I'm sorry but I cant remember. Since the tax form has been accepted, I can't redo the tax interview and step through the questions without explicitly asking the support to do the tax thing again.

I just discovered this gem of a game engine and immediately fell in love with it. The workflow is very fluent and easy to grasp. Kudos to you. :)

Found a few issues :

1) Space Shooter Tutorial:

The degrees for left and right are swapped in the Space Shooter tutorial (see the "Tip" section with the coordinate system circle). It should be 0° for right and 180° for left. https://docs.ctjs.rocks/tut-making-shooter.html#moving-hostiles-and-asteroids

2) Room editor Tileset:

If you create a room and click on "Find a tileset", you get stuck in the search window with no way back to the room editor if you haven't yet created any tilesets. A back button is missing. (ct-linux64-next.zip (alpha channel))

3) ct.js license:

I am not a lawyer but I think the current license prevents games from being released under viral open source licenses like the GPL. Since the game logic gets included into the same file as the engine itself. A game released under GPL would automatically change the license of ct.js to GPL too, which infringes your license. Having the game code in a separate JavaScript file would solve this issue I think.

By the way, have you thought about releasing ct.js under an Open Source license? I see that you want to give the users the freedom to release their games under any license they want and also protect the work you put into the game engine and IDE against third parties who would use it to make money. But there are Open Source licenses out there which prevent just that while giving the users the freedom to release their games under any license they choose. Furthermore other developers could help you with the development of the game engine and IDE. What do you think?

I have been using this game engine for quite some time now and I must say that this is one of the most easy engines to get into. The visual logic brick system is easy to grasp and if the logic becomes a little more complex JavaScript events are the solution.

I'm using GD5 in my current game project Sakawochi and it is working great.

Sakawochi Devlog #3 - Long live the community!

Version 0.2.12 is now live on Itch.

Changes:

• Italian and Spanish localization (BIG thanks to matteo and advocatux from the UBPorts community)
• A second backup save game for more reliability
• Sea grass now adds another snail for additional fish food
• Fixed save every frame bug in fish food logic
• Fixed fish sometimes turning multiple times
• Fixed wrong order in the language flags spinner
• New fix for screen flickering on some devices

The backup save game was originally made for the Ubuntu Touch on the Fairphone2 where closing of the browser or Web-Apps sometimes makes the Unity desktop or the whole phone reboot. Occasionally this seems to wipe the browsers local storage where the save games are stored. Unfortunately the patch didn't help against this issue but it should make the save games more reliable on other platforms and devices. I need to find a way to fix this issue on FP2 though. Since the local storage seems to get wiped about every two weeks when the memory bug reboots the phone I have to find a way to save the game to the file system instead.

A bug in the fish food logic made the game save every frame when spoiled fish food was lying on the ground. After the fix the game should run much faster. However the new fix for the flickering / black screen issue is said to cost a little performance so it might not be noticeable that much.

Unfortunately the sea horse didn't make it into this version since I got carried away and spent a lot of time adding new features to the GDevelop game engine instead. I decided to use the sea horses as test candidates for the upcoming breeding system. In the next version (if there aren't any bigger issues in 0.2.12) sea horses will be able to mate when they are grown up and have children whose colour varies a little from that of their parents. So you will be able to breed individuals of different colour. In the next step the economy will get an overhaul and I'll add a quest system where you get asked to breed a certain kind of fish to get a reward. Since this will be a really big update, it's going to take a bit longer to release.

So please be patient and stay tuned. :)

Thanks for your kind words, nice to know the game runs on a recent Firefox. Looks like I can finally remove the warning. :)

Sakawochi Devlog #2 - All to waste

Welcome to the first update after the release last week.

Version 0.2.11 is now live on Itch

Changes:

• New feature: Earn some coins by collecting plastic waste that floats through the tank.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the activation of the fish food button when only crabs were in the tank.
• Fixed a bug that limited the size bar of fish to about 3/4 of its full size.
• Reduced price for decorations.
• Reworked the localization system to make it easier to add new languages

I had to push this update a little earlier as intended since the bug in the fish food button could have broken the game for those of you, who sold all their blow fish for a single crab. 

