Mobile Games Development: 2016

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Mobile Income Report #29 - November 2016

What I did in November

spent some time with work on client projects. Will bring screenshots in next report,
added new levels to HTML5 version of Pirates! - the match 3. Still have to test it:

worked on Unity version of Pirates. Currently, main menu, map selection and map scenes are working. Only missing little thing is game itself :-)

if you examined screenshot above, you may noticed some markers on map. In November I invested into a few Unity plugins:

Text Mesh Pro - really great plugin for working with texts,
Pro Camera 2D - very nice plugin for various camera handlings,
ProBuilder Advanced - tool for rapid prototyping of 3D levels,
UFPS: Ultimate FPS - base platform for FPS games

So, my Christmas happen already in November. Last two plugins are 3D related and shows my interests in next year - I finally want to create also something in 3D!

my first book "Create procedural endless runner in Phaser with TypeScript" reached 80 sales.

Report

Here is first of last two income reports. I decided to end it in December to close year 2016. It started as income report from mobile games, but it is more and more about HTML5 games as income from mobile ones is still pretty low. Picking such a small figures from many internet consoles is boring and I decided to invest saved time into writing more tutorials and technical articles next year.

Here is income from mobile games in November:

Figures are slightly better than in October ($84,3)

As usually, the highest income is from ads.

Income from HTML5 hired work and HTML5 licences for November is $1 480,9.

Income from my book for November is $198,8.

Total income for November is $1 787,0. It is 28,3% decrease, compared to October ($2 490,8).

In December I am again working on some client projects. Beside it, I am rewriting Pirates into Unity and making new levels for it.

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Mobile Income Report #28 - October 2016

What I did in October

in October I finished another one-button game for Gamee platform. Its name is Gravity Ninja and it is fast paced runner with gravity flipping. You can play it here. Now, when writing this post, it already has 2.4 millions of plays!

my first book "Create procedural endless runner in Phaser with TypeScript" reached 60 sales.

finally, I got back to "Pirates - the match-3". But in little bit different way. While finishing HTML5 version on one side, I started to convert it into Unity on other side. We also have new main menu screen:

Report

Here is income from mobile games for October:

There is big decrease, compared to September ($124,8). But it is also true, that I did no changes or updates to my mobile apps for very long time.

As in past, the highest income is from ads.

Income from HTML5 hired work and HTML5 licences for October is $2 063,8.

Income from my book for October is $342,7.

Total income for October is $2 490,8. It is 20,9% decrease, compared to September ($3 147,8).

In November I am again working on games for clients. I finally got back to Pirates - I am working on HTML5 version as well as on Unity version. I am starting to take my Unity exploration seriously.

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Mobile Income Report #27 - September 2016

What I did in September

finished another one-button game for Gamee platform. It is called Ridhwan's Unicorn. In this game I used P2 physics and developed some new procedures for my future games.

last time I mentioned Jewel Jungle game made for Famobi, but I did not attached screenshots. So, here are some as I think Tomas made really nice graphics.

sales of my first book "Create procedural endless runner in Phaser with TypeScript" are getting close to first 50 sales. Currently, there is 46 of them.

working on another client game. Next, month I will add details and screenshots.

Report

Bellow you can see table with data for income from mobile games:

There is $9 increase, compared to August ($115,8). As in past, strongest asset in my mobile portfolio is Shards.

Most of the income still comes from ads - 90% (85% in August).

Income from HTML5 hired work and HTML5 licences for September is $2 845,70.

This month, there is new type of income first time - income from my book. For September it earned $177,30.

Total income for September is $3 147,80. It is 51,7% increase, compared to August ($2 074,40), but not all the earnings are mine (I have to share with other team members).

In October, I am again working on some client projects. Unfortunately, I still did not get back to Pirates and my Unity experiments.

