Chapter 3: Early Development of Idle Power II

 He took a two-day break from developing his game and took some time to relax and take care of himself. At his break, he goes to a barber shop for a haircut and chooses a common barber’s cut, and after that he binge-watches an entire anime season that has been on his backlog since a few months ago. After that, he treated himself to a meal at a local fast food chain near his residence and then spent some of his time playing games.

With those two days of relaxation, his tired mind was refreshed, and his enthusiasm was high once more.

“This time, I will definitely make it work!" With those words, he stretched his fingers for a moment before feeling warmed up enough to start dedicating his days to tackling his current hurdle.

It might be due to having taken a rest after that two-day break, or maybe it might be his enthusiasm just making it possible, but he was getting some progress on what made him struggle a few days ago.

“This code is junk. I have to erase it.”

“Hmm… right, there is something wrong with this. If I just change it like this… there, it's fixed now! ”

“Yeah… this part is totally wrong. I have to replace it entirely with a more compact one…”

“This is it. If I just put this here, it will run smoother than last time! ”

For the next few days, his excitement at just being able to solve his problems and then his improvements made it possible for him to finally create a working prototype that doesn’t throw errors in his face as he left the game to run for a long time. The combat system was finally working on the current version of the game. It still wasn’t ready because he still hadn’t made the mobs yet and was just using test dummies that had half of the player’s status just to test the new system, and he still hadn’t started yet on the effects of the game and various status ailments that the powers in his game could inflict on the mobs, among many other features that he was planning to put in the game, but the basic system itself was done and working as intended.

Completing such a hard task felt like such a great achievement to him that he had decided to make this the next update. Even if it was barebones right now, it still looked complete enough to be an update to his game.

“And putting this update will make my power apply the programming skills I used to make that combat system to myself. That means it will make it easier for me to add more features in the future! ”

With those reasons in his mind, he updated the game and put a simple sentence on the game stating that he had added a combat system.

“Okay… I’ll continue making an update tomorrow. For now, I’ll go and take some nap. That took a lot in my psyche…” Despite his enthusiasm, he had to admit he pushed himself there. He just tackled what would make other newbie indie game developers quit by himself.

He felt like he deserved some rest after finishing such hard work.

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The next day, he was just busy optimizing the system he had made yesterday when he stopped, shocked after he realized something.

“It’s getting easier now…”

Now he was definitely feeling it. The sense of improvement that felt invisible to him until now. Unlike the gradual improvements he got from the past month, this time, in a single day, he was getting insights that let him easily find flaws in his codes and even improve them with something better. In fact, just this morning, he suddenly became aware of the many lacking parts of the combat system that he was proud of just yesterday. He could even go as far as feeling ashamed that he even felt proud at that time because it truly had a lot of flaws in it that he could improve upon.

So, troublesome as it was, he had to postpone his plan to add more functions to the combat system and the game as a whole and instead spent his time optimizing the combat system and fixing everything he found lacking in it. This took him an entire week because he belatedly realized that his old model computer couldn’t keep up with the pace of his programming and the quality of his game, which was so surprisingly high that it exceeded his low-spec computer’s processors. Even if he could go faster than that, it was his old computer that made his progress stall at a rate he wasn’t satisfied with anymore.

“It can’t be helped. I’m using an emulator just to run this mobile game…” He sighed in disappointment.

It was already 2023. The model of his computer was still a 2014 one. Even in the Philippines, his computer would be considered vintage because of how old it was, but it couldn’t be helped. He didn’t have the money to change it yet. In today’s age, this kind of computer would sell at a cheap 1,000 pesos. A sixth of the price for the high-tier computer models that were on the market around this country in this age.

Even emulators would run slow on this type of computer, even if he was just running an idle game. Their specs were so entirely incompatible that if he ever wanted to play something without delays in it, he could only play retro games on an old emulator instead of something like an emulator for smartphones, which continuously updated till this day due to the advancement of mobile phone technologies too.

