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is Gideros slowly dying? - Page 2 — Gideros Forum

is Gideros slowly dying?

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  • MellsMells Guru
    edited August 2014
    @ar2rsawseen oh wow. So the business was dead before we even knew it.
    I kind of understand why we never got answers about how well the business was running, and our concerns a while ago.

    You'll agree that's not an excuse for neglecting those 10 paid users though.
    10 or 50000, you keep your customers in the loop. And it's actually easier when there are only a few of them.
    The little number of paid users doesn't make the lack of communication and failure to fulfill obligations less an issue.

    I can't agree that people who paid for a service and invested in their relationship with a company aren't much concerned about what's happening to the business, and what value is left from their investment.
    There was a money/trust exchange.

    So it's official.
    1. Gideros as a tool is alive for those who are satisfied with it in its current form.
    2. Gideros as a business is dead and those who were expecting support and updates should form their decision around that fact.

    I thought that people still participating to the forums would be paying users in majority.

    @ar2rsawseen I kind of feel sorry that you have to reply our questions yourself.
    twitter@TheWindApps Artful applications : The Wind Forest. #art #japan #apps
  • As a paid member (indie) the only thing that I have done is cancel the recurring payment on paypal until we hear a bit more about what is happening.

    I've never begrudged paying as it always struck me it was unfair to expect Atilim and others to keep developing Gideros with no returns for all their effort. Even as a hobby, the amount being asked for a year was not very much and seemed my best way of supporting Gideros.

    Likes: Platypus

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  • Im alittle sad about the fact this was my first year i actuall paid for a licence,(getting all geared up), i also bought the widget candy set of programs for Gideros (which i cant use on anything else).

    I have been slack in development due to other issues, but if i started developing again, i dont know if its worth building in a product that wont be here in the long term.

    i liked the way, what ever you did it worked on every screen size ios/android. but if i now go and learn Xcode, there would be more work, less shortcuts and designing for multiple screen sizes. (i had to do that with native android early on).

  • ..can Xcode6 and Swift produce "nice" looking games ?
    just having a quick peek (at work) at Xcode development, it mentions (cocoa), here is me thinking that was nothing to do with IOS development.
    ..Which means there maybe a chance i could salvage some of the graphs/code form teh widget candy stuff for cocoa.... tell me if im going loopy ok guys :)
  • john26john26 Maintainer
    edited August 2014
    @ArtLeeApps

    " a product that wont be here in the long term"

    The Gideros Studio you have on your computer will continue to run and work just as it does now. You can continue to develop and export your code without restrictions (and no splash screen either now). You can still download Gideros from this website, view documentation from the website and ask questions on this forum. There may be less updates in future (not necessarily) but in all other respects Gideros is as capable as ever.

    It's true that in future MS, Apple, Google might make changes to their operating systems which requires new versions of Gideros to be prepared. But the amount of recoding for these changes is likely to be small and I feel confident the open source community will be up to this challenge. What is more problematic is major changes like shaders, new platforms (eg WP8) etc. These updates may not happen or may be slower if @atilim is no longer involved in the coding.

    Likes: Disciple

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  • Regarding the paid / premium blah blah: I don't care that much. I paid, the price was really low and super ok. I still can't and will not complain. It's just a few bucks for a pretty cool product ...

    Likes: Disciple

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  • MellsMells Guru
    edited August 2014
    @seppsepp
    I agree the price was low, and we were a certain number of members to raise that concern several months/years ago. Yup, we asked for the prices to be higher.

    However, pricing is something that only the business is responsible of. Not the customer.
    What the tool is capable of is different from the relationship with the business behind it.
    I believe that whatever the price is, it's not customer's job to adjust their expectations.

    If a company asks a low price to acquire customers (=conscious strategy), that's their choice.

    I guess pricing being too high never was an issue. At least to me.
    The tool is great. I would have paid more if the price had been higher and strong signals of ability to run a profitable business had been sent.
    Moving between frameworks costs more than supporting a business and expecting support in return. That's what should have happened.
    I thought that's what the cost of the licence was for.

    I personally chose not to do anything about learning from a quick word "on the forums" (and not directly to me) that my paid licence suddenly became obsolete (it'd be a waste), but I would not judge anyone for being upset. I would totally understand.
    Business have obligations. Fact.
    Less than 10 paid customers, nothing hard with sending each one of them an email.

