IP Incubator Club Thread 2013: Bi-Week-003: May 6-19- 2013

#21

Hi Everyone,

Thank you for the comments and suggestions. I just want to address some things here real quick. Yes, the gameplay video does need some music, right now it just plays some of the ambient sounds that are in-game. Most people tend to just turn off the music in the actual game or play what they have on there playlist, but I do agree that the trailer needs some sprusing. I was trying to add some music, but after no sleep for 24 hours straight and trying to get it out on Monday before Europe gets to work, was a little draining. Anyone know of some good sites for RF music? - purchasable is fine.

@Banman - that is actually a really good idea you have and would be great to some how find a way to implement it.

@grantmoore3d - thanks for the suggestions. I have to check out the gavedev subforum. I posted in the www.reddit.com/r/IndieGaming forum upon release, but I didn’t even realize that one.

@CGIPadawan - I think there is a chance that you might have missed some of my postings earlier in this thread or on the previous week. I just cut it down for this weeks post so it doesn’t get too lengthy. The Apple description (Full one in the App Store and I posted it on an eariler IP week) pretty much explains all of the gameplay, functions, etc. We have a big game so it gets kind of difficult sometimes to narrow it down on what is best suited for the description areas.

The Blaster is actually a floating sphere-like object, with a forwarding vector, that gets its energy from the Orbs that it blasts through. The physics itself is pretty neat and each World has its own unique elements. I.E. World Sky has positive and negative poles (forces) that alter your Blasters trajectory.

One thing is for sure though, I have definitely not been sitting around hoping for the best by just using one medium. I have been working really hard, pretty much doing the marketing full time for many hours each day. I have been contacting loads of people and reviewers (mentioned in my first post above) and I continue to keep pushing forward.
Everyday I think of new tactics and search for options to help get the word out there. I have a personally generated list with a couple hundred contacts/forums/individuals, that I continue to plow through each day. I was just empahsising that even being really high in Apple’s New Paid Apps list doesn’t gaurantee visiblity, and what I mentioned above is true as many others are experiencing the same thing in the mobile market - over saturation as been a long issue for sometime now, making it difficult for Indies. I have been doing research for a long time - given the size of my list - and it is just a notable issue that others should be aware of.

We are hoping or the best, but we are taking and trying to make our own luck, and not just relying on one form of exposure. We definitely know that you have to “take the bull by the horns” so to speak, if you want to be successful and that is what we are doing - just takes a while with only two people. :slight_smile:

Please keep the suggestions and conversation rolling, it is greatly appreciated and all feedback is welcome. It definitely helps ourselves and others to refine our approaches.

Thanks,
Rudy

#22

OK… then you definitely need to make Featurettes that focus on GAMEPLAY and you need to start adopting language that associates the game with similar “Ball bouncing but with a twist” games like Arkanoid… and emphasize how your game is better.

And then you need to never get tired of answering the same questions over and over and over again. Remember that Blaster X is going to be “new” to everyone at least once (including me).

Each time, you do the same thing, you claim Blaster-X “improves over Arkanoid. It’s better than Tetris. It does this and that and has this feature and that feature let me show you.”

I can understand how you feel (I get the same questions over and over again about REVERSION for example) but you cannot answer “I already told it back in earlier pages” …

Nobody’s going to care. If you start interacting with the fandom and potential players, you need to be ready to essentially parrot the same opening pitch over and over again like you’re doing the talk show circuit.

P.S.: Same thing about the levels, if each of the levels have a unique gameplay feature? Then each is another featurette and you talk solely about that and you have the same closing in all of them that directs people to 2gmg dot com and your FB and the Apple page… etc etc.

P.P.S.: Oh and another point is that regardless of whether or not you stated or explained any core gameplay or features earlier, the point is your trailer needs to say that also (even if it means it is saying it again after you did). MOST people in the world will be seeing the trailer first.