I hadn't got any time to create a tutorial for the new mini game about earning some extra cash by collecting floating plastic waste but i'm pretty sure you'll be able to figure it out yourself. Just pick up all the waste floating through your aquarium. When the trash can is full you earn a coin.

In the version prior to the release fish food wasn't a limited resource. Players could buy as many fish as they liked and so earn an exponentially growing amount of coins. This problem got solved with the introduction of snails so that I was able to lower the prices for decoration drastically.

Unfortunately the popularity of the game didn't rise in the course of the week after publishing. The number of views is falling day by day since the game left the "Recently added" page.

If you like Sakawochi please spread the word!

Here are some statistics by platform for the downloads during the first week after release:

Even though I'm developing Sakawochi on Linux I'm surprised that it is also the strongest platform. I guess it is because fewer games get released which granted me a longer time on the "Recently added" page for Linux. But it is a little strange that Android isn't leading since Sakawochi is basically a mobile game. 

With the background work done for further localisations I'll be working on additional translations for the next update and a new little critter for you to care for:

So stay tuned :)

Thanks for your suggestion. :) A little more interactivity would surely make the game feel more alive. More fish is also on the way. I'm currently working on a sea horse, but I just finished the sprite. Still need to program its logic.

Sakawochi Devlog #1 - Launch

Welcome to my devlog about Sakawochi -A game you would probably never touch.

In case you haven't heard of it, and I am pretty sure you haven't I'll give you a small introduction:
Sakawochi is a real-time aquarium simulation where you need to nurture your fish until it grows up. The bigger your fish the more you get when you decide to sell it. From the earned coins you can buy additional fish of different type or decorations for your aquarium.

You can find the product page here: https://wend1go.itch.io/sakawochi
Sakawochi runs on Android, Ubuntu Touch, Windows, Linux and OSX.
It is currently available in English, German and French (EDIT: Now also in Italian and Spanish).

The idea to this game came to me after I got myself a new smart phone and installed Ubuntu Touch on it. While I really like the operation system and the fact that you can install both mobile apps and Linux desktop applications that you can run when plugging the phone to a display or television, I was a little disappointed about the emptiness of the OpenStore app store which as of today still has only about 120 games in total. So I decided to increase the number by at least 1. ;)
After digging through a lot of game engines I found GDevelop5 Beta to be the easyest one to create games for Ubuntu Touch since it is pretty simple to turn an HTML5 game into an app that runs locally on a phone.
On the 22.07.2018 I released the game on Ubuntu Toch OpenStore and the success was greater than I would ever have imagined for a game from a niche genre on a niche operating system. After about 3 weeks I had 144 downloads. When I pushed the first update it was installed by 65.5% of the players. So I figure that more than every second player who downloaded the game is still playing which I consider an amazing number.
After I finally overcame a bug in PixiJS (on which GDevelop relies for mobile games) I was finally able to release Sakawochi for Android and Desktop (Windows, Linux, OSX) on Itch and Gamejolt yesterday, but to my surprise the number of downloads and even views was extremely scarse and stood way behind the numbers from Ubuntu Touch.
When I already had roughly 50 downloads on the first day after release on UT the numbers on Itch were just 27 views and 10 downloads, on Gamejolt even less (8 views, 0 downloads).
Posting about the game on Reddit and tooting on Mastodon increased the number of views by -> drum roll <- 3. (or 11%) Sounds much better, doesn't it ;) )

Since Sakawochi was pretty successful on Ubuntu Touch and all my friends who tested it are still actively playing several weeks later, I figure that it's not the game itself which is boring but the "aquarium simulation" genre. So the question is: How do I make players install a game from a genre that they usually don't play?

Due to the lack of content on OpenStore, people over at Ubuntu Touch are hungry for games, I think that makes them more likely try a game from a genre they usually wouldn't install.

I really need to find a solution for this problem but in the meantime I'm going to focus on improving the game.
Next on my roadmap is a rewrite of the localization system to make it easier to add additional languages. I already got offers for Italian and Spanish on the Ubuntu Touch forum.

Short but fun. A nicely different approach to the runner genre, I really like the graphics. With a little more work and variety this could turn into a very cool game.

