Crime Closer Trailer and Demo
Entry posted by nick.ace ·
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This is my first blog post for Crime Closer.
Greenlight
This was my first time submitting something to the actual Greenlight program. I did this to force myself to continually develop my game. I felt that the scope of Built from Ruins was too large for what I wanted to achieve with it. Built from Ruins would have been a better Early Access game that Crime Closer, but I want to finish Crime Closer completely before releasing on Steam. I think Early Access gets abused too much, and for a game like mine that doesn't use procedural content (and has unique missions and a storyline), this would be a bad idea. The only way this would be beneficial would be if the Early Access period were very short. Anyway, that's assuming my game gets Greenlit.
I learned a lot about submitting on Greenlight. A few things I learned from my mistakes (hopefully others can learn from this as well):
- Have amazing screenshots since people mostly go on this. I had some decent screenshots, but nothing amazing, so I could have done better in this regard. Also, make sure you have at least 4 screenshots and a video. I initially didn't have that and took a lot of heat for it. IDK why Steam doesn't force these limits though since they aren't all that visible.
- Submit once you have more stuff done (I feel like I submitted too early. I was hoping to get a lot of feedback, and I initially did, but it's not as useful when you have less done). I was hoping to sort of shaping the development of the game around what people wanted. I think people sometimes don't know what they want exactly, but there are certain things that they will want.
- Use the first few days to your advantage as much as possible.Like I said, I put it up to vote too soon. Your game goes on the front page of Greenlight for a few days, and then you get hundreds of votes for or against it. After a few days, however, your games gets sort of lost in the array of other games. The trick here is to remain active and to advertise in other ways. This is something I need to improve at. One good thing, however, is that your game gets closer to the top 100 constantly since games are being Greenlit faster than ever.
Idea
Well, I wanted to create a game that focuses on positive aspects of society. I know that this may not be the best time to create a game about police (being in the U.S.), but I feel that the crime closing theme helps to give a bit of backdrop and allows for some interesting gameplay mechanics. This was an idea I had when I bought Leadwerks, and it was originally the idea I wanted to pursue with Leadwerks, until I learned LE3 didn't support vehicles at the time 
. Anyway, I don't want to make political statements with the game, but I feel that the police are sometimes objectified and made the villains in a large number of games, so I wanted to take the opposite side for once.
Trailer
I made my first actual trailer using some gameplay footage. I think it turned out pretty nice compared to other videos I've made in the past. Hopefully, it'll help a little with Greenlight.
Demo
I entered a demo for Crime Closer into the Winter Games. I'm actually kind of happy that this existed because it forced me to get more of a working game done. I wanted to release something that had applicable content and a few new features. Specifically, the game is evolving from a purely vehicular-based game into a third person game as well. I got some useful bug feedback, and this is great for going forward.
Anyway, I'm not going to reveal the demo on the Greenlight page because I don't really want people messing with it too much right now. I mean, the Leadwerks community, their friends, even some random people are fine, but I want to keep everything under control as much as possible.
Mods
There was a suggestion to allow for mods on the Greenlight page. I need to be careful in how much I allow to be modded, mainly due to the Leadwerks license (which is quite reasonable in this regard). I think mods for vehicles (and their statistics) and other aesthetics and stat-based things would be great and seem to be allowed within the Leadwerks license. What I take isn't allowed is allowing for a scripting system, at least one that's as open-ended as Lua in Leadwerks. Possibly, I could introduce a custom scripting system that limits this so that it's not possible for a user to develop their own game, but again, I need to be careful.
I would also need to figure out Workshop integration, but I'll cross that hurdle when I come to it.
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