v1.0 and spike in players

I've recently uploaded v1.0 of Altay Tank Game. Here's a brief summary of what happened.

First, a few words about my version numbering system. As a lonesome developer and a hobby style coder, I do not have a strict numbering system. Actually, the version numbers are just increments of release versions. So there's almost nothing fancy about going from a 0.X version to 1.X version.

At version 1.0, the major change was to go FULL SCREEN. And in fact, it was only one line of code that changed, on top of the Pixel Game Engine update.

Right after tweeting to the world that v1.0 is out, I've noticed a huge spike in number of viewers and downloaders. Unimaginable! What I witnessed was a huge wave of internet folks visiting the Game page, and many of them downloading.

I saw 20+ downloads in the first day, which was a total surprise for me.

On top of that, my tweet was blasting my record of viewers. Within a few hours, there were 4 thousand views of my release tweet.

I do not have any factual reasons to believe that going FULL SCREEN is the reason I've noticed the huge spike in number of viewers. Indeed, it seems more possible that the spike in number of viewers and downloaders is related to Twitter's algorithms, or my sudden luck of gaining exposure after my tweet about v1.0 release.

This is understandable, because my v1.1 announcement went almost unnoticed. Here's how it looks like on Twitter:

v1.1 is out there, and includes several modifications to the game, all of them as requested by players of v1.0.

Here's a short list:

* Ask user to select Full Screen

* Gameplay improvements (player-enemy collision-kills)

* Cannon heats up, and requires cooldown to shoot again

So basically, I've had my luck of running v1.0 to a wide audience, and this allowed me to find some new features that players requested. And I've improved the game play a bit more by listening to those requests.

After v1.1, I've received constructive criticisms regarding the dullness of gameplay. It's boring until level 10. So I've retuned the game difficulty to start immediately with action, and punishing the player more even at the initial levels.

Happy developing, or happy gaming everyone!

Feel free to shoot your comments towards a better Altay Tank game.