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View Poll Results: How much would you pay for Ravensword on Android?
I'm one of the guys that made Ravensword for iPhone. Was wondering if there would be any interest in a port to Android? What do you think people would be willing to pay for it? It's 4.99 on the app store now, and selling well.
Just testing the waters at this point... I don't have an Android device, and haven't seen the store. Have got the impression that there's really no money in it yet... and as much as I'd love to give stuff away, I have to eat.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
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I'm one of the guys that made Ravensword for iPhone. Was wondering if there would be any interest in a port to Android? What do you think people would be willing to pay for it? It's 4.99 on the app store now, and selling well.
Depends. Have a look here and here. Top paid games range from $2.99-4.99. And never think of us Android users as beggars who don't get to choose: if your port is a half-assed piece of shit with garbage graphics like most "ports" (hi, The Sims 3) to Android, then nobody'll give you a cent. Several current and upcoming Android phones have powerful hardware, much more so than the iPhone's outdated one, and greater resolution to boot: if you take full advantage of those, you'll likely hit the top lists in no time.
Quote:
Just testing the waters at this point... I don't have an Android device, and haven't seen the store. Have got the impression that there's really no money in it yet... and as much as I'd love to give stuff away, I have to eat.
The guy who makes about $13,000 a month off his Android app would disagree (he's a one-man team, no less), and he's not even the only one.
Hello, first of all, ya really one of the game devs of Ravensword? cause what i'm about to say, hopefully will get thoughts about.
Android is a platform with alot of potential, just look at the growth, it's going like crazy! Only thing i don't like is the lack of good games at the moment in comparison to the Apple App store. A new game would be great, and after having a look at youre game, it looks great. If you know how to reach the full potential of the fast Snapdragons and other processors and GPU's there are in phones right now, I would definetly pay 5 to 10 bucks. Android runs on very powerfull devices as you may have noticed, so if it runs smooth on the Iphone, it would propbably run great on an Nexus one or Desire. Android is a growing platform and there's is definetly money in it, if you make a great port, people will buy it, if you make something you spend only a few hours on, people won't, it's as simple as that. So yea, a port would be apreciated alot.
P.S. I would love to hear what a game dev who's new to Android has to think about it's potential. So, you think Android will be a nice gaming platform also?
Yup... I wrote the code, and my partner handled the art.
I'm out looking for a new home for us... Apple has made an evil change to their agreement that, if they enforce it, will kick Ravensword off their store. Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away.
I don't have an Android device... I don't use a cel phone. I'll probably get an Adam though. Specs look comparable to the iPad so we should be able to do some really nice stuff for it. The phones look pretty buff too.
I'm on the fence about the Android market. The open source thing tends to attract people that like free stuff... which is fine, but I'm not one of those clever guys that can make money by giving stuff away.
I'm looking into the windows 7 phone, too, but am a little shy about that given MS track record with the Zune, and the knowledge that they can be every bit as evil as Apple.
Also considering the wii, but it's getting kind of long in the tooth. Might not be worth tooling up for.
Some great games (if not the greatest) on Android right now tend to be from $2.99-$4.99 and are selling very well. I played your game on the iPhone and it would really be a huge advance for Android and I really hope you decide to port it. The App Store is so full of junk apps that cost 99 cents, and offered no demo, that I was driven to just pirate everything when I had an iPhone. With Android, many good apps are indeed free, but the paid ones actually deserve to be paid for, and I am happy to send a few bucks to a developer who isn't just mass producing fart apps.
Within the first hour of getting my Droid, I had paid for all of the emulators and a few applications. Now probably half of my apps are paid apps and you can really tell that the developers gave it their all to make a seriously quality application. You don't see that very often on the App Store.
Piracy also seems to be almost nonexistent on Android as well because of the trial system. Apple could learn a thing or two from Google.
Last edited by Rota; April 11th, 2010 at 04:37 PM.
I think Ravensword will be perfect for the Android Market, games with a little more content tend to do well, because you can't complete them in 24hrs without doing a gaming marathon.
But the better question is: How do you want to port Ravensword to Android now without Unity?
And when Unity 3 comes out sometime this summer, Android is an absolute no brainer for all Unity Iphone games. By that time, there will be a lot more Android users, because the devices, that are released now and in the coming months are the best smartphones around. I roughly check the game sales on the market regularly and while the months between January and April where a little slow in growth, the game sales grew rapidly in the last 2 weeks and will continue to rise with the Nexus One/Desire release in Europe this month.
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Last edited by Dan Fury; April 11th, 2010 at 09:46 PM.
We'd be doing the port with Unity, of course, but it's probably not going to be simple. Lack of multitouch is a big problem for our control scheme... and people hate moving around with the accelerometer. Then there are the screen resolutions and stuff for the various devices.
