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Need some volunteers to help me cull through, sift and extract all nominations that have appeared in the NOMINATING THREAD here...
... so they can be then organized by Category into a new updated thread that makes it much easier for everyone to see where the holes are, and where nominations are missing.
PLEASE PM ME ! -- vs just replying here. There's a lot of work to do in short amount of time, but divided up will make it pretty easy. I ask for PM because taking initiative is needed.
Please! XDA FOLKS, if you haven't hit the POLL yet, or suggested a nomination per PHONE category, or per type of development, please hit the link above and do so today. (If anyone thinks the thread should be sticky, please make that request of mods; it should come from someone else)
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Status of the 2009 Devvy Awards
• going well but nonetheless on a very fast timeline.
• Nominations will end on January 15th.
• Voting will begin January 16th. (and will either be open for 2 weeks, or 4 weeks depending on feedback I receive from volunteer helpers)
• SPECIAL NOTE: If the poll is any indication at all of XDA community acceptance & enthusiasm for these recognitions for achievement, there's a high degree of support for the 2009 Devvies. But with the poll's minimal stats of just 70 votes or so, it's impossible to tell if this reflects an overall community view. In the poll, a much smaller set of people thought the idea is good but the process (nominating, voting, etc) is not thought-through well enough, and the whole thing is happening on too rushed of a timeline.
• I have been transparent about everything, and I surely acknowledge the methodology that is being used right now is full of holes... Which is why I have noted several times & places that the 2009 Devvy Awards are a beta. And the 2010 process will be thoroughly reviewed, revamped, to make the recognition awards meaningful. Still, there are people who believe in "wait til next year", and people like me who believe that 2009 was such a pivotal year for the whole touchscreen development world, it's a good thing to do the best job possible this year... and know that it is a beta.
• A Logo has been commissioned ... and will signify the only tangible representation of this year's awards, and will appear on T-shirts for all nominees and winners of 1st, 2nd, 3rd place in each category.
Thanks!
What it is: Kicktrade is a free virtual multiplayer stock market, where you take on the role of an investor who buys and sells shares of the football teams currently participating in the Euro Cup event. Imagine the teams being like the companies on a real market and you compete against other players trying to make the most virtual money out of their development during the competition. Think of it like betting, but in a different way... although be aware that you neither pay or win any real money!
What's the idea behind it: The game is targeted to be casual with simple user interaction (you should be able to start playing immediately even without registering anywhere) but developing a high addiction factor, which can lead to micro management and wanting to understand the mechanics behind the system - but this is not required to play. The development of the prices should in the end reflect the expectations of the players in their teams and their real performance during the matches.
How the market works: The "companies" that you can trade start into the market with a price reflecting their FIFA ranking. You can take their development on the market or the matches into account to make a decision to buy and sell their stock. There is a bank that constantly buys and sells shares from and to you. The prices to buy and sell start above their current value to buy and below their current value to sell. However, those bank offers are adjusted in periods, so you will have to make a decision to buy or sell before someone else does - but also not too quickly because you then might waste money. Once a transaction has been made, the price of the company is adjusted to the transaction price (taking the trade volume into account) and the new buy and sell prices are calculated (and the cycle begins again).
Installation: I attached the game to this post (as the forum does not allow me to post any links yet). Since you are all privacy aware: You will have to accept 3 permissions to be able to play the game:
INTERNET : obviously to connect to the game server to fetch game data and send your actions.
WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE : to store cache data on your SD card. For example the icons of the teams in the market. All data can be wiped in the preference menu.
READ_PHONE_STATE : to read the IMEI of your phone for authentication with the game server. No other information will be taken from your phone. This is required to prevent players from creating multiple accounts.
