine Part 2

Machine Learning Part 2

As of January 15 (today) I've had a look at the AI players' battle statistics to get an idea of how well they are performing.

In my opinion they are performing admirably well, more so now that one of my users won the campaign.

The AI players in my game, as discussed before, improve over time as human players play the game and the AI learns from the human players.

As such their percentage chance of victory in any battle hovers around 66%, about two thirds of the time the AI player will win the battle.  This is great - if a football team had a 66% chance of victory they'd be over the moon.

The reason for the high figures is because the AI in my game learns from other players.  When a human player does well the AI player copies the flight behaviours and settings of the quality human players and tweaks the settings slightly to add a bit of variety to the settings.

As a result, with one of my users playing the full campaign and winning easily, the AI has now improved and as I've seen in my back end stats - it is very difficult to win against now.

So the AI for my game learns - and it learns quickly.  It has rapidly become a tough cookie to beat.

Well done AI opponents, I am well pleased with your learning. A+

AI Faction | Battles Won | Battles Fought | Percentage Mars | 63 | 91 | 69 AioSenti | 58 | 85 | 68 EarthHope | 44 | 66 | 66 Hushami | 56 | 85 | 65 Outlanders | 51 | 82 | 62

Some Metrics and Comments About Rankings

Some Metrics

Here are some basic figures about my game that have come to light since making the full game free of charge to users.

The Lite version of the game has seen a daily install rate of about 6 installs per day - this has been fairly consistent with a slight increase over the 3-4 month period the game has been available for.

The Full version, since being made free, has had an average of 14 installs per day - also a consistent figure.

This is during periods when there is no advertising. The value spikes considerably when advertising is active. 

Each user appears to use the game for an average of about 2 to 3 days before ceasing activating the game.  The average user visits the front page of the game about 12 times during the lifetime of the game. (4-5 per day).

On average about 55 users play the game each day. This is of a total install base of about 160 - so on average one third of my users currently are active each day.

Some notes about monetisation strategies for this game.

Monetisation strategies typically require high volumes of users.  Either a high volume of users or a high activity with a moderate volume of users is required. As such - my game has neither (in my opinion) to be worth monetising.  

Unless the daily average users increased by a factor of about 30x it is most likely not worth the effort to place advertising within the game.  

Monetisation strategies such as IAPs are not of benefit either since the game is typically played for a short duration (a few days) and my design does not really cater to IAPs since there is nothing that really is suitable as a saleable item in the game.

What I have noticed however is that no matter what method I use for promoting and advertising the game - the organic install rates for both free and paid has remained fairly constant and consistent.  

In terms of ranking in the app store charts the game sits at what I consider about 4th tier.

The tiers that I have identified in the app store rankings can be broken down into the following:

Tier 1 -

50,000 installs minimum, most apps are above the 100k mark with many in the millions.

Tier 2 -

10,000 installs minimum, with most apps hovering around the 50k mark.

Tier 3 -

5,000 installs minimum, with most apps hovering between 5 and 10k.

Tier 4 -

Everything below 5,000 installs.

This is a rough guide to how the app store ranks apps. Note there are exceptions and sometimes these exceptions are very weird - especially in the lower Tiers (apps with 1 install in the 3rd tier sometimes, and apps with 10,000,000 installs in Tier 4).  

My own app currently sits in Tier 4. I estimate that without advertising it will take approximately 2 years to reach  Tier 3 and may never reach Tier 2.

Product Virality

Product Virality

The term 'virality' with apps, youtube clips, songs and so on refers to the explosive exponential spread of a product that far exceeds the amount of effort and money spent on marketing.

It may be derived with the following mathematical model.

dU/dt = Total Rate of Accumulation of Users = Rate of Gain - Rate Of Loss

Rate of Loss we have already shown to be approximately equivalent to -aU where a is a measure of the quality of the app. This is a rough figure.

For the simplistic purposes of this model we shall express the Rate of Gain as equal to:

b + cU where b is approximately constant based on app store rankings and so on, while c is related to the likelihood of a person sharing the product with a friend or another person.

