www.seamlesstexturegenerator.com

Community Forums/Showcase/www.seamlesstexturegenerator.com

sswift(Posted 2005) [#1]
http://www.seamlesstexturegenerator.com/

Got my website finished finally!


AdrianT(Posted 2005) [#2]
heh some fantastic examples :) well done mate.


Rob Farley(Posted 2005) [#3]
Looks nice, although my only critism would be the 'welcome artist' at the top, personally I think it's a bit cheesy, and the shouty yellow in the help, nothing against the shouty yellow but I just think it's a little overused.

eg:
If you'd like to see THUMBNAILS in the file view, simply click the FOLDER ICON in the upper right corner of the dialog box, and select "Thumbnails" from the drop down menu.
I'd drop the first THUMBNAILS shout.

You can ZOOM the view in and out by holding SHIFT while clicking the LEFT and RIGHT mouse buttons!
I'd lose the ! from the end. It's not an exclaimation.

There's also a bit of inconsistancy where you quote things rather than shouty yellow (example in the first quote as well as this one).
A lower value here creates a "stronger" effect
Why is this quoted and not shouty?

Another example of overshoutyness:
If you do not want the program to switch to the FINAL image once processing is complete, you may hold down the SHIFT key while clicking MAKE TEXTURE, or pressing SPACE.

But this is all cosmetic... but then websites are all about cosmetics.


sswift(Posted 2005) [#4]
"Why is this quoted and not shouty?"

Because "stronger" isn't exactly the right word to describe what it is doing. That's what the quotes mean there.

Fixing the help file shouties is not a top priority at the moment. But I removed the welcome artist thing. :-)

It's such a pain in the ass changing colors in the Mozilla html editor. I wish it gave you the option of defining different types of type and what they look like that you could select from instead of having to select and bold and color everything manually to change it!

Oh, and the shouty things are there not just to draw attention to those features but also to make the page more readable. I find it's easy to get lost in lots and lot of text, so I tried to use short sentances that were to the point, and seperate paragraphs, but I still needed to add "shouty" text to make stuff easier to follow and it has the added benefit of adding visual interest to the page.


Rob Farley(Posted 2005) [#5]
I wish it gave you the option of defining different types of type and what they look like that you could select from instead of having to select and bold and color everything manually to change it!
Um... Style sheets? Just define a shouty style and a normal style, as well as heading styles then just <p class="shouty">ARRGGGH</p>

This might help: http://www.brainjar.com/css/using/

The other advantage means if you want your shouties to be green instead of yellow you just change the style sheet and all references to shouties will magically be green.

On top of that you've got inheritance too so if you define a shouty inherited from a regular paragraph then if you change the font of a paragraph the shouty will change too (if you didn't define a font style in the shouty).


sswift(Posted 2005) [#6]
I have looked at style sheets before. They're too complicated. I want something simple and easy to understand. I can't be wating several days trying to figure out how style sheets work and how to integrate them with Mozilla just to set up one small website. :-)

And <p class="shouty">ARRGGGH</p> huh? No thanks. I use a visual HTML editor. I don't intend to type all that stuff in by hand. It's hard enough getting the page the way I want it to look when I can tweak stuff visually and reasonably quickly. It would tkae forever doing it with text. :-)

The only thing I thought I should have done in retrospect was using frames. Then I could have avoided cuttong and pasting all those buy now and demo buttons on every page, and put the samples on the right on a seperate scrolling area.

But I like how it turned out anyway, and I have no plans to change it now.


SoggyP(Posted 2005) [#7]
Greetings Puppies,

Sswiftyoooooooh. Sorry, just thought I'd put a fanfare in the greeting. Nice application, very sweet. For CSS stuff you might want to check out www.csszengarden.com - as an artist I think it might appeal to you.

Peace,

Jes


Rob Farley(Posted 2005) [#8]
You suprise me Swifty! Given how neat and tidy your blitz code is, you view source of your website and it is ugly and bloaty as hell.

For example, just the 1.Menu section;
You HTML code:


How I would do it:

Which gives you the added ability to colour the tips differently.


sswift(Posted 2005) [#9]
Rob:
The code is all generated AUTOMATICALLY. Mozilla is a VISUAL heml editor.

