Finished my game!
by Martin Schultz · 01/03/2006 (3:22 am) · 5 comments
Excited and exhausted at the same time. What a great feeling. I finished SuperMaze! 1.0 is out! It's a Torque based shareware game I developed in about 10 months of my spare time. Sure, it's not Unreal 2008, no, surely not. Quite the opposite - it's a real real simple game where you just control a Smiley in a maze style environment and hunt other Smilies (AI and human). But hey, it's finished and now there's plenty of room to improve it step by step.
The game is available as shareware for just 10 Euro via the e-commerce provider Share-it who sends out the serial keys via email right after the payment process. My expetations for the sales are quite low or in other words: realistic. I'm hoping to sell three or more units of the game. "Why three?" my wife asked me once. Well, I said, two sold units would be just by accident. But with three units it's excluded to be by accident! :-)
Technically I used a very stock TGE version with less to none modifications of the engine itself. Due to the very simple design of the whole game I was also able to do all the three (!) models by myself which was a major requirement when starting this project. I created one multi-resolution Smiley mesh (sphere), one multi-resolution projectile mesh (sphere), one wall segement (cuboid) and a few custom textures (Photoshop filters). As you might guess, the graphics were finished within one weekend.
Testing your game in the public with a beta version is something I really can recommand. Not only to find bugs, but also to receive a feeling how the game is liked by the public. One of the nicest comments I received during the public beta phase was that one tester said that even his girl-friend and his grandma like to play the game because the Smilies are so cute, it's very easy to play and the whole game is nonviolent. It really surprised me that even grandmas play the game. Ok, it was not by design, but hey, a new group of buyers! :-)
SuperMaze is available for Windows and Linux. A Mac version will follow as soon as the new Intel-based Mac Mini is out which will hopefully happen next week during Macworld Expo.
Last but not least... Advertising! Here's a banner for the game:
Have a nice day!
Martin
P.S. No plan without eye-candy: Two recent screenshots of the game!
The game is available as shareware for just 10 Euro via the e-commerce provider Share-it who sends out the serial keys via email right after the payment process. My expetations for the sales are quite low or in other words: realistic. I'm hoping to sell three or more units of the game. "Why three?" my wife asked me once. Well, I said, two sold units would be just by accident. But with three units it's excluded to be by accident! :-)
Technically I used a very stock TGE version with less to none modifications of the engine itself. Due to the very simple design of the whole game I was also able to do all the three (!) models by myself which was a major requirement when starting this project. I created one multi-resolution Smiley mesh (sphere), one multi-resolution projectile mesh (sphere), one wall segement (cuboid) and a few custom textures (Photoshop filters). As you might guess, the graphics were finished within one weekend.
Testing your game in the public with a beta version is something I really can recommand. Not only to find bugs, but also to receive a feeling how the game is liked by the public. One of the nicest comments I received during the public beta phase was that one tester said that even his girl-friend and his grandma like to play the game because the Smilies are so cute, it's very easy to play and the whole game is nonviolent. It really surprised me that even grandmas play the game. Ok, it was not by design, but hey, a new group of buyers! :-)
SuperMaze is available for Windows and Linux. A Mac version will follow as soon as the new Intel-based Mac Mini is out which will hopefully happen next week during Macworld Expo.
Last but not least... Advertising! Here's a banner for the game:
Have a nice day!
Martin
P.S. No plan without eye-candy: Two recent screenshots of the game!
#3
Let me check it out first ... maybe it's more detailed than I'm realizing?
Congrats on finishing!
01/03/2006 (6:45 am)
Whoa ... 34 MB? You should work on that download size ... it's ginormous for such a simple game.Let me check it out first ... maybe it's more detailed than I'm realizing?
Congrats on finishing!
#4
@Jeremy: Right, 34 MB is much, but the game features A LOT of unique music tracks from a very famous musican from the former Amiga demo scene. But your suggestion is right, I forgot to mention the size and why it's so huge. Thanks, dude! :-)
01/03/2006 (10:55 am)
@Nick: Thanks. Well, I meant it a bit ironic with the three sales. My true hopes are to sales thousand units in 2006. :-)@Jeremy: Right, 34 MB is much, but the game features A LOT of unique music tracks from a very famous musican from the former Amiga demo scene. But your suggestion is right, I forgot to mention the size and why it's so huge. Thanks, dude! :-)
#5
01/03/2006 (1:06 pm)
Congratulations mate! I wish you great success!
Torque Owner Nick Zafiris
Three sales don't seem realistic to me, I'm sure you'll sell more. Send some press releases to gaming sites and you'll see...
Nick