Hi,
my games doesn’t seem to be played a lot and I receive few comments. Do you have hints or ideas to give me to improve this situation? And, I kind of feel that my game is considered average at best by the majority here.
As you might have read, the automatic promotion system is not fully implemented and it would be easier to promote your game on Linux games websites if it was open source. Nevertheless, if you’re in a hurry, I can manually put your game onto at least ten websites. TUER is played by at least 27 people per day, I think it would be fine for you if Incredibuilder! was played by so much people.
[quote]the automatic promotion system
[/quote]
What does that mean?
Thanks for your ideas.
Some people (like myself) are too lazy to comment too (sorry!). I played Lost Drops for ages with my kid and we both loved it… Dont lose faith.
We already spoke about this some months ago. A software uses all games in my database, then produces data files with the correct syntax; after that, it updates some “wiki” and some websites about games with my help because some anti-robot systems prevent the program from being completely automatic. Please send me a short description (only a short sentence) of your game and the category that matches the best with it (reflexion?). I’m going to promote your game a bit tomorrow morning.
I’d say a bit more but… well maybe they’re not really my kind of game. I generally like blowing stuff up.
Cas 
Look in your pool of frends/familly/coworkers/students for ppl your target demographic that are prepaired to give feedback on the game. Remember, even if they aren’t prepared to play the game ask them why. Whether ppl pick up your game and the first 2 mins of playing it are probably the most important, it tells you a lot about if your concept is sound. getting them to play 3 -> 30 min’s depends on how polished your game is or not. beyond 4-8 hours is a different ballgame altogether, storyline, game character progress, introduction of new ‘difficulties’(without it just becoming tedious or outside the flow of the game) etc etc.
Your game is now on some “wiki”. I’m going to put it into Mandriva wiki tonight, I have forgotten my login and my password :s
Ok now it is on Mandriva Games wiki too.
Wow! 
Thanks so much gouessej!
[quote]Please send me a short description (only a short sentence) of your game and the category that matches the best with it (reflexion?).
[/quote]
I’ll send you a private message for that.
[quote]I’d say a bit more but… well maybe they’re not really my kind of game. I generally like blowing stuff up.
[/quote]
Well, I guess that the majority of members here are not fan of puzzle like games.
Thanks Mr_Light for your advices. I already sent many invites to my friends and family but the main issue is that they are not really curious to try the game or visit my website. I think from memory that between 30 and 40% are interested. To me that’s not enough. Am I realistic?
[quote]Some people (like myself) are too lazy to comment too (sorry!). I played Lost Drops for ages with my kid and we both loved it… Dont lose faith.
[/quote]
Thanks for the nice comment. And, I forgot that a bunch of people are simply not interested to comment and that’s ok too. It’s not a question of laziness.
I suggest to make a self-extracting exe for Windows that includes the JRE and the game, so that people can simply download the whole thing, double click it and play the game out of the created directory. People from outside the Java-world are very suspicious about jnpl-files and Java itself. By offering an exe with everything included, you give them something they already know and on the other hand, they don’t really have to install anything, they don’t have to download Java and they don’t have to unzip anything manually. For the non-Windows world, jnlp should be fine.
I offered my previous game (RIP!) in three flavours: Webstart, Zipped without JRE and as a self-extracting exe with JRE. The latter was download many more times than the others combined, regardless of the large size of around 30MB…bandwidth isn’t that much of a problem as it was some years ago. The drawback is the bandwidth that this requires on your server. I had some problems after the game appeared in a print magazine and all people opted for the all-in-one-package… ;D
Yes, that’s a good idea. Thanks!
Which “exe” maker do you recommend?
I use JSmooth and have never had a problem with it.
But JSmooth can’t include the JRE in the distribution, can it? I used to use PowerArchiver, which can create highly compressed, self-extracting exe-files. It’s not free though and my version (quite old) doesn’t run under Vista, so i’ve to look out for something else myself when the next game is finished.
From JSmooth website:
[quote]When no VM is available, the wrapper can automatically download and install a suitable JVM, or simply display a message or redirect the user to a web site.
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So that solves the JRE issue I guess.
IMHO, it doesn’t. People shouldn’t bother about a Java installation. If you include the JRE in the distribution, nothing needs to be installed at all. People won’t even recognize that it’s Java.
JSmooth will let you do either - you can set max and min JRE versions to hunt for something suitable and download if not found, or you can provide it with a bundled JRE and have it use that.
My only gripe with JSmooth is that it won’t let you do properly transparent icons (I think gif works, but png doesn’t) but I can live with that.
That is a thoroughly depressing statement :’(
Very, very true though. Even sensible, technically competant people completely freak out as soon as they see a jnlp file. It doesn’t help that firefox is unhelpful by default - usually they’ll download it to their desktop and sit there watching it as if it’s going to magically scuttle off and eat their files.
Oddly, non-tech-y people usually have no problem with it. Perhaps because they’re using IE which defaults to opening them instead of trying to save it somewhere. But then they usually get scared off by the permissions dialog.
No it is a bad idea. We have to help the users to get accustomed with Java and Java Webstart. Using an exe file would be a step in the wrong direction on my view even though people are more reassured by an exe file than a JNLP file. If you really want to provide a better integration inside the Windows desktop, you should use IzPack.
It is not a shame to use Java, we have to show it!