i’m wondering if it’s worth trying to earn some money with games.
ie. one could create game levels and users can buy them. if they finished a level and like the game they have the opportunity to buy and play the next level.
what do you think of such an idea?
“good idea, go ahead!” or “you’ll waste your time, forget it…”
There’s no answer to this question. There are so many other factors involved. You can earn money with games. As for myself, I’ve only lost $1000s doing it. Some of this is a problem I have with redistribution (which is Sun’s fault).
Cas 
what do you mean with “redistribution”?
distribution:
He means “getting the product to the customer”, and his problems are:
And sun could have helped by:
amongst others.
re-distribution:
“getting other people to promote / distribute / sell my software for me”
I promised to make life easier with JGF, but that was a long time ago and JGF is still not ready yet.
I could be making 100x the sales I’m currently making but for the fact I can’t allow anyone else to redistribute my binaries because I’ve stepped into a woolly area in the license agreement. I’ve more or less been shafted using Java in this respect, and it’s a major blow to me. I can, with great hassle, get round it by using Excelsior Jet. But I’m not going to.
Cas
i’m a bit surprised that there is so much legal stuff to think of when someone wants to sell his java games.
is there a faq or something where i can get more information?
It’s in LICENSE, in the JRE distribution 
Cas
[quote]i’m a bit surprised that there is so much legal stuff to think of when someone wants to sell his java games.
is there a faq or something where i can get more information?
[/quote]
Don’t misunderstand. Normally there are no legal issues with selling Java games. You can make a Java game, sell it from your web site, and anyone else could sell it from their web site for you without hassle. Just don’t distribute a modified VM with your game and you won’t be in the murky areas of licensing
Therein lies the problem.
If it’s too big, it doesn’t get downloaded very much compared to a much smaller game. Puppytron is 1.5mb, but with a JRE in it, it’ll be 15.5mb. With a more sensible JRE in it it’s 4.5mb. At 15.5mb I’d get roughly half the downloads and roughly half the sales. Actually, a lot less, as quite a few people would be extremely pissed off at downloading a 15mb game only to find they got Puppytron at the end of it.
Cas
what are the reasons for putting a jvm into the distribution?
is it only because not all users have java installed or are there other reasons?
Most JREs are buggy. And most Windows PCs, it turns out, don’t have JREs despite Sun’s “efforts”. And most ordinary people who use Webstart, don’t like it, or don’t quite get the concept of purchasing software delivered with it.
When you develop software in the real world you need to be absolutely certain that something works as you want it to. Therefore you tend to ship software with everything it depends upon as much as possible built in to the distribution. It’s bad enough that we have to content with broken graphics and sound drivers, as well as the curious foibles of different operating systems.
At this point I’d just like to say hurrah for MacOS and Apple, who have really sorted it out and are probably the only success story to have actually come out of Java in recent years that isn’t to do with boring old J2EE servers.
Puppytron for OSX is 1.5 mb
Cas
If you don’t mind me asking Cas, how are sales on OSX?
A curious thing has happened in the last year. A year ago, Alien Flux was launched on MacOS X. It was only on sale for about a month and shifted 30 copies.
It was re-released on OSX a few weeks ago, and it’s not sold a single copy, despite being exactly the same.
I’ve since had almost no sales on Mac for any of my games.
Cas
When you buy a Puppygame’s game on windows or linux, you can download the game for OSX and enter the same key. It might work… I’m right ?
If so, I’m sure some people are playing your games on Mac. And me included (in some months, when I’ll get my Powerbook :D).
Chman
[quote] I’ve since had almost no sales on Mac for any of my games.
[/quote]
Could it be the WOW effect? Seems like everyones playing that damn game these days…
What’s WOW?
And yes, the codes work for all OSes. I even really ought to encourage people to spread codes to their friends and family too. That’s how I always wanted it to be.
Cas
[quote]What’s WOW?
[/quote]
WOW = World Of Warcraft
The new crack of MMORPG’s. I would have thought everyone in the game industry (and pretty much the civilized world) new that acrynom by now
Cas,
Maybe you should update some of the sites where you’ve posted Alien Flux. VersionTracker says the release date is last June. They give you a 4 of 5 rating… maybe something to bump it back on the radar would help.
http://www.macupdate.com/ has no listing for Alien Flux.
I see that you have submitted it to the Mac product guide, though my first search didn’t find it :(.
The categories (Games - Games for Children, Kids - Games) might be a bit narrow. Why not “Games - Action & Combat”?
There is also no mention of the playable demo.
It is also the only product listed from Puppy Games. Maybe if you submit SuperDudester and PuppyTron you can get more attention to all the games.