The Difference Between Mouse Clicks and Touches, Robots and Fruit….

alright! long time no update but i've been busy working away. last week i FINALLY got the pale one to work for mobile devices. which was a huge chore, and heres why,

Unlike Apple phones which are all made to certain specs (all iPhone 4's are the same W/ the exception of storage space) the Android operating system is open source, this means anyone who makes a phone can use Android. which is great for them BUT unfortunately this leads to a massive range in the quality of phones. anyone can throw together a cheap phone with terrible parts and plastic screens that break if you breath to heavy in their direction SO its harder to sure the games made for android are One Size Fits All.  so to slightly counter this and give people with higher quality phones or people playing on tablets i created an HD version of that pale one with higher resolution textures, enhanced game assets (the models that make up the game levels, things like trashcans, mailboxes, and so on) i also added more game objects into the level because the stronger systems can handle more objects being rendered at a time.

Theres just a few screen shots to show mostly the texture resolutions upgrades, Also you can see a bit of the extra detail i was able to put on the trashcan, its a smoother cylinder with a more detailed lid. its the little things in life!

so this week my goal(hopefully an attainable goal) is to touch up the code for The Pale One and Pull! and get those moved over and out on IOS!  hopefully the biggest thing i'll have to fix is that Android lets me use if (Input.getMouseButtonDown(0)) as an alternative to telling it to look for touches. this is nice because i can easily test the games in unity using my trusty mouse. UNFORTUNATELY  IOS says that not allowed i must use touches! assuming thats all i really have to fix it shouldn't take any time at all to get these games switched over and get em' out there to everyone with an iPhone/ipad with a hunger for skeet shooters or moister games!

have a wonderful week guys and an awesome april fools!

and Don Draper makes this look easy….

So this week is going to be all about the advertisement! out of all of game development this seems to be the most difficult part. once you've got your game out there is tends to just disappear amid all the other 30000 apps launched that same day. because of this i've been focusing a lot on trying to get my name out into the world. heres what i've messed with so far.

the very first thing i did once i'd decided on a company name was to make a website. so i headed over to Wix.com and made a free website. then i uploaded some screen shots, some bios, and any and all information people could possibly want about my company. I'm not entirely sure how much if any attention this has brought my way because i don't have any kind of visited counter of anything like that.

The 2nd thing i did was a created a Facebook page. AGAIN i uploaded and and all information i felt people would want to know about my budding company, screenshots of titles i've been working on or that are currently available and so on. 

3rd i added one of my games to Kongregate. this took a bit of work because Kongregate will only allow you to upload unity games 20MB or smaller, this of course means i had to cut down the level size, and texture resolution and eliminate all Bump maps to get it to fit. all and all tho i feel like it still looks pretty good.  

4th I started giving away the FULL version, complete with the full map, high res textures and those BEAUTIFUL Bump Maps, of the game on Kongregate for free to anyone who liked my Facebook page and sent me a message. i posted about that on my Facebook and then added a screen in the Kongregate page that informed people of this (IMO) awesome deal. one click for a free game?

for a while there i just left it at that updating my Facebook page one to two time a week. until i got "Pull! Skeet Shooting" out on android. then i started trying to push for more. i made a trailer on youtube, started this lovely blog you are reading here and started pushing word of mouth. and NOW i'm getting into the T-shirt Business! 

I'm Print up some shirts for anyone who wants one. i had to do quite a bit of shopping around but i found a shop that would do them for a great deal! I'm going to sell them at about $15 for this first Group of orders. Now i know that this isn't going to bring in a crazy amount of business BUT currently I'm at the point where every single  sell is a huge deal.  

So how well is this all working out for me? to be completely honest its going kind of meh…. but its something i anticipated. everyone in the world wasn't going to just wake up one morning knowing my companies name and having all of my games downloaded onto there various smartphones and computers. Now hopefully one day N00bile indie developers will be like "did you hear about that lucky *Expletive*  who owns winter Stories Studio? He just bought solid gold rims for his jet ski because he's just that filthy rich." but thats just me… i like to keep things realistic, ya know?

P.S if you guys are interested in order a t-shirt send me an email ( WinterStories.Studio@gmail.com) or send me a message on Facebook. Hopefully i will be ordering the shirts this monday (3-24-14).

The Price is WRONG Bob Barker....

So today i uploaded a new APK (APK is the file type you build your game to so you can upload it onto the Google play store) for the Pull! Skeet Shooting Free game. i did i little bit of updating, first i lowered the price of the targets so people can have a bit more of that instant gratification we love so much.Then i fixed it so the ads don't appear on the target select screen. the delay of the ad seemed to make it pop up about the time you went to click a target. this was NOT an intentional thing i did and was worried it people would feel it was a dastardly trick to get people to buy more apps and give me millions in ad money! now don't get me wrong I'm just as dastardly as the next fellow but i certainly don't want people to know that!

 Next I'm going to work on updating the paid version so the prices are the same as the free version. that should only take a few minutes. just a quick update to a bit of coding and changing a bit o' 3d text then upload that APK to Google and wait about 7 hours for it to be live! 

AND FINALLY! i've almost finished making The Pale One ready for android devices! i believe i fixed the issue with my joysticks from last week. and now all i need to do is a bit of optimization. the game currently runs fine on my tablet but has a less than desirable frame rate on the my old terrible android phone. so gonna fix that hopefully pretty quick. 

