Hello everybody. I just wanted to tell you guys that
PIRATEHELL
is
FINALLY
available on
DESURA! ( horray : D )
(there -> http://www.desura.com/games/piratehell/news/piratehell-released-on-desura )
An officiell and nice made announcement will follow soon (very soon).
regards from an extremely excited pirate ^^
Congrats, hopefully the hard work pays off 
Big congrats man! Holy balls you made it 
I’ll give it a proper play through when I come back after a short trip.
How did you find the process of getting onto Desura like? Did you have to jump through many hoops to get there?
@wezrule: I hope so, too. I just have to figure out how to tell the world that my game exists.^^
@erlend: The first steps are easy. You have to create a profile on indiedb/desura, upload some screenshots and at least a video. If they say “yes” it can going to be a bit complicated (depends heavily on if you’re supporting linux) because your game should launch right from the desura app (I don’t understand why my linux shellscript has to be that complicated). At the end I’ve uploaded 8 versions of PirateHell.
Nethertheless there’s much work to do. There’s this water thingy I want to create, I found an easy tutorial for sails simulation and so on and so on.^^
Greetings,
so after a couple of weeks where I had to do some other business I’m back to the PirateHell.
Currently I’m busy filling the world map with stuff to discover. It’s damn much work but to end this sentence with some ridiculous words: No pain, no gain!
And as I’m developing a content update there will also be a couple of new ships.
So here is a special one:
Compared to the other ships it has a more streamlined body and has a lower build rear. Also it got a bunch of additional sails on the first and second mast. (This is inspired by the development of the ships from the 17th to the 18th and 19th century). In the game the ship has the advantage of its modern design and will be faster and more agile but also well equipped with cannons. but also upgrades will be more expensive as the design is not very common to the ship builders of its time.
However as we’re pirates it will not be very easy to gather this ship…
If you really want to make any money with your games the better strategie is to either put adverts in your game or let people buy stuff ingame -> than people are more likely to play it and download it if they know they have a full version and can do anything anyone that pays can do to.
The best way to motivate people to spread word about the game is when you give ingame bonus for them getting new people to play your game.
(simple mysql database on some server you rented where all players are in a table ) -> every player that registeres can choose a player (also registered) that gets bonus which is set in the database -> then when the user who got this new player to play opens the game - he gets the bonus because the game checks the database
there might achely be mysql Servers with a limited free discspace you could use.
@emtonsit: This might be a good strategy to make money but I really hate all of these concepts. Call me old fashioned but in a game I want only see stuff that relates to the game. So no ingame shop with real cost, no adverts and no bonuses for advertisement.
If I want to let the players interact with each other I would create highscores, coop and multiplayer so that they start challenging each other (hopefully I can achieve that someday).
Also only a mysql-db is not enough. I would have to manage a webserver with user management and all the stuff related to it. And that is, looking at my current ressources and freetime, not possible.
greets,
ceiphren
@ceiphren Keeping your game real - no adverts … - is defentivly understandable
How did you make your interface and your models? (espacially the campaign screen) I quite like the style of the game.
Im not that good in creating models and animations - hope that comes with experience (using blender)
@ceiphren you’ll need to deal with that hateful stuff to make money.
You’ll need it anyway for payment processing. (Of course, once you can’t do that manually anymore, you have enough revenue to pay somebody to do it for you. Hopefully.)
@toolforger: Well as I already earned some money with the game I think i can avoid these hateful features.
The game is currently available on Desura and they’re doing a nice job handling the payment stuff.
@emtonsit: For the interface I’m using photoshop for the panels, buttons etc. and a tool called BMFont to create the .fnt-files for the nice letters. The ui framework is niftyGui (which is a little bit hard to start with but very powerful).
The models are created with 3D Studio Max and textured with photoshop and Terragen 1 for the skies. I tried blender for a while but I was always like 4 to 5 times faster with 3DS Max. That doesn’t mean that blender is bad. You can create everything you want in blender, too. And it is free while 3DS is really expensive.
And yes, 3d modelling is a question of experience. So the only thing you really have to keep in mind: Don’t. Give. Up.
A little beginners tip: If you’re doing more complex models like characters and ships, don’t start imediately with the modeling. Always sketch it on a paper before you start (it doesn’t matter if you can draw or not. The important thing is that you can “see” the idea of your modell )
Oh right, I didn’t consider services like Desura.
@ceiphren thanks man!
great help - really appreciated
i think I will probably go with niftyGui too.
Would be awesome if i can ask you for advice when i encounter problems.
greets
emtonsti
Nifty does have its problems, so expect to have questions. (Most importantly: Shutting down Nifty or the Screen doesn’t really work, not within JME anyway; switch to an empty GUI page instead of trying to shut anything down.)
There are better alternatives in the works, so maybe you’ll want to postpone GUI polishing work towards a time nearer to the release date in case a better GUI alternative is available then.
@toolforger said: There are better alternatives in the works, so maybe you'll want to postpone GUI polishing work towards a time nearer to the release date in case a better GUI alternative is available then.
Like what? Nifty is and will continue to be the primary choice for jME UIs
The “is” is correct of course; the “will continue to be” depends on what core dev you ask.
It depends on the time frame you’re considering, too. I know of a project that might become interesting in, say, six months from now; obviously there’s no prediction about when or if it will be adopted as primary choice.
@toolforger said: The "is" is correct of course; the "will continue to be" depends on what core dev you ask. It depends on the time frame you're considering, too. I know of a project that might become interesting in, say, six months from now; obviously there's no prediction about when or if it will be adopted as primary choice.
You mean Pauls Lemur?
@normen said: You mean Pauls Lemur?
That’s what he’s talking about. Not really a nifty replacement (for what nifty does well) but may be a viable UI library alternative for a particular type of user and game.
Now I’m curious: What is Nifty doing well?
The one thing that caught my eye was its animation support, but maybe I overlooked other good features simply because I’ve been taking them for granted.
@toolforger said: Now I'm curious: What is Nifty doing well?The one thing that caught my eye was its animation support, but maybe I overlooked other good features simply because I’ve been taking them for granted.
I’d rather not take this thread too far down this line here as it’s a bit off topic and probably unproductive. Nifty is supposed to support the separate designer, separate implementer idiom. We might argue over how effective that is in reality but it has a lot of code and infrastructure to support that, ie: XML layouts. Lemur opts for a more swing-like approach.