#23

Marketing is one of those big unknowns to me at this point but I know it’s going to be one of the most difficult parts of developing a commercial product. The biggest challenge I think is figuring out a way to market something when you don’t have a budget to advertise.

Well I think that is where we can all come in handy. WE can make a small army of “talkers”.

I think we should find a way to promote each other.

I would be happy to help promote any of you all and submit your stuff to various websites, talk about it online.

If it is a movie things like “Ain’t It cool news” Twitch, Toplessrobot, I09, Geeks Are sexy or whatever sites I gather. But myself alone would not be enough. It would probably help if 100 of us wrote the same sites. I think at that point we could even get featured. How hard is it to write one thing and submit it to different avenues to get attention for each other? I mean if 1 of us writes Wired for example how much attention to we get. If 100 of use write all individual stuff how much attention could we get?

Just a thought. It would definately make IP grow

#24

Hi, just a short update, not much to report, got distracted on another project…

To confirm that I have been spending a bit too much time working on Medievil themes I decided to “model” some granite panels to cover the bottom of my house. We raised the house last year and now are covering this up.

Taking raw slabs of this cool volcanic rock (I got 4 tons…) I am slowly but surely creating a castle wall style finishing using a 4 1/2 inch grinder, a hammer and a chisel. Very cool. It will be mounted on Durock wallboard with mesh and then concrete finish. I will then use a straight grinder to even out the lines then paint/polish the stones and then grout. Fun, fun. Hopefully it will look AWESOME. Way better than the 4$ a square foot plastic covering that looks like rocks for sure.

There is/will be more photos on the facebook page showing the original rocks and working setup.

I did hire someone to do voiceover work so this is good. Also going to try rendering my footage at 150 dpi instead of the default 72; see if this helps the “crispness” factor".

Nice work presented here; looking good and seems people are getting inspired.
I like some of the images but found one (banman’s) had an touch of Ironman with the Arc reactor center, but maybe just it’s an influence.

As far as marketing I would say that it takes money to make money and get noticed. If you spend thousands of hours creating something it just might be worth spending a couple of bucks on YouTube adverts to get the word out. Organic is cool but consider that the big studios spend ALOT on advertising and you don’t. Maybe a 25$ a month little program would be a reasonable investment.

Have a great weekend…

#25

Hi CGIPadawan,

You have some great points there, thanks for the feedback. The part where I mentioned that I posted a couple of threads back, was just a correlation to this IP Incubator thread, I was just trying not to say it on every intro post, as I thought maybe it might bore people and try to keep the size of my posts shorter by just keeping my posts to what I was doing at that time. You make a good point though, I am going to have to squeeze something into my description for people who just might pick up the thread - good idea. Whenever I post some where else outside of this IP Incubator thread, then yes, I try my best to always tell what the game, Blaster X HD is about and to clarify what the game may be, and why it is better than the competition. For one, I think we might be the only ones offering over 400 Levels to start, especially for 99cents right now.

The gameplay video that is currently posted, was more-or-less a quick scramble thing that we put together over the weekend so we had something for Monday, this way there wasn't too much of a gap. Unfortunately, there were some issues with the recording and other things so it made for a tight deadline. We actually are working on a Raw movie capture of the game, without editing, so people can get a better sense of everything. I was also thinking of doing many more videos in the future, possibly one for each World to showcase its strenghts. Also, like you mentioned  I am going to be working on making some videos that show more of the gameplay uniqueness...I think that will help. It might take a little bit to get them done, by I think having a steady flow of new material to show will keep the awareness going and reach out to new potential players.

Thanks Again for the Ideas,
Rudy

Blaster X HD: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blaster-x-hd/id615851024?mt=8

#26

Allright, it’s a little hard to keep track of everything but I’ll do my best…

I like that animated gif/comic format, first time I see something like this. Can be a fun way to develop your IP.

How big are these kaijus supposed to be?