Therefore we get an equation for our rate that looks something like this:

dU/dt = b + cU - aU

          = b + (c-a)U

Now, this first order differential equation will result in either an exponential curve that asymptotes to a flat curve or which exponentially explodes with time.

It all depends on whether (c-a) is positive or negative.

The meaning of (c-a) is the difference between the likelihood of the app being shared with friends to the likelihood of the app being uninstalled at any given time by a user.

So the key to having a viral app would appear that it has to be a product that is sufficiently high quality to keep 'a' small and sufficiently remarkable to have a high likelihood of being shared with another person.

For most of us mere mortals c is extremely low and a is small but not anywhere near as small as c.

The value of b is ultimately irrelevant with respect to a viral app although the ratio of b to a is the approximation of the equilibrium install value of a non viral app and so in that sense b matters.

Causing 'a' to be a low value is not too difficult as long as you are capable of making a quality product.

The real interesting thing lies in making something that has a non negligible c value - that is the key.

The difference is either a flat curve at equilibrium or exponential increase.

An Explanation of My User Retention Term

User Retention (part 2)

This will be a fairly short post but in it I hope to explain simply and clearly one of the terms in my function that describes rate of user acquisition (and loss).

In my function described earlier dU/dt = f(t) + g(m,e,t) - aU the term -aU may seem a little mysterious to some readers.

If we remove the first two terms that represent growth due to organic and advertising methods we shall look at the case where an app has been withdrawn from sale and no further promotion is taking place. In such a case the function becomes dU/dt = -aU

What this tells us is that the rate of loss of users is proportional to the number of users we have, by a coefficient of proportionality labelled 'a'.  

To understand it think of it much like radioactive decay which follows a similar mathematical model.

At a particular time there are 'U' total users with the app installed.  We do not know when each user will uninstall the app but we do know that it is a fairly random event - a user could uninstall the app at any time and the likelihood of them doing so at any given time is shown by the value of 'a'. Large values indicate a high likelihood, low values indicate a lesser chance of uninstall.

As such - the more users you have the more likely that at any given time 1 of them will uninstall the app.  If you double the number of users, by probability, you double the rate at which users uninstall the app.

This is what leads to the exponential decay curve those of you who are developers will see when you have finished a promotional period for a product as users gradually fall away and uninstall the app.

It is perfectly normal and mostly unavoidable. 

I hope that helps understand the model I use to describe app user retention and loss.

A Useful Metric

A Useful Metric

I was playing around with the numbers with my metrics and came across a meaningful calculation that I felt was quite revealing about the usage of games/apps (more so on mobile devices than PC but it would hold equally as well with these but the results would look different).

Typically things like DAU, MAU an stickability are thrown around along with D7 retention and so on.

This is a similar metric that is dead easy to calculate and gives away a fair amount of information on how your product is being used in the marketplace.

Take a particular period of time, eg 10 days.
Obtain the total number of unique users of your product in that time (separating by IP address while not a perfect fit will work)...eg 100 users.
For each day in that period count the number of unique users (use the same method, ie IP address - note any errors due to IPs being reassigned etc will even out in the wash)...eg

Day 1 10 users, Day 2 15 Users, Day 3 5 Users, Day 4 25 Users etc etc...sum them all up.

Divide the sum of your daily unique users (each day) by the total users for the period, call this figure D.

D is the average number of days, for the period, that users use your app for.

It will range between a minimum value of 1 and a maximum value of the period being looked at.

Something to note - this figure is amazingly stable. Unlike stickability which uses monthly active users - you can use figures from the entire life of your product to get an average value as most likely it won't change (once the product itself is stable).

The figure is similar in nature to the D7 retention and other figures like it and gives a rough idea of how engaged your users are with your product.

My own app has a value greater than 2 but less than 2.5. This means that most users use the app on the day of install, the following day and a handful use it the 3rd and subsequent days.

This is fairly normal - from what I've seen of various curves usage of games and apps is such that the fall off from install to inactive happens fairly quickly typically - especially on the mobile market, less so on desktop but it still occurs with a similar pattern on desktop.

So to summarise:

U = Total Users For Period
V = Sum of Daily Unique Users For Same Period (as U)
D = Avg Days Spent On App Per User = V / U

Simple characteristic to determine values - IP Address of User.