I assure you, if I coded it manually, it would be much easier to read. :-)

There's probably lots of color and font changes in there too that are uneccessary. Mozilla for some reason lets spaces be colored, and that results in lots of leftover tags and stuff. And it doesn't make it easy to delete spare tags even though you can view them as little yellow boxes over the html.

Why would anyone want to code in raw HTML? That would be like coding a windows app using C++ instead of Visual C++. Why torture yourself?

I tortured myself enough trying to code my app in Blitzplus without a form editor. :-)


Rob Farley(Posted 2005) [#10]
I appreciate it's generated for you I just thought you were pretty anal about the whole tidy code thing (in the nicest possible way of course!) :)

The thing is swift, once you've got your basic outline of a site up in php you do very little coding if any. For example my site I just upload a text document for any news item and the php renders the html. For projects I upload a folder (named with the project name), with a bunch of screenshots and content.txt (for what I want to say about it) in it and the php does the rest.


sswift(Posted 2005) [#11]
"I appreciate it's generated for you I just thought you were pretty anal about the whole tidy code thing (in the nicest possible way of course!) :)"


If I can't see it, I can pretend it doesn't exist! :-)


I know that the page would be easier to update if I used CSS and frames, but I don't plan to make many changes to it, and it was easier this way. My first priority is to get this selling. Fancy webpages can come later. :-)


Picklesworth(Posted 2005) [#12]
If you do do a nice web page, you should use examples of your seamless texture generator's output for the backgrounds in tables, headers, or whatever :)

Oh, and that web site does a great job of showing off the power of your generator! I had no idea it did all that.
I don't own it but... Feature request? Very simple :) Could the mouse wheel please move the scroll bar?
Oh, and shouldn't the width and height value things be able to automatically set themselves based on the selected area to transform?


sswift(Posted 2005) [#13]

If you do do a nice web page



<GASP!> <ACK!> <COUGH!>

Like daggers through my heart!


Feature request? Very simple :) Could the mouse wheel please move the scroll bar?



There are two scrollbars, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to have it scroll one but make you scroll the other manually. Someone else requested that it zoom the view. :-)

I'm gonna see how it sells before I start adding new features. Now that I've got it up, and am running ads for it, I can get back to work on my tank game and get that done. I should know in a couple weeks whether or not STG is a dismal failure or not. Then I can decide whether or not I'm going to make significant improvements to it.


"Oh, and shouldn't the width and height value things be able to automatically set themselves based on the selected area to transform?"



No, because you might want to output a texture which is larger or smaller than the area you are transforming. For example, by default the entire image is selected. But you usually do not want to make a 1280x960 texture. You want to scale the selected area down to 256x256 or something.


Mustang(Posted 2005) [#14]
Nice samples! Much more convincing than the ones you posted here earlier... almost too good looking :)


Jeremy Alessi(Posted 2005) [#15]
Great to see you've got a complete app up sswift ... the site could be better but it's probably good enough to sell the product.


keyboard(Posted 2005) [#16]
Why would anyone want to code in raw HTML?

umm... because its easy? and effective?

I agree with Mr. Farley, the website looks amateurish and does not inspire confidence, the black background makes it look like a warez site, sorry :(


sswift(Posted 2005) [#17]

I agree with Mr. Farley, the website looks amateurish and does not inspire confidence"



Rob didn't say anything about my site looking amateurish, or failing to inspire confidence. He said it looks NICE!

And coding with raw HTML is not going to change the look of the site for the better. You can do CSS with a visual editor, and a visual editor allows you to more easily try different things.


keyboard(Posted 2005) [#18]
yeah, sorry...

I was agreeing with his remarks about inconsistency then going on a bit myself...

some of the design issues are:
*white, red and blue are the "selling" colours, black is gloomy and foreboding
*more than two colours for text (ie, normal and highlight) make the site look amateurish
*headings are inconsistently either centred or aligned left
*thumbnails are differently sized
*having to scroll on the first page is a no-no, better to have the punchy message then links to "samples" "buy" etc
*too much bold text in the sentences and too many paragraphs, it IS like someone is shouting at you, and the paragraph for "Everything you don't want in a texture!" is too easy to read by itself, and makes it look like you are advertising that feature... Just a single para there would be better for that section, and no bolds...

oh well, its easy to criticise I know...


Damien Sturdy(Posted 2005) [#19]
Nice work Sswifty!!!


