RobotWarz Updates: User Interface Progress
April 17, 2010 Posted by Tyler CruzIt’s been close to four months since I last posted an update on RobotWarz. That’s a long time, I know.
A number of you have been inquiring as to the status and current progress of RobotWarz.com, but I never responded because it was a sore spot with me.
You see, I had a lot of crazy setbacks with the developer I hired. He had some personal issues that caused huge delays with the project, and they kept reoccurring (and most likely still are). Fortunately, he seems to be back on track now (fingers crossed) and development is progressing along at a decent pace again.
The designer I hired for the project, who was a freelancer, ended up getting a pretty good full-time job at a gaming company, so that will cause some delays later on when more graphics are needed, but he is willing to work at night and on the weekends since I already prepaid him.
Below is a short video of the current state of RobotWarz. As always, please take note that the game is still in its early stages and the current graphics and gameplay are just temporary.
There are many missing features (2v2, Replays, Helper Bots, etc.) which should be added fairly soon.
While development has been admittedly slow during the past few months, most of that was spent on the framework and mechanics of the game, most of which is not visually viewable. Now that most of the framework is complete, more focus can be put on the features and actual gameplay of the game, as well as graphics.
We are not too far from a playable beta. We have no ETA on an exact date, but it could be as soon as 1-2 months from now.
What do you think of the game so far? It’s still in such a rough state at the moment that my feelings won’t be hurt if you hate it. I’m very curious to see how it will fare on Facebook and as an iPhone/iPad app once it is finished.
I hope to have another video update for you within 7-10 days. If things go well, you should notice quite an improvement over the current state of the game.
Become the next FarmVille; then, you’re set!
I think if you integrated this within Facebook and had like a Vs. match up against your friends and got notifications like “You’re friend Rob has hit level 4 in Robotwarz” or something of that nature; it could be a big game, I’m looking forward to playing it.
Hey tyler i just wanna thank you for sharing about this game. It gives me good ideas on what i should do with my game bionicwarz. its basically the same thing as yours. Its almost done probably about 2 weeks away and ill be releasing it on facebook too.
If you don’t mind i used your robot models with the ones i came up with so my game has 7 robot models you can use.
everyone be on the look out for my new game coming out in 2 weeks called bionicwarz its gonna be awesome. It looks so amazing too i had 3 people working on it.
So you basically ripped his game?
rofl I can’t stop laughing.
I think I’ll make a game too and call it BotBattlez lol
This is why blogs that divulge your ideas before they are developed are a bad idea. Nothing good comes of it.
Oh god I want wait until someone rips the few not-stolen-from-Tyler bots from BionicWarz. Not cool Kyle.
That is definetely a bad thing to do. That’s why I don’t tell people what I’m doing. In the internet people will always try to clone your stuff (campaings, ideas or anything).
First you launch. Make a couple of thousands. If someone else copy you great. But than I already established myself as the leader.
OMG man, expect a cease and desist letter from Tyler very soon lol
It looks interesting so far. I just wish you had narrated it so there’d be more of a description of the features. I’m looking forward to seeing the next update.
I might describe things in a future video, but I tend to mention every tiny detail when I do that, which makes the videos very long and boring to watch… 🙂
I’m sorry, but I think this game is going to be a failure. I hope for you it isn’t though.
It takes a lot to make a good game, not just a developer and some nice graphics. I don’t think you are specialized enough in this area to make good gameplay. It all seems very simplistic (the turn based fighting). Once you have a great robot, how will you not win most of the time? Random luck element? It should be focused on strategy instead. And since you only have a couple of different robots, it’s easy to know the weaknesses and strengths of each.
What I would have done (if I made this game), would be to have a team of robots fighting, (calling in “air support” when needed, etc) not just a single one. I don’t know, maybe you’re already doing this, I haven’t followed the entire development of robotwarz.
Of course, what do I know, I hate farmville and any game like it 🙂
I think there’s also a bit of a lesson here not to go with a single freelance developer. It would have been better to go with a team that does this kind of thing all the time and can work fast.
I still hope you succeed! Best of luck.
Yeah, I looked into the game studios, but they quoted me an average of 25-40k for this project, which I can’t afford…
the lesson from farmville and all the zynga games is to make it as social as possible and force people to spam the shit out of their entire friends list to get rewards and move forward in the game faster.
good luck.
Exactly! You shouldn’t have created something that was “sim” based. You could have tied it into Facebook and maybe do something with Twitter.
Sorry Tyler but this game seems rather boring and not unique at all.
That mafia game sucked me in BIGTIME… I almost posted my mafia code on a “sharing site” but I ended up waking up from the mafia haze and didn’t do it : )
Hi guys,
This is not the type of game I would play. I think that it would probably be a hit for the young folks. Good Luck!!!
Kind regards,
Sam
X
Make a cross between Farmville, Neopets, and Gaia Online and make it spam like Joe said.
What about a mafia, but they’ve turned into zombies? And they have robots for pets. And you have to grow venus fly traps to attack your enemies. And you can customize your zombies with cool shades and tennis shoes.
I wish you the best of luck with your game.