It really couldn’t be helped. He was trying to make a game that would work even on a low-tier phone in this country, and that kind of phone was still a model above his own computer model. That fact made him feel depressed at his own computer.

He shook his head and stopped thinking about it. “Right. It doesn’t really affect me personally. I should be thankful I even managed to make a program that, even with the optimizations I made, still reached the limits of my computer,” he muttered to himself.

After that small moment of contemplation, he continued with his game development. He might have to take note of the limitations of his computer, but it could be done. He wasn’t trying to make anything that could heavily burden the processors of his computer. At most, he would limit the graphics to pixel graphics and minimal effects so it wouldn’t bloat the processors so much that it burned his CPU.

So he wasn’t worried at all.

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“… Okay, I am getting worried…”

He doesn’t know whether fate had it in for him or he was just stupid, but he realized that his computer just couldn’t keep up with the amount of processes his emulator was eating for the game to run. He had already made it as compact as possible with his current skill level, but it still wasn’t enough. When the number of entities in the game goes beyond a hundred on the screen, his monitor hangs. If the numbers on the game just go beyond a certain digit, then the game crashes. Even when he was just stress testing his game for any limits to the upgrades, it caused his computer itself to go blue screen.

He could only stare at his monitor, which got another blue screen again, in a dumbfounded look before shaking his head and then standing up.

“I need to upgrade my computer!”

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He was sad. That cost him 2,000 pesos just to replace most of his computer’s parts. That amount should have been part of his daily expenses, but it was a shame that he had to invest in his computer just so he could continue working on his game.

Good thing he found something cheap and reliable on the online shopping store popular in this country. After a day of taking those replacement parts and then installing them within his CPU, he could finally continue programming the day after that.

The following days were easier after that. With the upgrades in his computer and the improvements in his skills, it didn’t take long before version 0.2.0 was uploaded on Idle Power’s page.

“Just a bit more. After the combat system, I’ll be making the regression system and then the gameplay loop. After that, I can finally put it on Woogle Play!”

His goal was so close in sight. He estimated that after those features, which were just small features compared to the robust combat system, he would finally have the time to take a breath and enjoy some profits from falling on his lap.

“Okay. Time to illustrate some enemies and the stages for the combat feature of this game.”

He was done implementing everything he had put in the four options, mostly in the power section. Now he just needed to do some simple animations for the activations of the powers in the game, make more enemy models other than stickmen figures, and then add a few more sound effects for those power animations, hit effects, and other stuff. He still had a lot of things to do, but he felt that all of it would be easier now.

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Once more, he realized how naïve he was. He called it "simple pixel animations" just because his drawing speed for pixel art became fast enough that he could finish one before ten minutes passed. Now he realized how burdensome it was to make a 12 FPS animation for a single action in the game. He originally planned to make a 60 FPS animation on the unlockable powers but suddenly realized how hard it was to do so. He had the skills, but the time it would take him was too long; if he was planning to make an animation for everything he put in the game, then it would take him several months before he could finish. And that’s for the current version of the game!

So, loath as he was to do it, he was forced to compromise and reduced the frames of the animation to twelve. It decreased his workload, but it made him bitter about it. He was still not fast enough for it.

So, in the second month since he developed the game, he made a new update, which was just adding animations to all powers that the character could do, along with some optimizations in the game experience.

After having updated the game to version 0.2.1, the next day, he got the necessary boost in his animation skills to further shorten his time. This made it possible for him to make version 0.2.2 the next week.

“This is too slow. It's already been two months since I started making this game. My electricity bill has been a bit higher than last month. I need to finish this game next month, or else I’ll be screwed! ”

With those concerns in his mind, he has decided to multitask. Instead of just focusing on one aspect of the game and then fixing some codes in his spare time, he spent his entire time multitasking. His earlier relaxed demeanor and confidence with his power now became a desperate race against time as he worked on his game like a madman.

