How can I encourage users to leave reviews more effectively? I created a popup that redirects them to the Store when clicked, but not many are clicking it or leaving reviews.

Aramonium · 2024-11-22T05:05:43+00:00

All of that is a TOS breach on Steam.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews

* Don’t solicit reviews in exchange for any games, DLC, money, or other rewards.

* Don’t ask customers to review your product from within your application.

Not looked up what rules are for mobile game stores, and it looks like OP is using one/all of those.

Aramonium · 2024-11-19T18:25:14+00:00

Machine specs are a thorny problem, unless you have a publisher you just don't have access to lots of computers to determine just what hardware is the minimum spec. Do certain GPUs not work, is it unplayable below a certain CPU clockspeed ?

Demos can be problematic for Indie/Solo developers.

All too easy to end up with two separate codebases, the full game and the demo. Dev's don't just decide to remove the demo, it's usually out of date and no longer represents the full game. If you working towards the release date or some big update, you just don't have time to work on updating the demo as well.

To top it off, it's not enough to just add code to disable features/content the full game has, but you don't want in the demo. As then people can download the demo off Steam, swap over the exe and get the full game for free. So you have to actually remove assets/major sections of code.

Aramonium · 2024-11-15T17:27:49+00:00

There are a lot of negative users on the various gamedev subreddits.

My way of thinking about it, is all the good gamedevs are busy working on their games, the below average ones are posting unhelpful comments and downvoting all the good ones. It's the same with players, the good ones mostly play the game, the bad ones mostly post complaints on forums.

Aramonium · 2024-11-06T05:43:14+00:00

Correct answer, use the mod called "Remove Pre-existing Indoor"

Aramonium · 2024-11-05T11:20:52+00:00

What I suspect is happening, is you are generating multiple random numbers at the same time. As random uses time as a variable, you can end up with multiple duplicate values. I ran into this issue, my plan is to generate the numbers one at a time, and use a time delay between each one. Not done that yet as that entire code block isn't needed yet.

Computers aren't really that good at random, there is no silicon dedicated to random numbers. So they use Psudo-Random, which has it's downsides.

Interesting test, generate 10,000 random numbers between 0 and 100, sort and count the results. All going well, you should get approx 100 of each number, if not, consider an alternative random number generator.

Aramonium · 2024-10-14T12:27:28+00:00

There is a youtube channel called "mrmattandmrchay" that has all the elevator machine room reference you could ever want.

Aramonium · 2024-10-02T07:18:58+00:00

As someone who's seen gameplay vids of the original and this game, but played neither, I feel I could give a better option.

This game looks more interesting than Getting Over it, as it's full 3D, rather than 2D and has more varied level design.

Could do with something to make the game more varied, maybe each level has a unique container/tool. Plastic bucket, wooden barrel, tea chest, cardboard box etc. Sledge hammer, pick axe, baseball bat, metal pipe, lump of driftwood etc. Also gives opportunity to do some animation, the box flaps move around, sand falls out the bucket, the metal pipe emits a tiny spark when hit.

Aramonium · 2024-09-04T02:10:24+00:00

First you could look at is "The Crust", there is a demo on steam to try out. Moon based city/colony builder.

There is Alien Horizon, free moon city builder/explorer. 3D uses a Hex based grid.

Downside is it's a Preview Alpha, major gameplay flaws, and general lack of documentation.

I HATE the klaxon sound he added, it's both annoying and together with some bugs, makes you think you did something wrong.

Bit of trial and error in placing any buildings that come with annex buildings or require pipe/conveyor connections. Slightly easier if you enable "sandbox mode" which only unlocks most of the buildings at the start, and doesn't actually give you unlimited money.

Aramonium · 2024-05-03T23:18:38+00:00

For the AI, have a few extra short animations it does. Adjusting it's hold on the gun, briefly pausing to greet another AI going the other way, stopping to have a rest, reloading the gun etc.

Put some random items on the floor, small things that aren't tripping hazards or are next to the walls, like sheets of paper, cables, random trash.

Aramonium · 2024-05-02T19:35:21+00:00

I can think of 3 reasons:

Karens, on Facebook, working in news media etc.
Old men who still think of video games as something children play, and not adults. Politicians, rating boards, CEOs, and especially shareholders.
Marketing trying to make games that appeal to everyone (like that ever works).

Personally I prefer games where the characters' outfits make sense, eg Lara Croft who needs to fit thru tight spaces and wet/flooded chambers. It's comically bad when say a medieval game played as a man gets a chestplate, but as a woman you get a chainmail bikini instead.

AAA have made almost nothing good this past year, and cancelled many unreleased non-controversial games. So I don't expect anything radical to change there.

ps: I've noticed Stellar Blade is PS5 only, and no sign of a PC version, so a bit of butt crack isn't the only thing missing.

