Man, I wish I had an easy way of telling every aspiring developer this... As a freelancer, I unfortunately see very polished, well-designed apps fail way more often than not. That's just the reality of the market. You are in competition with a very, very large number of apps. If your game looks and plays better than 95% of the apps in the app store, and you do all the foot work, court review sites, have a Facebook/Twitter account set up to communicate with your fans, etc. you have a very slim chance of success. If your game looks and plays better than 99% of the apps in the app store? You have a slightly less slim chance of success. If your game looks and plays better than 99.9% of the games in the app store AND fits Apple's ideas of what sort of hip, fun software makes their devices look super appealing? Good job, you have an okay chance of success. Still no guarantee that it will be long-term. Just an example, Rovio had dozens of failures before they ended up with Angry Birds... So, what happens if your game is below the quality of 95% games in the app store? You're better off buying lottery tickets. TLDR: Don't be a developer if you think you're going to make easy money. Do it if that's what you're really passionate about. It is *hard* work. Manual labor is easier, often less disheartening, and the hours are better.
I still think theres potential. Watching the video though there was a few times when i thought you would die by hitting the baddie or missing the platform but the character somehow got past it. Double check the sprites movement as it doesnt seem totally perfect. Graphics 'could' be an easy thing to change if you get the right person on board, platformers are popular on the app store. They dont have to have cutting edge graphics (Eg Commander Pixman goes for the retro look very well). As i always say its about gameplay, i love vector graphics or simple 8 bit graphics, to me its about the gameplay. Get that right and people can look past basic graphics (Due to many of us having games in the 80's with very simple graphics). But please also check on the gameplay as thats key. Honestly wish you luck with it as i buy tons of platformers. But dont take everything here as hate, theres lots of constructive criticism here believe it or not. Your game still needs a lot of polish but i hope you sort it out as it has potential
If this thread were a film it would be Die Hard. Or Groundhog Day. No wait! The Blair Witch Project. Roy there is some superb advice within this thread. There are people who have to pay for this kind of feedback in focus groups and the like. For example, psj3809 in the previous post picks up on a really important point about the character looking like it is about to die but magically surviving - this is nothing to do with your terrible graphics, this is GAMEPLAY. It's such a shame you don't appreciate any of this advice and just turn against those who mildly criticises it who are only trying to help you. Eventually someone will get through maybe - for a moment I thought DrummerB had done with that video (the only thing Roy has taken any notice of), but we all know it won't make a blind bit of difference to his apps.
his name is roy.. plain an simple.. he had alot of different acounts over the time.. got banned for shilling and other stuff.. but his "work" has a certain signature and i was pretty sure it was him, even when he denied it in this thread and the others.. roy, yemi, krehol, etc. etc.. our janitor posted an appshopper link a page or two back with his offerings.. his work is based on gamemaker in combination of pretty much any art he can find on google in mix with weird pixelart which is apparently made in the image editor that comes with gamemaker.. so thats roy.. actualy a pretty sad boy who likes to make alot of money on the appstore with junk.. or at least he hopes so.. i suppose he is still very young and maybe roy is not roy but roy is his gurdian or whatever who set up the account for him. the problem is he apparently does not evolve, since his games are pretty much basic gamemaker tutorials with a skin slapped on.. and he does not want to listen at all to any help.. especially not mine because i am a freelancer for 12 years now, with 8 pc games, 5 ios apps, 6 ios games and one nds game i work/ed on, since of course most of the stuff is not published by me :/ so it does not count.. but then he does not care for other alot more prominent and experienced developers who offered their 2 cents to him... and got ignored aswell.. but since his flybird was developed by rovio, which is him (yes very colorful imagination) what do we know.. he also ported halo to ios.. ihalo.. and of course call 2 duty and some other prominent xbox games.. so thats him.. meet roy .. remind me a bit of this frog, when i was young, who was run over by a car and was completly smashed to a puddle from the waist down.. but still lived and tried to crawl over the the street into pointless safety.. you want to help but sometimes you can only end the suffering with a heavy stone.. ahh sleep deprivation always ends up with weird thoughts on my side.. pointless anyway.. cheers guys
OP, I will try very hard to base this only on the game mentioned, rather than your previous...Polish everything, repeat or replace until feels right to all involved. Don't let your customer feel they have purchased a cheap pretend app. Instead, aim to give them more than their monies worth - not 6.99 for anything less than ACTUAL AAA quality, I think you got carried away there. (hey I can only try so hard!) You have to try your absolute best and give whatever you can to your games. Sorry my friend but I look at your expectations and you have the fever bad, plus you seem ok about not proving total quality (to the best of your abilities), good luck and hope you can chill out.