Results - Close to 1 = poor quality, Higher is better.

Stages of Development

Over the course of 2015 my game interface went through a number of developmental stages.

The first stage was my initial concept when I was putting the game flow together.  It was terribly ugly but was never intended to look pretty - it was merely the flow from screen to screen in the game.

The second stage was when I attempted on my own to make the game prettier. As a programmer I was pretty impressed with my programmer art.  It was still dog ugly though. See below.

In May a family member linked me up with a Melbourne based artist who took my concepts and reworked them into something a lot prettier. I am very thankful for the work Brandie did on my game. The financial cost was well worth it to get some professional looking graphics in my game.

I can very much recommend Brandie as a quality artist who is reliable and professional (and very supportive while I was in hospital too!)  Having professional artwork done makes all the difference to the quality of the final product.

Fleet Strategies

Fleet Strategies

Over the last couple of days I've spent a good amount of time playing many, many quick battles to get a better feel for the optimal strategies for each fleet.

So far I have worked out what seems to be a good strategy for 4 of the fleets.  Unfortunately I didn't write it all down so some of this is from memory, however there are general principles which apply to each of the fleets AI settings which I discovered yesterday.

All of the fleets require a combined arms approach to defeat the opponents - there are no one trick ponies, however certain fleets have particular strengths.

EarthHope

With all of the fleets it is the settings for the fighters and bombers that make the most difference since these form the mainstay of the fleets. EarthHope is no exception.

EarthHope's fighters and bombers have very regular continuous fire weapons that are of low to medium damage.  Their weapons have no special effects other than simply outputting damage to enemy ships.  Their fighters and bombers mainly differ in that the bombers are heavier and slower but have a greater damage output.  

What I discovered was that a good first principle to apply when assigning AI behaviours to their fighters and bombers was to engage enemy at long range. Set the Extreme Range setting all the way to the right, and the Retain Target to a value somewhere near the middle.  Avoid enemy at close range. This allows the EarthHope smaller vessels time to lock on to their targets and get the most number of shots at their opponents.  There is no need to specify larger or smaller vessels.  Targeting vessels to the rear is a good option as well since it means that the fighters and bombers will change direction more often.

Their Cruisers and Capitals should be treated differently from each other as they are very different types of ships. The Capital is worth setting to engage enemy at close range, directly to its front. The Capital is a good focus for enemy fire that can be used as a distraction and so charging directly into the midst of combat is worthwhile especially as it has flak cannons that can fire in all directions.

The Cruisers are great at taking out enemy capital ships and should be used as such, set them to target larger vessels and less agile vessels.  

It is vital to keep the EarthHope fighters and bombers alive for the duration of the combat - at least before their Cruisers go down and by being moderately aggressive but not too aggressive with them they can survive long enough and do damage to enemy ships.  

AioSenti

AioSenti are a difficult fleet to get right.  They have a very mixed bag of ships that requires a bit of thought to get right.  I've found that by setting the fighters to engage at close range, enemies that are not approaching and to have a low value for retain target will keep their fighters alive long enough for you to do damage with the bombers.  Setting the bombers to engage at long range for a long retain target value will allow them to do damage to enemy ships while the fighters keep the enemy distracted.  

Cruisers can be set to engage at close range, to enemies directly ahead. This will force the enemy to engage them since although the AioSenti cruisers are not all that deadly having one fly directly at you with its mix of long and short range weapons will not allow them to be ignored. You will likely lose a pair of cruisers in the attack but at least one should survive.

The Capital has the best beam weapon in the game but rather than flying aggressively with the Capital - set it to engage enemy at its rear at optimum or extreme range. This will cause it to change direction fairly often making it harder for the enemy to bring their weapons to bear.  You will likely keep your capital for the duration of the battle, should you win, as the enemy will not be able to bring its weapons to bear upon it. 

AioSenti do not win battles quickly.  

Hushami Corp

Hushami Corp's fighters and bombers are its main strength.  They are one of the few fleets who can afford to set their fighters and bombers to behave extremely aggressively.  Set them to target approaching enemy who are targeting you. Set their fighters to engage enemy fighters by setting target larger vessels all the way to the left, and agile vessels all the way to the right.  Have the bombers target damaged vessels and enemy at optimum range. Also target enemy who are approaching.  Hushami Corp's fighters and bombers have low damage against capitals and cruisers but against enemy small vessels they can easily outmatch them in a direct firefight. Use that your advantage.