Tyler you deserve plenty of Kudos for investing your money into something creative. Too many people re-invest in creating junk e-books or crappy services so it’s nice to see somebody trying to make money online with something a little bit different, really hope it works out for you.
You do realise that there is a world of difference between hooking into the Facebook API and iPhone App development though? The money you are spending on one will have to be duplicated to have your games interface (at least) re-written for the other.
Hmm… do you have any direct experience in porting to these platforms? From what I understand (which isn’t much), Flash is pretty easy to port to an iPhone app – not so sure about Facebook, but I wouldn’t think it’d be all that difficult… but again I’m not basing this on much…
Actually, apple just banned those flash to iphone translators.. Adobe has a program that can turn your flash app into one for windows, ipad, iphone, android phones etc, but now that isn’t allowed any more. Look it up. Developers are pretty upset.
20+ years writing games covering just about everything going back to the ZX81 🙂 Thinking about it, it’s more like 25+ years now, god I’m getting old. I’ve got a couple of iPhone apps under my belt.
Making this work within Facebook is very simple, I only spent a couple of days playing around with Facebook development (I’m easily bored) but as long as the guts of this are running server side there will be no worries wrapping the Facebook API around it. It’s the sort of game I could imagine doing well with the Facebook crowd. The iPhone is a different story IMO.
I do laugh when people bang on about how “easy” iPhone game development is. There are 2 types of porting. There is automatic code porting i.e. what the Adobe app was doing – this tends to create “not very good” code (this is my polite way of avoiding being sued :)) Then there is manual porting which is essentially writing the same game for a new platform using some shared resources (graphics/sounds etc). I’ve never seen a code porting tool produce anything that I’d call quality, I’m no code snob by the way. Put simply you have to write clever for the iPhone due to the lack of resources, it’s quite an old school way of game development and very different to writing a Flash program. Doing this the right way from Flash to the OpenGL based iPhone environment involves time and experience = money
Just my opinion Tyler, I wish you well with it – like I said it’s nice to see somebody producing something a bit different in this niche.
Personally I would never play this style of game. It all seems so boring to me. Then again, some people like some pretty lousy games. The fight scenes definitely need improvement, but I’m sure you know that. As others have said, try to make it as social as possible. You want to take advantage of people’s facebook walls & friends lists to spread this game.
This is a great way of dominating the game
Hey a RobotWarz update, sweet ! My thoughts, the music is great, the customisation is impressive, the enemy select is nice. This thing has really come on a long way.
I dont get why the robots have to stand so far apart and run at each other and then run back to their starting point. I’d prefer it if they stood closer and within reach of punches/weapons etc. I know you are following the style of other succesful games here, but it always looked goofy to me.
The music is actually just in the video. The game will have sound effects, but I am not sure if I will include background music as well. Maybe though.
Regarding the running back and forth – yeah, you make a good point. I may see about having this changed, so that they start apart, but then just get knocked back after certain strong blows, then have to run back if they want to do another melee attack. We actually have some programming for this partially done when we were working on a “cinematic” feature…
This reminds me of the final fantasy way of attacking. They each stand at one side, and they run up to each other to attack. In this case, why not make the game into a top-down rpg which then goes into this mode when fighting?
Heard a great quote which may be applicable here in regards to people working for you.
“They are called deadlines because if you miss one then you are dead to me.”
That is an absolutely great quote to live by!
Deadlines are ESSENTIAL when outsourcing your work to others! “Do this and it should take you no longer than x hours and should be done by tomorrow”
I don’t like that game.
Is this going to be a standalone game or do you plan on releasing it on Facebook/Yahoo/Myspace
I think the main reason most of the games like Mafia wars and Farmville have gotten so popular was the social interaction and announcements the game has with your friends list.
If the game is just a standalone site, you are going to have a lot harder time getting the attention you want.
Actually, apple just banned those flash to iphone translators.. Adobe has a program that can turn your flash app into one for windows, ipad, iphone, android phones etc, but now that isn’t allowed any more. Look it up. Developers are pretty upset.
It would have to be targeted differently for each Facebook or iPhone app. The successful Facebook apps have “your friend just helped you out” or “your friend just got you started…do you want to return the favor?”.
Bryan
Hey tyler i just wanna thank you for sharing about this game.
I think the main reason most of the games like Mafia wars and Farmville have gotten so popular was the social interaction and announcements the game has with your friends list.
Wow, it looks great for still being in an early stage. I don’t normally play that type of game but after seeing it, I think I will give a try and see what I think. Have you been able to lock down a release for the beta version yet?
Tyler, I’m impressed. I’ll tell you, the reason why I come back to read your blog time after time is because I’m impressed by the fact that you don’t sit on the fence. You see an oppurtunity and jump right in. I think you’ll do great with this game and think by taking your time and getting it right, it will become a huge money maker.
Now, I’d like to see fewer weigth loss updates – but understand that you gotta have a life too 😉
Continue to make great posts!
I wish you the best of luck with your game.
I don’t like that game…) Thanks Tyler.
Actually, apple just banned those flash to iphone translators 😉
Hey tyler i just wanna thank you for sharing about this game. 🙂