Xmas Bonus 1.03 Released

F.A.O. Avon and other buyers of Xmas Bonus, and those who haven't tried it yet ...

Have released a new version which is easier on the first few levels, so if you found it hard before, have another go. This version also stores which level you got to, and your score, then lets you resume next time you play. Hoping these things will boost the conversion rate even more. Pros keep tweaking, amateurs give up.

http://cloverleafgames.com/game.php?id=1025 (Now rated 5 stars)

FREE 8 level Demo (~5Mb). Full version with 25% discount is only $14.95 or £8.99! Go on ... treat yourself.




V1.03 changes:

- Made first 8 levels have more lenient time limits and paint pot/brush bonus to make completing them easier.
- When you click Start Game you will now be asked if you want to resume your last game.
- Changed Exit to Menu to read Save and Exit because the player's progress is now saved.
- Pop-up leaf dialogs will no longer reappear if you exit and restart the game.
- Fixed black outline problem on yellow font X,Y,Z chars.

Anyway it's doing good. Loads of downloads from Cloverleaf and tons from Reflexive. Will be on Big Fish Games soon ... these portals have a bit of a queue you see.

GreyAlienGames.com has run out of bandwidth and my supplier is away for 4 days, how naff is that!

Woo!!! Just in time for the weekend. :) Thanks Grey.

Avon: Glad you saw the thread. If you download it a bit later (now in fact) you won't have to mess around with deleting Guest.dat, it should just allow you to continue from the last level (but with a score of 0 the first time). The idea behind the save/resume is you could actually do your 100 levels marathon and save and exit then resume many times and it will track your score and which level you were last on. Note: If you quit mid level, the score will be reset to to what it was at the start of the level, it won't resume the level "exactly" the same with all the items as they were, just at the start (much easier to code). This should be fine though. There's not two profiles yet as in one for you and one for your partner; might add that at some point OR watch out for my next game in a similar vein OR an expansion pack, who knows ...

Grey,

What a cool 'yule' your customers will be having...not only do they get the original game, but it's now enhanced even more - wow ! Nice one!

IPete2.

Grey - I can tell you're absolutely thrilled that your game is selling. Congrats mate - and don't forget your fellow Blitzers when you're a millionaire!

IPete2: Thanks Pete, I love making enhancements to a finished product as everyone benefits. btw Helen, my partner once joked I should call it Be"Yuled" early on, heh

Nomen: I was thrilled when it sold the first copy, that's the big one, makes it all worthwhile. I have set various milestones up for myself (in terms of downloads/sales etc) and I enjoy watching them pass. Not sure I'm gonna be a millionaire off this one but after a few more games and years maybe ;-)

Also if any of you have games nearing completing and want a really cool, understanding, helpful publisher go to http://www.Indiepath.com (cloverleaf games)

Grey, I'll download it tonight for some quality gaming at the weekend. I appreciate the "save & exit / resume" feature, that'll come in handy. :)

Hi Grey, I downloaded your demo and did really enjoy it, very well thought out game. Are you going to re-package it after christmas with new graphics title etc?

Chevron: Glad u liked it! Yes, actually it started as a non-Christmas game first and I repacked it as a Christmas game. So I all have to do is put back the old graphics and music, tweak it all round a bit, new levels etc and rerelease (actually this will still take ages). Also I might do an Easter version and Halloween version. Each version will have more game features and be more polished I hope.

Good to hear,keep up the good work.

Just got a lovely review on Reflexive. The graphics are the lowest point (but still good!) but the gameplay is highly rated. She really like the fact you can swap items whilst others are falling. I added this at the last minute and it was a b*tch to program due to all the possible bugs but I was sure more advanced players would really appreciate it (I did when testing) and so I'm so glad she noticed, it kinda makes it all worthwhile when people like the special things you did!

Now in the top 100 games at Reflexive which is nice. It's only been on there since Tuesday. Wish Big Fish would hurry up, Christmas is nearly here!

I had a quick look last night and I liked what I saw. I fired it up this morning to have a proper play and it won't start! The demo expires a bit too quickly for my liking...

Daze: It expires after 60 minutes, is that what you mean by won't start? Try getting the other demo from Reflexive for another 60 minutes, but if you consider buying, please buy it from www.cloverleafgames.com as they give me much better royalties, thanx! btw I agree with your Tagline.

Hi Grey. Ah... I did leave it on last night whilst I bathed my kids. The 60 minute demo period obviously elapsed. Thanks for clearing that up. I'll grab it from Reflexive and give it a proper go. My eldest daughter loved it, so a purchase (from cloverleafgames.com) is highly likely anyway.

Re: Protean

I purchased Protean last Christmas, mainly because of the much touted BlitzMax version. For me, it was the biggest waste of money I've ever spent on software - I've never used it and it's not even installed on my machine. In fact, if anyone wants my license for Protean, they're welcome to it (for free).

Daze: Glad your daughter likes it, a sale via cloverleaf would be great! The only minor bummer is that 1.03 on cloverleaf has easier starting levels and a save/resume function whereas the Reflexive demo is still v1.02, and I think 1.03 is better. Re: Protean: I bought it to use with BlitzPlus and wanted it for two reasons, 1) multiple file projects and 2) "find in files" feature. Thing is the find in files feature is bugged in the latest version and crashes, great! Also it can get really slow when working on big projects. The foldaway code is cool, code completion is OK, but a useful feature is the fact that if you use uppercase chars at the start of each variable name when it is declared, then later you type the variable in lower case, it automatically fixes the case for you. This is more useful than you think because I use this method to make sure that I haven't mistyped a variable name (and thus it's now initialised to 0), because Blitz Plus has no "strict" function. Problem is I wanted this find in files fixed and other things, but the forums are dead and there seems to be no sign of life. Actually I jsut realised I forgot to include it in my Xmas Bonus game development costs, even though I used the editor pretty much all the way through.