Monday, September 26, 2016

Mobile Income Report #26 - August 2016

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previous parts
Mobile Income Report #25 - July 2016
Mobile Income Report #24 - June 2016
Mobile Income Report #23 - May 2016
Mobile Income Report #22 - April 2016
Mobile Income Report #21 - March 2016
Mobile Income Report #20 - February 2016
Mobile Income Report #19 - January 2016
Mobile Income Report #18 - December 2015
Mobile Income Report #17 - November 2015
Mobile Income Report #16 - October 2015
Mobile Income Report #15 - September 2015
Mobile Income Report #14 - August 2015

:
:
Mobile Income Report #1 - June 2014
Apps page - Portfolio (what are my assets?)

If you do not want to miss any of my Income Reports you can follow me on Twitter. Just click the button above.

Under Apps page you can see my portfolio. It is list of the games that are then reported in Income Reports.

What I did in August

most exciting point first. My first book is finished and is available for purchase. Name is "Create procedural endless runner in Phaser with TypeScript". Book is one long tutorial, that guides reader through process of creating endless runner. Final game can be seen and played here. In individual topics reader will go through creating very flexible generator, skeletal animations for main goblin character, adding new features into game (like spikes, bonus jumps), adding sounds and music, etc. Of course, popular questions on handling different screen sizes are also covered. Book can be purchased here at Gumroad.

Create procedural endless runner in Phaser with TypeScript

we finished exclusive reskin of our Flat Jewels Match 3 game for Famobi. It is named Jewel Jungle and I think Tomas from Littlecolor made really nice graphics. You can play final game Jewel Jungle,
did some other work for clients - next month I will publish screenshots from very crazy game,
purchased book "Unity Games by Tutorials" from RayWenderlich.com site. They are making very quality tutorials and I learned a lot from it. Book is still in early access, but will be finished soon.

Report

Here is report for mobile games in August:

There is $25 increase, compared to July ($90,6), which was very weak month. But, it is still behind figures from the first half of the year. All earnings are determined by Shards, as usual.

Most of the income still comes from ads - 85% (84% in July).

Income from HTML5 hired work and HTML5 licences for August is $1 958,60.

Total income for August is $2 074,40. It is 9,1% decrease, compared to July ($2 282,80) and not all the earnings are mine (I have to share with other team members), but I am happy with it.

In September I am still working on some client works. I hope, I will finally return back to Pirates!

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Phaser book on making procedural endless runner finished

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After a few months of work I finally finished my first Phaser book. Its name is "Create procedural endless runner in Phaser with TypeScript".

In the book you develop procedural endless runner game "Goblin Run". You can see and play final result at http://sbc.littlecolor.com/goblinrun. It is using popular HTML5 engine Phaser and code is written in TypeScript. TypeScript is superset of JavaScript and if you are JavaScript programmer you should have no problems to follow.

Game features procedural level generation, spikes, in-air bonus jumps and gold to gather. Whole book is one big tutorial from setting up project to finishing polished game.
Book is accompanied with complete resource files as well as with folders with source project for every chapter. All source code in book and in files is well documented.

You can get it at Gumroad, as well as see there detailed table of contents.

This book is not for absolute beginners, who are learning what is variable and how to make loop. It is for people who have some basic knowledge what is Phaser, how to make something simple with it and now want to make something “bigger”, what will be beyond simple how-to examples. Book is one big tutorial that does not end with working prototype, but ends with complete game.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Mobile Income Report #25 - July 2016

What I did in July

worked on two small games for Gamee platform. One of them, Rio Sprint, was already released and you can play it here:

did some small work on levels for "Pirates! - the match-3", but not too much. I was negligent of it lately which I would like to change,
most of the time I spent on writing my first book. Currently I have over 140 pages and I am almost finished. Books theme is how to write procedural endless runner with Phaser and Typescript. Reader following steps in book will create game like this:

Report

Income from mobile games in July is simply tragic:

There is decrease from $143,1 in June to $90,6. From what I can see from August data, there is return back to better figures.

Share of income from ads is stable. There is almost no income from in-apps this month.

Income from HTML5 hired work and HTML5 licences for July is $2 192,20.

Total income for July is $2 282,80.

In August I am still working on some client works. In the end I would like to return to Pirates! Also work on book continues and I hope I will finish first draft soon.

