The Clans - Saga of the Twins

[cabfe]

Out of curiosity, since you mentionned Hi-res DLL, Effectus and Performance issues in the same game (well, hum...) I tried the demo on my old computer.

Title screen is at 58-60 frames per second (using F2). Just after hitting New game, I got 3-4 frames per second. It's possibly the slowest RM game I've ever tried

Not everyone (I hope) still uses an Athlon 64 4200, but since it lags that much on my computer, you're likely to have a lot of average range CPUs not running the game at a decent speed.

That's something you might want to address, either in this game (probably too late now) or the next, since it'll affect lots of players.

 

[EternalShadow]

Not everyone (I hope) still uses an Athlon 64 4200, but since it lags that much on my computer, you're likely to have a lot of average range CPUs not running the game at a decent speed.

That's something you might want to address, either in this game (probably too late now) or the next, since it'll affect lots of players.

Some people on the Steam forums did mention this already I believe.

 

[cabfe]

Some people on the Steam forums did mention this already I believe.

I haven't checked the comments there and I'm pretty sure my comment here was not unexpected news, as performance was a concern already, but I didn't expect it to be *that* slow.

As told somewhere else on the forum, if you don't have an actual old, slow CPU, you can try setting up a virtual machine and allocate minimum resources to emulate a less powerful configuration.

 

[Hirei]

Just popping in as the char artist / UI Designer: I'm going to be working on the shop UI and other UI items too shortly. But I think it's commendable that he's not just giving up on the game, he's trying to improve it little by little even though the reviews aren't good at the moment.

 

[phoenix_rossy]

Still in my defense, it was the community who voted the game to be sold. Problem is that Steam Greenlight doesn't let down vote things and current barrier of approval is too low. They should seriously rethink the system. I also guess that the Valve should play the games a bit before agreeing to sell them, a lot of us Steam Greenlight submitters have no skills to pull off our game ideas properly.

Woah, Clord. It's YOUR responsibility to provide a quality product. If you fail to meet this criteria... it's basically bye-bye to your long-term career. It's not up to Valve to quality-test your game, it's yours and yours alone.

If you have some issues to work through, release on Early Access rather than straight onto the full store.

Those reviews are brutal, but it's the same for most rpg maker games.

I'm not so sure... I've seen tons of RPG Maker games on Steam with a much better reception than this has had. From what I've seen here, the artwork/mechanics are good, but customers are finding that the writing is lackluster for a commercial product. Unfortunately, an RPG with writing that doesn't hit the mark won't hit the mark at all...

The commercial market IS a brutal place to be, and we have to steel ourselves against criticism.

 

[Clord]

My sales are still going well.


I have secured a lot of upcoming sales, can't go into much details about that as of yet.


Voice acting will be finished and what I have already heard it's really professional. I should know since I have over hour worth it on my HD already.


Game has already been almost fixed thanks to my own script fixing and outside help from SOURCE.


If I made my game release sound a total disaster, I apologize.

 

[phoenix_rossy]

If I made my game release sound a total disaster, I apologize.

Never said it was a disaster. I'm only saying that if the game isn't up to scratch, it should have been released in Early Access rather than straight to the Steam store. For your benefit, and that of the customer - EA players are a lot more forgiving for issues concerning the game, speaking from my own experience there.

If you want to build and preserve a good reputation, you just have to think about these things beforehand.

My sales are still going well.

'Well' is definitely a relative term

 

[Indinera]

'Well' is definitely a relative term

Definitely indeed, and it also relies heavily on how experienced one is, whether they are making a living out of it or not etc.

For some 100 sales might be great, for others it might be horrible.

 

[_Shadow_]

@Clord just make sure you will have correct minimum requirements for the game. And enhance it all the time.

If you got the same minimum as VX Ace has for instance, you are toasted by the market.

If someone pops up and say "I hate this game it lags a lot" and you ask info about his/her PC and info reveals a slower than minimum requirements PC, then it's not your fault really. 

I am not sure if you tested the game on as many systems as possible, but a good idea would be to find some old systems to just give them a try before releasing another game next time.

Software development can be hell on earth. You might make a simple piece of software using Visual Basic, test it a lot, make it solid as steel then go and test it to your customer's PC and it might crash no matter what. Been there faced that. And it might not be YOUR fault but the customer demands a piece of software that will work just anywhere. So... welcome to hell!

I remember your game from IGMC 2014 (consider this a copliment, since I don't remember more than 10 - 15 titles) and I can say it was a nice participation.

Try to make things right. Using Effectus makes means you take your game seriously by the way and I am happy to hear that.

 

'Well' is definitely a relative term 

For some 100 sales might be great, for others it might be horrible.

 

For a first game 100 or 200 or even 500 sales can be considered "well" because of the Return Of Investmet factor.

On the other hand, being there done that, making a second game, might make suddenly 500 sales look horrible.

You are right.

And if you spent the last 5 years making it, spending 6 hours/day... this can make an amount of 500 sales suck big time.

 

[phoenix_rossy]

Software development can be hell on earth. You might make a simple piece of software using Visual Basic, test it a lot, make it solid as steel then go and test it to your customer's PC and it might crash no matter what. Been there faced that. And it might not be YOUR fault but the customer demands a piece of software that will work just anywhere. So... welcome to hell!

You got that right! Nothing worse than ONE customer experiencing a game-breaking bug, because it's usually impossible to replicate and therefore diagnose. At least when the majority have a problem, you can cross-reference information regarding their systems, actions etc.

Hey Clord, I notice you have a deluxe edition with the soundtrack included. Is your Soundtrack launchable from the Steam Client, or from the game itself? Or does it just tuck the files away into the game's install directory?

 

[Clord]

I handled it like the most indies handle their Deluxe DLC.


Essentially it's just a bunch of sub-folders.

 

[phoenix_rossy]

Fair enough, thank you!

 

[Clord]

Some freebies. As you know, there are a lot scam attempts to get free games from the devs. These are the keys that were not used to their intended purpose. Feel free to claim your own copy of my game.


48Z6K-EIWW0-BQW7W


55QHT-VLC3L-CQGC8


HVT3V-88JWE-HK029


NX9AD-LN9IY-KG7TA


JTJ2M-YAI39-3Z2BI


KGKRX-PEQA2-HY98H

 

[bgillisp]

You serious? Free copy, first come first serve?

 

[Clord]

Yeah. I fell to this scam even though common sense says to use Google first. Those keys have appeared on resell sites working under Kinguin.


https://twitter.com/simoroth/status/532180963368136704

 

[Indinera]

If it was just ONE person pretending to be someone they are not... it's literally TONS of them. Not only youtubers, but also reviewers, editors in chief etc.

Always google the email address and see what you get before sending over free keys.

 

[Clord]

Yeah lesson learned.


I did Google an interesting article which told an experiment where the guy who wrote it pretended to be a popular Youtuber and sent a lot of E-mails to various developer teams. He got a lot of keys due tons of developers didn't make sure he was who he told he was.


http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LeszekLisowski/20141001/226840/How_to_get_every_game_on_STEAM_for_free.php

 

[Indinera]

Well the article is untrue, because you are not getting MY games using that method... I always check, and if I cannot verify the email I contact the youtuber directly through Youtube lol

 

[bgillisp]

I've heard of this scam too, and was just ninja'd by Clord on the article on this.

As for the keys, nice of you to offer them. I'm going to leave them for someone who probably can't afford the game (as I can). I'll probably buy it when the semester ends to check it out (and see if the bugs are fixed by then).

 

[Clord]

Well the article is untrue, because you are not getting MY games using that method... I always check, and if I cannot verify the email I contact the youtuber directly through Youtube lol

But that's beauty of the scam. There are enough developers who keep falling on it. It's probably because for many indie developers it's situation of "That's just one Steam key."