Social media

I think Game Develop should establish social media presence. Of course that’s up to 4ian, so if he don’t want to do this, I’ll understand, but it would do few things:

  • (Free) advertisement. Social media if used properly can be powerful tools of marketing. And they’re completely free to use! Seriously though GD doesn’t have recognition it deserves.
  • Giving quick updates about development of GD to current users. Things that are too short for a forum post can go e.g. to Twitter. Things like e.g. “I’m working now on porting lighting to html5” (example). Or screenshots of completely new extension in action.
  • Promoting games made with GD.

Best place to start is IMHO Twitter (you should then start to tweet about GD to established indie devs and gaming/gamedev websites, maybe someone will retweet). Then making a GD subreddit would be good idea. Don’t try Facebook though - it is unlikely you’ll get any traction this way. If you have any questions I’d gladly answer them.

I’ll already trying to tell about GD in some indie or game development websites, feel free to post links here if you stumble upon a such website where there is no post about GD.

Of course I’d like GD to get a better social media presence, but it’s a hard thing to achieve: Again, feel free to post here about any concrete idea (I really need some concrete examples of things to do) that could be done. GD already have a facebook/Google+ page where news are posted whenever a new version or tutorial is available, or any nice game created with GD.

Note that anyone can help me promoting GD :slight_smile:

Just go on your favorite social media and tell about GD. It can be a message on a forum, sending a tweet on Twitter, contacting well known indie game developers… If you do not know how to do, just send me a link to the website/forum/email address so that I could get in touch myself. :slight_smile:

The problem with Facebook/G+ is that… no one really use them. Most people here are either ghost accounts who just wanted to see what that FarmVille thing is about or aren’t interested in making games altogether.

Better idea, as I’ve said is to make Twitter account dedicated to GD (and update it often, even when no new version is planned for the moment e.g. with things you are working on) and using Reddit.

I’ve never said that it’ll be easy to do either. It takes lots of time and effort to do so. But for start few tips:

  • Be persistent. If some gaming/gamedev website won’t respond to your e-mail about what GD is, it might be because they just didn’t see your e-mail because of so many other e-mails. Try sending it again after 2-3 days to same outlet, at different time of day, perhaps even at night.
  • Another thing to keep in mind is that picture is better than 1000 words and video is better than 1000 pictures (though exact value depends of a length of video :wink:). Therefore making video tutorials of Game Develop and posting them via twitter/reddit would be good way to promote GD as well (and if your spoken English is bad, just get on some English TeamSpeak server - I’ve found out that it is great way to improve your spoken language).

//edit: And I’ve started to promote GD already, xenofex is one of results of said promotion. But author of tool should promote the most. Otherwise it just looks like you don’t care (even if you actually care as I and other GD users see).

//edit #2: Another tip:

Expose socialmedia links more on the website. I’ve heard from YOU that GD is even on Facebook. You should expose social links as close to top of page as possible. So people would quickly see them. Those should be one of few things people see after opening site.

In my opinion If you want to have better recognition for GD, in first place you should make sure it easy to find. In google whatever I search for, Game Develop never pops up. I don’t even remember how did I found GD, I just can’t find in google any more. To fix this, need to add better keywords and flags to the site to make it easier for search engines to find and crawl the site.

What I would do:
Register compilgames.net on google webmaster tool, and add sitemap to help google find and crawl the site easier.
Add Keywords to help google crawl the website easier for many search types:

compilgames.net, GameDevelop, Game Develop, game development tool, game engine , 2D game engine, html5 game engine, Linux game, engine, windows game engine, 2D, Linux, Windows, Html5, isometrick, 2.5D, game development tool, html5 game development tool, Linux, game development tool, windows game development tool, free, free game engine, free game development tool, easy, easy game, development tool, no programming required, event system, beginner, advanced, system tool, engine, built in scene editor…etc

Add everything however you would search for game engine and the same in French too.

More variations you add, makes more easier for search engines to find and crawl the site especially for google.
Maybe also worth to make a BlogSpot blog about Game Develop and add as many details, keywords, flags as possible to have even better chance of search engines and people find details about GD.

Second thing I would do.
I found some sites that list game engines, but Game Develop is not listed. Try to find sites that makes list of game engines, and try to contact the webmaster and ask him to add Game Develop to the list. What I have found so far:

html5gameengine.com/ - Sent a mail to the webmaster
mobilegameengines.com/html5/2d_game_engines - Submitted and added
makegames.pixelprospector.com/ - Submitted
freegamedev.net/wiki/Free%2C_cro … me_engines
devmaster.net/devdb/engines - Submitted
html5gameengines.com/game-engine-overview/ - Submitted
developer.mozilla.org/en-US/doc … _and_tools - Added
jster.net/library/game-develop )[/i]
html5gamer.net/site/resources - Submitted
html5gamedevelopment.com/html5-engines

I don’t know how much it cost, but maybe also worth it to upload GD to Desura
desura.com/engines/ - Need a game published on Desura made with GD

I know that steam cost money and users need to vote to be able release it, but can be a good investment for sure.

But I would like to mention that, to get recognition is one thing, to keep interested every user who come across GD is the main thing in my opinion, and to achieve this, from my point of view as a user, all existing features need to be solid because crap features makes worst impression than missing feature.
Features I have problem with so far and I recommend to improve:

-pathfinding is not smooth enough looks horrible the movement
-we can’t zoom in and out in collision mask editor, makes difficult to fit collision mask perfectly in some cases
-objects doesn’t shown in physics collision mask editor makes it impossible to fit collision mask perfectly. Sure everything should fit inside a square or sphere but sometime need to be more accurate
-we should be able to use more type of dynamic lights and also every light should be able to cast shadow
-we cant change canvas size, you promised it going to be fixed, fine, but also would be great if the canvas is can be stretched on y axis to fit browser window and make sure the game stay inside browser no matter what is the window and canvas size. I mean stretch canvas automatically to browser window.

I agree with point about crap features being worse than no features, however in case of stretching canvas, it should retain aspect ratio, so sprites won’t be too thin/too wide when browser get resized to weird size and should be purely optional so developer would turn it off when (s)he doesn’t want to make her/his game stretching.

//edit: Nevertheless, I’ve already, some time ago posted about Game Develop on TIGSource (forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=35706.0) and on forums of little game dev tool called CraftStudio (made by French guy as well!). Posted on others as well, but forgot which ones.

Am, where did you read that?
Just logged in to my Desura account, choosed add an engine, and these are the requirements:

First requirement doesn’t say that a game need to be released or something only that a game is under development or going to be. But anyway, there is a browser game is released remember?
tva.clay.io/
And also there are a few more games in showcase and yeah tons of games under development I show off all my crap if necessary :smiling_imp: .

To upload it, you also have to add your company (compilgames).
The requirements to add a company are these:

The 2 or more members for company I think for administration only, the only thing you have to do is to add admin privilege at least to one more active Desura member to be able to manage the company page on Desura I believe, so need to be 2 or more active member with admin privilege on Desura.

I can’t see any problem here, I’m sure you can add compilgames as company and upload Game Develop :slight_smile:

Alas, Desura really show your engine if and only if there is at least one game on their website powered with GD:

When trying to activate the engine on another page in my developer profile:


(Note that GD is already listed on Moddb and indiedb)

So there is really no other solution than having a game published on Desura.
Anyhow, many thanks for the large list of website! That was really useful! Do not hesitate to paste here any other link or interesting website! :smiley:

Publishing on Desura is free AFAIK. They only take percentage of sales. And is game is free… Well, % of 0 is still 0. So we could make some freeware game that would be good showcase of GD’s capabilities and put it on Desura.

I’ll do that with my next game (a platformer), since current project that I’m finishing is html5 and wouldn’t work as standalone game since it’s too short.

By the way, concerning the canvas size, next version will add the support for fullscreen for HTML5 games and canvas resizing. :slight_smile:

[b]Want a really big tip for you to rank fast on search engines. Its called Having the searched words in your website title

Gameengine.com is around £1k to buy but if you buy Enginegame.com its normal £6 lol. google searches game engine and engine game the same. they both have 2 keywords in the url :wink:
GdGameEngine is also a normal price.

with search engines a website with a keyword in the meta description ranks quiet high but a website with a keyword in meta and also in the url out ranks them all.
People searching for a game creating software . type Game Engine or Game software or variables of those. but the main search is Game engine so use GDgameengine.com for thie website or this forum. you will rank great without doing too much extra work :wink: [/b]