Hey guys, the new version of Adventure Story for the EBF Collection is up on my Patreon, if you want to play it a bit early. You can download it either as a .exe or .swf file.
There’s 5 new levels, 4 new bosses, controller support, new equipment effects, and some bug fixes!
The EBF Collection is 90% done. Most of what’s left is making the Steam store page.
Hey guys, it’s been a while since I’ve updated you.
I’ve made some progress on the monetization in Epic Battle Fantasy 5 on mobile. People had told me that no one likes compulsory ads, so the new plan is to make ads totally optional. At the end of each battle, you’ll have the option to watch an ad to get +25% more battle rewards, which means EXP, AP, and gold. I think this is a decent trade off, since you’ll only be tempted to watch ads after larger battles and bosses, and if you want to avoid them completely, it won’t take a lot of grinding to get those rewards back. Plus you have the option to simply play on a lower difficulty setting.
Anyway, the in-app purchases are likely staying as they were.
There’s 3 purchases, and they’re gonna be around $5 or $6 each:
• Ad removal and extra battle rewards
• DLC dungeons, including all the bosses, equips and other stuff within
• Custom Game Modes, Cheats/Challenges and Newgame+
So far I’ve got the in-app purchases working, ads almost done, and I’ve tried adding Google Play’s achievements, but so far I can’t get the user sign-in working, so I may or may not have those done when the game launches. I did spend a lot of time entering all of the achievements into Google’s system, so it would nice to get them working. I’m not sure how much mobile gamers care about their achievements though.
Overall the experience of developing for Android has been bleak. The developer dashboard interface is rubbish – everything is hard to find and counter-intuitive, every task takes more steps than it should, and none of the features are integrated with each other. Want to display ads? You’ll need to use a new dashboard and new credentials. Want targeted ads? You’ll need to ask the user for consent and write a privacy policy. You want to unlock achievements? You’ll need to use some new authentication method and new credentials. It basically feels like I need to make a new account and use a completely separate service for each feature!
Some of the requirements don’t make sense at all. They want icons to be 512×512 pixels, up to 1MB in size. And they want my developer page background to be in 4K resolution, but… also 1MB maximum. You have to fill in detailed questionaries for each new app you upload. Is it a news app? Is it a medical app? Does it contain ads? Describe in detail the violence and other mature content. You want to save your changes and come back later? You can’t! You have to fill in all of the details in one go or it’ll delete your progress. Want to enter achievement details on one page? Too bad – you’ll have to open a new tab for every single achievement!
I’ve heard from other developers that you never really get used to how awful it is, and that iOS is more or less equally bad. So I’ve still got that to look forward to.
Besides EBF5, I’ve also started porting EBF2. It’s a more complex game than EBF1, but I also know what to look out for when translating AS2 to AS3, so it should go quite smoothly.
So far porting my old games has earned me less than minimum wage, but it’s fun to work on smaller projects, and maybe it will pay off in the long term.
One of the things I’ve always envied about mobile games is how easy it is to show them to strangers or non-gamers. So I’m looking forward to having a decent portfolio of games I can show to pretty much anyone, anywhere. It’s just sad that Google and Apple are so awful to work with. But I’ll give them credit for recently reducing the cut of revenue they take from developers from 30% to 15%. That’s a nice change that will make a difference if these games ever take off and make some money.
Oh, and since people keep asking about the EBF Collection on PC, that’s been put on hold for a while. It’s a shame the timing worked out like this – it was almost finished. But since I got dragged into it, I want to finish all of the mobile stuff first, including iOS ports. Or maybe it won’t work out and I’ll return to PC sooner than expected.
Hey guys. I’ve figured out how to give out free copies of my Android games, so if any patrons want EBF1, Brawl Royale, Mecha Dress Up, or Cat Cafe on Android for free, let me know and I’ll send you a “promotion code” that you can redeem in the Play Store. It also works if you want to give the codes to your friends. Since each game is around $1, that’s a lot of codes you could get if you want.
It’s basically the same deal as with Steam keys – if you give me enough money on Patreon you can request Steam keys that are worth that much. This offer stands whether you’re a current patron or have been in the past. (you can ask me how much you’ve paid in total)
It’s a bit more complicated for in-app purchases, but I’ll figure out something when EBF5 is published too.
Anyway, that’s basically the main perk of my Patreon page. The (mostly) finished games from the EBF Collection are also available on there individually, which at the moment includes Bullet Heaven 1, The Kitten Game, Mecha Dress Up, EBF1, and EBF2.
Epic Battle Fantasy 1 is live on the Google Play Store!
This updated version has a new checkpoint system, a new soundtrack, some modified enemies, and a more user-friendly interface.
Please go buy it and leave a nice review.
If enough people do that, I’ll port Epic Battle Fantasy 2, 3, and 4. (5 is almost done)
As usual, iOS versions are coming later – I’m still learning a lot about Android development.
Hey guys, the Epic Battle Fantasy 1 mobile port is coming along. It’s taking more effort than the previous mobile ports since it needs to be reprogrammed from ActionScript 2 to ActionScript 3, which largely comes down to a search and replace job, but with a few quirks.
AS2 lets you get away with a lot of really bad programming practices that AS3 doesn’t. For example, in AS2 you can have variables and functions with the exact same name. You can declare functions multiple times. You can use variables without declaring them. The code doesn’t crash if an object doesn’t exist – it just ignores that completely and carries on. So all of those shortcuts needed to be sorted out, as they don’t work in AS3.
In addition to that, my old code is just really bad. Mainly there’s tons of code that has been copy and pasted which should have been in functions, making updating it way more tedious.
In terms of changes to the game, the mobile version user interface is bigger! That’s pretty much it.
All the other changes are the same as in the version that will eventually be on Steam in the EBF Collection: Copyrighted characters have been replaced, there’s a new soundtrack, checkpoints have been added after every boss, there’s a new Zero difficulty option, and the game has been balanced slightly (in particular making summons stronger).
So it’s gonna be a lot less punishing than you remember it.
Anyway, it should be up on Android in a week if you’re lucky. Probably for $1.50.
