yobowargames - YoboWargames

December 29, 2017

The Shape of Things to Come

What is planned in 2018 for yobowargames?

Battle for Korsun

I was originally hoping to release this around late November but as usual I underestimated how much effort it takes to really finish a game.

As of now, the two player game is almost complete and I have all the translations for the game. In the new year, I will focus on the AI and really test it out.

The planned launch is now sometime in March/April 2018.

If this game does well there is the possibility of a follow-up game that has the same ruleset – meaning a lot less work for me to release.

Invaders from Dimension X!

I am also tentatively looking at April/May (possibly earlier) for the launch of this game. Presently I am testing one of the scenarios out and making sure all the Alien and Marine actions work correctly. Once that is done I will work on the second map/scenario and the campaign game. I also need menus to be created and designed.

As for Korsun, if this game does well there is the possibility of a follow-up game.

Kampfgruppe

One of the things I have learned is that creating games that have different rule sets means I cannot reuse a lot of the code I have written. This means a long time span between games coming out.

With Kampfgruppe I am planning to release smaller incremental modules to the game. I am pretty much decided on the base game being free. This model seems to be working for Slitherine’s Order of Battle. Also, I want to appeal to fans of games like ASL who are used to a game coming out in modules. As a side note, the rules for this game will not be based on ASL.

This will allow me to work on a smaller subset of the game with each release. Also with the base game being free, I am hoping there will be more people playing it. Finally, I can get community feedback a lot earlier and adjust the future of the game based on that.

I will be adding modding tools to this game. For it to be successful I need to have community involvement.

Social Media

In today’s world to get noticed you really have to be active in the social media.

I am going to tackle this in a couple of ways. First up is I have started a Flipboard Magazine that puts together a lot of stuff I read on the web on a daily basis.

I will also use my Facebook and Twitter feeds on a more regular basis.

Finally

Happy New Year and thank you for all your support in 2017

Lance

December 29, 2017December 29, 2017

A look back at 2017

2017 is almost over and it’s about time to have a review of how the year has gone. Let’s start by setting out what the year should be judged against.

I have a three-year plan to see if I can become a full-time developer writing wargames or for a new opportunity related to this area (wargames development) to present itself. Below is a “back of the napkin” outline of that plan.

Year one – get a game published
Year two – publish more games and get a track record
Year three – make enough money to be viable as a full-time vocation

Presently I have a full-time job and therefore can only work on this in my spare time.

So let’s start with some hard facts:

Games Published: 1

Platforms supported: 4 (Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android)

Developer Blogs: 51

Times Blog read: 1884

NewsLetters sent: 1

Reviews: 1

Below is where I earned net income for my first game. iOS sales were a nice surprise for me. Google sales were a disappointment – I am not sure if I made it free that downloads would be much higher. I made a small profit from my first game. From what I read that’s a great achievement on its own.

PC still rules when it comes to selling games.

Below are the number of page views on steam for Kursk. The first peak was when I launched Beta and the second when I officially launched the game. Interestingly the Steam sales show only tiny spikes and yet sales were relatively good in those periods.

Behind those hard facts is a year-long list of things I have learned:

Blogging is easy when you have a genuine interest in the things you write about and don’t try and cater to a supposed audience. I have tied over the years to start a blog on various subjects because it seemed to be what everyone else was doing. Now I have found my niche. I write about things that interest me and its almost like a personal diary.
Writing code is probably only about 50% of actually publishing a game. I am constantly surprised at how much time I spend on things like research, working/speaking with my graphics artist, 3rd party contacts for localization, documentation, preparing for the launch of a game etc.
Finishing a game is really really hard. I have read this many times on other blogs and it’s an absolute truth. Test, fix, test, fix and repeat. It’s truly grueling!
People are generous, kind and helpful. I have had people reach out to me offering to test my games, suggest improvements, respond to my blogs with their own experiences, write emails just thanking me for writing the game and the list goes on. Thank you – they are the ones who motivate me to continue.
Localisation needs to be planned and is time-consuming. I have yet to see the results from my labors on preparing my games for localization in 5 other languages. I hope the investment will pay off eventually.
Technical skills have increased in areas such as Photoshop, InDesign, Code Management, Java, Packaging, AI and others