Grey Alien(Posted 2005) [#20]
It is really clever, the examples are amazing frankly.


sswift(Posted 2005) [#21]

thumbnails are differently sized



I hate thumbnails that are cropped versions of the images, because it makes it hard to tell what it is I'm looking at.

I don't want to waste time clicking an image so I can see if it is something I want to look at or not, and I don't want to waste time trying to figure out if a thumbnail shows something I'm interested in.



more than two colours for text (ie, normal and highlight) make the site look amateurish



I count no less than seven different colors on Voodoo Extreme: http://ve3d.ign.com/

And Google uses four distinct colors:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=good+web+design&btnG=Google+Search

You may count shades as the same color, but that still leaves three distinct colors on Voodoo.


having to scroll on the first page is a no-no, better to have the punchy message then links to "samples" "buy" etc



Adobe would appear to disagree with you:
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/main.html

Granted their main page has no scrolling, but if you search for photoshop with google, this is the first page you get, and I have only one product to sell right now.


Maybe I will take another look at parts of the design, and see if the bold text is unnecessary now that the images are in place. But I've designed my page to be useable first, and pretty second.


sswift(Posted 2005) [#22]
I tried some of your suggestions, but I think the resulting page not only looks boring, but is tedious to read, and takes too long to get the key features across to the user.

Before:
http://www.seamlesstexturegenerator.com/

After:
http://www.seamlesstexturegenerator.com/testindex.html

With my design, you can skim the page in moments and see all the bullet points in bold, and then go back and read more carefully those sections which interest you.

But with all the text being the same color, and none of it being bold, you have to read whole paragraphs to see if the information they contain is interesting.


Sweenie(Posted 2005) [#23]
I don't know why but I think a black background gives the page an "underground activity" feeling.

[Edit]
Hehe,just found this site...
http://www.strangebanana.com/generator.aspx

It creates a random page every time you refresh the page. Refresh a couple of times until you find a settings you like. :)

And I recommend this tool...
http://www.colormatch.dk/


keyboard(Posted 2005) [#24]
'k


CS_TBL(Posted 2005) [#25]
With the demo I tried a worst-case-scenario, a 64x64 image (bmp) of a 4-corner gradient (like the photoshop colorchooser)

with: top-left: (255,255,255) and top-right, bottom-left, and bottom-right: (0,0,0)

I got error-style'ish stuff in the bottom-right corner..

(as it's default: the image scaled up to 512x512)


sswift(Posted 2005) [#26]
The program is not designed to work with artificial images. It particularly doesn't like large sections of pure black, which you rarely see in a real world image.


SoggyP(Posted 2005) [#27]
Greetings Puppies,

Ever been to a rock concert?

Peace,

Jes


Ross C(Posted 2005) [#28]
The product is excellent. The website is dodgy :P Sorry swift, but it could be better :o) I bought the product before the site was up, because i liked what it did, and it does it very well.


sswift(Posted 2005) [#29]
"Ever been to a rock concert?"

Are you implying my website is like a rock concert?


"The website is dodgy :P"

Yeah well is the GRAY version I posted any better? I'm open to suggestions, even if I don't sound like it. :-)


Jeremy Alessi(Posted 2005) [#30]
To put it blantantly the site looks bad. Neither version looks good and you should totally re-design it or get someone else to do it for you. I can't make a good site either so don't feel bad ... but your kick butt program would sell a lot better with a professional looking site behind it.


SoggyP(Posted 2005) [#31]
Greetings Puppies,

Yes, that's exactly what I'm implying - it's full of nubile young women in tight tops and cut-off jeans; hairy and sweaty, long-haired skank-meisters and sells nothing but cheap, flat, warm lager.

No, actually I was referring to the 'It particularly doesn't like large sections of pure black, which you rarely see in a real world image.' but hey!

Poo!

Peace,

Jes


RifRaf(Posted 2005) [#32]
sswift,

a bit off topic, I appologize, but

I'm curious, it seems you do not accept paypal any longer. all of the paypal email addresses are cut of at sswift@...

I was interested in the commecial version of the shadow system, but would have to pay via paypal. if you can get back to me on this it would be appreciated. GameMaker04@...


sswift(Posted 2005) [#33]
I'm confused. What email addresses are you referring to? I just checked my worklog, and the entries I loked at say scswift@.... I have not used sswift@ anything in a long time.


