Yipe 5 Quest: Learning Javascript

Well, more like brushing up on javascript, but in any case, lots of learning going on as I look at updating Yipe 5 to be playable again.  Let me start off by saying thanks to you.  Those of you who have asked me where to download or play any of the Yipe games, here in 2020… years and years after the original game was released.  Thanks.  That’s what inspires me to dust off my programming skills and make sure Yipe stays updated and playable.

So here we are… summer of 2020.  And dabbling here and there in my spare time (which there definitely seems to be more of in 2020), I’ve got a bit of a prototype running.

I wrote a bit about using the canvas element to get started on this project over on yipe5.com.  And all of the links across Yipesoftware.com and Yipe5.com that sent you to the app store to download Yipe 5 now link to that page.  Once the game is playable, that page will link to the game.

There’s still a lot to get working.  Especially all those Yipe 5 nuances, like the interactions with Idle Hands, the secrets, the conversations with the King and Jester and a variety of other things to make it a complete game.  The game is not exactly mobile friendly yet, but surprisingly works pretty well out of the box with what I’ve done so far.

Anyway, thought it’d be fun to share a post with some progress updates.  And for those looking to create their own 2D games using canvas, here’s a few resources I found helpful along the way.

• A nice jsfiddle showing mouse detection.
• Drawing sprites to canvas tutorial
• Handy little function to wrap text that you draw to canvas
• Processing keyboard input

My list could go on and on.  If you’re curious about other resources or have a specific question about getting the game to work in a browser, let me know!

Easy Roller Dice — My Dice Collection Grows

Little known fact: I collect things. Well, it’s not really a hidden secret from my family and friends, but I wanted to share a bit about one of my collections and I thought this particular collection went well with my parody-RPG game, Yipe.

My dice collection.

My dice collection started back in elementary school, when I’d occasionally play D&D. My Dad picked me up a set of 4 jade dice for a birthday and well… there was no turning back on this becoming another one of my collections. Since then, over the years I’ve picked up a die here or there. Sometimes finding a store that had a great selection and I’d grab a handful.

However, I just added the biggest single group of die ever to my collection, courtesy of Easy Roller Dice. The chance to add metal dice to my collection was just too much to resist. I also ended up with my first ever dice tray, which I have to say is pretty awesome both for rolling dice and now being the new home to my collection.

Can’t speak highly enough about the quality of these dice. You check check them out at easyrollerdice.com. I’ll end with a couple pics of my 5 year old son getting in on the action!

Yipe Shirts!

I’ve got a little t-shirt blog going that I’ve been a bit more active on than my Yipe blog.  And so I wanted to cross reference a post I made featuring Yipe shirts!

Read all about it here: Yipe T-Shirts

Fun t-shirts at DesignByHumans

I’m mostly posting this to test a new widget and how it displays in WordPress.  But, I also do love the designs by Wotto, one of my favorite Design By Humans artists.

Some of his monster designs remind me of Yipe characters.

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,800 times in 2010. That’s about 4 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 8 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 21 posts. There were 11 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 1mb. That’s about a picture per month.

The busiest day of the year was April 21st with 60 views. The most popular post that day was 4.5 Months in: Yipe! Sales Report.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were yipesoftware.com, iphone5g.net, facebook.com, forums.toucharcade.com, and who-will-win-fifa-worldcup-2010.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for ipad rpg, yipe 5 ned, yipe 5 secrets, yipe apple mac, and yipe 5 final boss.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

4.5 Months in: Yipe! Sales Report April 2010
4 comments

2

iPad RPG screenshots! April 2010
1 comment

3

Yipe 5 Version 1.2 submitted to Apple January 2010
1 comment

4

Yipe! 5 FREE Lite version available! March 2010

5

99 cent sale, Danger! Dodgeball, Anything coming? July 2010
4 comments

99 cent sale, Danger! Dodgeball, Anything coming?

Both the full version of Yipe! 5 and the lite version option for unlocking the full game have reduced their prices down to 99 cents.  Seemed like a good summer move.  And if I actually analyzed my previous post a bit more, I’d probably realize I should have gone down to 99 cents awhile ago.  What can you do when you’re so tied up with your normal job?  Woah is me.  Ha.

So, a friend who was in the computer science program at Chico State just released an iPhone game with some of his buddies.  It’s got a catchy addictiveness to it and so I thought I’d give him a shout out.  Check out Danger! Dodgeball at the Robot Stampede site: http://www.robotstampede.com/

And as for updates on Yipe! 5 itself…

I have honestly been checked out the last few months from the world of Yipe!  Luckily, the world of Yipe! doesn’t need me to personally save it on a daily basis.  And there are still players out there trying out the game for the first time and enjoying it.  Like this comment on the App Store from yesterday:

“Bought it thinking I’d play here and there.  Ended up not being able to put it down.”  -r.richter, July 8, 2010

Always good to read those comments!

