We have just released our new casual game Balls Breaker HD on Android and Windows Phone (iOS is coming very soon :). This is a remake of our old game, but… it is much much more polished and improved - at least we think so
Shortly… currently there are 12 Worlds with multiple levels. Every World is different and requires different skills to pass the levels. Sometimes it may be very irritating…
Thanks Hope you like the way Balls Breaker HD is done
Currently I am using Cocos v3.12. I am going to switch to the latest version after iOS release.
Yeah, it was quite difficult to make the game “smooth” on Windows Phone. Here are the main things I have done.
First of all WP is not good at multiple GL calls. It is very important to minimize GL calls. To do that I am using spritesheets. I also grouped my sprite textures. For example in the main menu I am using only one texture/spritesheet for all my sprites.
The second thing is to use bitmap fonts (for dynamic and static texts). Yes, it is time consuming to create such fonts but the performance boost is very high (less GL calls). If, for some reason, you have to use TTF fonts then don’t use any “effects”, like glow/bold etc. I noticed that on WP it slows down rendering a lot (for example my Help dialog was a fps killer :P). Currently Balls Breaker HD supports 10 languages with bitmap fonts - so it is doable
I hope I won’t be killed by someone from cocos, but… don’t use UserDefault for storing game data. In Balls Breaker HD I am keeping quite a lot of player data and I noticed a lot of glitches when I was reading/saving values with UserDefault. I discovered, that every time you read/write some value it reads/writes all your database file. So for example if you need to write 10 values it will physically write the file 10 times. Fortunately it was quite easy to write “custom” version of the UserDefault with load/save approach. Maybe there is other way to do it, but I couldn’t find it
The biggest advantage of running the game on WP is that on Android and iOS it works pretty well
I am using “pure” cocos2dx. I have custom level editor. All the game is coded with the cocos2dx animation system. No scene editor
Hello, Thank for your idea.
Sorry for late rep.
But. To optimize GL calls, did you use SpriteBatchNode or just Sprite with same texture?? I tested on my WP 8.1 (Lumia 640XL) with SpriteBatchNode is bester Sprite.
And Do you preloaded Audio ?
No, I am not using sprite batch node. As far as I know in cocos v3.x sprite batching is done “automatically”, but I guess it is better to use the same texture from the spritesheet. In other words (if I am correct), if you use sprites with the same texture there shouldn’t be any difference.
Yes, I am preloading audio.
Ah, about preloading… On wp the normal cocos startup may take more than 10s! I discovered that most of the time it loads shaders But… when you use only 2d features you don’t really need shaders for 3d. So… I don’t load them You can find more info about it somewhere in the forum, but if you really want I can check my sources
I have to admit that in the past I had some issues with this name (for the very old version of the game) I was using automatic google translations (there was such option in the Google Play market) and… I almost got a ban, because in some languages google translated the name too literally ;))
Your game looks good. Unfortunately I’m in the UK so can’t access US app store. Generally, the market is pretty saturated with ball/coloured pattern games… but that’s because they can be so beautiful and addictive! Two Dots is currently one of my favourites.
Your facebook page looks good (gave you a Like). Based on the screenshots I’d say the wooden background works well visually.
Thanks for the kind words and “like” Yeah, Two Dots is awesome. And yes, there are plenty of extremely polished games. This is how it is right now. In the past it was a little bit easier, but now the huge part of the market is occupied by big players.
I have fixed the links (more universal) so you should be able to download and check the game. Or just search for the game name in the App Store.
We have just released Balls Breaker HD on Tizen It should run on Z1, Z2 and Z3 devices:
tizenstore://ProductDetail/pl.kds.ballsbreaker
or just search for “Balls Breaker HD” in the Tizen Store
Unfortunately there is no Tizen Store website with the list of the games Link above can be opened only by Tizen devices.
Btw. Tizen emulator really sucks If you want to release the game on Tizen get at least one real device. After that you may be surprised how well game runs
Good work! The game is looking really nice, I’ll try it out as soon as I can.
If you don’t mind me asking though, I notice you have a large number of downloads on the Play Store, as many as 1 million on one of your games! What type of marketing do you do? I really need help in that regard.
The game you mention is really old. It took a lot of time to get those downloads. Sometimes it was good but sometimes it was almost 0 downloads per day Android market was also much much different than now so some techniques won’t work anymore. I can say that I am starting from the beginning again
It is good to have cross promotion in your own games. But it may not work if for example you have a casual game and try to advertise it in action games (and vice versa). Still you have to have a lot of ads traffic to see good results.
You can try to position the game with the keywords in the description just to get more organic traffic. Check variants in the Google Play console (I have tried it and it is a really nice tool). You can also create paid campaigns but… without huge budget you won’t see good results. Buying cheap installs from strange sources is risky and I don’t recommend it (you can find interesting stories about it in the internet).
At last… create good product, have some luck and be happy
The other thing is that you have to be up to date all the time. For example Google Play is changing again Google just released new algorithms and will measure user engagement - it will have bigger factor than number of downloads. This is a chance for better discoverability but also forces developers to create better products.
There are so many things you can try. If one won’t work, try another, but before you do it make sure that you don’t break the market policy. Don’t forget to update the app with new content and try to keep your players happy.
very nice looking, how long did it take you to make it and to port it for each platform?
do you usually spend on online advertising to market your game?If i can ask how many download you usually get for your games in your first week?
Congrats again
To finish the game it took a couple of months. All the graphics and the game code were created from the scratch. But I wasn’t working on the game every day for 8h The hardest port was windows phone. I had to optimize a lot of stuff (but this is also because I have a lot of very large boards in the game in higher levels and I wanted to make it smooth as much as possible). Then, most of the time I spent on configuring platform specific stuff (compilation issues, certificates etc). It is time consuming only for the first time as you have to discover some things - e.g. this is my first game for iOS so I had to setup apple account, learn some objc and read about certificates.
I don’t usually spend money on advertising. As I already mentioned I am starting from the beginning and learn marketing again. When I released the game I got almost 0 downloads for the first week - yep, that is sad true On Google Play first 30 days is the most important time. If your game won’t be ranked in this time then it will be very difficult to get ranked later. I started my marketing campaigns too late (lesson learnt).
Now it is a little better, but still below expectations (at least on Android and iOS - the two most important platforms :P). That is also because of the type of the game - I really have to make a game trailer to show all the game features
I still believe that if you create a good, playable product it will succeed in some way. Even if you won’t get 1 million downloads in the first week Every finished project is getting you closer to this ONE, crazy thing which will make you very happy
Hi there! Our Balls Breaker HD just reached 30k of downloads on Windows Phone and magical 10k on Android Unfortunately iOS is heh… not so nice but who knows what will happen in the future
Hello, I’ve played your game. It is really nice. I go straight, until I get to those multi-color levels, when I get stuck for a long time…
A couple of things… first, the market; is it really got so tough? Yes, it’s pretty full out there, but…
I noticed you published both on windows and tizen, too. Is it that convenient? Can you break even on them? And in general, how long a game like this one takes to break even?
If you don’t mind telling, of course
Second one: the bonuses. The game is based on ads, both banner and interstitial… but you didn’t set the chance to buy the three bonuses. Why? Those ones, especially on the “gate” levels, would surely sell… I was frantically pushing on them, but no market…
Why is that?
Hope you like the way Balls Breaker HD is done 
It should run on Z1, Z2 and Z3 devices:
Link above can be opened only by Tizen devices.
