image by Lorrie McClanahan

I just did some research and found a bunch of neat commonly used keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop. Of course there are tons more that I’ll may learn over time, but already these ones are speeding up my work and teaching me cool new tricks.

Please let me know your favourite shortcuts!

Ctrl + Alt + Shift + K – Show Keyboard Commands

Zoom/View

H – Hand (or use Spacebar to pan around)
Z – Zoom tool
Spacebar – Pan
Ctrl + Spacebar – Temporary Zoom tool
F – Toggle full screen
TAB – Toggle panel visibilities
Ctrl + 0 – Fit to screen
Ctrl + Alt + 0 – Zoom to actual pixels (1:1)
Ctrl + keypad +/- – Zoom in/out
Ctrl + R – Toggle rulers
Ctrl + H – Show/hide guidelines/grid etc.

Movement/Selection

Ctrl + Click when Move tool is active – Select layer under cursor
Ctrl + Drag when a tool is selected – Move a layer
V – Move
M – Marquee (use Shift to make square selections. Also shift to add to selection and Alt to subtract from selection. Alt to centre on start point. Space to move whilst drawing selection.)
L – Lasso
Ctrl + A – Select All
Ctrl + D – Deselect
Ctrl + Shift + I – Invert selection
Ctrl + T – Free transform
Ctrl + Click layer thumbnail – Selects non-transparent pixels in layer
Move tool + Alt – Copies selection/layer
1->0 Tool opacity
Shift + 1->0 Tool flow
1->0 while layer selected – Layer opacity
Ctrl + H – Hide marching ants
Shift whilst moving – Constrain to vert or horiz movement
Ctrl + Shift + ; – Toggle snap
Ctrl + ; – Toggle guidelines
Ctrl + ‘ – Toggle grid

Tools

A – Selection tools (for path editing)
T – Text (Hold Ctrl to move text whilst typing)
B – Brush (Hold shift to cycle through brush tools. Works for other multi-tools as well)
E – Eraser
C – Crop Tool
I – Dropper
S – Stamp tool
Q – Quick mask
X – Swap foreground & background color
Alt + Backspace – Fill with foreground color
Ctrl + Backspace – Fill with background color
[] – Brush Size
Ctrl + Tab – Next Point on Curves Adjustment
Keypad Enter or Ctrl + Enter – End text entry

Layers

Ctrl + J – Create new layer from selected one (or selection, or current layer if nothing selected)
Ctrl + E – Merge down
Ctrl + G – Group layers
Ctrl + I (while layer mask selected) – Invert layer mask
Ctrl + Shift + N – New Layer
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + N – New Layer No Dialog
Ctrl + Shift + C – Copy Merged
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E – Stamp Visible

image by zugaldia

Over the years I’ve made quite a few casual games, and played absolutely tons of casual, indie, facebook and mainstream games. As I result I’ve seen plenty of tutorials ranging from non-existent to fantastic. Getting your tutorial right is a fine art and will greatly affect the sales of your game if you are using the Try before Buy model that most casual game portals use. Even if you aren’t using that model, you still want everyone who plays your game to really get into it and tell their friends how great it is – so a good tutorial is vital and not something that should be tacked on at the last minute (which of course it often is due to time/budget constraints – something that I’ve been guilty of myself).

Here are some tips to get you started. Of course every game is different and yours may need a different approach, but hopefully these general guidelines should help:

1: Make a List

List out all the unique game mechanics/features/content in your game.

2: Mark the Important Features

Mark the important items on your list that you want to introduce with a tutorial element of some kind. You may not want to introduce everything if you want players to discover some things naturally.

3: Order the List

Order the list appropriately, which means a) in difficulty AND b) in coolness (to make new players see the epic possibilities of the game).

If you are doing a demo, figure out what to show in the demo and what to leave for the full version (perhaps >50% of features in demo, but not >50% of levels i.e. the full version is padded with more levels using the features in clever ways).

4: Construct Tutorial Levels

Construct (or use existing levels) to show off the mechanics in your chosen order.

5: Have some non-tutorial levels

Make sure there are some levels that don’t introduce anything new but get players to practice previously learned stuff, perhaps in a combined manner. This way it won’t feel like there’s a constant barrage of tutorial levels. Also it helps to pad/pace the demo a little bit.