RifRaf(Posted 2005) [#34]
well the email is cut off in the worklog .. at any rate thank you for the correct email, expect payment in just a few minutes.


To sent payment, you have several options:


1. To pay via paypal, the preffered method, go to www.paypal.com and send payment to scswift@...




sswift(Posted 2005) [#35]
My email addresses are cut off in the worklog?

Which specific worklog? I think I know the one, but I want to be absolutely sure.

I don't see any of my email addresses cut off. They all look normal.

When you click the address, does it open your mail client with the correct address pasted?

Does this mean that all this time Blitz Research has been hiding people's email addresses except from the people themselves?


RifRaf(Posted 2005) [#36]
here
http://www.blitzbasic.com/logs/userlog.php?user=963&log=269
and here
http://www.blitzbasic.com/logs/userlog.php?user=963&log=267

the cut off email is not clickable for me.


sswift(Posted 2005) [#37]
RifRaf:
I see it cut off when I am not logged in, but when I am logged in it looks normal.

Does anyone else who is logged in see them emails cut off?

Also, RifRaf, I added a version of the email in parenthesis. Can you see that?


RifRaf(Posted 2005) [#38]
it looks ok.. the problem is clicking your links opens them in a new web page window, and in that instance of the blitz site ,users are not logged in.. if i go to your worklog properly i see it all normally. on a side note, i have sent payment for the system


sswift(Posted 2005) [#39]
Hm... well I don't think I can fix that. Blitz Research is obviously blocking the email addresses because they don't want spammers to get them.

But I think the problem is that the links you're clicking are on a different website than the one you're on. Blitz has two different website names, and if you're logged into one, you're not logged into the other.

I wonder if I could change my links to be relative to the current location so that they'll use whichever website you're on. Hm.


sswift(Posted 2005) [#40]
"No, actually I was referring to the 'It particularly doesn't like large sections of pure black, which you rarely see in a real world image.' but hey!"


Well let me put it another way. I could fix the issue with black, but it would slow the application down because I'd have to check for divide by 0 for every pixel... Since this issue does not affect most images I thought it better to have the occasional black pixel go wonky than to potentially halve the speed.

Of course it probabyl wouldn't halve the speed, and I probably should fix it just because people seem to think it's important even though they're unlikely to encounter the problem. :-)


You folks complaining about the website, I'd like to see examples of what you think the website should look like. You must have something in mind.


keyboard(Posted 2005) [#41]
I'm open to suggestions, even if I don't sound like it. :-)

nor were my suggestions meant to sound arrogant, even if they seemed that way.

To be clear, I spent some time (seemed like eons, but it was only two years) working for a company that was involved in affiliate marketing - selling online. The design principles of "sites that sold" usually included:
White background
colour scheme of mainly white, red and blue
no scroll on first page
page navigation at top or left
No more than two colours on text
etc.

these were not my ideas, but were our design guidlines, thats all, and many sites are not like this, and many sites break these rules, but not all sites are "selling" sites.

You folks complaining about the website, I'd like to see examples of what you think the website should look like. You must have something in mind.

ok, but you may not like it either, but no harm done.
<edit>
here is a link, SIMPLE SITE DESIGN
it is very simple, with a few graphics just for fun, and is obviously a very basic template, but if it helps, good, otherwise, oh well :)


WolRon(Posted 2005) [#42]
I like the gray one better. Yes, the text is harder to read, but the layout is better. Maybe lighten the gray a little...

The grey one is a step in the right direction though.


sswift(Posted 2005) [#43]
I dunno, I'm still partial to the back background.

Some of Cannon's website where they sell their highest end digital cameras is black.

And my dad seems to like it black. He thought the gray one was boring and that the black made the images stick out more.


Keyboard:
That black line that you have running around the white area... Is that done with multiple cells in a table?

The site design you have there is okay, but kinda bland. I wouldn't be excited about the product as soon as I hit the front page if I saw that.

Porn sells better than anything else on the internet, and what do porn sites look like? Some are bright and colorful, and some are black like my site, but they all have tons of images on the front page, because images look cool, and images sell a product better than text. That is why every ad for every product out there is mostly visual with little text. Even on the web people can't be bothered reading a bunch of text.

If anything I should have more images on my front page.

Maybe I should have some brighter colors too. I've been trying to make a new site design today, but everything I come up with doesn't really seem to fit my product.

