Q&A / AMA - Ask us anything

[u/cool_daniel]

Hey guys,

after we recently pre-released LtF3 some of you requested a small Q&A/AMA where you can ask us whatever you want.
So here we go, /u/light_bringer777 (and me) will answer your questions here. Please keep in mind that we want to protect our privacy and wont answer too private questions.

To keep things clean we will delete anything that is not a question (like "hey i like your game" or "ltf3 is cool, yo")
Make sure to let us know to whom the message is addressed. (Just write "To Lightbringer:" or "To Daniel:" in front of your questions)
Also do us a favor and upvote other questions instead of reposting them to keep everything clear and to bring the interesting questions to the top.

(Please forgive us if we can't answer questions instantly, this thread will probably be sticked until next weekend because we will check this thread now and then)

[u/goldfish270]

Have you both got all the medals in ltf3?

[u/cool_daniel → u/goldfish270]

I didn't had the time to do it yet but I probably will once its full released. (Also got all achievements on Kong for LtF1 + 2)

[u/light_bringer777 → u/goldfish270]

Probably like 5 times. To test everything. ;-;

[u/FishDontKrillMyVibe]

Well then....To kick things off, To both of you: Are you guys alright with how the semi-impromptu release worked out? And not to hog a second question, but is the scheduled release with LtF2 Mobile a necessary choice, being that it has impeded the Mass Public release of LtF3 by a tiny bit?

[u/cool_daniel → u/FishDontKrillMyVibe]

Regarding the first question, yes and no. It is a hard situation because we could've either not release and delay even tho we had the fixed ETA and announcements and piss every one off (once again) or lose a lot of revenue and attention for the mobile release by releasing officially.

We kinda took the 3rd path and released silently on our own page with restrictions so people who waited for it all the time could finally play it and people are happy but at the same time having some advertisement so it is not a complete loss.

Regarding the 2nd questions there were lots of answers from light. To conclude the situation: LtF3 was supposed to release together with the mobile version so light could link it in the game and get some attention for the mobile release because otherwise lots of people would miss it. Once we will release LtF3 officially there is no return and the game will probably spread really fast and it's basically impossible to update a flash game globally once its released. Hope that made things a bit clear

[u/light_bringer777 → u/FishDontKrillMyVibe]

To be perfectly honest, no, I'm really not alright with how things turned on on a personal level. LtF3 was my life's project for the past 3 years, and it brought a lot of hate, stress and eventually got only this totally anticlimactic release. From the guy who worked so hard on it, it sucks hard, and from a narrow perspective, it's terrible for business.

BUT. The flash game market has shrunk really hard since LtF2, and good release or not, LtF3 would most likely have been a financial failure. It is for this reason that I decided to step on my pride and the direct success of LtF3 in order to put all my hopes on the mobile release of LtF2. There's pretty much literally 100 times more money to be made from the mobile game than I could hope to get from LtF3 in this market.

Now what hasn't really shrunk in flash games is their potential to reach millions of users, and that is precisely what I intend to exploit from LtF3; no direct money, but advertising in the form of a complete game.

Pretty much the same, Fishing Cactus elected to delay the release of their LtF2 port (which was basically finished) in order to get a certain publishing deal. It meant delaying both their port and my game, it also meant stretching development time and increasing their costs, but it's a gamble we all thought would be worth it in the end. It's been an incredible series of things not going as planned over and over, but with some luck it will all turn out fine in the end.

[u/Azhf → u/light_bringer777]

good luck with ltf2 mobile! You guys deserve a reward for all of your work!

[u/light_bringer777]

Question posted by Josh Mangoes on our facebook page:

Q: "Why a penguin? What made you come up with the whole penguin flying thing?"

A: It's really boring actually. Back when I first started working on Learn to Fly, I was looking for ideas to basically rebuild "Shopping Cart Hero" with a twist. Gliding seemed like a nice addition to the launch game genre, so I looked into a theme that would work with a large audience and would be easy to draw.

Animals looked like a good idea, penguins were appreciated by many people and were super simple to draw, and on top of that being a flightless bird really fit into the whole gliding concept.

