itch.io

Robot Street Ultra Upgrades is the third in the Robot Street Series of games.

https://tadgames.itch.io/robot-street-ultra-upgrades

It is a top down rouge survival shooter.
Upgrade your speed stamina strength and gun as you collect coins from the robots you destroy.
If you select only the secondary upgrades you can get it to where you keep upgrading back to back.
When you select a primary upgrade the amount of coins needed to upgrade increases.
Depending on how you play it can be easy or hard, but nevertheless a fun shooter with lots of explosions,
and a slow but steady progression of enemies leading up to many shooting at you.
The game is also open source, and can be found on github. Enjoy!

In all honesty your game has to shine, and even then you have to push it with a bit of social marketing.
All of my games have started out with a boost of initial players that came as a result of social marketing.
The best  game so far has had continual players since it was released,
and it too started with a burst of players, trickling down to 1 or 2 a day sometimes 10 or 20.

Releasing a major game is like releasing a movie, you make a trailer, build up an audience with that trailer,
then release the game being sure to clearly link to your game on social media.
On that initial release, if marketed well, you'll have a burst of players ready to play it because it is new.
If the game is fun and engaging you'll gain a lasting fan base from some of those initial players.

That's interesting, my older games are using ES5, it could be any number of things, even a little syntax error.  And perhaps the security of the device blocks many games on purpose.

Did Pico-8 games from itch work?
How about any of my games? The older ones should work.
It could be that webgl based games are causing an error, and that browser handles the errors differently.
It also probably does not allow web workers, so some newer games would not work, it may also be using ES5 since it's based on  the older fire browser. 

Robot Street Ultra Upgrades, the third game in the Robot Street series, this one is also open source so you can remake it if you want!

Robot Street Ultra Upgrades

The video for Robot Street Ultra Upgrades has been released.
It goes over the whole coding of the game in time lapse.

The video shows all the code, the code and art for the game are on the tabageos github
You are free to reuse the code and even the art, the game is completely open source.

Next I plan on releasing the platformer from the beginning of this devlog. It has been years!
But the library has matured a good bit along the journey.

After the platformer is released I'll be working towards the release of the RPG
which has it's own tool that goes with it, I'm very excited about that.
At that point I will start another devlog.

Yes that's true, it's just a source of general traffic.

For reddit you need to stay on there a while, follow the rules carefully, post pictures, memes, get your karma up. A good game will get reliable traffic from reddit. 

The alpha version of Robot Street Ultra Upgrades is out! You can play it here.

I'm working on the video tutorial still but it will be out soon as well.

After this game and tutorial I will revisit the original platformer from the beginning of this devlog, making a video tutorial for it as well.
I've incorporated a new style of tutorial that hopefully will be more engaging than the previous videos.
Robot Street Ultra Upgrades uses basic lighting features that are used in a more advanced way in the platformer.
The tutorials go in order, Ninja Spike Avoider giving a somewhat detailed overview,
then the Robot Street Ultra Upgrades tutorial does not cover for example the code snips and initial workstation setup,
the advanced platformer tutorial will be able to concentrate on the advanced parts, the basics being covered in the first two.

After these I will start another log for the open source rpg that is also in the works.

Goldwave is shareware and has nice features for editing sounds.
For making sounds you can use something as simple as VSTHost, then search for various free vst sound effect plugins to use.

Added lighting to Robot Street Ultra Upgrades to give it more depth, also added some upgrades associated with the lights,
and users will be able to adjust the darkness level from the options screen, it could get totally dark, and that will also put the game into hard mode.
It is turning out to be a fun little game, the rate of upgrades is somewhat up to the player based on which upgrade they choose,
the rate, based on amount of coins, changes when you upgrade to a new gun, otherwise it stays the same, so choosing upgrades less than the next gun
can keep the upgrade choices popping up often.

The tutorial for this game will be done in a different style, there will be time lapses of the full coding of the game,
then a highlighted explanation of each section. I hope to have everything done this week.

It's a month overdue but Robot Street Ultra Upgrades and it's tutorial are almost finished. This tutorial will have a different style than the first two I released, and hopefully will be more engaging. After rsuu I will be revisiting the first adventure platformer from the beginning of this thread. With both Ninja Spike Avoider and the Robot Street tutorial the ground work will be there such that I can concentrate on just explaining the advanced parts of the adventure platformer in its tutorial.
After that is done, I will begin a new devlog for the RPG.

Marketing.

A good traffic giver for games is Reddit.
But you have to post in the proper niche, in the right way, and at the right time,
if your new to it, you should hang out a while posting comments before you post links.

