Ravensword on Android?

[AmazingRuss]

Hi;

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.

 

[grainysand]

Hi;

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 Several current and upcoming Android phones have powerful hardware, much more so than the iPhone's outdated one, and greater resolution to boot: if you take full advantage of those, you'll likely hit the top lists in no time.

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.

 

[mr HTC]

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?

 

[AmazingRuss]

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.

 

[Rota]

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.

 

[Dan Fury]

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.

 

[AmazingRuss]

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.

 

[peadar]

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!

 

[Dan Fury]

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.

 

[AmazingRuss]

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.

 

[8-Bit-Soldier]

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!

 

[SprintFun]

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.

 

[3devious]

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.

 

[AmazingRuss]

Sorry about that... I thought we were so famous even Android users would know all about us

The trailer is here:

YouTube - Ravensword: The Fallen King - Official Trailer!!! Action RPG iPhone and iPod Touch Game

It's actually made from pre-release footage... a surprising number of videos other people made can be found at:

YouTube - ravensword the fallen king


There are a bunch of reviews out there, most of them pretty positive.... just google "Ravensword: The Fallen King review".

 

[Quboid]

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.

 

[grainysand]

Some get around this by downloading extra content once the app is launched, which can then by saved to the SD card.

Any developer who's even halfway competent should do this, anyway.

 

[AmazingRuss]

Any developer who's even halfway competent should do this, anyway.

Are you a developer?

 

[grainysand]

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.

 

[Quboid]

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 ).

 

[AmazingRuss]

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?

 

[3devious]

Are you a developer?

Yeah, but I am not halfway competent. -_-

That game looks fun. I'd pay for it. I can vote in your poll now.

 

[Mrstickball]

Russ,

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.

 

[JB4times4]

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)

 

[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.

 

[spottyelephant]

I'd most definately pay up to