Sunday, July 17, 2016

Mobile Income Report #24 - June 2016

What I did in June

in the very end of June finished Football Star game for Gamee platform. You can play it here:

during month we did small adjustments requested by customers to HTML5 version of Shards. It is now published by Famobi and you can play it here:

started work on levels for our big game "Pirates! - the match-3". We build Cordova version with Google Analytics for testing. In Google Analytics we collect data on how difficult it was to finish levels. Currently, we have levels for half of the first world:

in the end of June I started work on HTML5 version of our older Android/iOS game Flat Jewels Match 3. It is now finished and we are looking for sponsors. Game is very simple, but fast paced match 3 game. You are given simple tasks in 150 levels or you can target highest score in Time Attack mode:

during work on Flat Jewels I wrote small tutorial, that was published in beginning of July. In it I explain how to add images into font definitions, so you can print them along with other text,
started to write book! Its theme is how to make complete procedurally generated horizontal infinite runner in Typescript with Phaser engine. First 5 chapters (about 50 pages) is finished.

Report

Here is income from mobile games:

It is better, than previous month ($119,6), which was really weak. I am afraid, that July will be bad month again.

More income from paid apps and from in-apps decreased Ads share from 91% in May to 83%. But still, most income is from ads.

Income from HTML5 hired work and HTML5 licences for June is $2 440,20.

Total income for June is $2 583,30. It would be great if I managed to keep it on this level in future.

In July we will try to get next sponsors for Shards and for Flat Jewels Match 3. I will continue to build new levels for Pirates! - the match-3 and to fine tune older ones. I will also continue work on my first Phaser book. Beside this, I have some client work to do.

Saturday, July 2, 2016

Phaser tutorial: Fun with bitmap fonts

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Previous Phaser tutorials and articles:
Phaser tutorial: Using Spriter player for Phaser
Phaser tutorial: Merging fonts into sprite atlas
Phaser: Typescript defs for Phaser Box2D plugin
Phaser tutorial: Spriter Pro features added to Spriter player for Phaser
Phaser tutorial: Using Phaser signals
Phaser tutorial: Breaking the (z-order) law!
Phaser tutorial: Phaser and Spriter skeletal animation
Phaser tutorial: DronShooter - simple game in Typescript - Part 3
Phaser tutorial: DronShooter - simple game in Typescript - Part 2
Phaser tutorial: adding 9-patch image support to Phaser
Phaser tutorial: DronShooter - simple game in Typescript - Part 1
Phaser tutorial: custom easing functions for tweening and easing functions with parameters
Phaser tutorial: sprites and custom properties for atlas frames
Phaser tutorial: manage different screen sizes
Phaser tutorial: How to wrap bitmap text

Introduction

Very often I need to display some information for player in GUI in my games. It is usually composed of some text and icon. And it also often takes some time to fine tune positioning of text and icon. Things get complicated if part of it can change width like number on following image:

Then, if you update number, you also have to update position of icon. Making some longer text, like the one on image bellow, with small images inside of it, is tedious work and usually needs lot of code.

Solution

Fortunately, solution is easy. We can add images as special characters into font and then print whole text, including images, in one call in code.

Let's say you have font called "Font" and atlas called "Game". Font is made of texture with characters and xml metadata file. It can be font made with Littera or any other font tool. Atlas is standard atlas with your game images.

After these are loaded in your preload function - for example like this:

            this.load.atlas("Game", "assets/Game.png", "assets/Game.json");
            this.load.bitmapFont("Font", "assets/Font.png", "assets/Font.xml");

you can start your adjustments in create function. First we get reference to our loaded assets:

            let atlas = this.cache.getImage("Game", true);
            let font = this.cache.getBitmapFont("Font");

Next we get reference to loaded font xml data and also reference to capital "A" character. Reason for this is, that we will center added images on the same level as center of "A" is.

            let fontData = font.font;
            let charA = fontData.chars[65];

Now, in my case, I have 7 gem images in atlas with names Gem1 ... Gem7. I will add them as special characters. First, I have to choose character code for them. Here I chose 5000 for Gem1, 5001 for Gem2 ...