It'll be a lot of work to do right. I took a lot of shortcuts getting Ravensword out the door that I'll get punished for in the porting process.
I can't speak for everybody here, but I'd happily pay $5 for a well-ported, high-quality game.
It's true what you say, that a lot of people who have android phones are used to getting things for free, but remember, the demographic is changing rapidly and people are crying out, not for games, but for *good* games.
You'll make a fortune if you get in there now, just as the next generation of android phones starts to hit the shelves. And you'll deserve it!
We'd be doing the port with Unity, of course, but it's probably not going to be simple. Lack of multitouch is a big problem for our control scheme... and people hate moving around with the accelerometer. Then there are the screen resolutions and stuff for the various devices.
It'll be a lot of work to do right. I took a lot of shortcuts getting Ravensword out the door that I'll get punished for in the porting process.
I guess you have to get a little more familiar with android gaming, we have multitouch on newer devices and we don't care much for 3D gaming on old devices, they are not powerful enough.
Also we have 6 extra buttons and a nav key or trackball on every phone, so controls should be way better than on the Iphone. I even wrote a special about it for devs that come to the plattform, please check it out.
Just concentrate on everything after the Droid with a WVGA resolution, because everything else is not worth supporting with the sacrifice of perfomance and multitouch and these are the devices, that'll push Android sales forward in 2010.
At the moment you have to look on the Android market like you did when the 3GS came out, you can make great games for the newer handsets, if you sacrifice support for older models, like Espgaluda II just did. You will still sell enough to make it worthwile.
Thanks for all the insights, I know a lot more than when I started. That little trackball is definitely sexy... though I don't know about positioning it on the left... that's really a thumbstick spot in most people's minds.
If all goes well, we'll bring over Ravensword first, then another game we're working on that I can't say anthing about yet, then the Ravensword sequel.
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Russ, I would LOVE Ravensword on Android (cause I loved it on my iPod). On the Android market we appreciate every game we get cause we are definitely not spoiled when it comes to gaming. But PLEASE remember this, for graphically heavy games like Ravensword you need to enable a save to SD Card feature to save all the data to the SD Card and that would also make people's games run faster as well. And trust me, you'll love Android, there's so much you can do to make your phone truly yours!
Last edited by 8-Bit-Soldier; April 12th, 2010 at 11:30 AM.
My impression is that the Android Market and users is pretty damn similar to the App Store - sure there are a lot of freebies, and there are people who only care about them, but people will PAY for premium content which cant be done as a hobby by a dev for fun.
The bigger issue I would have is the fragmentation of the Android platform, and trying to support the devices which can actually handle a game. The Droid is a great place to start.
Also about the trackball, that is pretty misleading. The upcoming Evo won't have one for example - and that beast would be the best place to showcase a premium game.
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Are there any YouTube videos of this game? I can't look at them right now from work because we are on lock-down.
I am willing to pay for a good, fun game. I even contribute to Parallel Kingdom every now and then. I have no idea what Ravensword even is, so I'll start searching and get back to you. I am mainly asking about videos here so that I remember to look it up when I have a chance to actually look at the videos.
I hadn't heard of this. I love The Elder Scrolls but I've yet to find a 1st Person or 3rd Person game with decent controls on a phone.
Multitouch shouldn't be a problem, any device powerful enough will be new enough to have multitouch. More of a problem I would guess is file size, as Android apps are presently limited to being stored on the ROM. Some get around this by downloading extra content once the app is launched, which can then by saved to the SD card.
If it's a good port, I would certainly pay $5. Quite possibly more.
No, but if you're making an app with huge chunks of data and can't manage to drop it onto the SDcard--and given that this is commonly done, not a unique and special thing, so it's not as if it's a miraculous feat accomplished by the very talented few--then you're not going to be able to do very much.
The complication is that you can only really put a few MB on the market - then your program has to download the additional data (textures, in this case I'd guess), which in turn means you have to provide hosting and infrastructure. It's not massively complicated, but it is something that needs done and needs done well, and it's something that complicates things for users and let me tell you, users are a fickle bunch. My point is just that there is an extra step involved, I'm not saying this is a deal-breaker by any means.
I am a developer, although not for Android (I've got as far as "Hello world!" on the emulator ).
No, but if you're making an app with huge chunks of data and can't manage to drop it onto the SDcard--and given that this is commonly done, not a unique and special thing, so it's not as if it's a miraculous feat accomplished by the very talented few--then you're not going to be able to do very much.
Are you always this hostile, or have I insulted you somehow?
I sent you a PM about some of the aspects of the Android market.
At any rate, I'd really like to see a top-tier AAA game like Ravensword come to Android. I'd imagine that with it being in exclusive company with Polarbit A.B. games, it'd do pretty well.
Wow, just watched the trailer...I'd pay for that and I have yet to pay for an android app, so that is saying something. A game like this would set the bar so much higher then it is right now, that you would swing the market in a whole new direction.