The development: This project has been implemented by one person alone (me) during free time as a learning project and is still in a testing phase. It is to my knowledge now bug free so I decided to enter the phase where more testers create more dynamics. This will allow me to tweak the game mechanics under more realistic circumstances. It is my first Android project, so any suggestions or comments are very welcome! (For example, if the required permissions prevent you from considering installing it and why)
The future of Kicktrade: The idea is to make more versions of the game to run during the longer running competition of several leagues in different countries. The Euro Cup is a perfect testing ground before release on leagues as it is a lot shorter with matches nearly every day. Until the end of the event I would like to have perfected the game mechanics and only afterwards I would like improve the UI and the code.
Keep up to date: You can follow the news on twitter @kicktradegame as well as on Facebook, or you can google for 'kicktrade' to find my blog called NeoZenCortexis among the first results. When there is a new version of the client available, you will see an update button on the main menu of the game. It is not always required to update but highly recommended (if you see an access denied message it could mean you should consider updating). At some point in the future, the game will also be uploaded to Google Play and get its own website but my free time is limited at the moment, so I will take it step by step.
How can you help: Most importantly, try the game yourself and/or invite your friends to play. I especially require feedback on the game mechanics at this stage of development and this requires a more dynamic market - although any other suggestion or comment is very appreciated as well. I have tested the game so far on Samsung Galaxy S, Galaxy S II, Google Nexus and a couple of HTC devices but none of them has hardware keyboards, so I expect some trouble there. Feel free to comment if you encounter any strange behavior with those. Also other than hi-res displays have not been tested.
Thanks: I would like thank all the people at XDA Developers and StackOverflow for the many hints I researched while learning how to work with android phones and ultimately even make my own app! Keep it up!!
I would be very happy if you help me test my game! For any questions or suggestions, contact me on twitter @kicktradegame, facebook or my blog (search for 'kicktrade'). Thank you very much in advance!!
Nice. .Vl try it out. ..
<3 I love football <3
Cool! Let me know if you need any help or advice... I really appreciate all feedback and I hope you enjoy!!
I had to slow down price development during the night (CET) until we have some more players from outside of europe... otherwise some of the teams dropped too far.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA
Kicktrade v0.25 released
Let's experiment a little. There was one thing in the game mechanics I was not very happy with: If you buy a share that not many people hold and nobody else is going to buy, your profit should be very small. But if your trade starts a trend on the market - let's say you buy and several other investors follow your example, you should get the best prices in average. Same thing with selling: if a lot of people hold a stock and you are the first to sell, you should get better prices than those who decide to sell last. I hope to bring more fluctuation on the market and make your decision depending on the trend you expect to see in the future. Of course this will most likely work best with more players, but let's give it a try now anyway, shall we?
One side effect of this will also be that teams which already went out of the competition and not many people are likely to be interested in are a great risk to buy, because the sell price will only increase if players follow your example. Otherwise the price might even go down, as the buy price is considerably lower now.
Further modifications in this version:
Fixed a bug: when you sell your complete depot of a share, you were still counted as an investor. This will be adjusted with the next trade on each team (only then, because those numbers are only calculated when trading).
Number of investors are now displayed (this information is important to you so you can make a decision with the changes above)
Switched position of the tabs "Depot" and "History", which increased performance (the history loads slower than the depot because it contains more entries and will now only be pre-loaded once you switch one tab to the depot).
The history now shows the last 100 trade entries when entering the tab. You can load more (if available) by scrolling all the way down.
The history graph shows the same amount of items that are in the list. Which means it will show up to 100 past trades now (before it was 20). If you scroll down the list of items before and more items are loaded, the graph will display them as well.
Performance has been increased on all list views.
Please comment on the changes, no matter if you feel they make the game better, worse or not very different at all... Thanks and let's see how the market develops now with so many teams out of the competition.
Hi
A bit about me:
I've just started uni to do software engineering and after the first week of "bonding" and stuff, we've been put into groups of 6 to develop an android app and market it. We're students of the Preston campus of the university of central Lancashire aged 18. My group has next to no programming experience, with only me having done anything before although it's mostly been python, I also did some C++.