Here's some different designs and colors I've been trying:

www.seamlesstexturegenerator.com/stg-001.png
www.seamlesstexturegenerator.com/stg-002.png
www.seamlesstexturegenerator.com/stg-003.png
www.seamlesstexturegenerator.com/stg-004.png
www.seamlesstexturegenerator.com/stg-005.png
www.seamlesstexturegenerator.com/stg-006.png
www.seamlesstexturegenerator.com/stg-007.png
www.seamlesstexturegenerator.com/stg-008.png
www.seamlesstexturegenerator.com/stg-009.png


BlackJumper(Posted 2005) [#44]
Porn sells better than anything else on the internet, and what do porn sites look like?


... maybe you could save that design for your "SemenlessTextureGenerator" when you ...err, "release" it.


WolRon(Posted 2005) [#45]
I like stg-004.png and I also like Keyboards design.


Jeremy Alessi(Posted 2005) [#46]
I like Keyboard's layout a lot better. It's centered and you don't have to scroll a lot ... I don't like to scroll a lot. You should make it look like one tight document and consolidate the information as much as possible. You have way too many paragraphs on there. You only need a short list talking about the functionality as well as a screen shot of the product in action and maybe 2 samples along with a download link. Someone should look at the page and be able to instantly see what it does and then click the download demo link.


Jeremy Alessi(Posted 2005) [#47]
By the way, all that additional information should/could be added to the demo itself in a nag screen or on a separate information detail page. The front page however should be quick and to the point. Oh and make some smaller more attractive buttons for the Demo and Buy Now links.


sswift(Posted 2005) [#48]
Bah, you guys want me to make a boring looking webpage which says little to nothing about my product which differentiates it from other similar products!

WolRon even picked the logo which was all metal that has no interesting font design, on a plain blue background!

BORING!

Btw, Jeremy you did something on your website which may look slick, but which irritates the hell out of me when I see it on websites:

When you click an image it opens in a window. That looks nice and keeps the user on the page, but I almost ALWAYS hold ctrl while I click and click every image on a page to open them all at once in seperate tabs. That doesn't work if you use Java to open your images, I just end up with a bunch of blank pages! And, if people like me have turned off Java completely, because companies have found away around the pop up window blocker in Mozilla, then we won't be able to open the screenshots at all.

Also, when I mouse over the images, I can only see in my browser status bar that it is a java link. I can't see where it is actually going to go. So there is no way for me to tell if the image is going to open a new browser, a pop up window, or what. I can't tell if I'm going to get a screenshot, or a page with more information. When I click on the "Market Value" image I'm not exactly interested in seeing a big version of what amounts to cover art and tells me nothing about the gameplay. I was hoping for more info about the game.

Also you break your own scrolling rule as every page on your site has to scroll. Just "not a lot". But that's silly. Scrolling is scrolling, and mine isn't a exactly 10 pages tall. :-)

Overall I like your site design though, it looks nice.


Black:
Terrible, terrible, terrible. :-)


keyboard(Posted 2005) [#49]
it is essential that you like your own website, of course :)
<edit>
That black line that you have running around the white area... Is that done with multiple cells in a table?


it is one table inside another. There is a table with a white background inside a table with a black background. They are the same width, except the table with the black background has cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0", which gives the one pixel border, ie: a black line.

cellpadding and cellspacing must both be set, to "1" and "0" in this case, because if you don't set cellspacing to "0" it reverts to default, which is "1", not "0", in IE. hell if I know why.


sswift(Posted 2005) [#50]
If I don't like my own website, how can I expect other people to like it? I haven't recieved that many complaints, and everyone knows complainers are much more vocal than satisified people. :-)


WolRon(Posted 2005) [#51]
Porn sells better than anything else on the internet, and what do porn sites look like?
I didn't realize that you were seaming together porn textures...


Jeremy Alessi(Posted 2005) [#52]
Yeah the Leadfoot site has to scroll but it's only a little bit and I don't even have to lift my finger off the mouse wheel to see it all. As for the links ... the design is consistent so all the images on the left are links to the game pages ... all the images inside the small info tabs for the games show larger information.

I didn't make it though Adrian did it with Dreamweaver. The biggest thing I contributed as far as help designing it was push for the centeral document and also our buttons used to be more complex ... I forgot what they requrired before but it was more likely to cause issue than javascript.