I see you don't have any browser games. A browser game can help bring people to your page.
A web demo of a executable game your trying to sell, is a must, in my opinion, for marketing.
Because you can put a link in the game itself, and then place that web game on all the web game portals.
Newgrounds, indiexpo, y8, gamejolt, itch.
And your web game/demo should have a link, in the games hud, to your itch page or steam page.

Robot Street Ultra Upgrades is almost complete, hopefully sometime this week or next I will release it alongside the video tutorial showing how to code it.
Afterwards I've deviated again and will be doing an isometric tower defense game, that game will just have a video overview of how it was made.
Then finally the platformer from the beginning of this devlog will be released along with its video tutorial series.

Robot Street Ultra Upgrades is in the works.
It will be the third in the Robot Street series of games.
And the source code and art will be fully open source.
And this will be the game I show how to code from scratch for the 360 shooter video tutorial series.
I hope to have everything released in the next couple weeks.
After this 360 shooter tutorial series, I will return to the original platformer from the beginning of this devlog.
And then probably start a whole new devlog for the rpg game and tutorial series.

The very first game shown in this thread is complex, it morphed into a complex thing with much lighting and much boss code that I would need to explain.
The tutorial for it is going to happen, but first I made the Ninja Spike Avoider tutorial series and game to more quickly give a overview of a complete game.
Next I have to do the top down 360 shooter, because there are people who have been waiting on seeing how that is done, it's easy.
But the top down rouge series will not go over making a title screen, and sounds and publication details, for that, one would have to watch the Ninja Spike Avoider series. I hope to have the 360 shooter series out soon, also the art used for it has changed, it will be cco art so I can distribute the art with the code.

The first new tutorial set in the 4 game tutorial series is out.

It goes over how to make Ninja Spike Avoider from scratch using Tads Basic Game Objects.

This is the first part going over initial setup and title and background creation:

In total there are 11 parts in this first new tutorial set.
Next I plan on releasing the top down 360 shooter game with tutorial.
Then the initial game that I showed in this thread at the first, will finally come out alongside its own tutorial as well.
Afterwards there will be the RPG game and tutorial.

A look at the upcoming release of the first intro tutorial game:

The new intro series will go over major points in setting up and programming a game,
using this game as the example made.

The top down shooter will apply things learned in the intro tutorial
to show how to make the open world top down 360 shooter.

Then the advanced platformer will introduce more complex game making aspects,
building upon the previous two tutorials.

Well, now July is coming to a close, but I've finally got some time to dedicate to this again. 

A lot has been finished slowly, and I can start to release things little by little.
The plan is a reworked initial tutorial, then the top down shooter, then the advanced platformer, then the rpg.

I hope to start the releases of all this by the end of this month. I have the platformer and top down shooter complete, and the beginning of those videos, I just need time to sit down and release everything. My day job keeps me very busy right now. Hopefully by the end of the month things will start to finally get released.

Wow, this tutorial series is turning into another development that I thought would take only a few months but is now going on a whole year.
That's largely because of my day job, which gets very hectic at the beginning of summer. But as things settle down I will have more time to complete and release this series, which will have a total of four game overviews and be everything anyone will need to make similar games quickly using the open source tabageos library.
I plan on releasing major updates to the library today and tomorrow, also updates to the documentation will be released, and there will be a new html and game js outline tool released.  By June I will release at least the initial top down shooter tutorial, along with another introductory tutorial.

I think you would have to get to the actual game page itself to do that, because it's in an iframe.
But you would also need to be sure that finding and getting the sword works as it should,
it is hard to escape having to simply play out and re play out the whole game, it is a normal part of development.

Interesting, I think you'd have to exclude the exact page that the game plays on, the worker itself is built into the code of the game. Nevertheless, the fix I have planned should work for you, it's something I should have already done some time ago. I hope to have this and other things ready by the end of next week, I'll post an update about it when it's complete.

I'm still working on these, my day job right now is taking a lot of my time, but hopefully I'll be able to dedicate some time to finishing and release these tutorials very soon.  The planned order of releases is the top down shooter first, then the platformer, then the rpg. All three together will give a full overview of the library.

I suspect that the device your on, the browser, does not support web workers. The main loops use a Web Worker, and I've yet to fully implement backwards compatibility for it. I'll be working on that, and will update the game when it's finished. Thank you very much for this feedback!

I've decided to also do a top down survival shooter tutorial series and game.

Believe it or not, making this kind of game is easier than an advanced platformer.
Also this kind of top down survival shooter style of game is popular these days,
and so I've decided to make a short tutorial series showing how to make it with my basic game objects.

This game will likely come out before the platformer series is finished.
The platformer is more involved, and is still in the works as well.
So coming up will be this top down shooter series, the advanced platform series, then the rpg series, stay tuned!