I've been on XDA for a few years, since I got my first android (a HTC Desire HD, now on a galaxy note) and have mostly been a lurker, not really saying a huge amount because I don't want to get in the way of developers and annoy people, but also because I don't know a huge amount about android, although I have provided some logcats and advice where I knew the answer and could help. I often also use alpha or beta releases as a daily driver as I just text a little and love fiddling with the android operating system.
Our task:
Our first task as a group is to create a android based quiz-type app that will eventually double up as a GPS located treasure hunt app. We have to build this in appinventor as few of us know a programming language and it's a good introduction in how a program is built up and the logic behind it. The app is built up over a few weeks, as we learn how to do different things. It starts as a quiz app with hard coded questions, then we have to develop it into a quiz app that uses a server to get questions and finally into a treasure hunt that uses GPS locations and questions to lead us around the city of Preston to get points.
All throughout the 4 weeks we have to do it, we gain points which transfer into the grade we will get for this module of the course.
The catch:
During these 4 weeks, we have to market our app and our brand, to try "sell" our app and get it out there. As I'm the programmer of the group, mainly building the app, I'm not so involved in this process but I thought I'd ask on here for feedback and to ask you to help us out.
What I'm asking:
So, please will you go follow us on twitter and retweet us, spread the word on facebook about us and our app and (when it finally gets put up) view our "viral" YouTube video.
Go to our website if you want to download our app and have a look, any feedback would be fantastic, thanks. It won't be up for a few days, but if you can please follow us on twitter and facebook for now and when it's uploaded we'll update everyone.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FrustrationTeamSkittles
Twitter: https://twitter.com/UclanSkittles
Youtube: *Coming Soon*
Website: http://www.teamskittles.co.uk/
Thanks,
Joe
Hello everybody,
I just wanted to present my new app "Robioactive", I have programmed in the last month. First I go to the story and following the app itself, then I'll talk about the development.
At the end, I present you a few general questions about your apps, applying your development and feedback
First the link to the app:
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brandy_games.robioactive
If you want, you can skip the story:
<--App-History-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
- The small and sweet robot named "Robi", was sentenced to arrange objects from a conveyor belt properly completely alone and without any help in the factory Robioactive.
- Unfortunately, the small Robi is not very fast, as it has so short and tiny ants-legs.
- Our robot is totally overworked, stressed and need your help.
- Can you help the sweet Robi to assign the Robioactive products off the conveyor belt to the product boxes?
<- End: App-History-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
App, Robioactive:
In this app you must prevent that the objects on the conveyor belt achieve the left end of the tape. This can you do by pressing the product boxes, which are arranged on the top and bottom. For each product correctly assigned a point is awarded. There is at the beginning a small intro with 4 images which explain the game. After that we go directly to the game. There are in total 4 levels. Only the first level is unlocked in the beginning. To unlock the next level you have to reach a certain number of points in the active level. Alternatively you can buy levels with coins, which you get in the game when you're playing, or get Coins in the "MAKE COINS"-part by clicking on the advertisement (I'll tell you more about that later in the chapter app development / advertising). So far I have built "only" 4 Level, however next there will be more available.
App Development:
I am a computer science student at TUM and can do programming (C, C++, Java, Haskell), but I have never dealt me ??with the app development. My goal was that I program an app with some flow to come in Android Studio, Admob, PlayStore etc. within 4 days. The background of this method is that I have noticed from some other app developers that they need 2-3 months for a mature app and then after further 3 months in which the app is to find in the App Store, the Play Store, only 100 Downloads will be reached. This raises the question, it is still worth at all to program Apps, or we, "small" programmer, are powerless against the great app development companies? There are a few more questions in the latter part. The idea for this app is not fallen from the sky, I wanted to build a game that is easy to program, but maximises fun factor at play. However, everyone must decide for themselves.