I have also learned about things I need to improve on next year:

Plan, sketch and commit to paper the game before starting coding. Up until now I roughly plan out the game in my head then go to it.
Marketing… I either need (free) help or I need to learn a lot more to make this effective.
Social Media – I need to be a lot more active in 2018 on things like Twitter and Facebook.
Walk don’t run. I am doing too much at the same time because I know it needs doing when the reality is I am under no real time pressure.
Stay focused. I allowed myself to get diverted working on things that provided no real benefit.
Staying healthy and spending time with my family is important. I have got better with this as the year has gone on but I can improve more.

Personally year one has been a success. I published a game, made a little money, learned a lot and have a solid foundation for year two.

Scorecard: So far so good

December 13, 2017

See you again in 2018!

To my loyal readers – Happy Holidays!

Thank you for your support during 2017.

Normal service will be resumed in 2018 when we have Battle for Korsun and Invaders from Dimension X to look forward too.

December 4, 2017

Lets talk Invaders from Dimension X and Battle for Korsun

This week has been a pretty intensive week working on two games at the same time.

First up is Invaders from Dimension X. I had more graphics arrive and I spent time plugging them into the game. So now I have almost all the in-game graphics. Next up will be the Menu, splash screen, and some chrome items. Followed by work on the scenarios the game comes with.

I probably have about 70% of the gameplay working – its a case now of getting everything working together nicely.

Starting positions for scenario 1: Run the Gauntlet

Fire!

Mind the Dice!

Battle for Korsun

I sent off and received back translations for Battle for Korsun. I used contacts that I have built up on fiverr.com. Now comes the laborious task of making sure all the strings fit in the spaces I have allocated. With 6 languages it’s going to be a lot of work…

Below is the start of working on the German menu – notice the rather long word for Manual!

I also had the manual translated – so 6 sets of them to tidy up and publish.

For some reason this week I suddenly had a lot of hits on the Steam page I have set up for the game. I can only assume the game appeared in a list somewhere. Good news for me as now have more people who added the game to their wishlist.

Also, I am very heartened by the fact that in the top 5 languages of users who visited the page are Chinese, Russian and German. I am hoping this is a sign that the game will do well with these users.

November 27, 2017

Invaders from Dimension X!

This Thanksgiving weekend I took a break from Battle for Korsun and plugged in most of the new graphics I received last week for Invaders From Dimension X.

I now have most of the Alien actions (they are card driven) working and its starting to look really nice. Below are the Marine units. If you are interested in looking at the original boardgame then go here.

This weekend there was another steam sale and I had roughly the same number of sales as the Halloween sale for my Kursk game. I am interested to see how the game continues to sell next year.

November 19, 2017

My Birthday today!

Today is my birthday – Yay!

And I got this as a present – Double Yah!

In other news, I have got some more graphics in for Invaders from Dimension X. I will try and get all the new graphics into the game this week to see how everything is looking.

Below is a little taster of one of the Marine Counters.

Most of this week has been spent on bug fixing the two player version of Battle for Korsun and I have also almost finished writing the game instructions.

Once I am sure I have all the language strings I will send everything off for translation and get them put into the game. I am sure there are going to be a few issues with string lengths but once they are sorted out I will then send this version out for some testing.

I have decided I will launch the game in the new year once I have got the AI in and everything is looking good.

November 13, 2017

A mixed Bucket

This week turned out to be a mixed bucket of good and bad things with regards to game development.

Translating Kursk – Battle at Prochorovka

This weekend I had planned to import all the translations I received a couple of weeks ago into Kursk – Battle at Prochorovka. However, it transpired it was not quite as easy as I initially thought.

I had expected there to be problems with some of the string lengths being longer than the English version and thus I would need to do some work to get all languages fitting correctly in the areas assigned. What I had not expected was that the font sets I was using did not have all the characters I needed.

This is a real pain in the ass. If I switch to another font its likely that all the English text will also need reworking.

I have paused this effort while I get up the courage to tackle this in depth. The good thing is I can take this knowledge and make sure I am better prepared for the next game.