Overall I think it's a good compromise between art and compatibility ... but most of all I think it's a really tight look that conveys quality. I know you can deliver quality but your site doesn't show other people who haven't seen all your work what you're capable of.


keyboard(Posted 2005) [#53]
bear in mind that my "design" is more or less a simple template.

With 10 minutes tweaking, it could become something like this:
SIMPLE DESIGN TWEAKED

and so on.


Jeremy Alessi(Posted 2005) [#54]
Getting even better there ... at least the general layout. It's elegant ... compared to the current site which just seems too bloated. I'd tweak the colors etc... but the idea is there.


keyboard(Posted 2005) [#55]
yes, there is a reason that REALLY GOOD DESIGNS take days, even weeks or months to perfect. It takes time and work to get it right :)
<edit> the secret ingredient is salt... I mean, love!


Barliesque(Posted 2005) [#56]
I don't know *what* made me think this thread was going to be about the new Seamless Texture Generator application! heh-heh

Well, yes the website is fairly plain at the moment. However, I think the information you've put into it is quite strong. Excellent samples, and I like the way you've presented them in before/after/tiled fashion. ...Glad to see you've removed that nonsense about not many features being a selling point. :)

I like this design best:
www.seamlesstexturegenerator.com/stg-006.png

...although, I would probably drop the alternate colors for first letters: STG. Just go all-gold. Very often, a simpler design looks sharper, while too much fussiness can get tacky. Don't over-complicate your color pallette. I'm sure you must've seen Fredborg's website for gile[s]--I think that's a very slick design. If you stick with those colors--blue, gold and silver (and black & white)--as much as you can throughout the site, you should have a tasteful and lively design.

I do prefer site designs that fit vertically into the browser's space, as in Keyboard's design. This takes a bit more doing as you figure out how to squeeze all your info into a page, but it does make for a more attractive layout.

But anyway...! I was coming to this thread to give feedback about the program itself! ...Utterly superb results. Regardless of the site, I'm already sold. I'll buy it sooner or later.

One small feature that would be very useful would be the ability to zoom in/out of the original image. I've got a bunch of texture photos that are really huge. They work great in this program, but it's a pain scrolling all over the place and not being able to see the image all at once. The mouse wheel would be my favorite control to use.

Here's an idea that could add some power to the transformation gadget: Curve handles to let you make the sample are convex or concave, and thus compensate for wide angle lens distortion.

...anyway, great work!


LineOf7s(Posted 2005) [#57]
I'd like to see examples of what you think the website should look like.


As far as lil programming utility websites go, I'm personally in love with the one for Sprite Candy (and Particle Candy). It's so professionally presented I have to keep reminding myself it's for (with all due respect) a dinky lil sprite engine (and particle system) specifically for Blitz.

http://www.x-pressive.com/SpriteCandy/index.html

Of course, this level of professionalism may be beyond your means. Still, it would match the level of excellence of your tool. Er.. I mean...


sswift(Posted 2005) [#58]
Barliesque:
"One small feature that would be very useful would be the ability to zoom in/out of the original image."

You already can!

In the help file, under section 2 "preview pane" it says:

"You can zoom the view in and out by holding shift while clicking the left and right mouse buttons!"


"Curve handles to let you make the sample are convex or concave, and thus compensate for wide angle lens distortion."

If I did implement something like that it would probably be a preprocessing step rather than a modification to the quad gadget. Ideally I'd want to make it something automatic where you just do it once by clicking a checkbox to toggle the correction on or off and it automatically figures out how much distortion there is and removes it.


"Of course, this level of professionalism may be beyond your means."

Ha!

First off, I don't think that site design is all that impressive, it's pretty basic actually, and second, you can do anything if you put your mind to it. :-)

Except this:
This link is much too long!

This guy has tons of website templates that are truly awesome, but I think they'd be too difficult for me to modify to fit my specific needs and require special software to do so.