Design:
I had difficulties to design this app. Unfortunately I have two left hands, regards drawing. However, the app had to be appealing. I didn't want to pay a designer because I didn't know anyway, if there will be a product or not. Therefore, I have worked a little with my Photoshop and made some ugly sketches, but with these I have created a framework with colors and forms. Further problem, I did not know how to fill the backbone. The solution was Creative Commons. I was searching for a relatively long time. Yet I could find a few "nice" images and icons, which were freely available. Given question below for you. Netvertheless I had to paint a few strokes and bars. The same problem arrived with the product video, which I generated with Adobe Animate.
I would pleased if you can give me feedback on the design.
Advertising:
I really do not like advertisment in apps, but I would somehow be rewarded for my work, even if it reaches the end on a Club-Mate or dinner. So I had to make a compromise. I give the user the possibility to click my ads to make them disappear throughout the app for a week. After that, the app is probably uninstalled. But a click per user would be the optimum for me. So I am quite satisfied with less. On top of that you you can generate 200 coins in the "MAKE COINS"-part, to unlock levels. I think that's fair. What do you think about the idea to make the user an app gift by clicking ads?
Programming:
I wrote the entire app in Java, XML is used only for the splash screen. Overall, about 2200 lines of code. I have built the app on the basis of a jump and run game in which was shown on Youtube. However, I had to stop after the chapter 3 of the video series, because I had to develop in a different direction. As a base I used a thread which calls the draw method of Game Panel (Surface View) every x milliseconds, thus changing the surface. The update method will change the position of the objects. So I achieve liquid movements. That works reasonably well. The entire app has only one Activity + one activity for the splash screen. In my Main Activity, Bitmap Images will be visible or not. This works fairly smoothly. One problem is that there are many events that can occur, which I have found after testing the app for one week. Is that too long? If you have any questions about my way of programming, then write me an email to the address below.
Timing:
I had scheduled 4 days for the app, without preprocessing. At the end, it takes 2 weeks + 1 week for testing . On one hand, I had to write my final paper, on the other hand I underestimated some parts of the app development. The designing part has own cost 3 days, seek out the Creative Commons was really tiring. The programming itself has drawn 6 days, adding 1 week for testing and repair. The promo video has cost 1 day, I had to "learn" Adobe Animate (I can recommend the Youtube-Channel "Draw with Jazza"). It was 5-6 years ago that I have looked at Flash, however it has been changed "a little bit". The inclusion of Admob was quite rubbish. This has again engulfed two days. In short, it is a surfaceview and no pure Activity layout so adding an advertisment was not easy and at the end it worked for a reason I do not understand to this day. But that important thing is, it works. Optimizing code lasts 2 days. I had to do that, because it was sometimes a bit too slow. I did not want to program Multithreading, because that would have certainly tooks again one week. So scheduling-conclusion : from 4 days planned to 21 days in the end, anyway I'm happy with the result. I present you below a question about scheduling.
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Questions about the app:
- Have you any guesses to improve the app?
- What do you think about the design of the app?
- What do you think about the app idea?
Questions about your app development:
- How long does it for you to develop an app? (Give an approximate number of lines of code, then I can better classify my project using Cocomo)
- Do you have designers in your team?
- Or rather, do you have a team? (I have my brother, who takes care about website and the legal stuff. I do programming and design)
- do you spend money for your app development? (Design, development, advertising)
- Do you do any advertisment for you app?
- Why do you programm any apps? (Fun, Money, ...)
- Do you use Creative Commons? If so, to what extent?
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I am happy about every opinion that is written down here. Any rewiev would be pleasent. You can write me personally, I will reply to each of the emails you send me and dedicate every question that you have, because the community is very important to me. A feedback from you is 1000 times more informative than a rating in the Play Store. I'd appreciate a download, or share the app with your friends.
I write the same text in several forums, in order to obtain a wide range of possible feedback.
My motto: The design brings the user to download the app, programming to utilize the app.
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Homepage: brandy-games.com
Again the link to the App-Download: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brandy_games.robioactive
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I thank you in advance. Thank you for your feedback.