6: Avoid Modal Windows

Try to avoid modal tutorial dialogs (where you have to read the text + press OK to clear) wherever possible. Sometimes it’s really not possible to avoid a couple of these.

7: Use Popups

Use popups on screen with an animated arrow pointing to the item of interest. These will disappear when the user performs the action.

Alternatively/additionally consider tutorials in the game world that you can walk past and read, and structure the game levels so that you can’t proceed without solving the simple tutorial, and be sure to repeat the lesson in a slightly different way (without tutorial text) soon after so it’s not forgotten.

8: Use Dynamic Popups

Some popups will be at the start of the level or trigger when a normal event/sequence of actions occurs (works better in sandbox-type games). Others will be for special edge cases where the player may have done something wrong (or way cool) and you want to inform them of that.

Don’t forget to point to things like goals or picked up items on the HUD that you want to draw the player’s attention to.

9: Edit the Text

Wield the knife on tutorial text. Make it as small as possible whilst retaining the core message (leave out extra details for skilled players to find out themselves). I’ve seen some very long and wordy tutorial text before than could have been reduced to just a few words.

If English is not your first language and the game is being sold on English sites, then get someone English (who is good with writing) to edit it for you.

10: Use Image/Animations

Try to add images/animations to important tutorial popups that show the player what they are trying to do (picture paints a thousand words…)

11: Ability to turn off tutorial

Decide if you want an option to turn off the tutorial. (Some players may turn it off, then fail to understand the game and quit).

By default the tutorial should repeat every time you play the same levels so that players who didn’t get it and want to can re-read and try again.

Also, if you don’t have a profile management system (unique profile for each player), new players will probably want to see the tutorial so you’ll have to leave it on by default. Profiles are better though.

12: Test it and fix it

Test it. Use Metrics (time level completion, track failures/retries, track when they give up/stop playing). Also watch players.

Look for where players have forgotten simple early lessons later on in the game, and where later lessons are too confusing, or they screw up the sequence that you want them to follow. Then make changes to the tutorial and test again.

Do you have any more tips to add? Please comment!

image by Steve Wampler

Can you make money on XBLIG? This question has been on my mind for over a year now and recently I’ve been researching it a lot, so I thought I’d share my findings with you.

I love XBLIG, it has some really awesome games on it for hardly any money. Also XNA is bliss to program in. I’d dearly love it to be a successful platform, but unfortunately I’m not so sure it is…

Here are some things I’ve discovered:

- You most likely won’t make any money at all, not even chump change. Many games make < $100, no kidding. But many are bad. Better games can make several hundred dollars, and the best can make a few thousand dollars (based on recent stats on the Creators Club Forums).
- To make a few thousand dollars you have to make really stand out excellent games that get in the top 50 download or rated charts, or on the IGN picks (People have not done much external advertising yet except for the Winter Uprising thing. Although there are a few review sites mentioning XBLIG games. Marketing may well be vital to making money on the platform.)
- So if you make a few thousand dollars from a great game (say $5-$10 over quite a few months), that means you need to make a game in a month and pay absolute minimum for content (graphics/music etc.) to make it worthwhile in my opinion. Plus it has to be awesome and maybe have a silly hook to get downloads and convert well. That is NOT an easy task at all. Probably <1% of people will manage it.
- Some of the best devs who are making the most money are considering quitting XBLIG (according to their blogs). Not a good sign.
- Sure that Zombie game made a ton of money, and some of the early games have done OK, but now there's a huge volume of less that stellar titles on it which probably puts a lot of people off even bothering to download anything. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that it's open and anyone can make a game and get it on a console, cool! But it's crappy if you want to make your game stand out and make money.
- Another problem is eyeballs. The Indie games are a bit hidden away on the Game Marketplace and not many people check them out. Some really great games only get 10K-20K downloads during the launch period (and plenty get <1000 downloads), and if they convert high (10%-20%, which is entirely possible) that might be OK. But that is a fraction of the total Xbox users. Casual games will EASILY get 10x (and even 100x) that many downloads on a portal (but will convert at a lower %)
- Personally I'm going to make some games for XBLIG for fun (early in 2011) and because I like XNA. It will be a good learning exercise. But it may be smart of me to think more about iPad, Facebook, and Download games later in 2011.

I hope that things will change it will become a very successful platform, but I'm not sure how or when that could happen.

Have more info? Perhaps you disagree? Please let me know.