That link is from this site:
http://freesitetemplates.com/templates/premium.php/Computers/


Jeremy Alessi(Posted 2005) [#59]
Man that Sprite Candy site is nice ... as well as the product which looks to do what I'm already doing with Playful GUI ... if only the darn demos would work on my computer!


maximo(Posted 2005) [#60]
How are the sales swift? are you making money on this that you hoped? Are you rich man now ;)


sswift(Posted 2005) [#61]
Maximo:

I've been advertising on Google, but that hasn't really brought in the sales I'd hoped it would. I have tried over 500 different keywords (currently my list is a little below 500) yet over the course of 5-6 days only 28,000 people have seen the ad, and only 125 of those have actually clicked on the ad. Furthermore, only 18% of those (23 people) who clicked actually went on to download the demo.

In comparison, 178 people downloaded the demo from download.com over the same time period.

I've also been asking folks who buy it where they saw the ad, and surprisingly, the vast majority have been from the Garage Games website. Not one mentioned google, and only one respondent said the Blitz website, though I know for a fact four or five Blitz users have purchased it.

Sales haven't been too bad so far, but I'm not yet sure if they still stay at this level, or if sales will increase or decrease.

Currently I am selling on average around 2 copies a day, which is better than all my other products combined by far, but it not enough to support me, and sales could drop off to nothing without warning.

If I were charging $45 for the pro version and it was selling this well then I'd be in a pretty good spot, but as I only see $20 from each sale at the current price of $24.99, it's not doing as well as I'd hoped. Still, it doesn't seem a complete failure either.


maximo(Posted 2005) [#62]
Don't spend any money advertising on google! You did a good thing going to garagegames.com Most guys over there are serious about indie development and are prepared to invest money. When my partner and me showed our weapons on 4 different places we got best respond and interest in buying the pack at garagegames.com We had some positive comments here on blitzbasic and very weak or non response from dark basic community.

What happened is not so strange. Most people on GG are guys that know their way around c++ and are not afraid of Torque engine that they already spent 100$. Those guys have money and are willing to buy quallity stuff if they need it. I'm not so sure about blitzbasic community perhaps we'll get a few sold here but I doubt it will be much. Darkbasic will probably be even worser. Those kids over there want everything for free.

Your best bet is to join game programming forums and advertise your software to people directly. Just like you did with garagegames.com If you haven't also try www.gamedev.net forums and tell people about your tool. You can also post it as a news on www.gamedev.net that many people read. Forget about google ;)


Also swift I'm interested in another thing. As you make money selling your stuff online and money comes into your account, do you pay taxes? Here in Sweden if I sell something online and money comes more or less reguallary month after month and above some point it is taxable and I have to give away 30% of sale to the state. How do you handle this?


sswift(Posted 2005) [#63]
I don't pay as money comes in, I just file once a year.

We already had a tax guy look at our stuff a few weeks ago because the end of April is approaching and that is when you have to file in the US.

You only have to pay taxes in the US if you make over a certain amount, but it's a very low amount, I think under $4000. I don't rememeber what the exact percentage is that we pay to Uncle Sam, but I think it is around 30%.

I think if I make over a certain amount too I'm supposed to file as a business and pay taxes quarterly, but I haven't been making enough in the past to worry about that.


Barliesque(Posted 2005) [#64]
You already can!
In the help file, under section 2 "preview pane" it says:
"You can zoom the view in and out by holding shift while clicking the left and right mouse buttons!"


Well whaddaya know about that. I hope one day to to learn how to read.

If I did implement something like that it would probably be a preprocessing step rather than a modification to the quad gadget. Ideally I'd want to make it something automatic where you just do it once by clicking a checkbox to toggle the correction on or off and it automatically figures out how much distortion there is and removes it.

Not sure if I'd agree that was the best approach--I like to be in control whenever possible. What if the automatic detection can't see the distortion? Adding curvature handles to the sides of the existing gadget seems to me like the simpler solution--more flexible as well.


Pepsi(Posted 2005) [#65]
Well ya got another sell from me today :)


sswift(Posted 2005) [#66]
"Adding curvature handles to the sides of the existing gadget seems to me like the simpler solution--more flexible as well."

Well curving the quad itself is out of the question because I don't even understand the math it's using to remove the perspective. :-)

Besides, the curvature of a lens would be relative to the entire source image, and not localized to the quad, if you know what I mean. So it would not make sense to put curvature modifiers on the quad. It would however make sense to have a slider perhaps which would "pinch" the source image inwards to compensate for curvature, and I could do that in a preprocessing step before I do the quad math which I don't understand. :-)

Another reason it is better to do it as a preprocessing step is because it would be faster to adjust that first and make surte you get it right, and then muck about with the quad. It would also be less confusing.

