Banana Warehouse full version concept art

Here are a couple of quick screen shots Ron put together showing the very first concept art for the full version of Banana Warehouse. Cavaet 1: There is a lot of detail missing from the images, fun things that have been sketched out and in the final game but aren't yet shown ... these models are just for me to start the coding/assembly. Cavaet 2: This is not the final artwork, jusr renderings (with global illumination on) of what we're heading towards.

That being said, here they are ...

 

And here's the second one ...

 

Yes. Most of the WidgetMonkey products will be in the form of a free widget and the $1.99 shareware version. Banana Warehouse will be the first of the full versions due it's popularity ... almost 10,000 downloads in the first 4 days of this month (we're on target to download 1/4 of a terabyte this month 250GB).

 

Wow, well you deserve the succsess! or both of you

I was thinking about the shareware deal for my own future projects, just how are you going to solve equation? I mean, are you adding a protection or serial or something?

PS! Im very sorry to have posted pictures in your thread david, no harm meant!

 

No problem about the pics, I liked them! If that had been a monkey about to be squished though we'd have been all over you :wink:

We plan on selling the full version at a very low costs to help counter any reason to pirate/pass them around. Futhermore, I have a friend at Apple who watches various bad places on the web to see what softs are being passed around so I should find out about something like that soon. And lastly, we are personalizing each widget so that if one does start to get passed around, we'll be able to tell who let it slip out.

I was thinking that maybe in the future Unity could include better shareware registration features, but also maybe a way to limit the full versions to only play on a specific computer by tieing the ability to run to the hardware's MAC address? Tough call. I've been using Macs too long to know that everything eventually gets pirated in some way but at a $1.99? We'd hope not as much. We'll see soon enough.

Interestingly enough, due to our site is getting so many visitors and so much traffic and "brand recognition" (we were written up in Canada's national newspaper, The Globe and Mail) we've now got three other things we're working on plus writing an article ... we need a patron

So much to do, so little time left after work and family, eh?

 

Quit your job!

You get to appreciate the wonders of actually having ketchup to go with the pasta, and have lots more time for Unity

 

Hehe, I agree with Nicholas (although thats not an option for me at the moment)..I read an article the other day about the increase attention to shareware games, and that they were a bigger sell than the BIG/EXPENCIVE games, it seems there's bigger marked for small, challenging games like yours than the big 2-years-to-produce-games (a bigger audience I suppose)..

I would like to set up a website and make some games like yours, in fact your website(and ingenious branding) is quite inspirational for a unexperienced lad like myself, but I don't think I'll make it on my own- I need to find myself a partner..

Anyway, how do you personalize them then? 8)

And at the price of 1.99 I don't think they'll be pirated no- or in any event you will probably have so much trafic(and sales) that it won't matter anyway.

But a buildt in solution in unity for a shareware "lock" or something would be a cool feature..

 

I agree with Joachim. Wouldn't credit card fees eat up all of that $2 anyways?

Are you going to make the forklift.. lift? I sure hope so.

Best of luck,
-Jon

 

Those renders look very great! An idea just popped into my head for a level you could do in it. For some reason you just got a shipment in of radioactive bananas and the boxes for those glow green. If they are on the forklift too long, you lose the game.

 

We're going to add the name of the buyer and another identifying thing into the actual build of the app. The buyer will be able to see their name (but obviously not remove it) and we'll be able to locate the other thing. :wink:

We'd be more than happy to distribute anyone's Unity-made games through WidgetMonkeys as long as they're appropriate for all ages and fun! Sort of like Ambrosia and Freeverse do ... Ron and I have been talking about this for a while. Email us anytime! It's a good idea, we think!

You may be absolutely right, Joe, and we'll need to discuss this more as we get closer to finishing off the full version of BW. Two shareware games that have recently caught my eye are Professor Fizzwhizzle and Hexvex. They are certainly worth the $19 shareware fee I paid for them, but I think they have much more playability than what we're going to do with BW.

But I'd be more than happy if some of the 46,000 downloaders of BW wanted to pay, say, $10. very, very happy in fact. Then, per Nicholas's advice, we could actually do this full time. Ron and I will discuss and I'll ask for advise from others whose opinions we value and trust closer to when we can get this thing going.

 

Yes, we promise the forklift will work correctly, err, have added functionality, this time.

 

Oh yeah - I just remembered: Another reason to quit your day job is that you get to find out who really loves you!

 

In my case that's a very good reason to actually keep my job. :wink:

 

This whole thing sounds great..
Im gonna pull toghether some stuff, and I'll get in touch with you David (the monkey one)..

Better get back to work!

 

A few years ago I produced one of the first MP3 players for the Mac (it was called QuickMP3). I am a very lazy programmer -- I noticed that QuickTime4 would play MP3s for you if you lied to it and said they were movies

So I coded this masterpiece in an evening* and sold it for $5. It sold quite a lot of copies (for shareware) ... somewhere more than 100 and less than 1000. I allowed any magazine which asked to put it on a cover CD (back then cover CDs were big) so long as they sent me a copy ... I got a LOT of Japanese magazines...

* Well three evenings. I added a skinnable UI in a second evening and AppleScript support in a third evening.

Anyway:

1) I sold a product for $5 through Kagi
2) I made about $4 per sale (after all fees). More than $3.50 anyway. Can't remember exactly, but it wasn't bad.
3) Many people registering commented that $5 was too cheap.

So I'd agree that $2 is too cheap. $5 may work. I think you're right to go for an "impulse-buy" price, but I think you need to think "one or two movie tickets" because that's an amount of money folks will spend on entertainment without thinking.

Finally -- I like the IDEA of your game, but I think it looks too "straight" (i.e. photoreal). You want cartoony. Saturated colors. No perfect cubes. Everything should be one or two levels of detail too crude (you know -- three fingers and a thumb, big warped planks, tiny not-quite-round wheels on the fork-lift) and everything should be crooked.

I am amazed at the banana warehouse screenshots because your monkey and giraffe characters are EXACTLY the kind of tone you want and they aren't.