I created my own basketball bracket and ran the tournament at Kongregate.com. The Flash part was easy. The server (mySQL) was simple. The challenge was tracking the winners and losers and all the admin stuff. And so rev 1.n has better tools.
I released the entire project under the zlib license today on MountAbbey.com at Bracket Challenge. This is my first real code release for the site.
Coding is more fun than running a tournament. I came in 30th of around 300 -- most of them one time users. I was hoping for 2000. At least next time, I'll have the bugs removed.
Showing posts with label SiriGames. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SiriGames. Show all posts
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Friday, August 17, 2007
Kongregate
I published Square Nine at Kongregate tonight. They share 25% of add revenue. +15% if a game is exclusive. +10% is a game uses their statistics and high score API.
Join up.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Games: Slider on Wiicade
I released Slider onto Wiicade.com last week and made it past its probation period with a rating of 2.7/4.0. Over 1000 sessions have been played so far. The Flash project was resurrected to see what type of results I could expect from wiicade and the opera browser on the Wii.
The puzzle game is a solid implementation of a classic. The first time I played the physical puzzle I concluded it was going to be really hard and thus went about writing a computer program to solve it. Unfortunately a bug in the code led me to the incorrect solution that the puzzle was unsolvable. The next week, after I told this story about the unsolvable puzzle, a co-worker quickly found the solution.
The most obvious change made for this version was the addition of an easy and half-way mode that makes the 116+ move puzzle more accessible to first time players. The easy mode requires just 17 moves and the half-way point is around 62 moves. I didn't add any logging functionality to trace the success rate of various users.
However, the second major change was to give out colored stars when a user completes one of the puzzle modes. A big gold star is awarded for the perfect solution. Large silver stars go to users getting close. And everyone else solving the puzzle gets a bronze star. The ratings may not be obvious enough to motivate a second attempt though. I suspect if I showed the number of moves actually required, Type A personalities would try again. Another limitation is that the stars are not persistent. However, I think that this is a really good first pass at ranking system.
The third change was to add sound. A quick prototype changes into a polished product with some quick sounds. The sounds are not great but enough.
The traffic to SiriGames hasn't been changed much but I expected the growth to be slow.
The puzzle game is a solid implementation of a classic. The first time I played the physical puzzle I concluded it was going to be really hard and thus went about writing a computer program to solve it. Unfortunately a bug in the code led me to the incorrect solution that the puzzle was unsolvable. The next week, after I told this story about the unsolvable puzzle, a co-worker quickly found the solution.
The most obvious change made for this version was the addition of an easy and half-way mode that makes the 116+ move puzzle more accessible to first time players. The easy mode requires just 17 moves and the half-way point is around 62 moves. I didn't add any logging functionality to trace the success rate of various users.
However, the second major change was to give out colored stars when a user completes one of the puzzle modes. A big gold star is awarded for the perfect solution. Large silver stars go to users getting close. And everyone else solving the puzzle gets a bronze star. The ratings may not be obvious enough to motivate a second attempt though. I suspect if I showed the number of moves actually required, Type A personalities would try again. Another limitation is that the stars are not persistent. However, I think that this is a really good first pass at ranking system.
The third change was to add sound. A quick prototype changes into a polished product with some quick sounds. The sounds are not great but enough.
The traffic to SiriGames hasn't been changed much but I expected the growth to be slow.
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