Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Insulating my ancient roof

Posted on November 4, 2012

Sooo… in-between all my games stuff I continue my hilariously slow process of trying to make my 1750’s drafty house more energy efficient. The big area of the house that is still horribly uninsulated is the attic, which is a sort-of spare room, which we never really use. Maybe twice a year.

because it’s so old, it’s not like insulating a new house with regularly spaced rafters and throwing down some nice easily unrolled insulating thingies. You need to use ‘breathable’ insulation. The attic has about eight wall panels that cover the eaves. I’ve insulated behind 3 already, and today I finally finished the fourth. here is the panel at the start.

behind that is a notable lack of insulation, and some thick felt like stuff hanging down. Look behind and around that and we find that the current insulation is…

Rubble! Yes rubble. huge pieces of slate, stone, some straw, a few long bits of wood, some newspaper, some stuff which I briefly panicked was asbestos, but we now think was just plaster dust. When I say ‘some’ I mean about a dozen bucketfulls of the stuff. methinks modern insulation has moved beyond ‘fill the eaves with rubble and straw!

And here we are with me having put down a nice thick layer of insulation instead of all that dust and rubble.

And here we go with another layer on top of that so it’s double thickness. Insulation achievement unlocked +10 points. Well done.

Apparently it started snowing in the west of England today, so maybe I’ll find out sooner than expected if it makes any difference whatsoever. It makes me feel better anyway :D

Median time played on steam for my games.

Posted on November 2, 2012

Something very interesting is happening with Democracy 2. because the game is now on steam, for the first time ever I am getting accurate figures for how long people play the game for. Steam tracks that automatically and gives you nice charts and graphs for it, which is very handy.

The values for Democracy 2 are staggeringly high. They won;t seem high, when i tell you what they are in a minute, but from chatting to other devs, and looking at my other steam games, they are disproportionately high.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, Democracy 2 is a pretty complex strategy game, that is based around running a fictional country. It has a fair bit of text to read, but nothing like the backstory in a game like dishonored. It’s a game of balancing competing needs (which is essentially what all strategy games are), and it has a lot of variables to tweak, just like all my games do.

The median time played right now is 2 hours and nine minutes. Does that seem short? Trust me, it’s pretty long, because the values are massively dragged down by people who buy games on impulse in a one-day sale, and only ever play them once. (Steam only counts games that have been actually played for a minute or more). For those who love comparing stats, the average time played is 3 hours 33 minutes. The game has been on steam less than a month, so you would expect that value to rise over time, as people revisit the game (although D2 has not been in a steam sale, which might explain some of this)

That compares extremely well with Gratuitous Tank and Space Battles. The average play time per session for both games is pretty much identical, but there is a massive difference in the distribution of time played. GTB basically hooks everyone for at least 20 minutes, then there is a falloff downwards until you reach this massive spike at 200minutes+

With Democracy 2, everyone is playing at least an hour, then there is a smooth drop off to the eight hour mark. D2 doesn’t have this weird U shaped distribution like GTB does.

Which would imply…errrr?  maybe that GTB does a bad job of helping people through the mid-game, but if they manage it, they are hooked and play forever. I wonder if people get stuck on a specific level, and then either make it through, and keep having fun, or they give up? some aspects of the game design are based entirely around avoiding that situation, but they may be failing.

two things I definitely conclude are that a) it’s good data to have and b)Democracy 2 does very well despite it’s age.

Gratuitous Tank Battles website stats

Posted on October 28, 2012

I’ve been casting my geeky eye over the google analytics data for the gratuitous tank battles website. Here are some assorted stats…

Looking at data for the last 60 days, the site had:

Visits: 67,440

Pages per visit: 1.49

Bounce Rate: 74.78%

TBH, only one of those stats is worth caring about (the top one), and only then, marginally. Bounce rate and Pages per visit are horrendously skewed by the content of those pages. If you pack them with text and video, people will get their fill of data with just one page. These are not stats worth worrying about. The visits stats is marginally more helpful, but it massively depends where they come from, obviously. I’ve sponsored a few small flash games which brings in a TON of traffic, but most of it is pretty ‘low quality’, kids without credit cards looking for more free games. The sheer volume means it can be worth it though. I find it more helpful to concentrate just on highly engaged visitors, such as those spending more than 60 seconds on the site. That gives me:

Visits: 4,723

Which are the only site visitors I really care about. This means I need to know where they came from. In this case the two big easily identified source areas seem to be google adwords and google organic search, which are roughly equal. The problem is, this isn’t showing me my flash sponsorship traffic correctly, so I need to do some analytics cleverness to detect when the ?ref= parameter is passed which tells me which flash game sent me the click. when i look for those clicks I find they supplied…

Visits: 2,977

Which is clearly the lions share of those above. Of course, all this means is those visitors spent time on the site, unfortunately I don’t have any easy way to tell that they are the same people buying the game, especially if they drift off and buy it on steam, or next month. However, I am quite motivated by the long tail effect here. There are hits coming in from long forgotten sponsorship deals from ages ago. That doesn’t happen with banner adverts which are obviously immediate. This can be a pain in the neck, because banner ads can be scheduled and also ramped up and cut back to fit your budget, whereas free game sponsorship is a bit of an all-or-nothing, no-idea-when sort of deal.

Even so, I think I’ll keep experimenting with it. Unlike my foray into stumbleupon and facebook ads, I think this may actually have a reasonable (on a good day) Return-on-investment

Some Democracy 2 hints and tips…

Posted on October 25, 2012

Now that my politics sim Democracy 2 is on sale on steam and has a big chunk of new players, I thought it might be worth noting a few strategy tips for people who are finding the game hard to get their head around, so here are my top democracy 2 strategy tips.

1) Plan ahead and be patient.
Be aware that many of the effects of your actions in democracy 2 take time to filter through to actually changing the simulation. Boosting healthcare spending may deal with that contagious disease, but it won’t wipe it out tomorrow, and it might be a year or even more before you can truly see the effects of your policies. There is a tendency to ‘oversteer’ policy changes as a result. You can probably see policy changes taking effect on charts long before they impact situations.

2) It’s the economy stupid.
It really is. The best laid plans of Right and Left all fall apart when GDP in on the floor and everyone is unemployed. If GDP is low, that is your number one concern. It’s the problem that makes all the other problems worse.

3) Know Thine Enemy
Pick whom you choose to really upset. Upset commuters will not vote for you. Upset patriots may try and kill you. That’s a big difference.

4) Ministerial fun
The ministers aren’t just for decoration. Some are more competent at a specific job than others. Putting the right minister in the right job will keep government costs down and make policy implementation faster. Plus, minister are popular with different electoral groups, so it might be worth token appointments to minor departments to keep specific groups happy.

5) Rally the faithful.
You need a core of really supportive voters. people on the fence don’t join your party, and certainly don’t become activists. Activists are hidden from the player, but they help with turnout on election day. Party members ALWAYS vote. This can make all the difference in close elections.

6) Voters are complex.
No voter is just a farmer. They are probably 75% farmer, 44% socialist, 12% Elderly, 25% drinkers. (They don’t add up to 100%, they represent percentage loyalty to each group). You can see in more detail how the different influences affect random focus group voters on the voter details window. Keep this in mind when analyzing whats going wrong.

7) Voter group sizes change.
Boost business, and you will get more capitalists over time. Teach evolution and you will get less religious people. This takes ages, but you *can* almost eradicate groups you don’t like over the long run.

Any tips that people out there playing the game would like to add?

Gratuitous Tank Battles: The Western Front Released

Posted on October 22, 2012

OK, here it is at last, I’m happy to announce the release of an expansion pack for Gratuitous Tank Battles we call ‘The Western Front‘. This is a World War 2 themed expansion for the game that adds a whole bunch of classic WW2 tanks such as the Tiger and the Sherman. There are also eight new maps to battle over, in a completely new singleplayer campaign (there is a new screen which lets you select the ‘classic’ campaign or this one. The new maps also come with new textures and props for use in your own custom scenarios. Here is the trailer:

Something new and different about these maps is that the first four are locked to the 1914-1945 technology era, meaning no lasers, no shields, no mechs. You can play them as completely straight WW2 style battles. As before, obviously you get to take the role of attacker or defender, and we have included both American and German AI attacking armies for you to play against, if you prefer the predictability of scripted attackers.

Enjoy! and for those who are gripped by a sudden urge to buy it immediately, you can grab it direct from positech here. You can see some groovy screenshots and other promotional happenings here.

Or wait a little while and it will be up on steam, and no doubt some other portals soon. Let me know what you think in the comments. Also, if you think it looks good, then please tweet about it, or link to it on facebook, or whatever cool and hip web forums you hipsters visit. Maybe even reddit?

Press types may want to grab the presskit, with screenshots from here.