I don't know when I'll get to implementing something like that though.


Grey Alien(Posted 2005) [#67]
So last time we talked sswift your sales per month was low but OK, it must be better now. I expect this massive topic has helped. Here is a technique my friend uses to market his game to a website (obviously he hits multiple web sites):

1. Submit the game to a reviewer
2. Submit a press release to the newsdesk
3. Make a post in the forum
4. Add the site to the links page
5. Upload the demo to their download page.

I thought of a smart addition to the Seamless Texture Generator: Seamless animations for creating movement i.e. waterfalls/lava or conveyor belts etc. I guess many less people would use it, but for platform games or 3D wall textures it could be cool!


sswift(Posted 2005) [#68]
Grey:
People don't use animated textures to make stuff move except in 2d games and those are really tiny tiles and not at all what my texture generator is designed to work with. :-)

Grey:
Sales aren't okay before, but right now, they seem to be ok. They could be better though. I'm not at the point where I am confident that sales will continue at this level.


Warren(Posted 2005) [#69]
Have you tried google adwords or any kind of advertising other than word of mouth? Yes, I'm too lazy to scroll up and see if you already mentioned this information...


sswift(Posted 2005) [#70]
I have been trying google, and I have posted on a number of different forums, including garage games, flipcode, cgtalk, and the dark basic website.

I gave detailed info about the Google campaign above. Basically, I'm lucky to get 20 clicks a day from that, and only 20% of those actually download the demo.

I've also got it on download.com where I've gotten over 150 downloads. That's more than I've gotten from the Google campaign.

The problem with the Google campaign though is that not that many people seem to search for seamless texture making programs. I tried lots of keywords, and keywords like photoshop and 3d studio get lots of ad views, but not many clicks. More specific words like "seamless textures" though just don't get that many searches.

I've tried over 500 different words and I just optimized the campaign and I'm down to about 30 keywords which are the ones that are actually generating downloads of the demo. But optimizing doesn't mean I get more good clicks, unless I actually get enough clicks every day to meet my ad budget of $10, and I'm not even close to meeting that.


John Pickford(Posted 2005) [#71]
I'll get my brother to have a look at this shawn. Might be useful for our game.


Grey Alien(Posted 2005) [#72]
sswift: what is the smallest tile it is useful for as I am making a 2D game?


sswift(Posted 2005) [#73]
Grey, I dunno, test it! That's why I provide a demo. :-)

The smallest tile it is useful for is whatever you think it is. :-)

The algorithm should make a tile of any size seamless, but small tiles tend not to have much detail, so it's generally rather easy to just paint them seamless. In fact, most people would ujust draw very small tiles by hand.


Ruz(Posted 2005) [#74]
why don't you advertise it it people who would actually use it . ie artists. there are loads of game art site all over the net. just a suggestion.

If I was making seamless textures at the moment I would probably buy it


sswift(Posted 2005) [#75]
Ruz:
Well if you have any suggestion for art sites I wouldn't mind hearing them. Google puts my ads on sites that run google ads though, so many of them probably show the ads.

I did post to CGTalk, which is the only really popular 3D art site I know of.


Grey Alien(Posted 2005) [#76]
hmm, just went to get the demo but your site is down ... for maintenance?


Ruz(Posted 2005) [#77]
try polycount to start with . when i sober up i wil try and think of some more


sswift(Posted 2005) [#78]
Grey:
I don't know why the site is down. The guy who hosts it probably just needs to reboot the server.


Barliesque(Posted 2005) [#79]
It would however make sense to have a slider perhaps which would "pinch" the source image inwards to compensate for curvature, and I could do that in a preprocessing step before I do the quad math which I don't understand. :-)

That works too. Yeah, that probably does make a little more sense. Go for it!


Grey Alien(Posted 2005) [#80]
site still down, bummer dude.


jhocking(Posted 2005) [#81]
Hey Sweenie, thanks for the link to the colormatch thing. Very useful! From that site I found my way to colormixers.com, which is even better; it's the same colormatching utility, but made cross-browser compatible and with an download version for offline use.


John Pickford(Posted 2005) [#82]
The object requested (/) could not be found on the server. You might want to go to the home page of this server or return to the referring page: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=45412


sswift(Posted 2005) [#83]
Website back up!