Monday, May 19, 2014

Shards is featured at Samsungapps.com!


 This post comes after long time as we were working hard on our last two games: Shards and Fruit Dating.

 Although the games were released already in December there is still a lot of work to be done. We primary released it for Android platform but as we want to be cross-platform as much as possible we released both the games for Samsung bada OS. Original resolution was 1280 x 800 pixels, but bada phones have lower resolution (800 x 480). When relaying on OpenGL to scale it down we experienced FPS decrease. It is not surprising as 800 x 480 / 1280 x 800 = 37,5%! It means that more than 60% of processed pixels were thrown away. In the end we had to downscale the graphics assets. If you own bada phone, you can see the result at Samsungapps here and here.

 We are also working on adjustments of the android versions to be suitable for other appstores. We already published Shards at Samsungapps and wow! we got featured in Czech version of the store:


 It is mainly thanks to support Samsung gives to local developers. But we hope Shards will find its fans. If interested click this button:

 And there is one more news related to Samsung. Samsung together with Intel are probably most active members of Tizen project - linux based OS for mobile phones. While it has not yet been released there is already tizenstore where developers can register their apps. We passed certification with both the games and they are now waiting for day zero when the store opens.

 Presently we are working on iOS version. The games can already be run, but there is still missing music and we have to manage game interruption at any point.

 Finally, there is very interesting project named Emscripten. This tool allows you to compile your C/C++ based game into javascript, so it can be run in browser. You usually has to do some changes into source, but not any drastic ones. We already managed to run Fruit Dating in it, although there is still some work waiting.

 Beside porting to various platforms we are also finding the right way to monetize our games. Selling the game is other half of independent developer's business. You are lost if you have great game but no one knows of it... I consider writing series of monthly monetization reports to share our experience and of course ... also to make some publicity to our games.