He worked on coding, sound design, illustration, animation, and optimization all at the same time every single day. In the first five days, his progress has gotten slow because he was unused to that kind of workload, though as the following days passed, he got used to it. In the third month since he started making this game, he had updated the game to version 0.3.0. In this version, he had finished all of the animations, added a lot of sound effects for everything that was happening in the game, added three stages for combat and 27 different enemies in the game, added animation to the character the player was using, added a few more powers that could be unlocked and a few more options that could be unlocked on [Activity] and [Knowledge], and finally added at least one boss character on each stage.

“… I still haven’t implemented the regression system and the gameplay loop… but…” He looked at his dwindling cash on his e-wallet from his phone before sighing. “It can’t be helped…”

With a heavy heart, he goes to the Woogle Play Store site and makes the necessary procedures, like paying a fee of at least $25, or approximately 1,250 pesos in his country, before submitting his app in the appstore. As for the price of his game, if it ever passed the submission review, of course he chose free. He had no intention of putting a price tag on his game.

For such a game, normally the creator would either enable ad placements on it or even put in some microtransactions that would disable ads or give boosts to the players. He didn’t choose these options too.

Then how would he profit if he abandoned profiting through ads, microtransactions, and a flat-out fee to purchase his game?

The answer is simple. Through a single microtransaction option!

That contradicted the previous statement, but this microtransaction was different than the others. This was because this single microtransaction option could only do one thing.

It would give the player a title of supporter!

The title was just a simple function he added, which would only boost all of their characters’ status by 1%. The cost to buy this title was just $1. The title was permanent even when the game changed versions.

It was the only choice a player could choose because, even if he wanted to profit from it, he cherished the skills he could gain from his loss more than the profit he could gain from the game.

Even if only twenty people paid that dollar to him, that was still enough money for him to survive for a week. If that wasn’t enough, he hoped the game could pull some interested players so they could see his witch.io link that he added on the settings menu. In his witch.io account and the page for his game, he added his PayBud account, an e-bank that was highly reliable all over the world. He's basically banking on the very few people who might feel interested enough that they would support him on his game.

If all of that wasn’t enough, he might have to seriously consider looking for work.

‘Hopefully, it doesn’t come to that. I want to spend my time making my dream games.'

He truly wished that some people would find his game interesting enough that they would donate to him and he could accumulate enough money so he could continue with this kind of life. He still had at least the fourth month before he seriously considered looking for work with the amount of money he had remaining.

“Okay, no time to dawdle like this. I have to keep improving the game even if I lose sleep over this! ”

With weary hands, he continued making his game with a small hope that he would make some profit from it.

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Three days later, his game passed the reviews and was successfully submitted on Woogle Play. Mike doesn’t expect it would immediately have people downloading it or even profiting from it on the first day of its release. Its page on witch.io has gotten a few increases in its traffic since the past two months. It now had at least fifty visitors, though no one had downloaded it yet. He thought it would be the same at this platform.

He underestimated the brand name of Woogle Play itself. Any game that was uploaded there would have at least a few people who would be interested. Of course, these few people were already on the hundreds. So without him realizing it, his newly published game got the attention of hundreds of people. Being a new idle game, of course many people would try it.

Compared to witch.io, which was more popular for indie games for PC, the Woogle Play platform was dedicated to people who preferred playing on their phones. This platform, even with its submission rules and moderation, was pretty lax about any games. So long as it wasn’t an adult game and it was properly rated and tagged, it would pass their review. Mike had also underestimated just how popular idle games were in the market for mobile games.

Even if it couldn’t compare to other popular idle games out there, many people still craved this kind of game that they would just pick anything that had an "idle" in its title and play it. It was that kind of popularity that caused hundreds of people to immediately download it.

And the game, with a design that was so smooth and barely had any bugs within it, along with rich content with its simplistic graphics and animations, attracted these people addicted to idle games.

It wasn't until the third day after the launch of his game that he realized it.

“Where did these 1,000 dollars come from!?” ”

A donation from one of those idle game addicts took him by surprise and soon made him aware of his game’s popularity.