    ---

    So. Here we are, discussing around a drink.

    It's been a great time. The beginnings were great. The end has been chaotic.
    I'll keep using Gideros on the side (love it), I'll keep watching and hoping that everything goes really well for the tool + for the company, but I'm afraid I'll refrain myself from doing business with the company again (too unpredictable) which is a sad thing because I really wanted to.

    The silence killed it all for me. Why would anyone avoid talking to customers?
    We were/are all supporters, there is no reason to hide from us.
    twitter@TheWindApps Artful applications : The Wind Forest. #art #japan #apps
  • Reading this thread makes me really sad. I was working on a side project over one year now. My suspicion was almost the same but I love that framework that much so I moved on hoping to see it open sourced :)
    Right now my game is nearly finished and I was about buying the indie license. Even it's only $150, do you all think I should buy it now? Compared to my invested time it is no money of course but maybe first of all we should start an initiative here? :) I definitely would support Gideros.

    I'll attach some screenshots from my current game. Hope you like it ;)

    clc_screens.png
    2272 x 1914 - 3M
  • I sent both private and public communication for basically 'What is going on?'. Arturs has been in touch and it looks like both of us have had no reponse from Atilim. Not even an "I'll get back to you". I don't know if he realises this, but it's extremely annoying. I have no idea how Arturs feels, but I expect deep down he is extremely annoyed about being ignored, expecially how he revamped the site, did all the plugins and took over all the forums - a lot of hard work.

    I set myself a deadline for any type of feedback, any sign of a pulse that Gideros is still alive. That time has now passed.

    As it stands I've now given up on Gideros and am actively looking at alternatives that will take me into the next generation of hardware. I've looked at UR4, but don't like the 5% charge - it's not the money, it's the paperwork. So I'm now looking at Unity, imho the rest of you should do the same.

    If the source is ever released then I might be back, but only if it's to port something I've already done in Gideros to another platform then it won't be to make anything new.
    Coder, video game industry veteran (since the '80s, ❤'s assembler), arrested - never convicted hacker (in the '90s), dad of five, he/him (if that even matters!).
    https://deluxepixel.com
  • I myself started to look at alternatives, as it seems that Gideros is not anymore a trustable option. Corona, Unity, Godot or Starling are under investigation now. Any other suggestions for a decent 2D engine that supports iOS and Android? With basically at least IAP, Admob and a particle engine. And of course, with a relatively more clear and safer short and medium term future...
  • @totom,
    "Any other suggestions for a decent 2D engine that supports iOS and Android?"
    i usually look up openfl (+haxepunk/haxeflixel/etc) and libgdx how they go, and they seem to be healthily developing. my problem is that i prefer lua (although haxe+openfl is similar to as3 too), otherwise they seem to be perfect frameworks with more supported platforms.
  • @keszegh

    Thanks, I'll check them out. And I seem to have the same problem :(
  • faycalfaycal Member
    edited August 2014
    try Cocos2dx , with the new Cocos Code IDE ,ios/android/desktop... & support lua programing , look's great
  • faycal: I might look at converting the existing stuff I have to cocos2dx. Thanks for the info.
    Coder, video game industry veteran (since the '80s, ❤'s assembler), arrested - never convicted hacker (in the '90s), dad of five, he/him (if that even matters!).
    https://deluxepixel.com
  • wouldn't it be possible to write a wrapper so that our gideros code works with cocos2d lua? maybe that would be a fastest way out.
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  • thanks @SinisterSoft ,as a beginner i realy really wanted to continue with Gideros but...
    i don't know about that @keszegh ,if someone found out any thing please share :D
  • Im thinking of going with @OZAPPS, down the Xcode6/Swift path.

    Coding for one platform, but less worry about maintaining multiple dev accounts and xcode/eclipse setups. also getting to the native gadgets without having to build a complex layer between each platform and lua.
    Where i work, the App Mgr has built a business app to complement our native applications. thats written in xcode5. so if i learn xcode, ill be working on the new iphone/ipad apps also.

    Im weighing up, id have to learn either cocos or xcode.... xcode is winning.

    As for its only a cheap licence we paid. that maybe true, but the point is we paid for 1 year of support and beta/labs, and i also paid for widget candy which is only for Gideros. this is only a hobby for me. They havent acknowleged anyone here, i paid money for something that i have to throw away. because of all that im not happy.

