GiderosMobile for best game engine...

antix

You want loads of noobs who make tutorial clones. Out of those, there will be a few that graduate to become good coders. Even if they don;t, they talk about Gideros and then more people try it.. creating critical mass, or a snowball effect if you like

It is a little like youtube. If you went there and there was nothing you wanted to see... you would leave. Gideros is the same.. if somebody comes looking for something that is not there... they will most likely leave.

I also am not a great fan of how the donation system works because whenever I have donated... my chosen thing was never developed. It was not a good investment I felt

At the end of the day, Gideros is amazing and if the objective is to gain more users then you need to supply them with what they want. Like the old saying goes... "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar"

oleg

@antix A simple example :, you can choose something 1 or implement a "path search" in Gideros, or Write a new tutorial. What are you donating money for?

antix

I donated for documentation improvements, none of which happened.

oleg

antix said:

I donated for documentation improvements, none of which happened.

Well, maybe other people have donated a larger amount to develop other features

antix

And that is why the donation system is broken

hgy29

Well documentation has improved a lot, maybe just not enough according to your expectations...

plicatibu

I agree with @antix.

When I first got in touch with Gideros I thought "this is outdated framework. It does not worth the effort to learn it. It's better leave and forget about it ".

The reasons that made me think it explained in my post Gideros - the good, the bad and the ugly from a newbie point of view so I won't repeat them here.

Gideros may be an excellent framework but its one of the worst when we talk about marketing and self-promotion.

Instead of a donation page you should have a patreon page. People could be a patreon with US$ 1.00 per month.

But for it working it would need to have thousands of users as well as people has to see a real value on Gideros. It doesn't matter what you think about Gideros. It's what its users and people that discover it think about it.

If one looks for tutorials about Gideros what they found is 6 or 7 years old. They don't know that those code still works with new versions of Guideros. Guideros main page looks outdated too. And what about the forum? It seems I'm on the 90's. Why not use a modern forum software like discourse? It's free for self hosting.

Maybe you guys think it's no sense. Maybe you think that by its superior features Gideros will attract new users but you're wrong. First impression matter. Just try to remember how many superior technology products were defeated by inferior products.

I'm writing as a newbie that almost lost the chance to know about Gideros . I think I'm a lucky guy because instead of leaving and forgetting about it I decide to learn a bit more.

I told in the post above mentioned that l would invest at least 2 weeks learning Gideros. Up to now it is paying off but I'm still not 100% sure it is the framework I will keep using.

Now imagine how many new users did Gideros lost because the bad impressions they felt when searching for information about Gideros?

I don't want to sound harsh neither offend anyone. I respect everyone here as well as the effort you invest to make Gideros technologically better and its community as friendly as possible.

Sorry for the long post.

hgy29

@plicatibu, I completely agree with you, and with @antix too. The biggest issue with Gideros is that its community, however friendly it is, it too small. The donations, until about two month ago, didn't even cover the hosting costs of Gideros (~20$/mo). That means that all work is done for free, and consequently that contributors do what they can, not what others want.

But things are improving slowly, and although documentation is very very important (and I thank you guys for all the work you do here, with special thanks to @MoKaLux), having an up to date engine is mandatory: who would want to use an engine that can only make games for old phones ?

So I spend several days per month to keep Gideros us to date, fixing things here and there and building the releases, adding more features because I need them or because someone else does and I can do it. It is ok for me because I love coding, and because my company uses Gideros, but I hate writing docs, and I am not a good teacher either, so my contribution in those fields is limited I am afraid. I'd really like to write a tutorial series anyhow, or to help writing one.

plicatibu

@hgy29 It's visible how much effort you invest to make Gideros getting better and it's very much appreciated.

I say what I think it is better for Gideros and its community. I really would like to see it shinning in the 2D game frameworks.

SinisterSoft

I'm currently writing a set of micro tutorials for the kids at my local Primary school - an introduction to programming. I'm writing it as they are ready to learn new things. It's in a state of flux as I find things are too difficult or need rearranging. It's written for people not used to programming with Gideros/Lua being their first system after using Scratch.

I usually update it before the first Thursday of each week (the school code club is on a break now until mid-January), but if you want to follow it then here is a link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d0fp6lwme237ytx/Introduction to programming.pdf?dl=0

The intention (no promises!) is that it will grow and then I'll tart it up (make it pretty!) and then I'll give the pdf away, make a version for the wiki and also make it available via Amazon as a printed book.

If you look at it, have any suggestions, spot any typos, etc then please let me know via a pm.

Each tutorial is designed to not take more than 30 mins or so, that way it can easily fit in a lesson.

MoKaLux

I started coding at an early age 12-13 years old.
I used android studio a lot, a bit of unity, a little bit of ue, a little bit of defold, a lot of godot...
@plicatibu why have I chosen gideros?
-for admob
-for lightweight apk
-for html5, windows, android, ...
-the SUPERB community, ...

Godot was easy to grasp unlike unity, ue, defold... but I was too limited:
-no admob
-no shapes (lines, rects, ...)
-no access to android file, camera, microphone, ...
-no arabic, chinese, ...
-apk size (~40Mb)

Here with gideros I found everything I wanted and much more that I am not using yet or not aware of, I am still a new gideros user.
I had to learn lua from scratch and now I know a little bit how it works
So imho gideros is not for someone who doesn't love coding. That's the hardest part of gideros and it takes some time to overcome.

When you are past this learning curve, when you need something you can:
-look in the forum if it has been done or ask for help
-the wiki
-look on github
-look for any tutorials (YT, web) written for love2d, corona, which are also in lua

This way you learn how other people have done it and you learn from their code. Then you learn to modify the code and adjust to your needs. And you become a HERO.

gemboy100

plicatibu said:

I'm writing as a newbie that almost lost the chance to know about Gideros . I think I'm a lucky guy because instead of leaving and forgetting about it I decide to learn a bit more.
.

me too
i found gideros after i tried almost all popular cross platform 2d game engines

i do remember how i got here
i was trying to find lightweight game engine or graphic framework and there was a github page with great list of results with gideros among others
but i dont remember i ever stumbled upon a name gideros except there

antix

@gemboy you should have asked about what framework to use on r/gamedev where I always say "give Gideros a try"

Apollo14

Lol comments under best game engine release notes
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/12/12/2019-3-is-now-in-the-final-stages-of-beta-testing/

keszegh

Apollo14 said:

Lol comments under best game engine release notes
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/12/12/2019-3-is-now-in-the-final-stages-of-beta-testing/

sounds really frustrating. it's good that our engine is stable and thus stress-free.

MoKaLux

have you seen this page?
https://www.slant.co/topics/2590/~best-2d-lua-game-engines#6
It can be a good place to show what gideros is all about.
Can we make it number one?

MoKaLux

It's maybe time to remove this thread from the Announcement category imho .

oleg

MoKaLux said:

have you seen this page?
https://www.slant.co/topics/2590/~best-2d-lua-game-engines#6
It can be a good place to show what gideros is all about.
Can we make it number one?

MoKaLux

yes I know, somebody created it twice! It's not me.
We should have added our comments only in the first article about gideros. I don't think I can delete the duplicate article (maybe the one who created the duplicate can delete it?).

It kind of ruins the list for gideros

edit: I think @plicatibu did it? @plicatibu Can you try to delete the duplicate article you created and update the first article instead please?

edit: thank you plicatibu you did it

edit: I can see the duplicate gideros article in the flagged section, so I am not sure plicatibu can delete it