P.S. the forums entry has also cost me a day, so 21 + 1 = 22 days
Best, Daniel
Hi everyone! I’d like to tell you the story about the creation and release of our first game. I will tell you a little about our company’s background and the difficulties that we encountered during the development. I hope our story might be useful to you too.
It all started a few years ago when my brother built up a team of like-minded people who were eager to create, and this was then expressed in the creation of animation and computer graphics for various projects. The team eventually grew, as well as the number of orders from clients. Then there was a point when we decided to create our own game project. Thus, we began a long preparation process. Unfortunately, our existing knowledge base was not enough to start the project. New volunteers joined the team, the learning process started, and the project began to acquire its first outlines. The result was a prototype of Crocks Hunter, a 2D platformer.
The plot of the game was as follows: Crocodile-aliens arrive on Earth to steal the Moon from earthmen. The main characters of the game (a boy or a girl, depending on player’s choice) must go through six different locations (desert, jungle, lava, water world, ice jungle, and fairy forest), and catch — not kill, the game is absolutely violence-free and child-friendly — all the Crocodiles into boxes which are used sometimes for some puzzles, and then defeat the final boss. One of the graphics features of the game is that 3D character models were rendered into 2D to make more complex, natural and fancy animations and to keep the high quality of the overall picture, along with a light-weight installation file.
Initially, the project was planned to be released for mobile platforms, but as the development progressed, it was decided to release it for PC, and then for Nintendo Switch. This was due to several reasons. Firstly, mobile game publishers are into the free2play game model, for which platform games are not quite suitable, although we figured out how to monetize the game, and to draw the player’s interest to micro-transactions. Secondly, in order to enhance the visuals of the game with various effects, we would have to sacrifice the performance. Therefore, it was more interesting to release the game on PC and consoles but at a set price. One of the publishers suggested that we release an update with six levels and two bosses once a month. Thus, it would be possible to retain the player for a long time, but so far we have not tried this model. Although, who knows, maybe you will?
We temporarily froze the Crocks Hunter project but did not abandon it. We are writing new documentation, and designing new levels. We are open to cooperation with investors and publishers to make a global bestseller together.
Currently, we are working without an office, so the whole team works remotely. In order to complete the project and make it at a high level, we would need to gather all the team members in one place, and this requires funding. So we started looking for investors. Many publishers appreciated the great potential of the game but would invest in the project after it being fully fledged and ready for release. As it turned out, Russian investors are afraid of the gaming industry, and they are completely unready to invest in it. Perhaps, this is due to their not understanding the potential and the specifics of the industry. Many foreign investors simply don’t work with Russia. At some point in our search for investors, we were stumped. The team could no longer work on pure enthusiasm. Some team members quit. Some began to slow down the main process, saying that they’d prefer to take orders as before than “work for the fairies and unicorns”. But some determined team members still believed in the project and continued to create it. So this is how the PUSHINGAMES company was created.
Unfortunately, there is no “book for dummies” on how to achieve success from the beginning to end in video games industry. The information you may find on the Internet is very superficial. Therefore, look for according courses, literature, or even better, find some competent mentor who will guide you. Our mentor was a game designer Konstantin Savochkin
One evening, when we were discussing some details, we decided to create a little something to distract ourselves, and came up with the “Quick Week” project. The main goal of which was to create and release one mini-game within a week. It took a couple of days to write game design documents and calculate P & L. Meanwhile, our artists already made the first sketches and prototypes.
We really like the examples of the Nintendo and Marvel universes when the story of one character is woven into the story of another, thereby creating fascinating endless worlds. Maintaining the heritage of the “Crocks Hunter”, we chose the main character to be a crocodile. The result was Jumping Crock: Jellyfish Attack, an arcade retro jumper for mobile platforms, designed in the style of space comic books of the 80’s .
Download link on GooglePlay: Jumping Crock Jellyfish Attack
In total, we spent around $600 to create the game, excluding licenses and developer accounts. We spent most of the budget on localizing the game and its description in 12 languages, including Russian.
