Why iOS Games Aren’t Worth Buying Any More

Why iOS Games Aren’t Worth Buying Any More.

Worth of reading it… I am Android guy!!! But this is worth reading for Andorid fans 🙂

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Once a Freelancer – Always a Freelancer

Well well well, its my second day continuous to write a post on my lovely blog GamyGuru. I would like to thank you all the readers who supported me and my blog by reading this. Thanks

You probably be thinking about the title of post, its a little confusing i guess. Well, it is. Here is background of title. Before starting my new job, i was at home doing some rest for while. I was at home for 2 months doing nothing and rest. So, a friend of mine, he is an iPhone developer, recommended me to start freelance and earn money at home. I was getting bored of rest, so I created account at Freelancer.com and started bidding and getting projects. You can see my Freelancer profile at this link:
http://www.freelancer.com/u/WajahatKarim.html

So, I always took freelancing as negative step, so i was never interested in it. This time I thought of giving it a try, and boom boom boom, I was liking it and I was getting projects. Then I suddenly got job as game developer and yes! I love games, so i accepted offer and started the job. But, as committed with my early and new clients I had to finish their projects and work, so I started working double shift. One shift at job and other at Freelancer. Man!!! That was tough life,  and i wanted to stop it, so i stopped to bid and apply for projects and hired some non expensive and affordable freelancers and gave projects to them and finished the projects. Phewwww, I took long deep breath and now its time to rest.

Haha, that’s not end of post, that’s the start of post…. well, as title says Once a Freelancer is always a Freelancer.  I stopped applying for projects but projects and clients never left me. They still contact me and provide projects and different offers, which i really don’t want to deny. So, its been 4 months to stop freelancing but still doing it, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally…  you really can’t quit freelancing so easily, its more tough job than starting freelancing. Let me explain this. One way to stop freelancing is to be unresponsive to all clients you got and sooner or later they will stop to contact you. Well, that will make your negative image in clients mind and the respect, you got by working hard and by providing quality solutions, will be gone within a minute. I would say, there is no worthy thing than respect in this world so I will never do that. The other method is to provide the projects which you get to other clients and manage things in middle. What I learnt through this was that managing projects is much much easier than managing people. Human behavior is toughest part in people, and that’s the skill in a true leader and entrepreneur.

Thanks for reading this, and I will be back tomorrow with my other experience story. I hope You like this post.

Regards,
Wajahat Karim
GamyGuru

Inside The Game – General Game Structure

This article is third part of the series called as Inside The Game. For those, who are not familiar with Inside The Game series, this series will provide the articles and tutorials related to mechanisms and architectures of the game. Also, in this series, you will learn to think like a game developer. Now, if you have not read the last part of this series, please click here to read it. I am summarizing the last part here for those who have not read. In the last part, it was discussed about animations, simulations, and games. In simple words, game is a controlled animation, which takes the input from user unlike animation and simulate the world like interaction. This part is more technical than last two parts but it is also sort of general as compared to the implementation or programming in any computer language. But, this article will be very important to know when it comes to game development.

Okay!!! Let’s start our article today. Today, we will discuss about the general structure of any game. You might know that there are many different types of the games such as platform games, First Person Shooter (FPS) or Third Person Shooter (TPS) games, strategy games, board games, and so on. So, it is very important to know about the structure of these games. The structure keyword means how the game is designed and what components together make a game. I am not explaining here about any specific type like how platform games are developed, Today, I am explaining about how any type of game is structured. Software include lot of coding, and sort of graphics as well for User Interface. But, normally, all software contain same Operating System’s User Interface Components like Buttons, Combo Boxes, Radio Buttons etc. So, it doesn’t become a problem to focus on User Interface more than the functionality of the software. However, in games, story takes turn to other side. Games includes many disciplines and field other than just coding. Following figure shows some of the disciplines involved in any game. It is not necessary that all the disciplines can be used in the game, but it is also possible that some of the disciplines are used in the game.

As in the figure, it is clearly shown that game contains very different disciplines to work on at the same time. For example, let’s take graphics here. Graphics is a very important part in any game, because it is the first impression of the game. The most first thing user observes in any game is the graphics. So, the more good are graphics, the more users are likely to play the game. But, let’s say that your game has got amazing graphics, but the game is slow and not good in interaction and gameplay, then users will not play the game. Because, they already observed the graphics, and they liked it so they gave a chance to your game, but when they played it, they didn’t find it enjoyable and interactive, so they just left your game. Interestingly, you can see Game Effects & Gameplay in above figure as part of the game. These all parts play almost equal role in making of any game. Let’s take Artificial Intelligence shortly AI here. You can say AI like it is the brain of the game. How computer will react and respond to the user input is the AI of the game. The enemies in the game, called as game bots or game agents, use AI to make decision. We will come to AI in details soon. Another important part of the game is Game Logic & Game Flow. Now, this is completely coding work, and in this part, all other disciplines like graphics, resources like images, sounds from Game Music part, databases, networking, etc. are assembled. You can say it the most important part of any game, but this part becomes zero, if no other part is available to you. So, all the components are tightly dependent on each other.

Well! I hope that you have known about different disciplines of the game, so let’s talk about the structure now. Behind each game, there is an engine running called as Game Engine. In the business world of games, game engine is like gold mine. You can make many games with game engine. Game engine’s objective is to manage all the data involved in any game. Following figure shows the role of the game engine.

As you are seeing the figure, game engine is managing and controlling other sub-engines like Graphics engine, AI engine, Physics engine, Sound engine, and so on. Game Engine manages all the game data and makes any game come to life. The way of game engine is to keep connected all the engines through one medium, and that medium is game engine itself. It basically takes game data, sends it to the AI for decision making, then sends it to Sound for playing, then sends it to Physics for real-life interaction, and finally sends it to the Graphics for rendering and displaying on the screen. This process keep to be repeated as long as the game is running. This is how a game engine gives birth to a game. On completing this article, I would like to ask you a simple question here:

Thanks for reading this article and series. I hope you liked it. Any suggestions, comments, or feedback is open. Thanks…. In the next part, I will discuss about some basic concepts used in game development like Graphics Engine, Game Engine, and so on. To read the next part, Inside The Game – Graphics Engine, Game Engine, and The Game, please click here.

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