game-editor.com

1) Make a windows interface. The current one is completly unfriendly to users.
2) Make this program F R E E. No werid stuff the professional version because there are way better programs out there that are free and as a beta it shouldn't have any limitations because of money.

Those ideas should be done to make this game engine a popular pick.

Good luck on making it!

~Riku

Yeah, make it free. later on, once you get a good community of followers, then spring on a fee, an optional one hopefully.

if you want to hope to compete with gm it has to be free for a while to get people hooked then you can add a registration fee.

all i can say is that i was there at the version1.4 or GM and this is just as or even better than that version of GM, so if you stick with it, it will pay off for you. And if you go into the profennsional market (not-free) you will have great struggeles keeping up wiht there pace! Maybe if you want money from it, go for donations.

Donations would be the way to do it.

but you need to get a good fan base before they will pay for donations

Thats true. I took a poll on my site on paying money:
2 would donate for my site to have domain.
0 would donate for games.
0 would pay for games.
6 wouldn't donate or pay for anything.

Now I know everyone's going on about GM here and no-one likes it, but I'm just going to say one thing about GM:
Mark Overmars asking for money didn't do him any favours.
So I suggest cutting the "professional edition" idea and make it totally freeware - open source might be nice as well, seeing as you've got a Linux version.
Definately a "proper" editor for both versions - Windows one could be done in Delphi or VB, and a KDE version for Linux.

Also... I'm a Linux newbie - I would much rather have an RPM package for installation on Linux - they are much easier to use!

But GE looks great so far. Definately good competition for GM at a later stage. Especially the cross-platform idea. Are the Linux and Windows versions exactly the same in terms of functionality etc?

Hello there!
Regarding the multi-platform isssue, we just can't make a Win-Delphi version and a Linux-KDE one; GameEditor's source is written in ANSI C++ and it is meant to be just ONE set of source code to be compiled on many platforms. if we take that suggestion in consideration, we would end up having different sources for different platforms; that would be a mess to keep synchronized.
About the RPM package, well, we will provide it. We decided to initially deploy it as a compressed package because this way it is compatible with all unix distributions.

qscomputing wrote:Are the Linux and Windows versions exactly the same in terms of functionality etc?

Yes, exactly equals

You didn't added an option 'neither' to choose from.

1.- I would like a windows interface, however in realize that its actual interface is due to the multiplatform "scheme" of the program.
2.- About making it FREE, well, GM is free and all the users are immature kids that yell at Mark's asking for donation/optional registration. If there are any other programs better than this that also allow you to release multiplatform games/applications (pass the link ); You are free to use them and leave GE

If you get it to compile to C++ for PPC,Palm, and/or other mobile devices, I'll buy it right now!

I believe that if a programmer works hard on something that people use and find interesting, that the programmer has a right to charge something for his/her work. That said, the program charge should be fair. Right now, the best buy authoring type of thing out there for Palm is PDAToolBox. It is sold for around $25.00. I bought it years ago even though I don't use it much because I liked the concept and I wanted to support it's development.

Yes, there are many, many game authoring programs out there for Windowz machines so I''m not sure that a programmer could charge immediately for yet another one, but as was previously noted in this thread, once people get to know and like Game Editor, they may be willing to support its continued development for Windowz...but offer something different for the mobile units and/maybe inking for Tablet pc's and you will be ahead of the wave. I think quite a few of us would pay for that now.

Just rambling on....