There’s a very nice vibe going on in your game, I like it. I think you’re striking just the right chord with this mix of old style adventure game and high-def graphics. There’s definitely going to be a market for it.

Brings back good memories of Planescape Torment, Fallout and even Beneath a Steel Sky for some reason.

Best of luck with your release. I’m sure doing a couple more videos will help a lot getting the attention you need!

Looking good! I really like how the Self-Destructive abs pop out with the lava texture.

If I may suggest, I just had a look on your website and you might want to change the main font, I find it really hard to read.

In our case, we’re trying to avoid resorting to outside help as much as possible. We’ve got a lot of complex animation to do but we still feel like the time we’d need to spend briefing everyone and dealing with retakes wouldn’t be worth it.

It’s so much easier to just film our animation references together, validate the timing in our edit and get going. We rarely have to make drastic changes since we’re usually all on the same page.

But the fact we’re are three guys working on this helps a lot. We each have our strenghts and complement each other pretty well.

Yeah, we’ve looked into that. We actually have a list of every festival for which a first prize would qualify us for an oscar nomination, so we’ll be aiming for those ones first.

Thank you guys! :slight_smile:

#27

I like that animated gif/comic format, first time I see something like this. Can be a fun way to develop your IP.

How big are these kaijus supposed to be?

They are about 10 for the Sasquatch and 30 for Snailo but there will be some variations. And I’ll have these Kaiju fighting Godzilla size Kaiju. I always loved seeing when humans would fight giants but what about giants fighting even bigger giants in the same fashion.

Snailo does change sizes past 30 feet tall. Megan the other character on the journey goes from about 5 feet to 100 ft. She is like an ultraman type character.

I always wanted a gif style or cinematic style comic and with today’s technology can do it. :slight_smile:

#28

I understand. A lot of people here talk about the battle to just MAKE something (and that is definitely a big battle). But the WAR is in getting it seen, getting it appreciated, getting people to see the value of what was made.

That is another whole planet of fighting.

For example all the AAA games, even with all their resources, know that a full web campaign, many featurette videos, a plethora of reviews, etc. still require between 4 to 6 months or even 8 to 10 months to really get revved up.

The point is, even with a wide net, you need time for that net to settle in.

Considering you had mostly just a trailer and a few other things “on the Monday”. Then you’re now looking at a long fight. At least your game will already be in stores…

I agree with what some other people posted about going to Indie-specific communities first. I would have preferred, like in the AAA strategies to have done this 6 months before going retail… but we’re there now.

It’s a long climb… and it’ll be difficult watching the sales trickle.

Take heart though, even Rovio didn’t get it right the first time (they had a game before “Angry Birds” called “King of the Cabbage World” (renamed “Mole War”) - which obviously did not achieve the same level of success).

That’s the last part of this initial journey. At some point, you’re just going to have to make the sequel (or a new game) and move on. Determining that point in time (because even the best and most popular games have a time limit on shelves) is tricky, but that time will come.

#29

Take heart though, even Rovio didn’t get it right the first time (they had a game before “Angry Birds” called “King of the Cabbage World” (renamed “Mole War”) - which obviously did not achieve the same level of success).

I think they had way more games even before they hit their big success.
That is totally crazy. I think they had about 40 games.

#30

Whether it was 4 games before “Angry Birds” or 40 games before that… basically Rovio went through the cycle of “OK… We move on”… and eventually hit Angry Birds.

That’s what I meant in the last paragraph… eventually you move on… it’s possible one day you achieve success with something you really don’t like as much as the one you thought would work very well.

But that’s life.

#31

@Rez007
NAME: Blaster X HD
COMPANY: 2GMG (2 Guys Making Games)

Rudy, I like the latest gameplay trailer. Interesting looking and neatly done game that ‘might’ be addictive. As others have said, it’s still hard to guess how exactly it works and what do we do so I will wait for your next gameplay video. Good luck!