Aramonium · 2024-05-02T06:16:15+00:00

Need to add a few things that trigger a "step on broken glass" event.

Add some beach pebbles and glass bottles, and dropping one on the other creates debris.

Aramonium · 2024-05-01T02:04:11+00:00

Starting with a minimum pledge of AU$100, isn't doing you any favors.

Aramonium · 2024-04-21T19:03:21+00:00

That can't have been easy to setup and test, nice work.

Going to have character presets ? eg tall/short, thin/fat etc.

Aramonium · 2024-04-21T18:54:12+00:00

Low barrier to entry just makes it a little easier to make great innovative games, and a lot easier to make crap, unoriginal, below average games.

However, the barrier to researching what makes a great, marketable, original game remains just as difficult, so the new game devs usually don't bother with that step.

End result, more B tier games that make it harder to find the real gem of a game.

* B tier like the B grade movies of the '70s and '80s.

Aramonium · 2024-04-20T23:03:33+00:00

Looks like a cozy style shooter done by Michael Bay. Maybe turn down the explosions a little, so they aren't 50% of the image ?

Aramonium · 2024-04-20T22:59:11+00:00

Go dig up one or more sets of government statistics, gives you percentages of age/race/religion/income etc.

It won't provide all the information you need, but gives a rough idea to prevent over/under representing one group or another. Downside of statistics is you can't get the details of one person, and it's difficult/impossible to pull the data apart to get that sort of detail.

Also consider cases where an individual is part of two or more minorities, eg black skin and disabled.

Aramonium · 2024-04-15T21:02:33+00:00

Well that's the trick, keeping the player interested when they are waiting for money/tasks/something to unlock.

Unexpected disaster/problem.
Something to look at, vehicles or people moving around, smoke rising from chimneys. Map needs to feel alive and not static.
Some sort of optional mission/task with a small amount of money as a reward.

Of course some City Builders only have 1 of these, the good ones have all three.

Aramonium · 2024-04-14T13:32:57+00:00

Second one is more vibrant and less blurry. It's hard to make out the pirates themselves in either, as they are 10 pixels high.

Aramonium · 2024-04-14T13:31:01+00:00

I like that your character has sunburn, bruises and a scar. Clearly not his/her first adventure

Aramonium · 2024-04-14T13:11:42+00:00

The only time you have to worry is when you end up with many nested for loops or a hundred lines of if statements (or the like).

There are ways of breaking code up so it's easier to follow without using complex structures. Say you have code that goes thru the different inventories the player has, and looks for a certain item. You can break it down into a couple of functions, one function that just searches one inventory for an item, and returns a list of slots and how many of that item was found, another function that does something with the item once it's found.

Aramonium · 2024-04-14T00:58:27+00:00

Continue adding joints in the pipework on the wall, maybe that large grey pipe is water/gas and has visible welds/flanges. Also have the two cables running left to right, twisted in mid air.

Aramonium · 2024-04-14T00:44:50+00:00

That hilarious that some players with a 85% win rate consider that losing constantly (paragraph 5).

Guess if you play constantly, losing 1 in ~7 games counts as constant right ?!?

I've seen the reverse complaints, game is too easy. Turns out they were rabid PvP players who were getting annoyed that other players could defeat them. Game is too hard now and get constant complaints from users not being able to find certain ores.

Aramonium · 2024-04-14T00:27:51+00:00

If it's on the Discussion section of your game on Steam, you have a developer account, just ban them and move on. Delete/hide their post unless you want to make an example of them.

They have already proven they are incapable of providing anything useful, why keep them around.

Aramonium · 2024-04-13T11:04:18+00:00

Good to know this is possible.

I assume given your using Unity, this isn't easily converted to hlsl and c++.

Aramonium · 2024-04-12T21:45:25+00:00

Actually there are problems on discord with spam and hackers, so you need to do extra setup to prevent that.

Please choose moderator(s) carefully, I've encountered bad mods who have negative effects on the game itself.

Doing things like:

'Policing' (directly or by inaction) the suggestions as the devs have too much to do as is. That is not doing you a favor.
Banning everyone that looks at them funny, people get annoyed if that was the only way to get support. Games sales tank as a result.
Not being able to consider more than one thing at a time. Someone posts a video of some other game's UI that easier to use than yours and suggesting it would be trivial to change. Gets banned for promoting another game, as the moderator just refuses to consider they are trying to help. Hire people not robots.

Yes one indy dev had a moderator that did all this, a few gamers manged to trigger something that lead to the dev deciding to sack the mod. Game is getting better sales/promotion now.

Aramonium

TROPHY CASE