Sakawochi is still in development and will most likely contain some bugs. If the game doesn't run on your device please file a bug report here on the forum so that I can have a look.

Is something about the game annoying you or do you have an idea for a cool new feature? Let me know on the forum. If enough other players support your idea I'm most likely going to implement it.

As mentioned on the main page Sakawochi is still in early development and will most likely undergo a lot of changes. Here you can find features that will later appear in the game.

Currently doing:

• Rework the localization system to make it easier to add additional languages.

Short term:

• Add sea horses to the shop
• Add random events like sinking ships that drop treasure chests and the like.
• Integrate decorations into the gameplay
  •  Make sea grass spawn additional snails for more fish food and a requirement to unlock sea horses

Long term:

• Make fish breed
• Grown up fish mates with each other and produces baby fish
• Each new born fish differs a little in colour from its parents so that you can breed different looking fish

Have you ever dreamed of having an aquarium that you can take with you everywhere you go, but that pesky tank just didn't want to fit into your pocket? Than I have good news for you, this game is exactly what you were looking for!

Sakawochi is a real time aquarium simulation. What that means is that the game goes on even if you close the App. Take care of your fish and feed it at least once per day to make them happy and grow.

The bigger your fish the more it is worth. Sell your little darlings when they grew up to earn coins which you can spend on other types of fish or decorations for your aquarium.

Get it here: https://wend1go.itch.io/sakawochi

I wish you lots of fun!

Nice pixel art and animations. I'd love to see this turn into a complete game.

Just two things: 

- Z and X aren't the best choice for controls since the two keys are not next to each other on all keyboard layouts. On the German keyboard for example the Z key is at the position of the Y key on the US keyboard.

- I couldn't find a way to quit the game, so I had to kill the process instead. Maybe you could open a menu when hitting ESC that lets you end the game.

Hello firecat,
thank you for the time you have spent on getting those information, this is very much appreciated. BIG thanks!
I have redone the tax interview and now it says "Withholding rate 0". The tax interview abstracts the form and takes you through it step by step. You only get to see the actual form (filled out) after answering every question of the interview. Looks like the important part was "6". I thought that I would have to check the box that says that I don't have a TIN or an equivalent of it which took me to the wrong follow up page of the interview. After stating that I have one, I was able to enter my German "Steuernummer" (equivalent to SSN in the USA). There was a ckeckbox to mark the number as a SSN but it could only be marked as checked if I had entered it into the US citizen related field but my German number was accepted in the foreign number field and I was finally able submit the form. Puh!

I read that in Germany there is a rule that if you only earn up to 410€ per month in addition to your main job it is sufficient to note the amount on your annual tax declaration form. Only when you exceed the amount, you need to found a "Kleingewerbe" or a company.
Since I don't expect to earn that much that should be all I need to do in order to comply to the law.

I have never played anything of the Metal Gear series but judging from the screen shots of Metal Gear 1 the Solarus Game Engine might be a good choice. It is open source, has Lua scripting and was made for Zelda like games.

Hi fellow game developers,

I'm a freetime game developer from Germany that has a regular fulltime job as an employee.
Guess this is true for a lot of us here on Itch so I guess others have already gone through the same trouble I'm currently facing and might be able to give some advice to people like me who are new to this business.
I read firecats articles but unfortunately they didn't really help me much. I am an individual so I figured that I need an ITIN number since I don't run a business in Germany, I haven't got a German equivalent to a US tax Id.
Unfortunately the W8BEN-I form is very hard to understand for someone that isn't a native English speaker and Google Translate is pretty bad at translating words / sentences without much context.

I don't want to do anything wrong so it would probably be wise to ask a tax consultant but I honestly don't expect to earn more than 20$/€ per year so I fear a single appointment would cost way more than I would ever earn by selling my game. So I have chosen the route of least resistance and picked the 30% tax option although there wont be much left from a $ after 30c Paypal + 30% tax and 10% Itch.
So I'd be interested to hear from others who have successfully managed to file the tax form. Maybe someone from the Itch support might also give some advice.

Thank you in anticipation. :)

You project looks really cool. This could make development with game frameworks a lot more convenient.

Having a Linux version would be very nice.

Peek (Linux) is one of the most simple to use visual GIF recorders I have seen.