Until a few hours ago, I used to think that a certificate to digitally sign code was expensive. But then I read this post on the Coke and Code blog, pointing me to the Thawte Freemail Certificate. I learned that this certificate is indeed free, and that this great guide explains step by step how to request this certificate, and how to sign your JARs with it!

So I signed my Bubblomania webgame with my newly requested certificate, and now the applet will show up as trusted. This is a lot more reassuring for a new player, especially those not familar with certificates!

Today I moved the Bubblomania X page to my new bubblomania.com domain. It makes more sense to put both the Bubblomania web game and the downloadable version for MacOS X on the same website.

I also changed all links on the Dark Moon Software website, and on some of the sites where Bubblomania X could be downloaded. This should drive some traffic to the new domain, and allow more people to play the new online version!

The last release for Bubblomania X is already 8 months ago, but it still has about 20 downloads a day, and even a registration now and then! But when there’s enough interest in the online version, I plan to extend it into a downloadable deluxe version, to replace Bubblomania X.

The Bubblomania web game is still in public beta phase, and some people are reporting very weird problems But according to people who know more about LWJGL, at least part of these will be fixed when the new LWJGL beta arrives. And that should be very soon!

Yes, I know this is the most boring blog post title of the year. No comments please

It’s been another week since my last blog post, and even longer since the last progress update! Shame on me! I just had a very lazy weekend, which started on friday and ended this noon…

Hmm, nothing to be proud of actually. I worked really hard last week, especially wednesday and thursday. But by friday my energy was completely drained I should try to spread my work more evenly over the week!

The good news: I’ve been able to deploy Bubblomania as an applet last week. There were some nasty issues to work out, but it’s really nice to see the game running in all it’s glory in a browser window! Now I can finally call it a webgame

The gameplay has also been further tweaked and improved. I decided to drop the mouse support, because it was mostly confusing and annoying for users. It really is a good idea to watch how users actually play the game! I was reminded to do this after reading the article An approximate guide to selling Indie games, which is a really interesting article btw!

OK, major issues left to do: Instructions screen, sound and a basic website. When these are done, I can start the public beta. I hope this will be by the end of this week!

Mara Pets Games is a big website for children, with games about virtual pets, and a huge collection of free flash games. From the site:

Mara pets is a free online game with virtual pets. We release three new flash games every week!
Play dress up games with your customisable character which is you as you chat in our pets community.

This was a sponsored message. If you would like to become a sponsor, buy a link on this blog at Text Link Ads.

It’s time again for the monthly Speeltijd site statistics!

There was a slowdown in growth this month. The number of visitors grew with 24%, with a peak of 205 visitors on a single day at the beginning of the month! But after that the traffic declined a bit. The Google Analytics chart says it all:

What was unexpected, was that the site’s revenue more than doubled! It grew with 141% actually! And this is still from Google Adsense alone. I removed the CPA (click per action) ads from CJ, since they proved to be useless for this site.

Yesterday I signed up with 2 text link ad brokers: AdEngage and the relatively new partner program from Performancing. With AdEngage, advertisers can buy a text link with an small description for $5 per week, while Performancing has still to determine a price per month.

I hope these programs will be as succesful as Text Link Ads has been on this blog. I’m also considering selling text link and banner ads directly. So if you have a site that suits our audience (Dutch kids, parents and educators), contact me so we can work something out! Or use one of the above ad brokers…

I was sitting outside on my terrace this afternoon, enjoying the sun, and coding on my old Powerbook It sure has advantages to work from home, I haven’t regretted it for a single moment!

Sitting there, I had to think about the song Wonderful Days by Charly Lownoise & Mental Theo, which was one of my favorite happy hardcore tracks about 10 years ago

Something else which happened about 10 years ago, was the very first release of Bubblomania! By doing so, I discovered the fun of creating and releasing games. And even back then, I knew I wanted to do this for a living one day! I’m planning to write some more about Bubblomania’s history later this month.

Since I started work on Bubblomania Online last week, I have made some good progress! It’s going a bit slower then expected, because I’ve written a lot of useful utility classes along the way. But I will save that time again for my next projects, so I don’t mind. It’s not like I have a deadline anyway

Expect to hear more about this soon!

Iron Realms Entertainment is a producer of popular online text-based role-playing games. Their site features 4 games which are completely free to play!

I’m not really into RPG’s myself, but if you are, do check them out! The site looks very good, and the testimonials page is impressive. Which is to be expected, since they have a whole team of professional developers.

This was a sponsored message. If you would like to become a sponsor, buy a link on this blog at Text Link Ads..

Yesterday was the first day in my new career as an independent game producer. It was a very productive day actually! I organized my existing code, from the prototype of the Smiley Puzzle, and started a new mini project. Furthermore, I did some organizational tasks.

The new mini project I started is called Bubblomania Online. As the name suggests, it will be an online version of a part of Bubblomania X, my MacOS X arcade game. The reason I start with this project, is to get up to speed with the LWJGL API, and create some reusable components in the process.

Since I will reuse part of the artwork, I can concentrate on the development, and get a feel for how fast I can work in this new environment. The online version will be limited to only 1 game mode, compared to the 8 modes in the downloadable version.

From a marketing point of view, having a webgame online will increase traffic, maybe even enough to monetize it with ads.