My update on actual development progress for Yipe! is:  Purchased an iPad and started on a version that was better suited for the iPad.  Put larger graphics in that Dylan gave me to make everything look crisp and clear on the iPad.  Realized the larger size graphics slowed down performance on the iPhone version.  So, now I was sort of in a state of not being able to do a release.  And then things sat for a bit.  A couple weeks ago, I optimized the memory usage so the large size images wouldn’t slow things down.  And started playing with Plus+ integration again.  And well, that’s where we are.  I think the games in a state I could do a release again, so if I can finish up Plus+, I’ll get something out.  No idea on timeline though.

4.5 Months in: Yipe! Sales Report

Yipe! 5 was released to the App store on December 5th, 2009.

The free lite version went out March 10th, 2010.

In the 4.5 months since that first version went out, I thought I’d share some stats on how things went with sales, downloads, updates, in-app purchases, etc.

Let’s start out with the totals.  I download the “weekly top 50” report from iTunes Connect every Monday and put it into a little excel sheet I have.  Here’s the summary details:

Yipe 5: Attack of Idle Hands
	Sales		In App Purchases	Aprox USD Value
USD Tot	1057		19	$1,384.60
AUD tot	72			$92.50
GBP tot	127			$133.31
EUR tot	120			$146.70
CAN tot	75			$93.10
JPY tot	29			$37.93
Totals	1,480		19	$1,888.14
Yipe 5 Lite RPG: Attack of Idle Hands
	Downloads	In-App    Unlock Game	In-App Purchases	Aprox USD Value
USD Tot	1091	57	12	$88.20
AUD tot	79	4		$5.50
GBP tot	105	7		$7.88
EUR tot	210	7	9	$15.22
CAN tot	104	1		$1.40
JPY tot	62	0		$0.00
Totals	1,651	76	21	$118.20
Percentage of Unlocks from total downloads: 4.60%
Total Installs and Apple Payouts from Yipe! and Yipe! Lite
	Installs	Revenue	Apple   Payout	Apple       Owes
USD Tot	2167	$1,472.80	$960.40	$512.40
AUD tot	151	$98.00	–	$98.00
GBP tot	232	$141.19	–	$141.19
EUR tot	330	$161.92	–	$161.92
CAN tot	179	$94.50	–	$94.50
JPY tot	91	$37.93	–	$37.93
Totals	3,150	$2,006.34	$960.40	$1,045.93

Ok, let’s break this down a bit.

The game is typically priced at $1.99  in the app store.  I’ve put it on sale for 99 cents a couple of times and sales definitely go up when that happens, more on that later.  My “In App Purchases” are always 99 cents.  They represent the in app purchases I have in the game for “Unlock additional Save Slots” and “Add 10 pack of heals”.  The “In-App Unlock Game” row for the LITE version has been a $1.99 purchase up to this point and that unlocks the entire game, just as if you had bought the full version.

Of those purchase prices, I receive 70% and Apple takes the other 30%.  The numbers in the charts above represent my share, after Apple has already taken their cut.

Notice the Apple Payouts section.  Apple pays out on a monthly basis if you have received $150 USD value for any given currency.  So far, I have only reached this twice, Dec 2009 for USD sales and Jan 2010 for USD sales.  For AUD, GBP, EUR, CAN, JPY, I have not been paid anything from Apple for my sales since I have not yet reached $150 in total approximate sales.  I went over $150 for March USD, but have not actually received the payout from Apple yet.

It looks like I actually am there for EUR now.  $161.92 total over 4.5 months.  So, hopefully as April comes to a close, I should receive a payout for those sales.

I have heard on discussion boards that Apple will eventually pay you out, even if you do not receive $150 in total sales for a given currency.  I’m just not sure when this happens.

Price changes and Updates.  What increase do I receive?  Here’s a weekly progress report with info on what (if anything) happened each week.  Weeks are based on Apple’s weekly reports and cover the period of Monday through Sunday each week.  These sales totals are specific to the full version and do not count in-app purchases or downloads of lite version.