With the capitals and cruisers, set them to avoid enemy - by keeping them alive for as long as possible they remain a distraction for enemy fighters and bombers. To do this - set the approaching enemy and enemy targeting us sliders all the way to the left.  

Outlanders

Outlanders have to make use of their EMP weapons on their fighters to win and are really a combined arms force.  Set the fighters and bombers to target enemy larger vessels at close range and to change targets rapidly.  Expect to lose many of your fighters midway through the battle however by focusing on the larger ships their EMP weapons will prevent the enemy cruisers and capital ships from being able to take out your own capital and cruisers.

Set the Cruisers for Outlanders to the default middle settings. This means that they will target their opposing cruisers first.  Set the Capital to target enemy to their front and at extreme or optimum range. Also set the Capital's 'Target Larger Vessels' slightly to the left, and the agile slider slightly to the left. This means that the Capital will prefer enemy cruisers to capitals in general.  The reason for this is because EarthHope has the best means of countering your fighters and bombers EMP weapons by virtue of the fact that their Cruisers are great at taking down capital ships.  Typically with the Outlanders - if you are winning your larger vessels should survive but you will take heavy damage to your fighters and bombers.

Pics from cafe

As said in previous post I played in a cafe on Saturday.  Here are some of the screenshots.

Star Dancing in the local cafe

Greetings to any who bothers to read my development blog.

Once again I find myself in a local cafe on a Saturday morning, drinking a couple of short blacks and enjoying epic space battles on my mobile.

No..this is not marketing talk.  I've played a lot of mobile games in the past 24 hours and I played a bunch before I made my game. None of them have held my interest like Star Dancer.

Now, I may be in a significant minority - in fact a minority of 1 when I say this - but i love my game Star Dancer.

The space battles are truly mesmerising to watch.  As the beams zap, the explosions burst into space and the fighters and bombers dodge and weave I can't help but be hypnotised by the slow dance of death the ships fly in through space.

Mobile games are well known for being install, play 10 minutes, uninstall but Star Dancer (perhaps because it is my own game?) has kept my interest for over 12 months.

Now - I must be fair here to other games and other users - I am an exception to the rule.

When I look at my game's stats I can see that the majority of users play 1 battle if that. For many of them it is complex and hard to fathom.  But for me, the creator - I enjoy and love every minute of the action. I understand what the decisions I make in the AI section do to the flight patterns and I know how to adjust my settings to defeat the opponent. Also - I simply love to watch.

Like the old guiness ad - "I like to watch" - this game has everything I want from a space battle.

Getting back to the stats for the game - it is obvious to anyone who checks the numbers that I like my own game.  With over multiple hundreds of battles played by me, and the next nearest having under 20 and the majority being a single battle - it is clear that this game resonates with me quite strongly.

I admit I am an odd individual. I am different. I am unique, like everybody else as a friend likes to add.  But this game contains a part of me, I've invested myself heavily into it over the course of 12 months - even spent time in hospital as a result.

It is a joy to play and watch for me.  Others may disagree. Although the ratings do suggest it is well liked by the few who've played it.

No, for me this game is beautiful to watch and play.  I can play for hours at a time - and often do on a  Saturday morning when I'm drinking a few cups of coffee at my local cafe.

Whether you enjoy it or not, whether it gets downloaded once or one million times - I am well pleased with how it plays. It is my favourite game of all time I think - and I created it!

Not bad eh, to be able to be the maker of your own favourite game.

I must give credit where credit is due however. Brandie, the artist who worked on parts of the game I am indebted to very much (I did pay her however!) - her work has made the game really shine with the additions to the interface she has made as well as the little icons here and there in the game, gui elements and animations.  Without her work the game would be much less interesting to look at.

Personally I think it is a visual feast.

I am glad I made this game, and I am actually quite glad I've made it completely free - free for anyone to play and download.  I would love it if others found it as riveting as I do but no worries if not - the only person whose opinion really counts is mine when it comes to this game.

