Bullet Candy $3.95

Just thought i'd let you guys know that Bullet Candy, made with Blitzmax, is now a meager $3.95.

for those of you who don't know what it is, here is a video link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDyTPAbsM58

Cheers
Charlie

Given that you're clip has over 27000 views, have you sold many copies? And how have you avoided MS's greedy claws shutting you down?

MS's greedy claws?

Cheers
Charlie

I'll second that!

I like the style.. reminds me alot of gridwars (renamed to vector wars most recently, I think?). Looks alot like it too.

It's structured quite differently to geometry wars if that's what you're implying it's like. Bullet Candy has 50 different levels (150 in extend mode), 3 difficulty settings and four play modes (arcade, extend, survival and asteroids).

Cheers
Charlie

I think he means Geometry Wars vs Gridwars, those two games looked too much alike...

Bought Geometry Wars on Steam, think I'll do the same for Bullet Candy today ;-)

Nope, I was referring to the PC version of Geometry Wars, I can't remember who made it, but it has since been removed for download because of copyright issues.

bought it.

Keep up the good work.

I take you have more games being worked on?

Did you write this one alone, or do you have a team?

thanks :)

I did everything myself, even graphics and sounds/music.

Cheers
Charlie

hmmm, hotmail put your download link email into my junk mail. That's interesting.

but you got ok?

Cheers
Charlie

oh yeah, downloaded fine. I'll try it out later when I'm not on a crappy work laptop.

Hello.

I thought this was about shooting dead dogs. Oh well.

Goodbye.

LOL @ SoggyP - though I think that wil be lost on the victim of that joke.

I'm interesting but how do you play it because I don't have a gamepad controller to plug in. Can it be played with keys?

yes, you can use a combination of mouse and keyboard(move with keys, aim with mouse) or just keys(lock firing direction with space by default)

Cheers
Charlie

Bought it. :)

I always wanted to try it, but for a mere 3.95$ I didn't even bother with the demo.


Well, they can't shutdown any Robotron like game, or else Williams/Midway would have to shut them down too. ;)

Gridwars was a direct clone of Geometry Wars (an exceptionally well done one), right down to enemies and behaviour.

Anyway, I always found Mutant Storm to be definitely superior to Geometry Wars.

$3.95? Why so cheap?

it's on Steam, so is Geometry Wars. GW is $3.95 and BC was $9.95 - guess which one got most sales.

Cheers
Charlie

Hi jkrankie,

How did you get BC on Steam?

Looks good BTW, keep up the good work

jk:
I don't think the price of Geometry Wars is what caused it to sell so many copies on Steam. They have TV advertisements, and have been in numerous game magazines, and gaming websites, and is on in-store kiosks, and of course there's word of mouth...

Seriously, I think you should charge at least $9.99 for it. Are you selling anywhere near 3x as many copies at $3.95 as you sold at $9.99? If not, then selling it at that price point doesn't make sense.

I was talking to someone who makes a lot of shareware games once, and I asked them how my game could possibly sell with the thousands of free games out there already. And he said that people will play your game demo, and if they're having fun playng your demo, then they're gonna buy your game, they're not gonna go looking for another similar game and play that instead.

So try charging $19.95 for your game and see how much money you make at that price point. You might be surprised to find you sell just as many copies but make 5x as much profit. My texture generator sells just as well at $34.95 as it did at $24.95, and I make a decent amount of profit on it now as a result.

@therevills - they asked me.

@sswift - i'm selling an awful lot more than i did when it was originally released last year, and way more than i was this time last month. it's still a bit early to tell what level of sales it will settle to however.

Also, i originally released the game in 2006 at $19.95 and lowered it to $9.95 last year, so it's been kicking around for quite a while really. Geo-Wars was released on Steam at the end of last summer and it did make an impact on sales. ultimately, i saw no reason not to compete with GW in the same space, after all they are cosmetically similar games, even if they play quite differently.

another thing is that i don't think what has become the indie standard of $19.95 for a game is right for every genre. sure it works well in the match-3 space but for arcade games and other more gamer-orientated genres i think it's too high; it's difficult to get that demographic to put their hands in their pockets without offering the game at the right price.

i've also stopped distributing a demo, instead i have a video which show the game in action. i think that the video gives a very good idea of what the game offers, and for $3.95 (£2ish) i think customers with consider it worth the risk. it certainly seems to be the case so far.

Cheers
Charlie

jk:
In my opinion the video you have there is rather worthless, since it's so blurry you can barely see the ship, and you can't tell if the music is the same as is in the game. And if that is the same music as in the game, maybe your game isn't selling because the music is incredibly annoying? It sounds like a cacophony of three songs playing at once.