As for the marketing, I guess for your next game you should definitely consider opening a developer diary or something. Similar to Stasis, and many other indie developers. That definitely helps building the initial fan following.

I have a question for everyone though, are there any affordable companies/freelancers who can do Internet Marketing etc. for a project like ours (games/comics/mixed media etc.). Creating an IP and promoting it at the same time basically doubles the work and not proving to be very efficient IMO.

#32

@banman7
I LOVE KAIJU

The project will be broken down into 4 parts.

  1. Paper print 2) Online animated gif 3) App 4) animated online series which will later be compiled and sold on DVD.

Your latest designs look cooler than previous ones. It seems you are developing the story from character designs. And your character designs are changing on the go too. As you are planning a lot in coming time, do you think it’s better to plan out a structured story/script first? If you have written it down already probably it’s a good time to re-iterate with new characters and make it better. When you have several mediums the risk to waste time also goes high. If you have done all this already then great. I am just assuming this because your concepts are changing on the go. Good luck! :slight_smile:

@Pyke
and the sounds of the empty bowels of the ship echo through the engineering decks.

This reminds me, the sound design in your gameplay videos is really adding a LOT to the mood. You doing it yourself too?

@Frotze
CONCEPT NAME: Le Gouffre

The autumn sequence in your blog looks great. As I am planning to submit to some festivals myself have you considered the cost of film conversion too? I have yet to explore that but I remember somebody telling me it’s quite expensive. Not all festivals require it but the big ones do. The festival fee is already going to take a chunk from my savings.

@grantmoore3d
CONCEPT NAME: Soliloquy of a Madman

Within the depths of his own mind, a man seeks the answer to an unknown question. Facing fragmented thoughts, haunting memories and reflections of self, the actions taken will lead to enlightenment or self-destruction

Your project description is always quite intriguing to me. And I really want to see how it translates into the game. I am not sure if I have played something like this before.

Self Destruction works. What’s with the growing grass in the enlightened version?

#33

Concept Name: SCHIRKOA

[b]Website:[/b] [http://www.schirkoa.com/](http://www.schirkoa.com/)

[b]CGTalk WIP thread: [/b][http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthr...f=153&t=1103500](http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=153&t=1103500)

[b]Project Description: [/b]
SCHIRKOA is the story (an IP maybe) I will be trying to develop in coming years. 
   At the moment I am aiming at an animated Short Film. Followed by a  graphic novel. And then let's see what else can come out. It's set in a  dystopian city, involves bagheads and some other 'creatures' :)

Status Number: 3

[b]Team Members:[/b] 2
Ishan (Writing/Directing/CGI/Graphic Novel/everything else)
Yiming (Rigging/Animation/Simulations)

What went right this week: Defined the style of graphic novel. Finalized a bunch of characters (families) in the city of Schirkoa.

[b]What went wrong:[/b] Couldn't work at all for a week as I was out of town. But it was fun :D. And I feel it was important.

Show & Tell:

Family portrait of family 197A. There will be more character sheets in the coming weeks for different families in Schirkoa. The render below also defines the style of the graphic novel. Next update will be the official synopsis.

#34

To put the game mechanics very simply, I intend the gameplay style to be similar to other Action Adventure games like Assasin’s Creed or Uncharted, but with a bit more emphasis on the hack and slash style combat you’d find in God of War. The vast majority of the game is going to be exploring the environment, encountering bad guys and defeating them with the combat techniques you have available. Pretty standard stuff in terms of how a lot of action adventure games play.

Where my game differs is that I am not making it purely for entertainment’s sake, but instead I want it to be more of an art project with an intended message that the player discovers through the game mechanics. What I want to express is that when looking at yourself and you come across something you don’t like (such as a painful past memory, or something you don’t like about yourself) that you shouldn’t fight it but instead embrace your faults lovingly so that you can change them towards something positive / productive. By fighting them through suppression, anger or other means, you only end up hurting yourself and personal progress is impossible.