I'm planning to going out for a bit today and spending time with other board gamers, I may even bring a couple of phones along and play it on my own if I get bored at the game place.

These days I no longer, to use a bit of french, I no longer give a fuck about what most people think or about pleasing/impressing others with my efforts - and that's how it should be. Comfortable in myself.

from Matt

Free At Last

Free At Last!

I feel like my game should be one of those old movie cliche's where the lead character exclaims after being locked in a dungeon for several years that he or she is 'free at last' with whoops and hollers for joy.

In January 2015 when I designed the game I originally intended for it to be free.

Completely free.

No Ads.

No In App Purchases.

Just plain old free.

I had no monetisation strategy - it was purely about making something really cool, really good looking and hopefully fun for me to play with my mates.

I achieved that.

But along the way I became side tracked by the lure of making money off the game.  A number of friends and family spoke to me about the chance of making it big with the game (after being impressed by early builds). 

I allowed myself to deceive myself about the potential to make an income off the game.

I ought to have listened to my inner voice that told me that money is not made from android apps.  I ought to have listened to my own set of values that told me that it was not what I really wanted.

Instead I fell for the lure of potential wealth.

If anything - I'd rather make a name for myself (positively) than wealth in any case. But I know that neither of these are likely to be realities.

Anyway.

I hope everyone who plays my game enjoys it greatly. It is a great fun game - if you like watching space battles.

from Matt

App Reception

My game was generally received well by users.

The ratings were quite high.

It was a pity therefore that it received so little attention.

Some have suggested the app was lower quality than I thought but while the usage bears this out the ratings do not.

I am very pleased with how the game has been received by users.

Costs

Costs

Here are the development costs of the game. All figures are in Australian Dollars.

Apart from marketing everything was accounted for back in January in my budget and I ended up finishing the game within budget. I did have to leave out professional voice acting however but all the other components were approximately as I'd projected in January.

Game making can be expensive.

Note I have not included my time spent here - I class that as 'free'.

Expenses	TYPE	$ Cost
Sound FX	Audio	$88
Jason Livesay Music	Audio	$360
Classical Music (unused)	Audio	$360
Menu Music	Audio	$104
Shutterstock 2d Graphics	Graphics	$49
Font Licence	Graphics	$27
Brandie 2d UI	Graphics	$894
Turbo Squid (Ships)	Graphics	$524
3D Artist (Failed To Deliver)	Graphics	$311
CG Textures (Unused)	Graphics	$84
Skyboxes (3dRT)	Graphics	$160
Brandie Animations	Graphics	$1,925
Speakers	Hardware	$15
MHL/HDMI	Hardware	$20
LG Mobile	Hardware	$200
PlayTab	Hardware	$100
Wifi Dongle	Hardware	$36
Huawei Phone	Hardware	$169
Server Upgrade	Hardware	$261
Leadbolt Advertising	Marketing	$620
Ad Printing	Marketing	$20
Google Advertising	Marketing	$246.00
Facebook Advertising	Marketing	$56
Leaflets	Marketing	$77.60
TShirt	Marketing	$44
Translation	Marketing	$208.00
Website Ads	Marketing	$350.00
Maccas Cybercast Ads	Marketing	$50
Box Hill Tech Market	Marketing	$33
TOTAL		$7,391

Free as in 'free beer!'

Free at Last

I have now released my game (full version) for free for anyone to download from any country who has access to google play.

About a week ago I decided to give up marketing and promoting the app further. It was an extremely unsuccessful venture - even for the free app.

I will give some figures about both the free and paid versions of my app.

The approximate release date was October 1st for the game (both free and paid).

I did release earlier while I was in hospital and was not quite with it - I published and unpublished multiple times during this period. I was not well and didn't really know what I was doing. This was a mistake.

As mentioned elsewhere I tried very hard to promote the game through a variety of means.  I personally think it is a lot of fun - but I admit it is not everyone's cup of tea.

However even the free app managed a total of about 3 or 4 installs per day - which even if I earned money from them would never have recovered the development cost.

The development cost of the game was about $6000 and the marketing cost was about $1500.  All in all I recovered about $25 from sales.  