OH! and i stepped on a nail yesterday....that sucked...

Holy Delayed updates Batman!!

Hey Guys and Gal!
Sorry for the delay in updates! its been a pretty busy few weeks for me, unfortunately not a crazy productive few weeks as far as game development goes.  i did finally manage to make it up to the city to attend the Oklahoma Game Developers meeting. which was a blast. if you live in Oklahoma and you are into game development at all you should try and make one of their meetings. i believe they have them the last thursday of every month.

one of the cool things about this meeting was it was held in the Digital Tutors building. which if you don't know what digital tutors is you are missing out my friend. they do really great video tutorials on everything from adobe photoshop, maya, ads max, After Effects even Unity 3D. incredibly helpful tutorials on that site so you should check it out if you get some time. all the guys who work there turned out to be really friendly and oddly enough most of them are from Oklahoma, which if your like me you wouldn't really assume the good ol OK state would have a large computer modeling, graphic design community but hey, at least we'd be wrong together!

the real reason i haven't gotten to much done so far as game development progress is i've stumbled onto an issue I'm having trouble resolving. basically I'm working on a game for mobile that uses two joysticks to control a First Person player. the issue I'm running into is that while the joysticks placement is correct on my testing tablet(a Nexus 7) when i play it on my phone the joysticks are oversized and i can only see one on the screen. i believe i know whats causing the issue, its a resolution problem. the joystick knows its 100 X 100 Pixels but on my phone with a much lower resolution 100 pixels take up more screen real-estate . same with the offset for the second joystick it thinks it needs to be 1000 pixels in (an example i don't remember the exact pixel inset off the top of my head.)  but while 1000 pixels works great for a tablet it doesn't work so well for a phone.


i had a similar issue with the UI ( User Interface) my GUI's wouldn't scale based on screen size. now i figured this issue out. basically i figured out the resolution i was testing the screen on because it was the perfect sized, i then did a quick bit of code that found out what the screen size was for the device you are currently using then made the GUI's take up the same percent of the screen that they did on the test screen.( i can supply a more detailed explanation if anyone is interested. send me a comment below) unfortunately this doesn't apply to well to the joysticks. HOPEFULLY i'll have some good news next week on this front. anyway friends family and both my fans thanks for stopping in for an update. i'll talk to you all real soon.

Samwise we are barely out of Hobbiton...

So this last week has been pretty eventful. i uploaded my game to the Amazon store so i can hit that Kindle-Fire-Owners-Who-Are-Looking-For-A-Skeet-Shooting-Game market. i'm confident that its a PRETTY big market...surely?

Also I created a free version of Pull and slapped that bad boy up on the Google Play Store.
( Available Here!!! ) I'm sure that second bit sounds easy BUT it was actually more difficult than it sounds. Being as its a free game i decided to add in some advertisements. After a bit of online window shopping a decided to go with ChartBoost.  Basically how it works is after a player finishes a skeet shooting level an ad will pop up for a free game. if the player clicks the ad i make  4 big ones!!! (by big ones I of course mean pennies...) if someone then installs the app from the add i make 50 big ones!!!(Yes, still talking in pennies here) which doesn't really seem like much and honestly its not, But if someone downloads at least 2 free apps that pop up in the free version I make what I would for the paid and it doesn't cost them anything. Win Win if you ask me.  I'll let you guys know how the whole Chartboost,  free game with ads thing works out  me.

Then i did some much needed App icon upgrading.

Original Icon

Updated Icon

Updated Free Icon

Its not a massive improvement but I feel like it gives the icon a little bit more life, which hopefully will lead to more interested parties.. 

I've got big plans for this week so hopefully next monday(or sooner!) I'll have some big news to announce.  Anyway Guys and Gals I'm going to hop of here and get back to work! Thanks for stopping by and for all of your continued support!

This might take a while.....

Hello random internet dwellers!

Being as this is my first post on my very first blog, ( A momentous occasion I'm sure you'll agree) i felt i should give you all some of my Developer backstory. 

My name is Michael Kolb, i own my own indie game design company called Winter Stories Studio, LLC. my goal in life is pretty simple, i just want the american dream. you know the one I'm talking about. The one where i'm filthy rich and the only exercise i get is when i go swimming in my giant vault filled with money all scrooge McDuck style.

  I published my very first game on July 13, 2013 to a little site called Kongregate. it's called " The Pale One" and it launched to some amazing reviews. Trolovtricky was quoted "nicev game" while kilspeed111  raved "all i gets a white screen." still all in all 3.3 stars is not to bad for a first game. and did I mention the MONEY!!!! Since "The Pale One" launched I have made over $0.75 from ad revenue!!! I know right?! Here I come 1%!!!

so not exactly a " i should quit my day job" success, but you bet your life when they mail me that 75 cent check I'm taking that bad boy to the bank with a smile on my face...

More recently i launched my second game onto the Google Play Store. This one is called "Pull! Skeet Shooting"  its a pretty simple tap to shoot game with unlockable levels and targets. 

Right now I'm proud to announce it's sitting at a 5 star rating!!! 

Right now I'm slightly less proud but feel morally inclined to tell you  its only sold 4 copies and the only two reviews are from my girl friend and my best friend. 

Looks like this might take a while...