Game update. Now with self serve ads.
Posted by Will | Filed under Adobe Flash, Advertising, Experiments, Flash Games
I mentioned a while ago that I was working on a Flash game and I think it’s time I showed an update. As you can see from the screen shot it’s had some substantial progress since my first posting.
At the time of writing this I consider the game to be 97% complete. I’m pretty happy with the outcome and think it’s pretty fun to play. The zombies drop health and money and between levels you can upgrade your weapon, buy more health or repair your shield.
I also want to mention that I have made some good progress with the ’self serve’ ad technique I mentioned in my post “Monetizing your Flash game. Serving your own ads?“. As you can see it the screen shot below, a 300×250 SWF is loaded directly into the game during the preloader.
I’ve written a custom static class I’ve tentatively named ‘GameXML’ which handles the retrieval of an XML file hosted on my own server. The XML file contains info such as the ad url, ad click-through link, my website url, my email address etc… There is also the ability to remove the ‘Advertise here’ ad footer (in case your advertiser doesn’t want you promoting the space).
There is even a list of ad-disabled domains which will be compared to the domain where the SWF is currently hosted. This can be a benefit if you submit the game to a portal that does not allow third party ads. In the event that the game is currently hosted on an ad-disabled domain OR the XML fails to load alternate content is shown. In my case, simply the game’s logo.
As mentioned in my last post I’m considering this self hosting of ads a trial. The success of this method relies solely on finding an advertiser willing to pay you directly rather that going through one of the ’safer’ ad networks like mochiads.
Having said that, the idea behind pulling in dynamic content is very exciting and I hope to bring you a more detailed tutorial on how you can implement something similar.
Stay tuned.
July 27th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Hm looks really good so far, can’t wait to play it!
July 28th, 2008 at 6:04 am
I like how the weapons look. The health icon looks great hehe
July 29th, 2008 at 2:49 am
if gameplay involves slashing zombies - sing me up ;]
terrain looks nice. maybe you could add some random buried things like bones and rocks.
oh and g’luck with job, if u’r still looking.
July 29th, 2008 at 5:10 am
Nice idea about the buried things dxOne. This was something I had planned on doing but put on the back-burner in favor of getting the game coded.
Since the game is almost finished I think i might do that now.