Week 1: 98 total sales (Dec 5, 6)  First 2 days of being in the app store.  Ahhh, these were the glory days.  Made it up to top 55 in RPG category.
Week 2: 151 (Dec 7-13)  Things started going down after day 4 as the drop in sales was noticeable.   Days 5 and 6 had 13 total sales each and I dropped down to 90 in top paid RPG category.  After this I was out of the top 100 until…
Week 3: 160 (Dec 14-20) Version 1.1 was released on Dec 16th.  This got TouchArcade.com members talking again and that definitely helped sales.  The day before, Dec 15th, I actually cracked the top 100 again as 26 sales put me at 87th in top 100 RPG category.  One thing the update did was allow 3.0 OS users to download the game.  The original release only allowed 3.1 or higher OS iPhones to download the game.  This however was not a major factor in increasing sales.  From my stats on PinchMedia.com, about 2% of my downloads over all time have been from iPhone users with an OS Version below 3.1.
Week 4: 150 (Dec 21-27)  On Dec 23rd, SlideToPlay.com did a review of the game.  Sadly it received only 2/4 stars, but the review was actually fairly positive.
Week 5: 139 (Dec 28 – Jan 3)
Week 6: 137 (Jan 4-10) 148Apps review of Yipe went out.  4/5 stars.
Week 7: 69 (Jan  11-17)
Week 8: 39 (Jan 18-24)
Week 9: 39 (Jan 25-31) On Jan 29th, 1.2 version was released which had lots of major changes.  I posted about those here: 1.2 Yipe changes.
Week 10: 148 (Feb 1-7) On Feb 2nd, price was reduced to $0.99.
Week 11: 27 (Feb 8-14) Raised price back up to $1.99 on Feb 8th.
Week 12: 19 (Feb 15-21)
Week 13: 20 (Feb 22-28)
Week 14: 21 (Mar 1-7) Review of Yipe on TouchMyApps was on March 2nd.
Week 15: 48 (Mar 8-14) March 10th, lite version was released.
Week 16: 37 (Mar 15-21) March 12th was official release party in SF.  March 16th, good review from SarcasticGamer.com. For the stats period ending March 21st, the lite version had a total of 919 installs and 39 of those purchased the in-app purchase to unlock the full game.  March 21st, I started an ad on 148apps.com.  The ad will run for 30 days.
Week 17: 73 (Mar 22-28)  On March 26th, price was reduced to $0.99.
Week 18: 56 (Mar 29 – Apr 4)  On April 2nd, price was raised back up to $1.99.
Week 19: 30 (Apr 5-11)
Week 20: 19 (Apr 12-18)
Week 21: ?? (Apr 19-18)  Just putting this uncompleted week here to note that my ad on BuySellAds.com expires on the 19th.  The ad was displaying on 148apps.com.  Results are in for the 30 day ad run:  42,796 impressions, 100 clicks, 0.23% click through rate, $0.02 ECPM.  The ad directed people to the Yipe! 5 site, http://www.yipe5.com.  Here’s a link to the Yipe! ad displaying on the site.  Here’s the actual full animated Yipe! ad.

Lastly, I will leave you with some links to my analytical data on PinchMedia.

Pic 1:  Dashboard.  Shows total unique users according to PinchMedia.  The Jailbroken users could be either paying or cracked version users.  No way to tell.

Pic 2: More Dashboard info.  Breaks down the Device type, OS Version and Application version.

Pic 3: Number of sessions per unique user over the lifetime of Yipe! 5 (full version).  Most people only open up the game 5-9 times, but there are still plenty of people who have opened the game up even more.  I wonder who the 500+ user is?

Pic 4: Session Durations.  Every time someone opens the game, how long do they keep it open, before closing the application?  I like this chart a lot because it shows that Yipe users typically stay within the application a fairly long time.  Most users keep the app open from 2-10 minutes and a significant amount of sessions last over 10 minutes.

Pic 5: Using PinchMedia, I can track specific occurrences in the game.  I set the game up to let me know when users hit certain levels, beat the first boss monster, finish the game and start new characters of a specific type.  Keep in mind that a single user could have started more than 1 character, so these are not unique user numbers.  I also didn’t add the tracking for new chars, bunny boss or NED levels until version 1.2, which explains why the numbers are so off for level 2, 5, 10, 15, 20, which were all in place from day 1, as was “Finished”.

Pic 6: As I looked at Pic 5, I realized the lifetime data here isn’t as meaningful, since I didn’t record everything from day 1.  For the lite version I did record everything from day 1, so here are the stats for the lite version.  Keep in mind that a player can only reach level 8 in the “trial” part of the lite version.  You must use the  “unlock game” in-app purchase to advance past level 8, get to the NED cave, finish the game, etc.  Total unique users who have unlocked the full lite version: 76.

Well, that’s my 4.5 month report!

iPad RPG screenshots!

Ok, we have a ways to go… but here’s a few intro screen shots from what I’ve been working on so far with the iPad version of Yipe! 5.  Mostly just trying to get things in the general layout I want and then will clean up from there.  Dylan already gave me larger images for all monsters, hero’s and world tiles, so those are in place and look nice and clear on the iPad.

Exporing the world on the iPad

Yipe! 5 Release Party

Dylan put up some pictures from the Yipe! 5 Release party.  You can check them out here.  http://www.yipe5.com/event.html

The party was definitely awesome!  As is my cool new Yipe! t-shirt!  May have some extras to put up somewhere soon…

Yipe! 5 FREE Lite version available!

After a bit of a delay due to that whole “demo” thing… Yipe! 5 Lite is available in the app store!  You can now pick up your FREE copy of Yipe! 5.  I’ve added in-app purchasing as well, so you can unlock the full game and continue playing with your saved characters.  You can also purchase a couple other new add-ons, like additional save slots and a 10 pack of heals for your character.

Here’s the itunes link:  http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/yipe-5-lite-rpg-attack-idle/id352289075?mt=8#

To all Yipe! loyal fans, I still encourage you to download the free one if you already have the full version!  It will help me get more attention to the app!

Oh… and don’t forget the SF release party!  Two days away!