Battle for Korsun

Every evening this past week I have been whittling down the list of unfinished items needed to get the two player game working. This is the worst part of game development – getting the game to the finishing stage.

I still have the AI to work on but I need to get something finished so I can send it out for testing.

It’s also getting to the stage in development where I am nervous whether people will like the game. Luckily I am not dependant on the success of this game for a living but it would be nice for it to be liked by the market I am aiming at.

Invaders from Dimension X

I have been waiting for my graphics guy to come back with some more graphics for this game. They finally started to arrive this weekend.

As a little taster here is the front and back of one of the alien activation cards.

Finally

I have been trying out scrib.com. It looks like this could be an excellent way to do research my games or indeed anything else that takes your fancy. They do a 30 day trial and if you decide to subscribe its $8.99 per month.

I wanted to do some research for the Pacific war game I am thinking about for next year (one of many games I am thinking about!).

Day dreaming and wasting time on future projects!

November 11, 2017

Zero Painting

My wife has just started taking painting classes. So naturally, I commissioned her to do one for me!

Little does she know but she is now part of the wargame community….

November 6, 2017

Distractions

This weekend I allowed myself to get distracted. It started when I was sketching up some ideas in photoshop for Invaders from Dimension X for my graphics artist. Earlier in the week, I was wondering how to use google maps to accurately map a battlefield to a game.

After a little investigation, I found a couple of plugins for photoshop that could take an image from Google Maps and convert it into something pretty reasonably without the need for an expert artist.

So knowledge in hand I went at it…

I really want to write a Pacific War game so this might be the start.

I also purchased a couple of Samsung 500GB SSD’s this weekend. One I put into my wife’s Laptop and the other into my PC. I was a little disappointed with the resultant speed increase. While there is definitely some increased speed with disk related activities it was nothing like I expected. Maybe I am just being too greedy.

I did do some work on Battle for Korsun! Fixed some small bugs and worked on saving and loading games. Early in the week I wrote up a large part of the game manual. I have yet to start work on the AI.

Finally

The Steam Halloween sale is now over. I had a small but nice increase in sales. I might actually end the year just a few dollars down compared to game development expenditure. Good job I am not relying on this to feed the family!

October 28, 2017

General Update

Things have been very slow on the wargame front for the last few weeks due to personal circumstances, making it hard to focus on yobowargames.

Anyway, time for an update on how things are progressing.

Steam Sale

The Steam Halloween sale has now started. This is my first experience of a Steam sale so I was a little unsure what effect it would have on sales. I was notified a couple of weeks ago by Steam that the sale was happening and decided I would offer a 25% discount. Kursk has only been out for a few months and I don’t feel that a larger discount was needed at this stage.

I have definitely seen a spike in sales so what I had read about Steam sales being a good time for games sales seems to be true.

Battle for Korsun

I finally have all the graphics I need and have been working on improving the menu and getting it into shape for localization.

Below is pretty much the final version. It’s a little cluttered but I think it does the job.

Battle for Korsun - Menu — Battle for Korsun – Menu

Next up is playtesting and making sure there are no obvious bugs in the two players hotseat game, writing the manual and getting translations for everything. Then I will move onto the AI for the game.

I am still very undecided about beta testing as I found it to be a two-edged sword when running one with Kursk. It was great to get feedback on the game but I felt added pressure to finish the game quickly.

I was hoping to have the game finished by the end of November but I am beginning to think that early 2018 is more likely.

Invaders from Dimension X

I have been waiting for my graphics artist to finish the artwork for the Alien actions. I now have them all and they look really great. Next up is the UI for the game. I need to sit down and think about some ideas for how this should look and then discuss with my graphics artist.

Google Wifi

Since moving to our new place back in August we have suffered from poor wifi. We have a Comcast router and while it was just about adequate in our old place it struggles to provide a strong enough signal everywhere in the new one.

So I invested in Google Wifi, buying their 3 pack solution (a bit of an overkill but I was not sure if one unit would be enough). I have to say I am very impressed. Wifi speed went from 10 – 20mb to 150mb everywhere in the house. Everyone is very happy!