(this is all my opinion though and I bet I get attacked for some of the things I said, but someone needs to say it)
Hey Russ,
Regarding multi touch, all you will have to do is make the buttons on the right side a little higher, so that when playing, your fingers wont cross the x axis and therefore cause the screen to react. This'll be fixed hopefully in a software update, but for now that's all you'll have to change.
I'd most definately pay up to €5 for the game, assuming controls and graphics stayed the same. It looks great.
As for hardware controls, i think it would be a bad idea since so many phone are so different. I think to make the gaming experience the same for everybody, you need to focus on android phones that have the horsepower and multi-touch. If you start messing around with a trackball here, and a d-pad there, it just wrecks it all. The iphone method of control is a tried and tested method. Masses of games are setup the same way and it is seen as "the norm", because it works well.
There are only two note worthy game developers in the android market at the moment - Polarbit and hyperdevbox. It'd be great if you could make the triumvirate complete!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Forge94
Hey Russ,
Regarding multi touch, all you will have to do is make the buttons on the right side a little higher, so that when playing, your fingers wont cross the x axis and therefore cause the screen to react. This'll be fixed hopefully in a software update, but for now that's all you'll have to change.
What do you mean? Is this a software update for the N1 or the next version of android that would fix this?
He means the problem with HTC's implementation of multitouch.
If the D-Pad and the buttons are on the same height, you have problems with multitouch gaming on their devices, if the buttons are raised above the D-Pad, the problems are gone.
Count me in as someone who would buy this game on Android. I'd love to see more developers push the higher end Android devices to show what they are capable of.
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I think this game will do great ... the last quality 3d game asphalt 5 was a hit. A good 3d rpg is bound to do well and you won't have much competition ... you also may encourage more games to come out of the woodwork with all your success and raise the standard for android games.... add a exclusive multiplayer battle arena to the game and it would be epic...
On another note I would pay for a straight port of your iPhone version as Long as it runs well... one thing u need to make sure of is it works just as well on the nexus one as the Droid... people tend to optimize for the Droid but don't make sure it runs just as well on the nexus and there are a lot of us nexus one users...
don't waste your time with any other devices as the nexus and Droid are the standard now for high end games...
Russ you got our hopes up now you can't let us down bring us Ravensword!
don't waste your time with any other devices as the nexus and Droid are the standard now for high end games...
Gee, I wonder what country you're from...
Heard of the X10? The Milestone (ok, you referenced that), Desire, the Legend. Don't target any specific devices. That's the point of an OS that runs on different hardware like Android.
The Desire has hardware similar to the N1's; the Legend has inferior processor and most likely GPU--an upgrade to the Hero, but that's about it; plus it's still got a puny 3.2'' screen with lower resolution--and the X10 doesn't do even the tiniest, slightest bit of multi-touch. So yeah.
All I'm saying is to use the nexus and Droid as the standard for the game ... and anything older and less powerfull isn't a ideal place to start when porting a game over
All I'm saying is to use the nexus and Droid as the standard for the game ... and anything older and less powerfull isn't a ideal place to start when porting a game over
Only problem is, that separates a large percentage of Android users away from Ravensword. If the developers expect to make any money, they'll need to ensure it goes on as many devices as possible.
Of course, my question would be what the baseline is in terms of specs to run a game like Ravensword...
If you mean to target devices with hardware specs like the Droid or Nexus, then ok, I can see the logic in that - 600Mhz+, plenty of RAM, multitouch. If you're making a demanding game like Ravensword presumably is, then Tattoo owners can't realistically expect to play. The only caveat is that I wouldn't rule out HVGA - it's not going anywhere except to smaller devices such as the Legend and other 3.2" and smaller phones and they will soon be fast enough. The Legend is faster than the iPhone 3GS and it presumably runs fine on that.
I will definitely buy this game. But it would be nice if some of the major problems were addressed such as being able to tell what weapons are better than others, having more than two sets of armor in the whole game, a more accurate map, and more auto travel spots. Will still buy it, but it would be nice if these things were fixed.
Only problem is, that separates a large percentage of Android users away from Ravensword. If the developers expect to make any money, they'll need to ensure it goes on as many devices as possible.
Of course, my question would be what the baseline is in terms of specs to run a game like Ravensword...
The game was a little choppy on my old iPhone 3G. The Droid would be a perfect baseline for this game. It just isn't possible to address all of the low end Android phones with a game like this. This is a premium game that requires phones with better hardware and multitouch, such as the N1 and Droid. The dev will still make plenty of money. The Droid user base is HUGE.
Are you always this hostile, or have I insulted you somehow?
Ignore him Russ. We would love to see your game ported. I am a huge RPG fan and have bought all the RPG games on Android so far. Your game seems pretty good on the Iphone so if you port it to Android count me in as a day one buyer!