The free game hovered around 100 users most of the time in its lifetime.  I could boost it by about 50 or 60 if I paid for google ads - assuming the google ads weren't being all consumed by bigger fish in the pond which from about December onwards it was impossible to get even a handful of impressions or my advertising budget.  Basically I lacked the funds to promote it meaningfully.

The decision to cancel the paid version and release it as free was not too difficult in the end. It meant that I forfeit about $8 per month in income but it meant that the game may actually get a handful of people to play it.  

I doubt very much whether it will gain any users though. Not because of its quality but simply because it is so low on the charts that it will never manage to be visible to anyone.

The difficulty in the play store is that it is very hard to be visible.  

I expect that come about April or May the full version will have maybe 100 users installed for a total of about 20 using it each day.  

My server can handle that so I'm not too worried about the load.

The full version had the sum total of about 10 installs over the 3 months. The free version supposedly had 600 but I could only measure 200 from my metrics.  

I will post another blog post shortly with my full costing shown for people to see, in the event that there is any interest. However I severely doubt anyone will read my blog for the simple reason that I am a relative unknown in the world - there are millions of voices crying out for attention and only a handful ever really become known. Not that that was my reasoning behind the game.

My original intention was to make a space battle game I could play with my friends who enjoy strategy games.

Unfortunately most of them it turns out had non android devices which I didn't discover until long after I started development. Either way, I doubt they would have played it anyway.

My own tastes in gaming are very different from the mainstream. You're reading a blog from someone who doesn't like chocolate and has very little interest in mainstream entertainment...so yeah...I'm odd.

It does sadden me a little that my efforts went unrewarded. I'm not really fussed at all about the money -I'd budgeted for it as if it were a holiday just like some people go to Europe I would spend it on a game.  I'm more upset about the fact that no matter what efforts I put in to promoting the app it never gained any traction.  Nothing I did seemed to have a substantial effect.  It had a measureable effect, just extremely low.  

I put my heart and soul into this game. I spent 20-30 hours a week on top of a full time job for six months and even ended up in hospital for three months as a result.  I wrote pages and pages of design and testing.  I gave a lot of myself to it, in the end for basically no return.

It was hard work. It takes a lot out of you to develop something like this, and for it to fall on completely deaf ears was hard.  

I will still play it myself in coffee shops when I go on a weekend.  

I did notice strange behaviour in terms of user analytics.

My users activity spiked during the week on weekends.  I had roughly 40% of my total users engaged with the app on a Saturday or Sunday (free app) but then during the week it dropped to around 8-12%.  

It tells me that someone somewhere enjoys the game.  

The game was originally designed as multiplayer but what was more disheartening was that in the entire 3 months it was available as the two free/paid versions - only 1 group of players ever played it (other than me) multiplayer.  I noticed a couple of users (with my metrics) playing it all one night against each other but other than that - everyone else played singleplayer.

I also noticed that the majority of users played 1 battle - if any - and never played the campaign for any duration.  That was sad too.  

I went to a lot of effort to create this game and it turned out to be not really anyone's cup of tea.

I once joked, as a single bloke, to a good female friend that this game is almost a microcosm or reflection of my relationship status - a lot of effort at certain times of my life all for no result.  There is some truth to that...but that's a bit maudlin.  Honestly I don't really care though about being positive online.  

Sometimes things in life are hard, sometimes efforts are not rewarded. Sometimes people get lucky, other times people put in  a lot of effort for little reward.  It's the luck of the draw some times.  Generally effort is rewarded in many fields but in some - it's very difficult.

If you play the game - good on you - I hope you enjoy it.  A lot of blood, sweat and tears went into this product.

The nice thing about no longer caring about income from the game though is that I couldn't give rats arse anymore whether it gets 5 star or 1 star reviews. Admittedly it has mostly had 5 star reviews. Although the day I received a 1 star review with no comment was a little upsetting as I could not communicate with the user to find out why they were upset with the game. There was no way of interacting to help resolve whatever issues they may have had.  Most likely they simply got up on the wrong side of the bed that morning.

Oh well. Back to regular life again.

I'm not happy with how it turned out but what can I do.....oh well.