You might tell from some of my posts that i absolutely hate shilling !!! IF this kid had duplicate accounts and has been banned for shilling previously then i wont be going near any of his games even if he somehow makes them into brilliant platformers. I know the app store/scene is huge and people try to get one step ahead by getting friends to say 'great app' about their game etc but the second you see through it (or have duplicate accounts/lots of shill posts) i'm outta here, i dont support anyone like that. If he has had duplicate accounts here in the past surely a mod could check the ip address of them to see if they match ?
I'm with you, there's certainly potential, but at the moment it's a car crash. Only thing I'm going to have a friendly argument with you over is the graphics: There's a line (and a very thick one at that) between crap graphics and retro graphics. Far too many games come out which are abysmal in their graphics and the excuse is always "ahhhh, but it's retro innit, didn't have cool graphics back in the day" No, the graphics were 'simple', but they still gave, for a good example, a visual indication of a character moving with no pants and swinging a sword (Ghosts'n'Goblins in a classic example of this), but there's never an excuse for 'crap' graphics in a commercial product But yes, it does have 'potential', needs a lot doing to it but done right, could give the author some spondoolies.
1st off I dont use gamemaker 2nd Of all my name isnt Roy its Rogelio 3rd I havent release any game into the market myself. I made games for others and did what they wanted to make not what I wanted to program. 4th It seems like a mob mentality here, when one guy jumps on someone everyone joins the festival. 5th I see there are alot of people who cant read or understand English. 6th I didnt just throw Super Meebo together , it took a bit of work. Since some of you feel its easy to make a platformer, lets see your version. The final note is I see alot of following the herd here. If I made a game and it became a hit I can tell you guys probably would say oh yeah I could tell your game was going to make it. If I fail then oh yeah your game was crap, I could tell it wasnt going to make it.
Its funny I saw an app the other day called Super Marik and its been on the charts for a while now. The description said like super mario and that was it. Iam pretty sure it was a runner just from the screenhots and everyone 1 star the game but yet it sold. I guess some developers are just lucky.
It's not following the herd if one came to the same conclusion independently. The fact of the matter is, in the screenshots you posted the buttons ARE crooked. The graphics DO look incoherent and there are touch ups to the sprite animation that SHOULD be done. However, even if you did use GameMaker as an engine (which you say you didn't), you did well enough to disguise that so that people like me and Zenout didn't notice. There is potential if you are willing to listen to feedback and improve. It's good to see you're taking the advice in the thread seriously, since that's where it starts.
I think quite a few people in this thread are just trying to give you helpful advice... The bottom line is that you are really, really hurting your chances of success by setting the bar so low. Apple won't feature you, because your game does not represent what they want for their platforms. Many potential customers will dismiss the game instantly because of the quality of graphics. You can't assume that a bunch of people will buy your game just because it's in the app store.
In the 1st 3 pages of the thread people were trying to help out but after that the thread became stupid. People started to read only what they wanted to read and understand, then Mr.Ugly came with Demon jim just to add insult. I repeatedly said I would change what needed to be changed and they kept putting hot sauce into the subject. I guess thats how things work around here, no wonder new threads dont get started here often in this section. Iam not the only one this has happened to either.
What I'm curious of is why you think that you can keep evading bans by creating new accounts and literally posting the exact same things you always do.
Yeah, it's unfortunate how hostile things can get around here... But I don't blame these people. Like I said before, it's hard to make a living this way, so when people so much as suspect dishonesty of some kind, they tend to get up in arms. Try not to take it personally -- it's just a side effect of being in a very competitive field. One thing I would recommend is trying to work really hard on your art skills. Join a pixel art community and practice every day. You have some very basic understanding of how to make and animate game art, and IMO, almost anyone can become a decent artist -- it just takes a lot of dedication, practice, and of course, patience... Check out some of the tutorials here: http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=5692&PN=1 Not all of them are very useful, but this will give you some good ideas about how to make your art look cleaner, shade with a consistent light source, add detail to your work, etc.
Rogelio, I'm going to try a different approach to see if you have learnt anything from all this. Please answer this single question: What are your feelings right now towards Apple for rejecting your app? (what I mean is, have they changed?)
Indeed I thought it was a jolly good effort for a kinda game maker type SDK. But would still advise that it looks like a prototype. Focus on quality. You shouldn't rush out stuff as someone else already advised, your launch day should IMO be at v1.1 spec. Else just stick to testers and aim To tick off dealing with your todo list.
Because like all indy developers, we don't want incomplete trash on the App Store. We don't want games that are thrown together with only the idea of making a 'quick buck' as the primary motivation. Earn money to make more games, yes, earn money at the expense of putting incomplete games out, no. Finally, we're hoping that he will UNDERSTAND where he is going wrong and he can become a better developer. Perhaps he will understand the nuances of game development and grow into an awesome game creator. He has at least some talent, if only he can listen now.