I'm not trying to be mean here... The video shows me just enough that I'd be interested in seeing a high res video of the gameplay because it looks kinda neat, but it doesn't show me nearly enough to allow me to decide to buy it because of how blurry it is, and the irritating music kills any interest I may have had in it.


Put a high res video on your website and get some new music and I bet your game would sell great at $14.95. But I think it'd sell even better with a demo.

@jkrankie: could you please send me the download link? still waiting... :)

@sswift - i'll put a higher res video up. youtube doesn't really cut it does it.

@Doioran - have i sent it to you yet? i'm not at home today and i'm having to process payment via webmail on dial-up so i'm not able to get things out as quick as i might. did you check your junk box?

Cheers
Charlie

Doiron, just to be sure i've sent another link to you. to the address in your profile.

Cheers
Charlie

I didn't receive this one as well... since the paypal address and the one in the profile are on different servers, and since I don't delete Spam directly (just send in another folder and I checked that one as well), I guess it's a problem on your side. However, I received the paypal receipt. Please check the e-mail I sent you, I don't want to hijack your thread. :)

Edit: to be sure, I changed the address in my profile with a more reliable one.

ok, i've tried the new address in your profile from a different email account. the link should be in a message called Bullet Candy Registration.

hopefully this will work for you.

Cheers
Charlie

Everything's ok, thanks!

Wonder how they managed to get all the particle effects

Going from 19.95 to 9.95 will generate what they call a temporary spike in sales. Going from 9.95 to 3.95 will again, generate a spike. Things always even out in the end. Pick a price you're comfortable with so it's high enough you can do sales and also allow interested affiliates to sell it as well.

What is more important is targeted downloads. That's where you make your money. Putting games on generic download sites usually only affects your bandwidth and not your bottom dollar. Creating an excellent landing page is mandatory to maximize sales.

$3.95 is too low and shows little faith in your product. Bullet Candy is a kick ass game, but a niche game. Your market potential is very slim so it's important to maximize your profit with each sale. There's only going to be "x" amount of people interested in your game. And for the majority of those peeps, 3.95, 9.95 or even 14.95 isn't going to matter.

Instead of lowering your price, I would consider investing in better marketing, ppc advertising, etc. Actually the online video is a GREAT idea. Downloads by "lurkers" cost money, so this cancels out a great number of those downloads.

Your landing page should consist of:

* Nothing on the page but your product! Don't advertise other products, keep them focused on what got them there in the first place, your game!

* No external links to other sites, etc. You want to keep them at your page. Linking to other software sites, other games, etc, interferes with their impulse drive.

* Great screen shots. Clear, colorful screenshots is a must.

* Good end user comments. Fake em if you have to. Everyone does it.

* Highly visible buy now buttons. Send the message they're there to buy something. Nothing wrong with that.

* A video they can view. This is a great tool. But...you need a good video that's short and sweet and to the point quickly. Don't show too much, don't show too little.

* 100% Money back satisfaction guarantee.

* Colors that promote fun, positive vibe, etc. A static dark background sends a negative message to the brain. You want to send a positive vibe subliminally.

* Don't talk down about your price or game. "It's a measly $3.95". Makes your game sound cheap. Plus it sends a negative vibe to the user. Perhaps it's a measly 3.95 because it's a measly game?

When all else fails, give it to someone else to market. Seriously, programmers are usually horrible at marketing. Sometimes it's better to get 40% of something instead of 100% of nothing.

;)

yes, my website is pretty poor. i've got rid of the outside link and am looking for a better video host - i'm sticking with flash though.

Cheers
Charlie

jkrankie: thanks for the control info. Downloading now.

JK what did you do for the particle effects? seems like that would run pretty slow..

Did you use large images containing multible particles and use those as particles? Or was it each individual particle being dynamicaly updated?

all done individually with max2d. i found it plenty fast enough to shift tonnes of stuff around at the screen.

Cheers
Charlie

TLists or arrays?

i used Tlists for simplicity, although arrays are faster in most cases.

Cheers
Charlie

Cool, last question on the particles, how many do you normaly have on the screen at a given time?

quite a lot i guess, i never counted. normally i suppose 500 (backgrounds and starfield included), but when things kick off i suppose there could be 5-6 thousand. i also don't use cls each frame, instead i use a large black rectangle with alpha so that more particles appear to be on screen.

Cheers
Charlie

"i also don't use cls each frame, instead i use a large black rectangle with alpha so that more particles appear to be on screen."

