Gamasutra Article: Guide to getting your game known for $0

Quadko · Post by **Quadko** » Thu Jul 03, 2014 2:21 pm

A small guide to getting your PC game known - for $0
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MarcMcCa ... _for_0.php

Marc McCann of [url=http://www.farspacestudios.com/]FarSpace Studios[/url] wrote:How many times have we all been told that you *NEED* a marketing budget or that you *NEED* someone on full time PR to make people take notice? I have heard it a lot, and quite frankly I disagree. Up to the point of writing this article - we have spent 0 on marketing Hyphen. Here's how we did it:-

I've wanted to write a game for 25+ years now, but even if I got one written, what do I do next? This was an interesting article on an independent developer studio's success using the current tools and industry situation. He talks about having a demo, Twitter, YouTube, and some other advice.

Post by **MrFlibble** » Fri Jul 04, 2014 12:59 pm

Interesting, thanks for sharing! Not that I have any practical use for the advice in that article but there's still lots of useful information, like this:

Make a pre-release demo
Get your game out there and being played ASAP. This worked absolute wonders for us and websites such as http://www.alphabetagamer.com/ will be your best friend in making people aware of it's existence.

We've discussed the public alpha/beta release marketing strategy a while ago, but somehow I didn't know about that website. Gotta check it out.

tienkhoanguyen · Post by **tienkhoanguyen** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 12:47 pm

Hi Mr.Flibble, I just took another look at the article. Unfortunately for me, it made me realize I am out of my league in those games over there. Even in the DOS sections everyone seems to be far ahead of my humblest demo. So thank you however it is just too much for me to handle seeing some of the games featured. The graphics are far ahead of what I am capable of at the present moment anyways. I am not even sure I will ever be able to reach that height with my favourite programming language Borland Turbo C 2.01; I guess it makes me humble and keeps me from putting my nose in the air.

Quadko · Post by **Quadko** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 3:38 pm

If you are interested, you might check out a DOS C programming topic on 'Sprites'. A quick search turned up this, for example: http://www3.telus.net/alexander_russell ... ter_21.htm

And once you can draw an image in a paint program and display it from your game, you can animate it by drawing the different poses/frames, and you can move it around the screen. As I recall, there should be many 'Sprite' examples out there; most dos graphics books had discussions about them.

Then it's just a matter of drawing pretty grpahics in an appropriate paint program so you can load the file from your C code. (Or creating a paint program yourself!)

tienkhoanguyen · Post by **tienkhoanguyen** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 8:21 pm

I will see if I can get to that tonight. I am helping my mom out in the kitchen. haha Thanks for your friendship.

tienkhoanguyen · Post by **tienkhoanguyen** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 9:00 pm

I had briefly skimmed the contents and it seems very interesting. I always wanted to know how the transparent parts where so quickly done.

Post by **MrFlibble** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 4:40 am

As a matter of fact, there should be some free graphical resources available on the Internet (I mean fully legally free, not the various ripoffs). Here's an article on this matter to get you started:
https://www.makegameswith.us/gamernews/ ... developers

Even if nothing suits you it is quite possible to find a volunteer artist who will do the graphics for your project.

OpenGameArt doesn't want to load for me but JIC here's the latest Wayback Machine snapshot:
http://web.archive.org/web/201408090558 ... meart.org/

[Edit] Oh, and also there's a nice article at Lost Garden:
http://www.lostgarden.com/2007/12/how-t ... needs.html

Daniel Cook (the author) created some excellent 8-bit graphics (e.g. for Tyrian) and even has a free set for a game that never happened.

Also here is a selection for resource sites:
http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big- ... -graphics/

tienkhoanguyen · Post by **tienkhoanguyen** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 8:18 am

Thank you both, Quadko and Mr.Flibble. I am looking into it. I spent the whole night reading up on Borland Turbo C 2.01 - and I have a bad back by crouching over and typing all night long to try to get some stuffs to work. I think I finally am getting there with pointers and addresses which is encouraging. Now I am starting to put together the "possibility" of sprites. Next I am planning on looking at the 8-bit graphics stuffs that you put up as well as maybe someone doing a artwork for me for credits for now as pay. I do not think I will be making money however who knows. If that one guy who started off on YouTube making the game Hyphen is right - maybe one day I can become a success like him? haha Just wishful thinking. haha Wow! $8 per copy of the game at 2 million people comes to like 12 mil after taxes or so. How lucky!!!!!!!!!!!!

Quadko · Post by **Quadko** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 9:57 am

I think I finally am getting there with pointers and addresses which is encouraging.

Very nice, that's the hurdle that stops a lot of people with C.

$8 per copy of the game at 2 million people comes to like 12 mil after taxes or so. How lucky!

That's certainly the dream! A little progress every day; who knows where it will end up?

tienkhoanguyen · Post by **tienkhoanguyen** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 11:54 am

@Quadko, my mom says just to do it for fun. She says just to be happy. Some people have money however they are not happy. That defeats the purpose of living.

My dad also says the same thing. When we were young my father works hard to make ends meet. We always had a good life. However, he told me before we left that if you ever come into money to do the right thing with it because you cannot take it with you when you die.

