Cheapest 3D Printer

My latest obsession is trying to build a 3D printer for as cheap as possible.

Partly it's because I believe 3D printing is a disruptive technology. The lower the cost for making a 3D printer, the more people will have access to the technology, and sooner the disruption will take place.

And partly, it's because I'm just really really cheap.

Low Cost

What does low cost really mean? One obvious way is to look at the price of something if we were to buy it new in a shop. If we only source new parts and new materials, we're going to have a difficult time creating something truly low cost.

My strategy is different. I'm going to try and get as many of the source materials as possible for "zero dollars."

Consider old car tyres. Any time you can recycle the rubber from an old car tyre into a seesaw or a swing, or into building materials or to protect a wharf, then the cost of that rubber is effectively "zero dollars."

That's why the core design elements of my 3D printer are going to be fishing line and lego. Two very cheap substances if you source them the right way.

Fishing Line

Nylon fishing line is an amazing substance. It's strong. Durable. Inexpensive. It's readily available everywhere around the globe. And if you need small quantities, you can often obtain it for "zero dollars". You probably already have some.

Lego

Lego is an amazing substance. It's available everywhere. It's manufactured to extremely high tolerances. It's consistent across time and place. It comes in a variety of colors. It's durable.
While lego might not be cheap, you can often *borrow* lego for "zero dollars" by using the magic words "I'm trying to make a 3D printer out of lego."
Once your print run is complete, you can simply disassemble the lego and return it to it's previous state.

Calibration Problem

When I look at the designs for existing 3D printers, one of the biggest design considerations seems to be finding out where the extrusion point is in relation to the "bed". Existing designs carefully measure the motion of the motors, try really hard to make the frame rigid, and then have lots of complicated software to try and calculate where exactly the filament is being deposited.

Ack, too difficult.

Why go through all the calculation, when you can measure directly?

My plan is to use the camera on an Android tablet to see where the bed is, and, at the same time, to see where the print head is. If it needs to move to the left, well, the tablet will keep the motors spinning until it lines up. Too far to the right? no problem, spin the motors the other way until it matches. Checkmate calibration problem!

OpenCV

Oh, and remember our lego? We know exactly how large a block is in the real world, so we can measure off distance in our 2D camera space by placing a known lego calibration object made with a few different known colors.

This way it doesn't matter if our fishing line stretches during the course of the print, or our lego gets bumped half way through, or the ambient temperature changes which make the layers a tiny bit thinner.. no problem, the camera on the android tablet sees all.

And how much does it cost for an Android tablet? "zero dollars." You just have to use the magic words: "Can I borrow your Android tablet to make a 3D printer?"

Next Steps

I've already starting on version 1 of the prototype. Watch this space.

Analytics

If you happen to live in a certain North European Country, in the wee hours of this morning, ScooterBoy went live!!

That's right, you can now download ScooterBoy, for free!!  (with certain geographical restrictions.)

"But why can't I download it??!" I hear you ask.

Well, you see, it works like this :

We want to make the best release possible in the largest market.

 ➡  The best way to do that is to use feedback from real live customers to improve the game.

 ➡  Where best to get those customers? Yes! From a certain Northern European Country!

Analytics

Now our analytics takes over.  How many downloads will we get? How long will players play? Which level and characters do they play the most? How quickly do they earn currency? What's their favorite IAP (In-App Purchase). What does our retention look like? Where does the game crash?

We can turn all these questions into metrics, then apply those metrics to our game.

We will compare our numbers to our expectations, and then see which numbers we want to improve.

What If?

The next step is to play the "What-if" game.  For example, suppose we make the decision we want to increase player retention:

• What if we had more characters?
• What if we had more levels?
• What if the game were harder? easier?
• What if we gave a bonus for playing every day?
• What if we had daily challenges?
• What if we highlight the leaderboard?

Soft Launch

Exciting times for ScooterBoy!  And lots of geek-out points writing queries in SQL to try and turn a mountain of data into usable information.

We can't wait to make ScooterBoy even bigger and release in more markets!

...watch this space...