To do the translation job, we chose a small but very responsible team — Locnloader a pool of freelance video game translators with 8 years of experience and voice over actors collected in one place. They specialize in indie-games and such small teams as ours, and that affects the price in a good way. For a reasonable price, they did us translations within 2 days. Moreover, they helped us with the ASO description text and edited it to sound a little more adequate, which is sometimes hard when it comes to repeating many same keywords in one small text. What I personally liked is that their team manager had some understanding in game design (and even took a course in it), and a little in ASO. That’s what I call speaking the same language!
We are very proud of the music in our arcade in particular. We love rock! There is 8-bit Space Rock music in the game. It was written by a wonderful musician, composer, and our cousin Yevgeny Protopopov. The music takes you back to the past, especially if you played Battle Toads and Tanks as a child.
Since we created the project with our own money, the payment to our specialists for the work done was extremely symbolic and incommensurable with the level of their professionalism. Therefore we are immensely grateful to our team and believe that without them we wouldn’t succeed.
In order for the project to be successful, it is very important for the team to have a Team Lead, who could drive this train, per aspera ad astra. In our team, that would be my brother Nikita.
Many companies could have achieved well-deserved success, but they never reached it, stopping halfway through. The history of the company with the fruit on the logo is the lodestar for us on how to do things.
Of course, you always want to do something unique and ambitious like Crash Bandicoot. You might want to make the game more complex by adding many different features and mechanics, but it’s better not to do so. Make it easy! The process of creativity absorbs you. You always want to add something else, when almost everything is ready. It’s best to concentrate on the main idea and actually bring it to life, and after the release, just make an update. By making game updates after the release, you maintain players’ interest and make your app appear at the top of the search results in application stores. In the long-term development of your project, it’s very important to take a detached view. Do beta and alpha testing. Of course, this is a bit like parent-teacher nights at school, when they scold your beloved child, and it can be painful, but it will be good for you.
We made our game free-to-play. We were looking for ads SDK for a long time, and we stopped at the companies:
● Appodeal
● AdMod
As the saying goes, “Creativity is great, but sometimes hunger takes over”. The most important thing is to remember who we are doing this for. We believe that a player should stay immersed in the game as long as possible, without being disturbed by ads in the heat of the moment. And of course, you can’t go without them at all. Use all available services of GooglePlay and AppStore, in-app ads, Achievements, and Leaderboards.
After we published our game in stores, the hardest part began — promotion. Promoting the project itself is also very important. You can create a masterpiece, but in order for it to become a bestseller, you got to try your best. How can you do it when there is no budget? To accumulate link mass, you can write articles in the media and various forums. But as practice has shown, there is nothing better than word of mouth. Bloggers, YouTube and streamers are such goodwill ambassadors. Each of them makes game reviews in their particular style. Find the one you like and persuade them to do a review for free. However, you are unlikely to have luck on this one (we haven’t). Russian bloggers ask for two to three times more money than their foreign counterparts, by the way.
Before releasing your game, create your info channels and use cross-references between them. It works! We use:
● Facebook
● Twitter
● Youtube
● Instagram
● Yunoia
● Bridget Loker
● Telegram channels and chats.
Now let’s get to the final part — working with app stores and how we published our game.
Google — everything is quick and easy. The main thing is to make an agreement with your conscience and not to sign Coppa.
AppStore —an application is being checked for a long time. It feels like an eternity. But in fact, it takes a week for them to check it, despite them saying 24 to 48 hours.
Amazon — quick and easy.
AppScater — as soon as you publish on the main stores, you can start invading Greater China. Appscater is there to help you.
So it goes.
P.S.
Once again I want to say thank you to my team. And please, don’t forget to try and play our game
The author of this article and chief marketing officer, one of the brothers, Artem Pushin.
Love your journey from starting to till today. Thanks for your post. :good:
Сongratulations on the release! I would like to read about promotion steps, if you did any, except social networks cross-references..
Love it!