Is Gideros for Desktop ready for commercial games?

MikeHart

Hi folks,

I am working on a game which I will try to release on Steam. Right now I am undecided which tool to use. As it will need some basic 3D stuff, I am thinking of using Gideros.
Would you consider the desktop export from Gideros stable enough for a commercial project? One big plus for me is that Gideros is open source. I don't want to use Unity or something similar for several reasons.

Cheers
Michael

ar2rsawseen

I can share couple of points about the desktop

1) We have known issues with OSX, so if that is your second choice platform (which it could be) currently not supported, the problems are in the code signing step, since I don't have more knowledge of that and don't really use apple technologies, it is hard for me to fix, would appreciate the help

2) We don't have official Steam SDK, but I know that couple of games have been greenlit (Miracle Fly and Jewel bits), and I know for sure that @tkhnoman has used Steam SDK, but as I understood it was mostly coded to meet his purpose, and not a general use case plugin (as I would want it to be part of Gaming Interface to meet Google Play and iOS Game Center interfaces), still you can communicate with him about problems, etc that you might face.

3) Desktop export (for Windows) supports same functionality as desktop player and I think there are no known bugs now (just skimmed through github issues, did not find anything desktop export related).

And I think you are familiar with Gideros and what it is or is not capable of. So if above points are ok with you, and you would be willing to fix them yourself if you come to need them, I'd say you are safe to try and make your game with Gideros

MikeHart

Thanks Arthur for the assuring reply.

tkhnoman

Regarding issue of OSX, its for the Mac Appstore, which i think not that profitable for games. You can release savely on OSX, if it's for Steam.

The Steam SDK only have leaderboard and achievement feature. (Trading card is automatic).

MikeHart

Regarding issue of OSX, its for the Mac Appstore, which i think not that profitable for games. You can release savely on OSX, if it's for Steam.

The Steam SDK only have leaderboard and achievement feature. (Trading card is automatic).

That is good to know. I think achievements on Steam is almost a must these days.

john26

Also Gideros now has an alternative lightweight PC export called "win32". It does not use Qt libraries so is much smaller and potentially runs smoother. In time this will become the default PC desktop export. At the moment it is in alpha stage but will be in beta in the next version, 2016.4 which we are currently testing. At the moment the only feature missing is UrlLoader.

MikeHart

@john26, that sounds very good!

SinisterSoft

The win32 version is great, the controller plugin (and the LuaJIT patch) works with it out the box too. The exe is smaller and faster than the QT version.

john26

Thanks very much @SinisterSoft. The win32 version has now moved to beta and lacks only UrlLoader. Perhaps by next release we can make it the official Windows export. Having a smaller package is better for Steam I think.

BTW I'd love to see more Gideros games on Steam. Several people have told me they can make more money that way than on mobile. Of course it favours more complex non-casual games but there are many Gideros games that fit this category already.

MikeHart

Are there any limitations with the win32 export? Yesterday I tried the horse example quickly and it didn't run. Will try again to start the console version from the command line and post what it said.

john26

Just tested it and it runs fine for me. Are you sure it runs in the desktop player? It may be the version of OpenGL on your computer is too old.

MikeHart

Ok, I found out. IT runs in the player but the exported app throws an error because it doesn't find the assets that I had added to the project. So somehow the export doesn't work right. Weird.

john26

Hmm do you have subfolders in Gideros studio? It's possible something is going wrong there. Could you send a print dump on the console? Or perhaps find a short example which illustrates the bug?

MikeHart

It was possible a problem when I installed the new version. I will try to reproduce it.

talis

Before installing the new version i am always making a clean install. Uninstalling the old version totally, hence sometimes while playing with plugins i am ruining the installation folder . Maybe the reason can be this one.