Game Progress Update #84

Hello world! And welcome to the eighty fourth Dev with Dave Game Progress update!

I must admit to being a little tired of doing marketing stuff, planning emails (which I really need to get done), and creating even more social media content than usual.

So on top of everything else which needed doing, I wanted to get the bug with the currency purchasing fixed.

I also had some personal stuff going on this weekend, which kept me away from the computers and made this post a couple of days late, sadly.

But, lets not dwell on that, let me tell you about all the stuff I did manage to get done this update 🙂

Promotion

Email sequence

The main focus again this update has been planning and executing promotional stuff. Predominantly the email sequence for when people sign up to the website after being directed there by adverts.

I think I have decided to use Breva (Previously Send In Blue) to send the emails with. I already use their service to send transactional emails from various websites.

I have also decided that it would be better to use two sequences. One which is initiated when the player signs up to the list. The other which starts a week or two before the game is released.

Social Media Leveraging

I’ve also been maintaining a presence on a small selection of FB groups which I am planning on leveraging to gain some free organic awareness of my game.

This has so far just been mostly liking and commenting on other peoples posts. I am planning a few posts which will keep within the niche of the group. I had planned on starting these posts sooner than this. As I said previously, a large part of me not doing so has to do with the fact that I cannot schedule a post to a group.

I will manage to sort this out though. I will probably end up writing all the posts and copy on OneNote (Which I can easily access from my phone) and then set up alarms on my phone’s calendar to tell me which post to share and into which group.

Bug fixing

I was hoping to spend Thursday afternoon working on fixing the bugs, but the forces which govern my life decided otherwise. Instead I managed to squeeze in a few hours of doing so on Friday afternoon (When I was supposed to be writing this blog!)

Because of changes made by Google to the way purchasing consumables works, I now need to reset the purchase every time it is successfully purchased. That is not happening now. Currently it lets you buy the pack (success), then the next attempted purchase fails, and it’s not until the 2nd attempt at this that it works.

//********************************************************************************
//	void = BuyCoinPack(ui ref as tUI, player ref as tPlayer, coinPackID as integer)
//********************************************************************************
//	This function will handle all the buying coins with IAP stuff.  I will need to
//	sort out the IAP on the Google Play page before I can do too much more with
//	this aspect of the game.
//********************************************************************************

Function BuyCoinPack(player ref as tPlayer, coinPackAmounts ref as integer[], iapCoinPackID as integer)
	
	//	Local
	Local iapStatus as integer
	Local finished as integer
	Local token as string
	
	//	Do the IAP stuff to buy coin pack
	`	If IAP fails then just exit the function

	//	Starts the buying process
	InAppPurchaseActivate(iapCoinPackID)
	
	Repeat

		iapStatus = GetInAppPurchaseAvailable2(iapCoinPackID)
	
		Select iapStatus
	
			//	Cancelled?  The IAP was cancelled by the user
			Case 0:
				//	Break out of loop
				finished = true
			Endcase
	
			//	IAP Queued
			Case 1:
				Print("IAP in progress..")
			Endcase
	
			//	IAP In progress
			Case 2:
				Print("IAP in progress..")
			Endcase
	
			//	IAP Pending
			Case 3:
				Print("IAP in progress..")
			Endcase
	
			//	IAP Completed
			Case 4:
				//	Award the IAP

				//	Add the relevant amount of coins to the player total
				Inc player.coinTotal, coinPackAmounts[iapCoinPackID - 1]
				
				//	Break out of loop
				finished = true
				
				//	Resets the purchase
				token = GetInAppPurchaseToken(iapCoinPackID)
				
				`InAppPurchaseResetPurchase(token)
				
			Endcase
	
		EndSelect
		
		sync()
	
	Until finished = true

	//	Moved to lower down the code,  This allows for an extra sync.  If this doesn't work, then I will put this in a repeat/until look
	`	which checks for the status of the iapCoinPackID
	InAppPurchaseResetPurchase(token)

EndFunction

As the eagle eyed of you have probably noticed, I have moved the InAppPurchaseReset() command to after the sync() and out of the Repeat/Until loop.

If this does not work, then I will add another Repeat/Until loop which exits when the InAppPurchaseReset value has successfully been changed.

Sadly, I was unable to upload a new test build to the Google Play Store.

New Build Issues

I thought things were going quite well earlier. It wasn’t until I uploaded a new build of Flappy-vaders to the Google Play Store, and received the following error..

I am unsure if this is a recent change that Google has made, or if it’s an oversite with the current build of AGK Studio (It was updated recently).

>Edit<. I have been in contact with the AGK Studio developers and it’s an oversight with the last update of AGK Studio, it will be fixed in the next update. But until then, I cannot update the Flappy-vaders test version available to the play testers.

That’s all for now

It’s now Sunday afternoon, and I am sat inside with the laptop, finishing off this post. I’m hoping that the next update will go smoother than this one has.

I will be back in two weeks with the next progress update.

Until then.