So one of the key mechanics in the game is that if you use brutal combat techniques to defeat the enemy (punching, slashing, beating into the ground, etc…), you will move towards self-destruction. As you move closer to self-destruction the game will get darker, you will get darker and the enemies will become more difficult. To the point where if you are fully “evil” you simply can’t beat the game and will be returned to the beginning.

If instead you choose to go the path of enlightenment by using non-voilent techniques (which I’m hoping will look more like very well-timed evades and re-directions of enemy attacks, to the point where you almost “dance” with the enemy) the game will become lighter, enemies will become easier and you eventually can just walk through the last level, transforming everything around you to light simply by existing.

The key to making this message happen is that the player must first fail by going the typical route of attacking their foes (which from a gamer’s perspective, is probably the more “fun” way of playing the game at first glance). I want them to fail at least once. I hope to entice them towards the “good” side by making those non-violent attacks more difficult to pull off on the easy enemies but reward them with a more visually pleasing combo. Sort of like when you can beat the game with the basic combo set, but once you realize you’ve got a special move, you want to try and use it because it’s awesome.

I’m still figuring it out, but I hope that helps explain my overall intended direction. I’m pretty much spoiling the biggest plot twist I intend for my game here, but that’s only because it’s the IP-club thread, I’ll be trying my best to leave all of this hidden to the player once it gets to that point. Any questions / critiques / comments are welcome as I’m still figuring out exactly how I want to build this as I go.

The growing grass is kind of broken right now, but what I’m going for artistically is that once you achieve enlightenment, you are creating life and prosperity everywhere you go. So fields of grass will pop up around you, butterflies, etc…

#35

CONCEPT NAME: HYPERREALITY ENGINE

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
A hybrid real-time ray tracing rendering engine that uses ray tracing and rasterizing render techniques to deliver real-time performance of 3D scenes with animation.

STATUS NUMBER: 3

TEAM MEMBERS:(Voluntary)
Jules Bushell

START DATE
April 2012

ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE : (Voluntary) -
April 2014 (?)

WIP THREAD:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthr...97&page=1&pp=15

WHAT WENT RIGHT THIS WEEK:
STill of course modelling the 3D world for the engine tech demo. I’m not a 3D modeller but learnt a lot the past week or so to do with texturing; applying base textures, building up with dirt and weathering etc. etc.

WHAT WENT WRONG:
Ran out of time to do what I wanted recently because of working 15+ hour days. Sorry for slow progress.

SHOW AND TELL:
Nothing new worthy to show yet (WIP).

Jules

#36

That concept is definitely intriguing, I like the style. The cool thing about having bags on their heads is you’ll save a lot of time modeling and animating faces in your short. On the other hand, you might have a hard time expressing emotions. Have you thought about that?

About that pic you posted, does the man on the right have a bag shaped like a skull or is it an actual skull? He brings a cool eerie feel to the overall picture, I like him. :slight_smile:

Thanks! I thought most festivals nowadays accepted digital files but you may be right about the bigger ones. One thing I read is that if you’re chosen for the oscars preselection, you have to send your film converted in a matter of a few weeks so that’s something we’re definitely keeping in mind. I’m really not sure about the price though, was it something like a thousand bucks? Maybe someone who’s done it before can enlighten us.

#37

@grantmoore3d
The key to making this message happen is that the player must first fail by going the typical route of attacking their foes (which from a gamer’s perspective, is probably the more “fun” way of playing the game at first glance). I want them to fail at least once. I hope to entice them towards the “good” side by making those non-violent attacks more difficult to pull off on the easy enemies but reward them with a more visually pleasing combo. Sort of like when you can beat the game with the basic combo set, but once you realize you’ve got a special move, you want to try and use it because it’s awesome.