Don't Repeat Yourself

When making Indie games, there's a mantra that bears repeating over, again and again:

“Don't Repeat Yourself”

It's actually a corruption of a much deeper truth. If software development excites you, I urge you to read all the gory details about that deeper truth over on wikipedia. (If you want to go read it now, I'll still be here when you get back.)

When making Indie Games, however, “Don't Repeat Yourself” means something different. It's rooted in the notion that (calender) time is the most precious resource. It's the free variable with the highest opportunity cost. The longer amount of time it takes you to do something directly translates into a lesser amount of time you could be working on your next goal.

So what happens if you have to repeat a previous step? Replace an image that's no longer working? Change a sound effect? Rebuild a level? What happens when you have to repeat yourself?

For every repeat, the time you wisely invested into the previous version of that asset is effectively wasted.

You would have been better off using that initial time reading game development blogs. Or meditating. Or playing Dino Switch II.

So what does "Don't Repeat Yourself" really mean? It means that as an Indie, (almost) every piece of content you put time into, needs to ship at some point in the future. It means that each time you touch an asset, you should treat it as the last time you'll touch it before it ships.

Your asset pipeline (as an Indie) needs to go :

Concept -> Placeholder -> Shippable Asset

Cappucino

Contrast that with the apocryphal AAA game producer, “Make three cappucinos... then bring me the best one!”

Of course, what he really means is “Have three baristas separately make three different cappuccinos... then discard the two which aren't as good.”

So here's a Pop-Quiz, are those two discarded cappuccinos wasted?

Some would say “Yes”, referring to the ingredients and skill which went into the preparation of content which will never be consumed.

Others would say “No”, because the producer couldn't know ahead of time which barista would prepare the best coffee. Three times the amount of resources have gone into the production, in exchange for an improvement in quality and a substantially reduced chance (risk) of getting a bad coffee.

Don't Repeat Yourself

As an Indie, where (calendar) time is the most precious resource, “Don't Repeat Yourself” means shipping every piece of content you produce. If you somehow find yourself with 3 cappuccinos, then you're going to be drinking them all!

But does that also mean you need to ship the pieces which didn't work out? Not at all. Because the overarching process goes like this:

• Get placeholder assets for everything into the game

• Without repeating yourself, systematically lift every asset in the game up to shippable quality.
  (Upon completion, your game as a whole ought to be shippable)

• Do a polish pass where you replace only the assets which are (a) quick to improve, (b) have a big impact on quality

• Ship it

And that's indie game development...

Launch: Dino Switch II

The MissingBytes Blog is very proud to announce the launch of Dino Switch II, available today for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad!

It's a free download from the Apple App Store, so what are you waiting for?

Download it today!

Release

These days, everybody seems to be asking me, "When is your game going to be done?" or even more bluntly, "When is it going to be finished?"

In complete sincerity, I don't actually mind the question.  It's perfectly natural for people to be curious.  But there's a deep assumption underlying that question that I really struggle with.  It's the idea that a game might ever be finished.


You see, back in the "packaged goods era", we used to make video games (i.e. software) that would be burnt into silicon ROM chips, or etched onto optical discs.  This media would then be wrapped in alternating layers of plastic and cardboard, and ultimately stickered and sold at an outrageous mark-up at a magical place called the "point of sale".

Back in the old days, it made sense.  We talked about finishing games, sometimes even had to rush them, to get them on time to that magical faraway land - the "point of sale", where they could be released.

  I like to live in more modern times.

These days, when a game is ready, it is "Launched."  Much like a ship on its maiden voyage on the open ocean, a game is launched onto the open internet, into unfamiliar territory.  There will be changes.  There will be problems.  Maybe even icebergs.  When we come across these unknowns, we are no longer surprised. We take them in our stride and carry on.

More important than that, and just like the ship on its maiden voyage, there will be an ongoing dialogue between the new captains and the old owners.  And that dialogue will evolve and change over time.

Launch

The biggest difference between Releasing a game and Launching a game is that somebody still cares.  Long after that initial purchase is made.

In this brave new online world, as long as you're still playing my game, as its creator, I still have an obligation to listen to your opinions.

So when someone asks me, "When is your game going to be finished?" what I'm hearing in my head is, "When are you going to be finished with your game?" i.e. "When are you going to stop caring about your players?"

And the answer to that is "Never."