What should I be working on for Alpha 1.3?
Have you done those zombie vampire rats yet?
About 5 minutes into that, I realized I don’t know how to draw vampire-zombie rats. If you can help, PM me.
Big teeth, white round starey eyes?
It’s near impossible to do that in 32x32 pixels, no offense.
Hey accept my skype request. We have some stuff to discuss.
You should make it close the launcher window once you’ve clicked play.
I’m working on it, thanks for your suggestion!
Diamonds Alpha 1.3 has been released! See below for a complete change log.
Added Features:
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Miners’ Rat: Second enemy, does the same thing as spikes
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Menu Messages: When you open the menu, it displays a little message under the main title. Just for fun.
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“Clear” control: Hitting “C” on your keyboard clears the current message (the thing at the bottom)
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The menu now closes once you hit play.
Removed Features:
- Removed the “top.png” tile: This was supposed to be in this update, but it turned out in order to make it realistic, I’d would have had to spend much more time that I could have used otherwise.
Bugs Fixed:
D-03: Menu stays open even when game is closed
Download:
Any ideas for 1.4? I’m already working on making generated session keys to prevent pirating.
Wait… isn’t your game free…? How does one pirate a free game?
I might start charging once I think the game has progressed far enough.
Don’t worry about that stuff until people actually start to pirate your game.
No offense, but don’t think about charging for the game yet. Its one of your first projects, you just need to focus on polishing it and adding tons of gameplay before you can even think about selling anything! Not trying to discourage you but its very hard to actually get a game sold. It takes a lot of effort, and even then you might not be able to sell anything.
That’s why I said “progressed far enough”. I’d never even think of selling it now. Once it’s the offical release (Note: It’s in Alpha 1.3 as of today), I might charge very little for it. I’m sorry for not explaining this better.
Hmm… probably shoulden’t have used the word ‘pirate’. What I meant is that I plan to have player register for a free account until the 1.0 release, and that key is just to make sure it’s that player.
I’ll be the bearer of bad news.
Ain’t no one going to care about that, let alone should you. No one is going to sign up to a game they know nothing about.
Put it this way, if I downloaded this and seen a “login” screen when I start it up, I would just quit and delete it.
Forget about all that stuff and code your game, stop trying to cater to an audience you do not have. Again, just code and enjoy.
Many people do exactly what you are doing, make their first game and think everyone is going to love it and start playing it, they implement such thing as login systems, player database, a website etc etc. Don’t fall into that trap, your doing well.
Alright, I’ll follow your advice. You’re right, I’ thinking too far ahead.
Yeah, I’d have to agree. The problem is, we all see our project through rose colored glasses. It’s hard to pull away from our own work and ask ourselves “if this wasnt mine, would I care about it?”
It’s a painful realization, but the sad reality is there’s probably 10,000 games just like yours and unless yours is (literally) the absolute best version of it ever created no one will care. Everyone is going to play “the best” if they can. That’s why even though there’s like 10,000,000 Bejeweled clones, everyone still plays Bejeweled. Of course, there are exceptions, like Puzzle Quest is a badass Bejeweled clone. But generally speaking unless you really blow people’s socks off no one will give a damn. 
Obviously that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep trying, nor does it mean what you’re doing is bad/incorrect, it just means you have to face the hard reality that absolutely no one cares about your project as much as you do unless you make the best version of your game type ever created or it has some element with it’s own unique spin that grabs people.