How big is your game? If you have played Dishonored, you know that you may not need to let the players replay the game. If you play by killing everyone around producing ‘chaos’ the ending is going to be chaotic and unpleasant. If you play through stealth all the way not getting detected by most and killing lesser people causing less ‘chaos’ the ending is less unpleasant and positive. Have a look - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca4EdhcSiK0

So just a thought. Probably you can leave the choice to the players. There could even be a third stage/ending (neither destruction nor enlightenment) where you just end up as an ordinary person (killing+stealth in proportion) trapped in the cycles of life.

@Frotze
That concept is definitely intriguing, I like the style. The cool thing about having bags on their heads is you’ll save a lot of time modeling and animating faces in your short. On the other hand, you might have a hard time expressing emotions. Have you thought about that?

About that pic you posted, does the man on the right have a bag shaped like a skull or is it an actual skull? He brings a cool eerie feel to the overall picture, I like him. :slight_smile:

Yup they are a big time saver! I am basing their emotions on simple expressions like smile, anger (morphs on the bagheads). Besides, they might take away bags somewhere in the story. You never know :wink: The man on the right is a skullhead. I like him too. He is simply a senior citizen.

There is a cool informative podcast regarding film conversion. It’s old but still very useful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xgMwJcu75x0#!

#38

Hi Everyone,

Sorry about my delay in posting, just trying to keep everything in order and playing a little “catch-up” with the busy week I had. Thanks everyone for the ideas and suggestions - I definitely take note and make improvements anywhere I can.

I have some good news that we recently received, and that was from Kotaku. For those of you who may not know, Kotaku is a very big news outlet for gaming and other tech information. Kotaku actually just gave our game, Blaster X HD a feature/mention as a recommended game to play for the week. Our game was also mentioned in the same article as Zynga’s new Running with Friends. That is some pretty big exposure and is also exciting to see and be judge by one’s peers. I posted the link below if anyone is interested is reading.

Blaster X HD on Kotaku: https://kotaku.com/your-weekend-is-going-to-be-horrible-bring-some-gaming-500507250

In addition to the news above, we recently just posted some new gameplay video that features some aspects to our game, but most notably shows some footage for Worlds Horizon and District. Please let me know what you guys think.

//youtu.be/lA_DBIIV08g

Blaster X HD: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blaster-x-hd/id615851024?mt=8

Thanks,
Rudy

#39

Ok time to update the list.
I would encourage all to update your status,
since I plan to plug ONE PROJECT next week.

STASIS[color=dimgray]______________Games ______Dec 2010_____04-16-2013 [/color]Link
NeverEndingPrincessStory[color=dimgray]Animation____TBD__________04-16-2013 Link[/color]
Le Gouffre[color=dimgray]_______________Animation July 2011______04-16-2013 Link [/color]
Top secret project[color=dimgray] ________Animation TBD_________04-16-2013 Link
Spec Commercial__________Animation___ April 2013___04-17-2013[color=#696969] Link[/color]
I am the Antagonist[color=#696969]______Cross Media TBD__________04-17-2013 _Link[/color]
[color=white]SCHIRKOA_______________Animation___ Mid 2010______04-17-2013[color=#696969]___ Link[/color][/color]
HYPERREALITY ENGINE_____3D Engine ___ April 2013_____04-18-2013[color=#696969]___ Link [/color]
Blaster X HD[color=dimgray]_____________Games ______End of 2010____04-25-2013 ___Link
Soliloquy of a Madman[color=dimgray] _____ Games _____January 2013___04-23-2013 ___Link
[/color]Le Gouffre _______________Animation_____ July 2013_____ 04-23-2013___[size=2][size=2]Link
[/size][/size]I LOVE KAIJU_____________Animation[color=#696969]___ April 2013______05-04-2013[color=#696969]___ Link[/color][/color]
NeverEndingPrincessStory __ Animation June 2010_______04-29-2013_ Link
[/color][/color]

#40

Hi Jules,

When I tried clicking on your WIP link, it came up as “page not found.”

Just wanted to let you know. :slight_smile: