
Show HN: My First 3D Android Game Using Unity3D – Dragon Slayer: Reign of Fire - bharatparikh
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thoughtshastra.dragonslayer
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semperfaux
I admire your ambition! My own Android game development is intentionally
limited to 2D for various reasons.

Unfortunately, and I hope this is not your experience, the way I understand
the state of affairs in gaming in general is that if it's not as gorgeous as
_Mass Effect_ or as addictive as _Candy Crush_ you're not likely to see many
people caring.

Really, though, good on you for releasing a game! If making games is what you
love, keep going; I just hope the monetization you're doing is more
experimental than an attempt at making a living. People are cheap, cheap
bastards, and your prices aren't even attempting to hit the whales that
support most (if not all) profitable F2P games.

 _Edit: Also, please note that as many of us found out the hard way, Google
Play does indeed show your freaking address as part of your listing, so you
may want to remove it from the relevant part of your profile. It 's not
required but it's also not made clear that it'll be shown publicly if you
enter it._

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bharatparikh
Thanks for your comment. I can relate and agree to whatever you have
mentioned. The chances of Indie game succeeding are very slim.

My motivation for making games is two folds - one the psychological
satisfaction of "creation" and second the ability to reach out to global
audience with whom otherwise I would never had any connect. See, we two are
talking right now :) I am hoping to reach a level where I can make a living
through my games. I am far away from that goal right now :)

Regarding the developer address part - Isn't it mandatory in Play Store for
every developer to list their address? Can the address be just a city and
country instead of a detailed one?

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chpp
Congratulations on the release. I am currently a deep shade of green as I am a
devops engineer who has a pipe dream of creating and releasing a game really
just for the pleasure of just doing it and learning a language (and hopefully
a personally successful future as a freelance dev). I have been looking at C#
and Unity. I started digging into c# but I am a weak python guy so it's
frustrating :)

You are a great motivator! Your work is appreciated. Congrats again.

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deciplex
Why not use Boo? Serious question and if there is some reason to avoid taking
advantage of the Boo support in Unity, I'd really like to know about it.

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bharatparikh
Had never heard about it before. Will give it a try. Thanks for suggesting!

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AdmiralAsshat
Suggestion for your description: "High Quality 3D graphics" comes across like
you're scraping the barrel for bullet points to put on the back of the box. To
boot, I can say from experience that the ones that put that on the back are
usually the shovelware games with graphics that always look like they're one
or two generations of consoles behind (i.e early-PS2 graphics on a PS3 game,
etc.) Now obviously you're doing this all on your own and I'm not going to
hold you to the same standards as a multi-million dollar project. I guess my
point is, that kind of blurb invites criticism. It's like a chef bringing you
a steak that he proclaims "perfectly cooked" when it's clearly overdone.

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bharatparikh
Thanks for your suggestion. The title and description of the game in Play
Store plays a big part in ranking the game against keyword searches. Hence, a
lot of Indie developers like me go a little over-the-board in describing the
game :)

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Aardwolf
Congrats for the game.

Unity3D makes me shudder though. People are publishing Unity3D games on the
internet, but on Linux you can't play them because unity refuses to make a
webplugin for Linux. One for Mac or one for Windows they of course have.

At least because of that bad experience I have with them (some game on
newgrounds looks like good, but oh no, after opening it it turns out it's a
unity one instead of flash) makes me HATE the name Unity3D and everything that
has to do with it, no matter how good they try to be for the rest.

Them refusing to do the effort of making a Linux webplugin, smears their name.

~~~
_random_
I think they announced that they are going to allow publishing to web via HTML
and CrapGL at some stage. So you might have something eventually.

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Aardwolf
What would that publishing method do to the already published things though?
If they can make a unity webplugin for Windows and Mac, two completely
different systems, it should be possible to make one for Linux as well.

Also, "CrapGL" sounds not so good... not a fan of WebGL?

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draugadrotten
> If they can make a unity webplugin for Windows and Mac, two completely
> different systems, it should be possible to make one for Linux as well.

Please share your estimates how much money you can make on a linux plugin vs
how much you have to spend to create it?

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srikz
Great first attempt! Kudos!

I feel you should blog your experience on developing this game. I'm sure it'll
be an interesting read and an inspiration for many of us who wish to get
involved in game development.

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bharatparikh
Thanks for your encouraging feedback. Thats a very good suggestion. I will
start putting together something once I port this game to iOS.

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NKCSS
Bit of unrelated advice; in one of your other games (
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thoughtsha...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thoughtshastra.templetreasure)
) , you address people in Dutch with 'U' (capital u), which in Dutch is only
used to refer to God.

~~~
bharatparikh
Thanks for pointing that out. I will make the necessary correction. I don't
remember if I got help in getting the text translated or if I had used Google
Translator. In either case I will get it corrected.

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higherpurpose
That's one hell of a first try. Good job!

You should post it to r/Android as well with a similar headline.

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bharatparikh
Thanks a lot for your encouraging feedback and the suggestion! Posted to
/r/Android.

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Envec83
Congratulations! I see you have a couple of other games. One with 100k-500k
installs, one with 50k-100k installs, and one with 10k-50k installs. All of
them have in-app purchases. Could you share with us how much you are making
with each game?

~~~
bharatparikh
Thank you! I can't share the exact numbers. All I can say is the earnings are
not enough to make a living (even in a low cost country like India) :)
Probably, the numbers are not even worth sharing :)

I will be trying my hands with iOS by porting this game to see if its any
different on that platform.

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Kurtz79
Seems impressive, congrats!

How long did it take from start to finish ?

How many people were involved ?

~~~
bharatparikh
Thanks for your encouraging feedback!

I was the sole game developer / designer working on it. It took about 2 person
months of effort. I have prior experience in Java and Libgdx engine. But this
is my first in Unity3D and C#. Along with Unity3D, Google Game Services and
OpenIAB plugins have been used. I used Blender for 3D modeling and animation
and GIMP for 2D image editing.

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antichaos
Why did you ditch libgdx?

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bharatparikh
For the lack of a visual editor to visualize how the scene would look like. In
Unity3D you can play a game, pause it, make necessary changes to find out how
would it effect your scene, and every thing is updated real-time in the scene
(the changes are not saved though, so you need to remember what was changed
and redo once you come out of Play mode). In short its a what-you-see-what-you
get kind of tool.

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devopsproject
"The skies have turned red"

First screenshots show a blue sky

~~~
bharatparikh
The first screenshot displayed to the user in Play Store depends upon the
platform that you are using to view the Play Store entry. Check out within
your Play Store app on Android phone and it would display a screenshot with
red sky. For tablets and desktops I chose the blue one to be displayed first.

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Kiro
Very nice!

How come you went with Unity3D instead of Unreal Engine 4?

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bharatparikh
Thanks for your feedback. While there are couple of reasons for choosing
Unity3D over Unreal more than anything else it has been the cost factor.
Unity3D basic version is free (for organizations that make annual revenue
lesser than some threshold value) versus Unreal Engine which is paid. Since I
am still a novice Indie developer not making any money from games I am trying
to keep my cost to a minimum :)

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k__
How about the design part? Did you use free graphics? Some of the Unity
bundles? Did it yourself?

I often have the feeling, that games are the only type of "Software" that has
enough developers but never enough designers...

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bharatparikh
Yes, I have used free graphics and optimized them to reduce the vertex count
and size and also created custom animations. All the arenas / level have been
modeled by me though.

I agree that games, especially indie games, need more designers. Since indie
games usually don't end up making enough money its difficult to find designers
who are ready to work on profit sharing basis rather than upfront money.

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bactatin
Wasnt battle tank 3D your first 3D game?

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bharatparikh
Battle of Tanks was using Libgdx. This one is using Unity3D. Knowing Java and
Libgdx engine helped a little but it was still a very different experience
using Unity3D and C#.