I remember the good days with my father. I am 40 years old now and he bought me my first computer that I programmed with around 1983. I was always good with logic however my physical education was what made me fail. haha

Post by **MrFlibble** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 2:26 pm

In fact, doing a free game for fun might be a good start for a professional career.

This is what Lee Vermeulen did for example. He started a small "mod" project for Quake which was intended as a "warm-up" of sorts for a newly founded development team, Alientrap. The mod eventually turned into a stand-alone game called Nexuiz, which was released for free, and Alientrap went on to develop commercial games (I like the idea of this very cool "Greek vase paintings come to life" side-scroller Apotheon).

What's more, the free Nexuiz game gained such a popularity another company bought rights to it and developed their own, commercial game with the same title.

I fancy Lee Vermeulen never imagined anything like that back in 2001 when he started working on that project

tienkhoanguyen · Post by **tienkhoanguyen** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 4:55 pm

Thank you for the advice Mr.Flibble. I did download Nexuiz a while back looking for a similar game to Quake that is free and it is a very amazing game. The speed at which the graphics and sounds are impressive.

I did skimmed some of the graphics tools and resources and it made me humble seeing how many talented people there are out there.

When I was just sitting in my quiet apartment programming I was not even thinking it would even get this far. I started out with printing 2 color texts on the screen like 100 times. Then it eventually (little by little) started to become a joke and a game.

So looking outside of my own place I see many infinite talented people!

Quadko · Post by **Quadko** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 8:01 pm

my mom says just to do it for fun. She says just to be happy.

She's certainly right. But while I work away at my day job, I do dream of my own software paying the bills and taking care of my family instead of a paycheck from a boss. That's a lot of what I meant. I haven't figured it out yet, but happily I do like my day job.

That's a reason I rarely finish home projects - it's more fun to start a new one!

And yes, sorry, didn't realize you didn't know there were lots of such ball & brick games with clones and fan remakes! But that shouldn't ever stop you. It's all for the love of the game and for learning "how did they do that!" Good stuff.

I don't know if you play other dos games now, but I always thought Caverns of Gink would be a great place to start a platform jumping remake game, myself. Then you add ladders and other badguys to it and you get something like JumpMan, not bad. Just thinking out loud, though. I haven't ever started that one, lots of other projects going and abandoned.

Actually, because I start "big" projects and abandoned them, I have this idea of "single day games" - basically start and finish a game in a day or a weekend. But I felt I needed some tools to do that in windows, and then I started that project and abandoned it for now... but maybe someday.

It's somewhat like the idea of the "7 day roguelike" (7drl) if you ever played rogue or have heard of the challenge - one week to create a text based roguelike game, apparently quite a challenge from what people report!

Anyway, those are the game development things I'm thinking about on and off, not to distract you from your ideas or great work! I hope the sprite code is working for you, it sounds like you are making some great progress with the resources. Best of luck and blessings!

tienkhoanguyen · Post by **tienkhoanguyen** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 9:44 pm

Quadko, you have what I used to have. You take on alot at a time. There is a lot of good in you even though you do not finish. You feel you have alot of other important things to do and are having fun. That is important in life. For what it is worth, I had maybe around 30 odd jobs before settling down and taking programming seriously! Yep, thirty or so jobs that I could never finished. So I know one day that big thing of yours will come true. I always regretted how much hardship I went through in life. However something so small as someone putting up on their website makes all those years worth it. In fact, I could not stop going around my family and old websites and letting them all know I am now recently added to WWW.PLAYDOSGAMES.COM!

tienkhoanguyen · Post by **tienkhoanguyen** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 9:53 pm

As for the sprites, I hate RLE encoding. haha To be honest I never liked doing that type of encoding. Luckily at this point in time my game is not in need of sprites.

For what it is worth, it took me 3+ months or so to do my demo from conception to porting it from Android platform over to DOSBox. The initial start seems easy enough

tienkhoanguyen · Post by **tienkhoanguyen** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 10:23 pm

I do not play any games much. I mostly listen to old 80's/90's music on a daily basis and learn programming Borland Turbo C 2.01 in my leisure to hopefully one day buy my mom the house of her dreams. Believe it or not, I am planning to do it all just with Borland Turbo C 2.01 because I believe in the principles of K.I.S.S. which stands for "Keep It Simple Silly!"

Quadko · Post by **Quadko** » Wed Sep 17, 2014 10:46 pm

First you dream big, and then you never give up! That's what every success story out there seems to boil down to. Worst case, you die happily in pursuit of big dreams, and that's not a bad thing.

Best of luck to you!

RLE encoding - I sympathize! None of the others get any better, that's why it is so tempting to write your own drawing program to output your own simple image format. Ported from android to dosbox? I think that's the first time I've heard that direction!

tienkhoanguyen · Post by **tienkhoanguyen** » Thu Sep 18, 2014 12:16 am

I did it the reverse way. I always wanted to program however never was good enough. One day a light bulb figuratively speaking. I had 3 years of previous programming experience. This would make it my 4th year so it is like graduation for me.

Quadko · Post by **Quadko** » Thu Sep 18, 2014 10:07 am

It's funny how life goes. I'm that way with music; I wish I'd kept up piano or guitar over the years after some early training, but don't seem to have time. I'm hoping for that lightbulb one of these days.