Aseprite is one of the most popular.  Photoshop/gimp can also do pixel/sprite graphics. And the old ImageReady photoshop side tool has a timeline for animations.
There is also Tiled, all those would be the major ones. I use mainly Gimp and Aseprite myself, but not really for animations because I lay out all animations frame by frame in my sprite sheets.

The original platform game for the first tutorial will be out soon.

Along the way during making this series I've updated the library in many ways, and have been working on multiple aspects of it as things come to my attention.
Stay tuned for major updates, the platform game and updated tutorial series, and an rpg game jam!

Yes, I'm working on a beginning tutorial, from the feedback I've got many say the same thing, that it needs a little introduction to get started. The game may have stretched on your screen, it's not supposed to, I'll have to look into that too.
Thank you very much for this feedback, and for taking the time to try it out!

I first made some games in eighth grade computer class using qbasic; a rocket ship of words, hang man, things like that, that's the first programming I can remember. 
That was in the 90's, by 2006 I was in a rock and roll band and had learned some web design in college and was using what I knew to make a site for the band.
The band had the idea of making a game, so that there would be something unique on the site. I found flash, and specifically a rickety program called swish max, lol, and using nothing but if else statements and a very procedural pattern I made a ship shooter, I think I stayed up for 24 straight hours making that game, I was hooked. And that also happened to be around the start of the glory days for flash, so I went fully into the flash game dev world, eventually learning to code in AS3 with classes and interfaces; actual programming, which also propelled me into other languages like Java and C++.
And since then I've just really enjoyed making games, playing them and having others play them.

Idle City Sim 2051

Thank you so much!

I've been working on major updates to the library and other tools related to using it in different environments.
I'm now ready to start releasing the videos with the updated library and tools,
The original platformer has turned into a 4 stage quick platformer, just the initial levels with a cave level that has lighting and the boss stage,
both it and the tutorial showing how to make it should be out by March. Beforehand the isometric video will be out and a few isometric games showing what can be done. Then afterward I'll release the open rpg, which will be a very major undertaking and most likely will include a game jam as I release the tool for making rpgs from just art and strings, stay tuned!

Reddit is great for getting game players because it has pages, called subreddits, dedicated to game players.
Colin mentioned buying ads, but you can also do it the manual way. If your not on there already, first spend quality time on there, joining subs you find interesting and posting comments and question posts. Build up karma by posting questions, pictures, devlogs, anything with no links. After you've got around 500 to 1k karma and get the feel of the place, then start to post  link posts, typically you want to only post 1 link post per week.
The main game subs that are for posting links are;  webgames  freegames playmygame  destroymygame  playtesters  webmobilegames. And itch has a sub too.
You can post a link to your game on each one, but you should not post to all of them on the same day.  Wait about three days to a week in between posting the same link to multiple subs, or have different links, like one to newgrounds one to gamejolt one to indiexpo, and wait a day in between posting each link to the subs.
Other subs more for like devlogs are  solodevelopment   gamedev   gamdevscreens.

I'm still working on this.
There will be three sets of video tutorials to go over almost every element of the library giving a full overview of everything.
I've finished work on the isometric touch example and video,
I plan on releasing the video this week, here is a code pen you can play with if you like,
showing the code that the video will go over; Isometric scene example 

This month should see the rest of the platformer tutorial videos along with the isometric scene tutorial, stay tuned!

Yes, if you can put all the animations in the same dimensions that would be best. And yes, to please most kinds of devs, you could have a sprite sheet and also each frame as separated files. I will definitely check out your art when it's done.  :)

I like all the animations in a single sprite sheet, but as FearCode said, it's best if they are aligned correctly. That is that each animation fits into the same frame area, normally it should be some even multiple of 16 even if the animation has oblong dimensions. For example if the animation happens to be 58x60 at one frame and 54x62 in another and so on, then each frame should be aligned at 64x64 with the animation centered.

Years ago it was definitely ActionScript 3.0 which is most similar to Java and C#.

Today I use mainly JavaScript and C++.

That is what the rpg looks like so far, I've got the whole world map system done, with random fights,
and items and storage, next I'll work on the details of each town and place, the scenery details
and the npc and story line details.

This has turned into two separate major games, as I aim to show every major part of the library in the tutorials for each game.

The open rpg will be completely open source being released with art that can be used and distributed commercially.
And full source code and video explaining the source code, and a tool that makes editing the existing game very easy.
I can't find 16x16 cc0 helmets and shoes, there are 32x32 of such, but not 16x16, if any artist wants to make some sets of 16x16 classic style helmets and shoes
that would be cc0, that would be great. All of the art for the open rpg is cc0, but the art for the platformer one would have to piece together for yourself.
But both will have video tutorials showing how to make them and available code. Stay Tuned!