Potato The Destroyer

Alright, then go with that then. It's the same .swf so I guess it's a Newgrounds issue, though I played through it on there and I didn't notice anything wrong. Weird! Hopefully it only happens under very specific conditions so most people won't encounter it.

If anyone's interested in analytics, I decided to use this game as a test dummy for the system I intend on using in future games. They're pretty basic. It tells my website to increment a value at certain points in the game.


View Line Graph

I plan on having finer data in future games.

Some Notes:
80% of players quit on levels 1 or 2.
50% of players who make it past level 2 beat the game.
10% of players who start the game beat it.

Those percentages are assuming my math is correct, anyway.

Spoiler alerts!

What.

I'm sure other devs do this, but you're the first to openly talk about using analytics to track player progress. All devs should take note - this stuff can drive game design and if you're selling the game and using it shrewdly, can affect your bottom line.

Interesting stat. 708 plays, but 633 make it past the title screen. Did 10% drop off at the title?

I think Edmund McMillen (Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy) briefly mentioned having analytics in his games, which is what got me interested in the idea.

Yeah, I guess so. There's just the title screen and the difficulty selection. Some of those are probably from refreshing the page or loading it and reading the description or something, but maybe some people were appalled by my title screen.

I'm sure other devs do this, but you're the first to openly talk about using analytics to track player progress. All devs should take note - this stuff can drive game design and if you're selling the game and using it shrewdly, can affect your bottom line.

Interesting stat. 708 plays, but 633 make it past the title screen. Did 10% drop off at the title?

Ive pondered including some form of analytics in my games previously but wasn't really sure how to go about it. This sounds a simple but useful way of doing it - how was it done? Were you writing the number to a text file or something on those lines, everytime something specific is done or achieved in the game?

He's just pinging his personal site using a GET HTTP request every time a certain milestone's reached and likely storing the results in a database. If you've done any webdev before - it's a 10 minute hack job.

But remember that flash games spread like a virus, and in the first month you will get thousand get requests to your website... that means that if you store data into a DB (mysql) you will get thousand SQL requests per second...
I've done this system with my first game Bugongo, and my host after 1 week told me to shut down this system because it caused problems to other sites hosted in the same server.
Obviously if you have your own dedicated personal server you'll not have this problem.

Cheers,
Alessandro

It only accepts requests from Newgrounds and Kongregate.

Obviously if you have your own dedicated personal server you'll not have this problem.

You can use free and easy analytic tracking services from sites like MochiMedia etc, even if you dont integrate their advertisements.

But remember that flash games spread like a virus, and in the first month you will get thousand get requests to your website... that means that if you store data into a DB (mysql) you will get thousand SQL requests per second...
I've done this system with my first game Bugongo, and my host after 1 week told me to shut down this system because it caused problems to other sites hosted in the same server.
Obviously if you have your own dedicated personal server you'll not have this problem.

Cheers,
Alessandro

I can't speak for the host you used, but VPS services like Linode or Digital Ocean would never have an issue like this, and you can get an entry level package for just $5/mo. It's only if you use a shared service that you might run into problems.

It's tempting to offload this kind of thing to a third party, but doing so limits what you can do with your own data.

Game seems to be missing the logo after you updated (?) it.

Damn, thanks for pointing that out. Fixed.