First game in 4 months

Acquaintance

Hello everyone, I’m 22 years old. A little over six months ago, I realized that I wanted to make games. I started learning C #. For three months I learned the basics from Schildt’s book, mastered half of it with notes. Then I decided that it’s better to learn in practice, otherwise it’s very scary from the unknown, and I didn’t understand what to do in Unity at all.

For the sake of gaining experience, I decided to make a pixel platform project as my first project. Moreover, there is no normal PC. From a working machine, I still have a laggy laptop, which is already 10 years old, get acquainted:

• Processor: Intel Core i3-2310m 2.10 GHz;

• Video card: Nvidia GeForce 315m;

• 4 GB RAM + 2 added.

Of course, it upsets me when it hangs, does not pull something, but I’m really grateful that at least something I have on which to make games. Going to buy a normal PC as soon as possible.

Game idea

Then I realized that even a platformer takes a long time. I wanted to do something quickly to get as much experience as possible. I started looking for a game on Google Play that I liked and not too difficult. Found Scrap Clicker II there. Surprisingly pleasant game, very simple and addicting, two hours were killed in it as if instantly

The idea came to make a similar game, but a different one, for the place of the barrels I wanted to drain minerals, I love minerals. The first month I made a prototype, just to understand whether I can do something like that or not, otherwise it was very scary, such things scare me a lot, so I try to do them faster.

It turned out satisfactory, but very damp, did the fusion of stones, automatic fusion, improvements. All problems were googled somehow, so I did it.

For convenience and in order not to forget, I made lists of plans for what needs to be done from the mechanics and what needs to be drawn.

Graphics

For the next 1.5 – 2 months I painted graphics in Photoshop. It was also scary that it would not work, but it did! There were 44 minerals, and a lot more. But the minerals were the hardest. And they turned out to be the most elaborated for me. It was going slower than I expected, but I wanted to do it so that I liked it.

During the graphic part in one day I could draw a maximum of 4 stones, usually it turned out only 2.

Small digression

Along the way, with the creation of the game, I was constantly looking for a job, called employers, went to interviews, worked at a car wash for 5 days, trained as a designer, worked in a printing house for 2 months for a penny, it is very stressful to do this. I started hoping that the game would bring money so that I could do what I want, make games!

Back in Unity

After collecting graphics in Unity, I started fixing my test mechanics. I had to remake them almost completely. I have added many new ones as well. The game now features chests, picks, tasks and a level system, prestige, upgrades, a gallery, advertising rewards, and a forge.

Three things scared me the most on my list of plans: save, localize, and embed ads. I thought it was very difficult. My plan was to do them only when everything else was ready.

It was difficult, but fortunately there is a lot of information on the Internet about Unity. As a result, I figured out pretty quickly with localization and saving. The hardest part began with the implementation of AdMob ads. My application crashed and lagged very much, I was very worried.

For about 2 weeks I was trying to figure out what was going on. I thought it was optimization, I read the whole Internet (heh). I did everything I could, changed a lot, there are much fewer lags (according to estimates, every 10, probably). UI optimization helped the most. I divided everything into canvases, many of them added a personal Graphic Raycaster, which allowed the canvases to not be redrawn when changed on an adjacent canvas.

But crashes and lags remained on some devices. I even thought that I wouldn’t be able to finish the game at all, it was hard.

At first, in Profiler, everything consumed a lot of GPUs, and there was no hint of advertising. It was written in Logcat that the application is very slow. I thought that it crashes because of this, and this all happened only when there is the Internet.

Later, by testing, I realized that the point was how I caused the advertisement. I have had about 12 rewarded ads. I will say that it is better to trigger one advertisement at the start, and depending on the button you click on, give a reward. In one, Reward Handler did it. Works great now. It’s a pity that it has not been written anywhere, or maybe I did not find it. Perhaps someone will help. I can, if I can explain something in more detail, and I also failed to implement FireBase, since I have Windows 7.

All in all, it took 4 months to create the game, not counting the language basics.

Before and after the release

I wrote the music in 2 days, it was surprisingly easy, I thought it would take a week, I recorded the sounds in FL Studio, except for the sound of stones, I found them on the street.

At the time of release, there was nothing out of the ordinary.

Almost every day I fixed bugs and released updates, I wanted new users to see the game as complete as possible.

Then, after fixing the main problems, I implemented Google Services, so far only saving to the cloud.

18 days after release (now) – 101 downloads, the game brought in $ 30 on advertising, which pays for the developer’s account. Already good. I am constantly improving it. My friends, family and acquaintances help me with finding bugs – testers in general.

Impressions of creating a game

Very good, although it was not easy. It turned out to be mine. I love doing it, drawing, programming, making music and sounds, I don’t really like doing marketing only.

Plans

Now, I’m trying to advertise the game as much as I can, I think it has potential. I plan to do marketing this week.

Further plans are to make a game of trolley ride in the style of Hill Climb Racing, but in a cave. And so that it was part of the gameplay of mining stones. For example, you collect 100 stones – take it away, it seems fun and fresh to me, I have already done the test mechanics.

In the first and the new game, I will add new minerals, fix the bugs that will be. I really hope to buy a new PC with the future proceeds. Literally a couple of days ago, my USB connector for the keyboard refused and I am now writing in my own, the one without buttons. Also I have the “P” key on num binged because it doesn’t work.

I would be glad if you download my game and leave a good review in the store and in the comments here. Tell us what you think you need to improve or fix. I appreciate it and I will be grateful. Thanks for reading!