First let me say that I admire you and thank you a lot for the marvelous Game Editor.
You did an excellent job so far on that product, and there's a lot of your dedication and
heart in it, your passion shows. Plus the fantastic support you are providing on this
site and forum is in my opinion hard to find anywhere else.
I hope you will find a way to let game editor evolve, and to deliver it to us soon.
Here are a few suggestions:
- Someone suggested to make a book, to publicise game editor. I think it's a tremendous idea
Why not try to make a collective electronic document for a start (maybe under an open license
like creative commons), that will compile in a intelligent way all the wisdom and tips that are
exchanged and stored in this forum like little gems buried in hundreds of forum threads ?
That document could describe all the actions needed, to make a little arcade game from scratch
with game editor, with later chapters more focused on advanced techniques, and tips and tricks.
The best would be to make a Chapters plan, for a start.
- Someone else suggested to receive some royalties from commercial games made with game editor
That could be a great way to generate more income, to pay for the development of GE.
You could establish a license contract that would say "For the first n sells of the game, xxx cents/dollars
(or a percentage) of each sell will be payed back to GE" etc. I'm not a lawyer but I think you definitively
should look into it.
- Give better visibility to existing commercial games
maybe find a partnership with a big shop, or a mobile operator etc, in order that the games made
with game editor, will reach easily the end users. Most end buyers are lazy, they won't search the net
for that particular rare nice game to put on their mobile/smartphone. But if on a lonely night they
check out what games they can buy from their cell operator, maybe a GE game can pop sparkles
in their eyes if it's sold on the operator's portal
.In my opinion, the success of GE commercial games, is your success, so you should explore that lead.
Maybe that part would need some selection of what games goes on the partnerships, because
you don't wanna publicise on the market, unpolished/not finished games that would be associated with
the Game Editor name.
- Adopt a strategy, about platforms targets and technical evolutions, and about who uses GE
I think there are strategic decisions to be made, to help focus the development of GE.
. First I think the question that should be asked is, is GE for mobiles platforms primarily ? And does
GE have to support 3D games ?
I would say that the PC/Mac desktop market is already saturated by companies with huge technical
and marketing budgets. In my opinion, GE is clearly for small teams/lonely developers who want
to make good 2D games. Mobile platforms are best for simple funny 2D games.
Is 3D necessary ? I don't think so. Fun and good gameplay doesn't need 3D. Watch what Nintendo
does with it's online shop with the Wii, you can buy old games from NES/SNES, PCENGINE, MEGADRIVE,
NEOGEO, etc, and play them on your Wii. Those games are 2D, so there's clearly a market.
Plus you have to aknowledge that to make a good game in 3D, it requires a lot of budget/work,
compared to a good 2D game (that requires already a lot of work !)
I would prefer GE to provide nice special effects like funny menu transitions, elegant color palettes
generators, etc. that would bring some sparkle and cuteness to the presentation of our 2D games.
. What Platforms to target ?
The community can help you define what platforms you should support for compilation, but you have
to keep a realistic view on it too.
"Are there enough 2D/action/arcade gamers on that platform ?
Can GE games be easily sold on that platform ? Technically ? Commercially ?"
For example the Nintendo DS, from a hobbyist developer standpoint, sounds interesting as a target
for GE. But it has no commercial future for us, as the end buyers won't be reachable, unless paying
licenses to nintendo, and investing obscene amounts of money in cartridges production + distribution.
There are a lot of new targets appearing, and some decisions should be made, with a market view
in mind. What about the google android platform ? What about the I-Phone ? Other popular mobile
OSes ?
. You should also understand who you are making GE for, and maybe change the technical future of GE:
.. Is GE for hobbyists, more or less motivated who wanna make small fun games but not necessarily in
a professional fashion.
.. Is GE for motivated lonely developers who want to do everything themselves and be able to distribute
small games, but with no big money return to expect ?
.. Is GE for small teams (3-5) of talents (programm/dev, design, music, gfx), willing to make more solid games
and have wider distribution ?
From my point of view, you should target in priority the lonely dev and the small team, and focus the tool
and the community on the goal of well polished, professional games.
That doesn't forbid you to welcome hobbyists and give support to less experienced people.
But they wouldn't be the priority in terms of design of GE as a tool, and new functionalities, etc.
There could be a section in the forum dedicated to beginners as game developers, for example,
while the rest of the forum would tend to be more pro/semi-pro minded.
- Expand and improve the Community surrounding and supporting GE
I think you need to organize more sections, subsections, advanced sections, in the forum, with specific
topics (for example graphics, music, gameplay design, etc.), and give a more professionnal structure
to the forum.
The idea is to better organize all the knowledge that is posted, focus the forum on achieving more
polished games, and attract new people to the community.
- Install a nice bugtracker system
In order to centralize and make more understandable/visible for the community what bugs fixes / new
functionalities are planned/needed.
- Find ways to boost the development and the releases of new versions of GE
. To keep GE alive you could try to apply a "clockwork minor release procedure", and release for example
every month, or every other month, an update that includes all the little bugs you were able to fix on the
current version. Even if there's not many fixes/changes, release as a clockwork
. I think that it wouldkeep everyone motivated and the GE scene alive.
. Find ways to alleviate your burdens.
.. You can (and should) have people who would freely help you administer and moderate the forums, as in every community.
.. You could have skilled people take the lead on specific parts of the developping of GE.
For example the compiling for new targets platforms, the networking code, etc.
I have the feeling that GE has a great future, but it means also a lot of work, and you can't take everything on
your shoulders. That doesn't mean you have to lose control of your product, you can work with people, and still
be in charge of the core, and always be the architect of the whole project.
- Opening parts of the G.E. code
Don't be affraid by the title
. I think you should consider opening parts of your codes, via an open sourcelicense (GPL, Apache, etc.), so that people could give a hand easily, while you stay in charge of GE and which
contributions make it into the releases.
A dozen fixes made by a dozen different people, each one concerned by a different bug/lack of functionality
they themselves encounter and want to fix, would be made quite fast, compared to twelve people asking you
different fixes/changes of functionality.
Plus, you could open the code for the parts of the project you want to delegate more.
Opening the source means (If I recall), that every project/product that will use that source, will have to distribute
a copy of the original license, a reference to the original author(s), and will have to release the source code they
modified. (I'm not sure about all that, you have to check by yourself).
Opening parts of your work, means losing some level of control on your baby, but you stay in charge, and now
the community is more alive and helps improving GE faster, plus GE gets some visibility on the open source scene,
and attracts skilled developers that will be able to provide solutions for GE, and maybe will develop themselves
good games with GE.
It's a "let it go" step, but it's a good way to keep GE alive and allow it to evolve as we all wish.
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Hope everything I wrote made sense to you, and that maybe it could give you some leads/ ideas.
Best wishes for your life and your projects.
R.
(I don't have time for the moment to use GE to develop a game, but I still plan to, and can't wait to
have time to start a first project !!)