            for (let i = 0; i < 7; i++) {
                let f = this.cache.getFrameByName("Game", "Gem" + (i + 1));

                fontData.chars[5000 + i] = {
                    x: f.x,
                    y: f.y,
                    width: f.width,
                    height: f.height,
                    xOffset: 1,
                    yOffset: charA.yOffset + Math.floor((charA.height - f.height) / 2),
                    xAdvance: f.width + 2,
                    kerning: [],
                    texture: new PIXI.Texture(atlas["base"], new PIXI.Rectangle(f.x, f.y, f.width, f.height)) 
                };
            }

First, we get Phaser.Frame from atlas, so we will have access to position and dimensions of image within atlas. Next, we add new object with all font metadata to current font characters data at position of character code we chose before. For yOffset we are doing small calculation to center added images relative to "A" - we want center of A and added images on the same level. xOffset is 1 and it says, that there will be 1 pixel space after previous character. xAdvance then says how much has font renderer step to draw next character. We set this to width + 2 (= xOffset + width + 1). On last line, we are setting texture property. Here you may get error - just head to phaser.d.ts and change BMFontChar interface to use PIXI.Texture instead of PIXI.BaseTexture.

Test

To test our gem images in text add this code:

            let text = "Hi, " + String.fromCharCode(5000, 5005, 5006) + " there!\n\nHow are you? " + String.fromCharCode(5001, 5002);
            let bmText = new Phaser.BitmapText(this.game, 0, 0, "Font", text, 110);
            bmText.anchor.x = 0.5;
            this.world.add(bmText);

To include gems we make string from character codes with call to String.fromCharCode(). You should see this on screen:

Draw calls

While everything works, there is small issue you should be aware of. As our font images and gem images are in different textures, there can be more draw calls. In above case there are four draw calls to draw this single piece of text.

Fortunately, there is also solution for this. Merge your font into atlas as described in one of previous tutorials. Code changes only very little:

            let font = this.cache.getBitmapFont("Font");
            let fontData = font.font;
            let charA = fontData.chars[65];

            for (let i = 0; i < Level.MAX_GEM; i++) {
                let f = this.cache.getFrameByName("Game", "Gem" + (i + 1));

                fontData.chars[5000 + i] = {
                    x: f.x,
                    y: f.y,
                    width: f.width,
                    height: f.height,
                    xOffset: 1,
                    yOffset: charA.yOffset + Math.floor((charA.height - f.height) / 2),
                    xAdvance: f.width + 2,
                    kerning: [],
                    texture: new PIXI.Texture(font.base, new PIXI.Rectangle(f.x, f.y, f.width, f.height)) 
                };
            }

You do not need reference to atlas, because gem images are in the same texture as font characters and in last line you can get base texture from font data.

This reduces draw calls to one.

Conclusion

With presented solution you can easily mix text with icons. If you merge font with atlas, there are no additional costs in terms of draw calls.

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Mobile Income Report #23 - May 2016

What I did in May

worked on endless procedural platformer runner for Gamee platform. Game is finished and I am really prod of the generator. It generates platforms in real time and the result is not looking bad. For player animation I utilized my Spriter player for Phaser:

continued work on "Pirates! - the match-3". We started to create final levels. For this I have built Cordova version of game for Android using Google Analytics. In the evenings we can play it and generate statistics for tuning.

Report

Figures for mobile games are these:

There is big decrease, compared to April, from $154,5 to $116,9. I did not investigate the reason, but number of downloads is more or less stable.

More than 90% of income is again from ads.

Beside this, we got some small fee for our HTML5 games - $95,3.

This month, I did not get any income for hired work - it is shifted to June.

Total income for May is $212,2. It is a lot less than in April ($1 391,1) because of absence of income from hired work.

In June I am still working on "Pirates! - the match-3" - creating final levels and testing it. Working on another client work. We are also trying to sell licences for HTML5 version of Shards - the brickbreaker.

Pages

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

What I did in November

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Tuesday, November 22, 2016

What I did in October

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Tuesday, October 25, 2016

What I did in September

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Monday, September 26, 2016

What I did in August

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Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Thursday, August 25, 2016

What I did in July

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Sunday, July 17, 2016

What I did in June

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Saturday, July 2, 2016

Introduction

Solution

Test

Draw calls

Conclusion

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

What I did in May

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