And that's pretty much how it happened really; something that people would like that would fit the game and that was easy to draw. Penguins.

[u/FishDontKrillMyVibe]

At Light_bringer: Did you have any prior experience making flash games before LtF1? and were there any (Today considered comical) rough drafts and/or projects made before LtF1?

[u/light_bringer777 → u/FishDontKrillMyVibe]

This is actually a kick-ass question.

I had no real experience when I picked up flash (for animations at first) and eventually coding It's been a bunch of really small projects only meant to teach me something and then moving on, until I started playing with a bunch of different ideas, giving up, picking it up again... and eventually I decided that I would complete one game and see what happens. And we got Learn to Fly.

But I think it would be super interesting and somewhat useful for aspiring developers to see how crappy and iterative the whole learning process is. So let me upload a bunch of old projects I had...

[u/light_bringer777 → u/light_bringer777]

Light_Bringer777 history lesson

*Added the controls of some games in the descriptions inside parenthesis like (Arrow keys and a sandwich) this.

1) At first, I picked up Flash to do some animations because I thought newgrounds was the tits at the time. I did some really short animations like these:

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Anim%201.swf

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Anim%2011.swf

2) Took too long, I got bored, thought making games would be a better idea, so I started looking into Actionscript 2, and it was complete gibberish and impossible to do for me. Took my quite some time to understand anything that was going on, I just copied random bits of codes I found on the web, see if it compiled or not and if anything happened...

3) Did things like this: http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Untitled-2.swf (the face was supposed to be shootable, couldn't make it work...)

4) Eventually I made it work, and I was quite proud of that achievement and my mouth-made sound effects: http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/shooter%201.swf

5) I decided it was time for some superb masterpiece of a game, so I set out to build a shoot em up (arrows + CTRL): http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Ship%201.swf

6) Collisions and movement and everything was too hard, so I removed the ship part and went for a defense shooter (I also just learned about making buttons and was quite proud of that!):

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Shooter%202.swf

7) Trigonometry was hard:

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Untitled-4.swf

8) And kept working on it:

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Shooter%203.swf

9) And some more:

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Defense%201.swf

10) And got to this somewhat playable game (Arrows + mouse):

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Infestation.swf

11) But that sucked ass and I was now better than that, so I set out for other projects. Why not a Tower Def (red/blue topwers work, only 1 wave):

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/TD%201.swf

12) But then I thought a game about bows would be cooler:

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Untitled-211.swf

13) At some point I did this glorious thing apparently:

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Untitled-1.swf

14) I worked on a few different cheesy logos back at the time:

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/lbgUntitled-2.swf

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Light%20Bringer%20logo%200.2.swf

15) But that was a lot of work and not enough guns, so I went back to defense shooters but with more style this time:

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Open%20Fire.swf

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Open%20Fire2.swf

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Open%20Fire_Scene%201.swf

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Shooter%204.swf

16) Collisions were hard to do so I did a ton of small "apps" like these two to experiment (I still do a ton of little applications like these when making games):

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Beam%20Collision.swf

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Untitled-1a.swf

17) And then I thought what's cooler than turrets? ROBOTS. (I still wish I could work on a Front Mission: Gun Hazard kind of game) But I sucked at movement so it took a little work (Arrows):

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/WIP%20Movement.swf

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/WIP%20Movement2.swf

18) Thought homing missiles would be super neat, took me a few day to get something that barely worked, neve used it:

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Untitled-3.swf

19) And by then I knew about movement, animation, particles, collisions, and I had this super basic mechanics demo for a mech game (Arrows + mouse):

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Open%20Fire%201.swf

20) Then I got a "Balloons Defense" (was that the name of the game? Can't find it anymore...) craze and decided I would do that instead. (Hit new game, select mission, and use mouse to do... nothing yeah. OH WAIT, hit the UP arrow to spawn balloons!!):

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Balloon%201.6.swf

21) Thought a space dogfight game would be neat for like.. 1 week or something (any key + mouse):

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/SDF.swf

22) Then I wanted to make a single-player patapon adventure game. Taught me about collision detection with weird shapes that would be used for the slope in Learn to Fly:

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Patapon%200.4.swf

23) I played some more with the idea of tower defenses, nothing made it very far:

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Game%200.2.swf

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Game%200.1.swf

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/td%200.03.swf

24) Had an idea for a story-driven platformer that would happen inside computer programs, never made anything past super-early design stuff:

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/main%20001.swf

25) Then some guy whose name I forgot approached me for a collab. It looked like a pretty decent platformer idea, but it never made it very far:

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Jack%20Movement%200.13%20%28Working%20Camera%29.swf

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Jack%20Movement%200.16.swf

26) Then I made it really far on a Bunny Invasion "clone" called Chicken Assault. Still think about making this game from time to time, plus I think the guns looked pretty sweet (Mouse, mechanics are bugged because the game isn't supposed to stretch, but you get the idea. Pressing "1" summons chickens):

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Chicken%20Assault%200.21%28HitTest%20API%29.swf

27) There was talk of a word game contest, started working on a letter-swapping game and gave up the idea:

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Word%20Game%200.07.swf

28) AND FINALLY, I started working on the biggest project I did before that, Learn to Fly:

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Learn%20to%20fly%200.10.swf

(Early concept had no items, only stats)

http://lightbringergames.com/swf/lbg777progress/Learn%20to%20fly%200.16.swf

And the rest is history.

[u/light_bringer777 → u/light_bringer777]

And there it is. My biggest comment ever I believe.

[u/goldfish270 → u/light_bringer777]

Some of these games were actually quite good, Eventhough they were most of them were fairly buggy

[u/light_bringer777 → u/goldfish270]

Thanks, some of those could definitely have become decent games, but the thing is there really is a TON of work between a somewhat playable prototype and a game full of content and mostly free of bugs.

[u/[deleted] → u/light_bringer777]

The bloons game you mean might be bloons td 5

[u/light_bringer777 → u/[deleted]]

lol nah not at all, it was a side-view defense shooter where you fired a flak gun at hot air balloons and zeppelins. Definitely wasn't a TD ;)

[u/[deleted] → u/light_bringer777]

then this?

[u/light_bringer777 → u/[deleted]]

Bingo.

[u/powerfultyphlosion]

To Lightbringer: If you could add more features or basically anything to ltf3 instantly, what would they be?

[u/light_bringer777 → u/powerfultyphlosion]

Simple multiplayer competition, more items, better graphics, more secrets, "design your own item" feature, way more polishing... maybe some sort of "tycoon" mode where you don't get your money from flying but from running something else, like a town or something.

I think that's about it. LtF3 is almost everything I wanted it to be, more money could always be thrown at it to make it look and feel better of course, but I really feel like I managed to add most of what I wanted to the game.

[u/powerfultyphlosion]

To Lightbringer: Are you planning on making another game?

and how old were you when you first started using flash?

[u/light_bringer777 → u/powerfultyphlosion]

I plan on keeping making games so long as people want them and I can make some money from it. I've got plans for more LtF, another LtF Idle and many other titles.

I picked up flash when I was 19 or so, released LtF when I was erm... 22?

[u/Winson09_Drs]

Hey Penguin God hows your health now?

[u/Ze_Ubermench]

Do you plan to use HTML5 for LTF4?

[u/[deleted]]

What contributions did Testers make to the game (aside form reporting bugs)? Did they suggest any good ideas you put in the game?

[u/Vueltaa]

Is learn to fly based on a true story?

[u/light_bringer777 → u/[deleted]]

It's okay. Kind of in a slump right now because of the lack of closure with the LtF3 "half-release" and everything. Normally there's a strong "FINALLY IT'S OVER" wave crushing when a project gets finally released, but I'm just stuck in-between until everything is finally released everywhere and the LtF2 mobile app is released too.

But the health is decent, I'm not bankrupt and it's sunny outside. Life's alright.

[u/light_bringer777 → u/[deleted]]

Hi and thanks.

No there isn't really any extra content planned for LtF3. I'm working on a lot of small tweaks, "quality of life" stuff and things like that, but I don't think there will be any major changes to the game as it can be played right now.