Shhh... that's a secret only a few of us shooter coders know! :) :) :)

OMG, that's the most simple trick I've ever heard of, but at the same time, very simple. I feel stupid for not thinking of that. I guess it's cause I'm used to thinking in Blitz2D non-alpha terms. So redrawing all the particles is the only option.

But then don't the other ships appear to be blurred if they are moving? Wait I think they do, I thought they looked funny.

>"i also don't use cls each frame, instead i use a large black rectangle with alpha so that more particles appear to be on screen."



This is what I use as a blur effect, never thought of it for adding more 'fake' particles, nice idea

Yahfree, keep in mind, BulletCandy is no speed demon on slower machines. On my dev boxes, the fps fluctuates greatly, dipping under 25fps when alot of images are being rendered. ;)

Hmm - how reliable have you found your alpha fullscreen rectangle?

Technically you are not guaranteed to get the same backbuffer preserved after you do a Flip(). The o/s might allocate several back buffers and cycle through them, or you might not even get one. Assuming that its contents will be preserved is nice and efficient but I would expect that on some systems the screen will flicker and swap between out of date images, or show old unwated graphics.??

The safer way would be to render to a texture and keep the texture.

How are you doing your collision detection between the player ship and all the enemies/bullets?

I don't see why it should happen. You only have one dedicated buffer and the OS does not write wherever he wants. Double buffering has been used for more than a decade... setbuffer backbuffer() would be useless otherwise.

Simply put, the alpha rectangle fades the last frame, then the next is drawn without clearing the last one. When this cycle repeats, the alpha rectangule simply fades the current one plus the older frames. However, old frames are overimposed in the same buffer. This method in only practical with blank backgrounds, but works nonetheless.

the buffer thing has never been an issue as far as i know.

collisions are rect based, pixel perfiect being too slow. it uses the usual shooter trick of not having the collision rects the same size as the images.

Cheers
Charlie

Doiron: Would be nice but thats a myth
Most drivers today default to tripple buffering, if that is not enabled fast GPUs can create a chain of up to 7 backbuffers (-> this is the cause for BMs mouse latency issue back a few versions ago)

The only thing you can guarantee is that it is noobish stupid behavior to missassume (out of missing knowledge) that the frontbuffer will be the same when you flip twice. Because even if it is the same buffer, it does not mean that it hasn't been cleaned or modified through other effects, there is no consistency guarantee for a flipchain buffer after you disabled it (-> after flip)

What algorithm are you using to speed up your collision checks? Do you use a grid?

And as to the backbuffer thing, yes I know what double buffering is and how it works. Also there is no SetBuffer BackBuffer in BlitzMax. You should look at the OpenGL documentation. When you Flip() your backbuffer to make it visible on the display, you are NOT guaranteed what the contents of that buffer will be when you flip again. It *might* be the content that it had when you last flipped, OR it might be garbage, OR it might be some entirely new buffer which you haven't used yet, OR you might get a cycling sequence of several backbuffers.

The whole `mouse lag` issue is directly the result of the way that the graphics drivers sometimes allocate multiple back buffers and cycle through them so that the one you rendered to might not even be displayed until several frames later. I'm not saying that when you Flip() you would be several frames behind (especially if you have a fix for the lag issue), but I am saying that you cannot 100% trust that your buffer contents will be preserved after a flip. It would be GREAT if that were the case, and you could actually keep the buffer content, because that would make things like tilemap scrollers much easier - you could do things like dirty overlapping rectangles and all that. But you can't reliably do that.

I can tell you that on my iBook your game flashes and flickers like crazy because it uses multiple backbuffers and by the time your front buffer becomes your next used backbuffer it's several frames behind.

Of course I was talking about B3D, therefore not OpenGL but DX7... wasn't thinking about the fact that Bullet Candy is coded in BMax.

I don't use this technique so I didn't get deep about it, but I certainly recall that in DX9 you can set the backbuffercount to 1 (I don't know if OpenGL allows it, though I really hope so). I also assume that SwapEffect is set to discard. This answers to Dreamora as well (moderate your language).


It's jkrankie's game, not mine.

I discovered that some older video cards only have one buffer a while back when I was testing some of my BlitzPlus games on some crappy office PCs.

If you render the entire the screen each flip, is this flip issue not even a concern?

When i set out planning the game, i aimed for the average gaming PC spec at the time. I looked on the Steam website at their user stats.

My game isn't really a casual game as such so compatibility with office PCs wasn't really an issue, although it will run fine on most Intel GMA chips. considering the number of copies i've sold, the handful of users who have complained that it doesn't work for them on their machines is pretty insignificant - although i obviously help them to get the game to run if i can.

Cheers
Charlie