Plus Russ if Apple is going to "kick you out" then you really have no choice but to port your game to Android or start from scratch for the Iphone. And since you have the game on the Iphone already no-one is going to pay for it again after the rework.
The game was a little choppy on my old iPhone 3G. The Droid would be a perfect baseline for this game. It just isn't possible to address all of the low end Android phones with a game like this. This is a premium game that requires phones with better hardware and multitouch, such as the N1 and Droid. The dev will still make plenty of money. The Droid user base is HUGE.
The Droid userbase is far from 'huge'. Compared to other phones running Android, yes, its certainly the largest.
Here is why:
According to Google, Android >2.0 users (which would be the Droid and better) make up just 30.1% of all Android phones....Not a particularly great number to sell to.
Having said that though, there are a slew of great phones running 2.1 that are slated to come out, plus the Hero is supposed to make the jump from 1.5 to 2.1 (which makes up probably half of that 1.5 userbase). I guess that 2.1 would be a good starting point for such a great game *if* they were willing to take an initial hit in slow sales. Say what you will about the Droid and Nexus, most people own 1.5 and 1.6 devices. It will probably be July or August before >50% of Android users are running 2.0 or greater.
But at the same time, I would assume it'd take that kind of time for Ravensword to get ported to Android devices, which would ensure ample time for the more powerful phones to proliferate the market.
Honestly this game would make best sellers list/featured list almost instantly. This should really help considering Android's growth, as new users will probably buy this game just because its popular. Even so it is an incredible game, Iv played it on my ipod and I consider it to probably be one of the of the best apps on Apple's App Store. It would be an insta-buy for me, again, haha.
It will probably be July or August before >50% of Android users are running 2.0 or greater.
But at the same time, I would assume it'd take that kind of time for Ravensword to get ported to Android devices, which would ensure ample time for the more powerful phones to proliferate the market.
Since Unity 3 will come around in august (my prediction, they said late summer), I think that's the time where they actually will start to port.
And honestly, I'm pretty sure I bought more games for my Nexus,then all G1 and Hero users I know combined, even before I started reviewing them. People don't buy these handsets with games in mind, but they will do with Droid/Nexus One, at least I did.
Device numbers alone are not the important factor, how much the people download with it is, or else the Ovi store wouldn't be such a flop.
Droid/Nexus One are the first devices, that are great for gaming and that will push game sales. That's why they will be the new baseline entry for Developers.
On another note Russ hasn't posted back hopefully that dude didn't send him away with all that negativity... If you are still reading this Russ what is the chance you will port this to Android?
It looks like you will have a lot of support and now would be a good time as there are not a lot of quality games yet.... "yet" being the keyword...
Maybe he's taking back all of his findings to his other partners to see what they think?
I PMed him about the company I work for...We do analysis on the Android game market, and offered our reports to him. He didn't reply, so I think it may just be a case of him not returning to the forums (yet)....Hopefully that's it at least ;-)
I gotta throw in my vote for this. I've never heard of this (don't follow iphone stuff much), but this game looks INCREDIBLE. I'm on the fence on buying a few apps still (I've only had my Droid for a month or so and have yet to buy an app), but I think this coming paycheck I'll drop some money on the better ones. For this game, it's a no brainer. For one thing, I could get all my friends with iphones to see that yes, Android is a powerful and great platform.
Just as everyone says, people need to make games for it.
I also think the demo has shifted a lot this last year. Whereas before we were probably looking at people that were seeking out Android devices, the Droid had a huge marketing campaign which I think brought in a lot of people that have no idea what android is - and that's the distinction to me: these are the people that make up the iphone userbase, now ported to the Android.
Not sure if if I'm right at all. Point being, bring this game over, you will do well.
I would enjoy this game as well, I would pay more for it and be willing to beta it if needed. I agree that Android needs some more quality in the gaming department, and I think a lot of developers are stuck on the fence. Android is rising, Apple is already there...but things change so rapidly in the technology field. I think the game will do well, and I have at least 15 friends with the Moto Droid or a Nexus , so I would inform them for sure!
PM me if you do this and I guarantee you will get 5 dollars from this N1 user
Then again I'm the kinda guy who went and bought ExZeus just because I wanted a 3D game that used the full power of the snapdragon inside my N1 (couldn't have all that grunt just pushing sudoku pixels lol).We really need more 3D games - I have no problems with the app selection in general, everything I want/need is catered for then some more, but the android games selection is really below par IMO (esp compared to iphone/ipod touch)
And slightly OTT, lemme guess, steve's new rules means the current iphone SDK you use is no longer kosher?
Last edited by wintermute000; April 19th, 2010 at 09:52 PM.
Ravensword on Android?
cause what i'm about to say, hopefully will get thoughts about. 
And trust me, you'll love Android, there's so much you can do to make your phone truly yours! 