    Likes: SinisterSoft

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  • @zer0flag awesome graphics, great job! I personally paid for indie license just a week ago - I wanted to thank gideros developers for all their work but also I wanted to get access to gideros lab so I can use awesome plugins for ads and inapp.

    While I do not believe gideros creators care that much now about gideros after they spent so much time it and not being rewarded for it, I keep my fingers crossed that Arturs and gideros fans would not let it die.

    From a customer service perspective and being in the USA where customer service is a big deal, I would have to agree with Mells that this is not good thing to keep everyone in the dark and having 0 communications with loyal developers.

    Likes: SinisterSoft

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  • talistalis Guru
    edited August 2014
    Even i like the SDK and the community, unfortunately i totally agree about 0 (even minus) communication from the team. As myself as a paid user, started to think my license fee as donation, and not expect anything more unfortunately.
    It is so much sad and annoying that even after so many posts on the forum from both loyal and normal users no one from the team (except arthurs, he is exception) even replied.

    Everything can happen, the business can go wrong, can be bankrupt or even something can happen badly at personal life but not even one of them is an excuse for this childish and not professional approach. We are talking and listening by ourselves.
    As for me i was just expecting one sentence of explanation from the team. It will be more than enough for me like " Guys don't worry we are working on it, and try to complete on this time ..... bla bla" or "Guys sorry we have this problem will give feedback soon, thanks for your understanding ... "

    This situation is more than absurd.

    Note: One more time i want to pint out that i am not questioning the capabilities of the sdk.


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  • @talis, the only other possibility is that @Atilim could have had some potential interest from a company to the source code of Gideros and could have been asked to maintain silence till this deal is over. So he cannot give away the source code and nor can he tell us about the deal.

    There was another OpenSource product and if you have visited @ar2rsawseen's website, you would have seen a couple of tutorials on that, QiTitanuium (I think it was called) the funny thing is that it was OpenSource still the author sold it and closed the GitHub/Google Code repository and now it is available via licensing as Platino.

    Things happen, plans change and yes while we all need to know what is happening, there could be other things that might be preventing this.
    twitter: @ozapps | http://www.oz-apps.com | http://howto.oz-apps.com | http://reviewme.oz-apps.com
    Author of Learn Lua for iOS Game Development from Apress ( http://www.apress.com/9781430246626 )
    Cool Vizify Profile at https://www.vizify.com/oz-apps
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  • MellsMells Guru
    edited August 2014
    @OZApps
    since I saw the picture on twitter, that's something I had in my mind too. What you suggest would make sense ("want to move from the beer sdk and use your existing code? we have a solution...").
    Could be a bridge to use lua in their solution, or only for the instant testing on device feature..

    What I sincerely hope is that nothing "really" bad happened to the team (health issues, etc).
    But we all know that NDA doesn't prevent from talking to (paying or not) customers though. There's always room for that.

    We might never know what is actually happening. And sadly the most active supporters are getting resigned to it.

    twitter@TheWindApps Artful applications : The Wind Forest. #art #japan #apps
  • john26john26 Maintainer
    Like I said, I think we should wait at least one more month before migrating from Gideros. However, if you are thinking of an alternative you might consider my free, open source engine, Longford. http://sourceforge.net/projects/longford/. It is Lua-based and VERY close to Gideros in API structure. If you already know Gideros, the learning curve is almost zero.

    I am also in the process of porting it to Windows Phone 8 and the Windows Store. I have already added code so you can use either OpenGL or Direct3D as the graphics engine.

    Likes: MikeHart

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  • atilimatilim Maintainer
    edited August 2014
    Hi all,

    I'm sorry for not writing earlier.

    I just overestimated my strength and a little bit burned out on client work plus re-organizing Gideros' source code. Today, we'll be preparing a new package with Arturs and will publish the source code on Github.

    Best
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  • :)
    Coder, video game industry veteran (since the '80s, ❤'s assembler), arrested - never convicted hacker (in the '90s), dad of five, he/him (if that even matters!).
    https://deluxepixel.com
  • great news, thank you!
  • yay this is awesome news!
  • To throw in another tool that has onthefly testing on devices, look into AGK aka AppGameKit.
  • atilimatilim Maintainer
    edited August 2014
    Hi,

    We've just committed the code to github https://github.com/gideros/gideros

    Our next step will be creating an easy to use build system so that anybody can create an installation package from codes easily.

    Our best,

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