My first game: A Zombie RPG

[EccentricDuck]

Right on - congrats on finally getting it up and it sounds like you're seeing some impressive sales figures! It's looking good - it's definitely come a long way I'll download the online copy as soon as I finish moving and get internet set up in my new place. My Xbox is currently over at the other place along with my tv.

Sorry I haven't been active in the app hub forums. I've felt a need to put that to the side for the time being because of the stress I was feeling with trying to juggle school, finances, and putting my game through playtesting/review; so consequently I haven't posted in the forums there for awhile. However, I definitely haven't given up on game development - I just needed some time for reflection. I actually started working on a rhythm game in Java with some classmates that lets you record your own music.

I think we should have a Chaos Rift multiplayer night at some point. Undead Empire would be an awesome pick.

[EdBoon]

that would be awesome! just let me release the patch first so its not broken when we play

sweet i love rhythm games, keep us updated

I'm definitely in for a chaos rift multiplayer night, we can throw in a game called gyroball too, i kno the kid who made it

[EccentricDuck]

I'm definitely in for a chaos rift multiplayer night, we can throw in a game called gyroball too, i kno the kid who made it

Hey, I think I know that guy too

[MrDeathNote]

Bought and downloaded. Nice work bro it plays really nicely And I got a mention in the credits, boo ya!!!

[EdBoon]

So I was going through my google docs and stumbled across a document we used to track all of our sprite animation and code progress for undead empire development before we hired an artist to actually do the spritework. its pretty funny to see the sprite work and notes on the game. i made it public so u can make fun of it.

But really, documenting the process really really helped the development progress and the code tracking and planning was a huge help. sometimes you dont feel like coding all night, so you can just pick something small that you estimated would take an hour or so just to get something done when not motivated. And other times it is a motivating factor itself to see all the progress that you have made and how little is left to complete the project. I highly recommend some sort of project tracking for anyone in a project even if it is a solo effort. But the primary reason for sharing this is definitely to laugh at the effort

Here is the link for the google document:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LbX ... t?hl=en_US

[dandymcgee]

make quad tree more efficient (1200 objects)
fuck u quadtree

Lmfao

[EdBoon]

make quad tree more efficient (1200 objects)
fuck u quadtree

Lmfao

yeah man, spent like a month trying to get it to support all the objects but it was just too much with 4 players shooting dual sub machine guns, and up to 16 turrets and then zombies that shoot vomit balls, just wasn't going to cut it. switched to spacial hashing system and it was no problem.

also wanted to share the sales. Just passed 6 months the game has been out and here are the results:

Period Statistics
Trials: 24285
Purchases: 15453
Purchase/Trial Ratio: 63.63 %

game is a dollar and MS takes 30% so over 6 months it made me $10,817. Not bad for a hobby in my spare time!

still selling about 50 copies a day, it was about 100-120 a day but really died down after about 4 months. I really didn't know what to expect so I'm pleased with the results. Also the purchase to trial ratio is pretty good, seems that others that post stats i would say the average is around 10-15%. I think it is because the trial you only get about 7 minutes, which is enough to experience a lot of other indies, but with undead empire u really dont even get to experience any of the other guns and the whole game takes about 90 minutes. plus MS wont allow trials to have multiplayer so that probably has some to do with the high ratio as well.

[dandymcgee]

Period Statistics
Trials: 24285
Purchases: 15453
Purchase/Trial Ratio: 63.63 %

Not bad for a hobby in my spare time!

Not bad at all! Grats on the well deserved rewards!

[k1net1k]

It's great of you to share the details about the sales. Thanks Man !!

[GroundUpEngine]

Period Statistics
Trials: 24285
Purchases: 15453
Purchase/Trial Ratio: 63.63 %

Not bad for a hobby in my spare time!

Not bad at all! Grats on the well deserved rewards!

Agreed, very good turn out!!

[EdBoon]

thanks guys,

just wanted update how sales are going, ratio has been surprisingly high the past few months, uncommon for XBLIG, majority of purchase/trial ratio that people post on the xna forums are around 5-10%.

December
Period Statistics
Trials: 816
Purchases: 856
Purchase/Trial Ratio: 104.90 %

Janurary
Period Statistics
Trials: 798
Purchases: 903
Purchase/Trial Ratio: 113.16 %

Total through January
Period Statistics
Trials: 27108
Purchases: 18130
Purchase/Trial Ratio: 66.88 %

Currently i am trying to port it over to pc and mobile, both because i've heard of people finding much more success on PC outlets like steam (the CSTW developer had 20,000 sales on xblig over a year and put it on steam and had 200,000+ sales in 4 months) and also because i just want the experience of porting from xna to windows to WP7.project was recently accepted by kickstarter too http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/big ... hooter-pca

Anyways, right now im trying to focus on beer pong right now, but I thought people thinking about developing with xna would be interested

on the other hand, sales for Gamerscore Tracker, an app i released mid-December that tracks gamerscore history and some other stuff, didn't do so well :

Period Statistics
Trials: 1948
Purchases: 519
Purchase/Trial Ratio: 26.64 %

i spent about 500 on art assets. Bombed! haha, o well i learned a lot about menu navigation and menu animation so it was worth it even if i lost money on the deal

[dandymcgee]

Total through January
Period Statistics
Trials: 27108
Purchases: 18130
Purchase/Trial Ratio: 66.88 %

Hollyyy shit. That's a lot of people interested in your game. Congratulations dude! It must be nice to know your hard work was worth it and people are enjoying your product.

[k1net1k]

I don't know whats considered good, but that seems like a good trial > sale conversion rate

[EccentricDuck]

That is a wicked conversion rate - congrats.

The loss on the score tracker app is no big deal - a piddly amount lost for learning about UI (which I thought your score tracker did an excellent job of, along with the music and general ambience).

[Light-Dark]

When i renew my xbox live gold and get some more microsoft points im definetly buying this, its wonderful to see how this game has evolved!