More on marketing

I've spent my recent development time improving the animated gif creation tools for Arduxim Squadron Command. I've added a 'circle gif' which gives a very nice visualisation of the 3D space of the game. Here is a circle gif of the galaxy view, where the player will choose the next campaign to undertake.

circle_2017-09-29_22-10-48.654.gif

I've also added the game's logo to the gifs and still images. This was far more complicated than I expected, I think due to the way I take the gifs and images. They do not just snapshot the display shown to the player, instead they rerender the frame at a custom resolution (640x480 for gifs, 2650x1440 for stills). Positioning the logo on the Unity canvas so it appears in the right place and size simply didn't work using the obvious setup as the canvas was sized to the real (VR) display.

Eventually I got it to work by creating a canvas for the resolutions I wanted and rendering these explicitly over the gif or still image. The end result is a sharply rendered logo which appears exactly how I want it.

circle_2017-10-02_21-54-51.085.gif
screen_2560x1440_2017-10-02_21-52-41.541.png

In case anyone is wondering, there is an actual game being developed here. It's just that I didn't market Starfighter Arduxim until near launch and want to do better with Arduxim Squadron Command. I'm working towards a vertical slice which will allow myself and play testers to get a feel for the overall game structure If you're interested in play testing subscribe to the mailing list here to be notified when one becomes available.

Currently I have a fair amount working in the tactical layer where combat occurs, as this part reuses a lot of the Starfighter Arduxim code. I'm working from the main menu, through the galaxy view, the campaign view, then to possible a solar system view to finally link to individual combat areas in the tactical layer.

In-game tools for building awareness

I read r/gamedev and one of the pieces of advice which crops up often is to market your game early. I didn't do this effectively with Starfighter Arduxim and want to do better with Arduxim Squadron Command. This means I'm spending a lot of time at the moment working on adding tools to the game to make it easy to produce media good for sharing on the web. This work still has an positive impact on the game though, for two reasons.

screen_2560x1440_2017-09-17_19-14-47.268.png

First, I want a flexible, programmatic UI system for showing various information and UI controls, without having to lay them all out myself. This will be used for UI such as the configuration menu, pilot information, fleet information and so on. By being able to say 'here's the information, display it' I can save time by not having to lay out the GUI myself and know that all the UIs in the game will be consistent.

The second reason is that these media tools can ship with the game so players can use them to record exciting or funny moments and share them. This will hopefully spread the work about the game but regardless it lets people share their experiences with their friends.

Arduxim Squadron Command Cover Art

I've now got a draft version of the cover art done. I wanted something reminiscent of Powermonger's cover art, showing the player looking down upon their forces. My programmer-art version is... not as good.

screen_2560x1440_2017-09-15_19-27-46.178.png

It will definitely need redone professionally, for which I'll likely use Fiverr - there are a lot of talented artists there and being able to contract work for a known price is helpful in managing the budget.