Ludum Dare October Challenge 2014. I'm in!
Being a busy father of two never leaves enough time to do regular LudumDares. It's almost impossible for me to dedicate 48 hours straight to anything. That's why I love the October Challenge. Last year in October I participated in my first LudumDare OC. I made an Android Game called Drone Invaders, released it on Google Play, got about 3000 players and earned some trivial money (about $140). But I learned a lot, especially all about Android development.
This year I plan to build another Android game. Some (say, 60%) of the graphics will be outsourced to artists on Fiverr. Rest of the gfx, programming and sound effect I plan to do myself. I'm still not sure about music. I depends how much time is left when everything else is done.
Last time I used libGDX as bare-bones graphics library, only utilizing Sprite and BitmapFontCache classes. This time I plan to use Scene2D with Stages and Actors. Another big change is that I will make sure that devices with higher screen resolutions are properly supported and all the graphics are crisp clear.
As for the $1 goal, I will stay away from IAP this time. Google Wallet accounts are still not available in my country, and doing it through some friend abroad just complicates things and slows me down. I decided to try AdMod instead. It's linked with my AdSense account, so there should be no problems with the payments.
As for the game itself, I plan to revamp my Gods of Sparta strategy game. The main focus will now be local, hot-seat game for two players on Android devices. It will be completely free to play, supported by ads. I will reuse some old graphics, but more need to be drawn, especially higher resolution stuff for Nexus10 (2560x1600 pixel screen) I got recently. Also, UI needs to be drastically improved and game rules have to be simplified. To cut the long story short, I need to improve the player experience and make it feel more like computer strategy game and less like paper card game. Here's some teaser graphics that will be included in the game...
