The tools I use
Quite a few people have asked what tools, software, and online services I use to build FRVR, so here is the comprehensive annotated list:
3rd party software
In this section I purposefully neglected to add simple applications that I deem obvious. Think; twitter app, Skype, etc.
- Sublime Text 2 My default editor for HTML, JavaScript, Bash, and any other language that does not come with a dedicated tool chain.
- Xcode Used for building the iOS mobile wrapper.
- Android Studio used for building the Android mobile wrapper, including flavours (Amazon, etc)
- Adobe Photoshop Used for creation of in-game/app store assets, banners, etc.
- Adobe Illustrator I pretty much only use this when receiving assets from other artists.
- Excel I currently use this to create my time tracking XLS documents. I guess I should be using Google Docs, but old habits die hard.
- FileZilla While I have automated build and release scripts, I fall back on FileZilla when I need to access the server for less automated tasks. A good example would be, when setting up a new game that requires me to setup a new sub domain name on frvr.com.
Tools
- Httpd (Apache Webserver) used to run a local web server, such that I can test the games as if they where online (Helps prevent domain security issues etc)
- Node.js My build scripts that create unique flavours of the game for each platform is written in Node.js
- pngquant Used to compress PNG images of my games to make the download size smaller.
- UglifyJS Currently used to compress my JS source. I am however looking to switch to google closure compiler.
- ADB I find myself using ADB directly quite often to debug issues, look at Android logs.
- Safari / Chrome Mentioned here as I use their remote debugging capabilities to debug the games, when they run in a WebView on iOS and Android respectively.
- SSH Yep I once in a while SSH to the server to do apache restarts, etc.
Services
FRVR would be completely impossible without the huge amount of online services that exist on todays internet. As I access these quite frequently, I have them nicely linked up on a local Dashboard which is also my browser start page.
Let’s take them from the top. (Order does not signify importance... I ordered them mostly to be visually pleasing.)
- Revenue - Ads
- Facebook Audience Network On both iOS and Android my first choice of advertisement provider is Facebook Audience Network. For now they give the highest eCPM, so they are staying. (Except in China, where I default to Google AdMob)
- LifeStreet My advertisement provider for Facebook and Google Chrome Apps. So far they have been a great partner and I can highly recommend them.
- Google AdSense Used for monetisation in a few of my user acquisition experiments on web. As I am currently not running such experiments, it represent neglectable revenue.
- Google AdMob My fallback ad provider for mobile advertisement. surprisingly where I make most of my money as Hex FRVR is huge in China.
- Ad4Game ad provider used for Facebook ads before I switched to LifeStreet Media.
- Revenue - Ads
- iTunes Connect Micropayment revenue dashboard for my iTunes Connect account. Currently representing neglectable revenue from “disable ads” in Hex FRVR.
- Google Play Micropayment revenue dashboard for my Goole Play account. Currently representing neglectable revenue from “disable ads” in Hex FRVR.
- Advertisement - While currently not running, I have done quite a lot of experiments in user acquisition. They should be self explanatory.
- SEO - While not yet a major source of traffic to me, SEO is very important for the long term goals of FRVR.
- Yandex webmaster Webmaster tools for the Yandex search engine.
- Google webmaster Webmaster tools for the Google search engine
- Bing webmaster Webmaster tools for the Bing/Yahoo search engine.
- Analytics - Generalised analytics overview. Each individual game also contains this section for per game specific analytics links.
- Google Analytics All of FRVR is hooked up to the same Google Analytics tracking ID (Including the mobile games). This is personal preference that allows me to get a view of the total size of FRVR at a glance. So far I have been really happy with this decision. Live is simply a quick link to the Google Analytics lice section.
- Cloud Flare Link to the analytics section of cloud flare.
- Youtube Link to the analytics section for the FRVR YouTube channel.
- Services - It basically covers all productivity services that I make use off.
- Use Response Customer feedback tool allowing users to give feedback, submit bugs etc for FRVR games
- Google Docs I have a fair amount of company information stored in Google Docs. More on that later, as the dashboard has a dedicated Google Documents section.
- Dropbox Pretty much all of FRVR is in Dropbox. Allows for easy backup, sharing and much more.
- Asana I keep everything from overall goals, future plans and simple todos in Asana.
- Slack Relatively new addition to the dashboard. Allows for team communication for when I work with 3rd party developers.
- Engineering - Stuff related to hosting and running the service itself.
- Digital Ocean FRVR is basically hosted on a small Digital Ocean droplet.
- Cloud Flare CDN caching of FRVR website. Handles 99% of the traffic, allowing me to use a small droplet on Digital Ocean.
- Parse Highscores and progress are stored using the Parse API for the Facebook versions of my games.
- Social
- Tumbler news Official FRVR news page (Settings icon links to settings)
- Facebook Page Official FRVR Facebook page (Analytics icons is a quick link to analytics for this page)
- Google+ Official FRVR Google+ page
- Twitter Official Twitter page
- 3rd Party Services
- Google Documents - I use Google Docs mostly for shared spreadsheets and occasionally for specification documents. The four on this list are just the ones I use the most.
- FRVR FB Ad Tracking Resulting tracking of my FB advertisement experimentation
- Distribution Overview Huge document with progress and status of my distribution efforts for all my games.
- 5k Games Websites As the name implies, a list of about 5k games websites that accept 3rd party developed games.
- FRVR Tracking Generalised advertisement result tracking.
- Other
- Youtube channel Direct link to the FRVR Youtube channel.
- FRVR Website Take a guess?
- Per game Dashboard Besides the generalised services, each game also have it’s own section on the Dashboard. This mostly represents a full list of app store listings and distribution channels where I can actually change things. However one service which deserves to be mentioned here is App Annie which I use for analytics on how well the Android and iOS versions of my game does globally.
- Services I no longer use - Bonus section! Stuff I tried that did not work for me.
- Hootsuite Here I got really sucked into the hype. Branded as a social media management system, I was sure this was exactly what I needed to manage the social channels I have. Turns out it’s pretty much completely useless. Not something I would every recommend to anyone. (No link, as they do not deserve the SEO)
- Uservoice before Use Response, I used Uservoice. While a great service it’s ridiculously expensive for what it is. Prompting me to switch.
1st party software & Tools
During the time FRVR has been operating, a reasonable big amount of internal software has been developed to make it easier to build more games or run the company.
- XS game engine Custom FRVR game engine, specifically engineered to have a build once, run everywhere model that only require one set of assets regardless of screen size and resolution. The engine currently uses a fork of version 2.2.3 of Pixi.js as the underlaying render layer. (Something I am actively working on replacing, more on that later).
- XGame wrappers Application wrappers for the games, allowing the games to be released on platforms such as iOS, Android, Google Chrome, etc. Today these wrappers tie into the XS game engine to provide improved performance and a more native feel on their respective platforms.
- Build script Small software package that builds slightly diffrent flavours of the game for each specific platform and compresses and combine assets and code.
- Release script Automated release script to push the online hosted versions of the game to the live environment.
- Custom modules To some extend FRVR games are based on the same structural template. Allowing me to skip a lot of work when developing a new game. Examples include but are not limited to:
- Sidebar which I will be using as the primary navigation model in all the games.
- Menu system for overlays, popups, etc.
- Social sharing Unified custom API for using the best social sharing in each territory.
Open Source Libraries
- Pixi.js Used as underlying render layer for the XS HTML5 games engine.