Game Editor Dead? Looking Back

[Turon]

The Forum is now so inactive that it appears as though nobody is doing anything serious anymore... Skydereign hasn't made an appearance at the gEF for a long time (though his steam account is active) so no new version. If the software is dead and the community is dead then gE is Dead?! I missed an era?

There was once a time when this software was equal to game maker. Now I've met a programmer who has compared gE and JavaScript to MegaBlocks and Lego, wasn't gE a proffecional tool at one point? What was makslane's original vision?
What is there to leave behind? Is gE really special?

I have one theory on why gE died. It's because it's not really easy enough to atract the same crowd as the one that go to Game Maker and Construct 2 and some aspects of the interface programmer seem to find unnapealing to programmers
such as the need to click around the interface to open scripts and the fact that the script editor sort of sucks...

The fact is all I really know well-ish is Game Editor. I could never have seen this coming...

[420foxbot]

Game-Editor died because it stopped innovating.

It has been the same broken, glued together mess that it's been for years. Meanwhile, Construct & Game Maker have active developers, are being updated, and \just work\. Many things that we have hacked into GE only work on certain versions and platforms, and are buggy.

Years ago, when I was learning programming and looking for a game engine to use, I saw Game-Editor on a list. But it looked ancient, it looked complicated, and it didn't seem very appealing to a new developer.

[Spectrogram]

GameEditor is definitely inactive compared to what it used to be, but I wouldn't call it dead.

I have no personal experience within the golden days of gameEditor, but judging by the one day 69 game makers gathered together on the forum, it was once much better. I totally agree with what 420 said. GameEditor is hitting the wall because it isn't catching up to the other game makers. It is still speckled with bugs and the interface isn't the most appealing, either.

The problem with gameEditor is that it doesn't appeal to the broad community of developers like Game Maker and Construct do. Sure, once you take the time to get into it and learn the works it's a powerful engine that yields good games, but that doesn't work when people can only experience what it's like after working toward a certain point. New developers want to see a program that looks promising at first sight and doesn't need any digging to find the qualities. In fact, the first time I used gameEditor, about two years ago, I didn't like it at all. I thought it was badly laid out and took too much to do what I wanted it to. It wasn't until recently - after trying other programs like Game Maker, Unity and RPGMaker - that I realized that gameEditor was what I needed simply because of that: it required a lot of DIY but that meant it could be fully customized, and that's what I wanted.

However, people want to see something that, first of all, doesn't look like it hasn't been updated since its release (by this I mean the GUI. It looks very XP) and something that they can work with right from the start without having to look up tutorials just to get started. Personally, I like gameEditor because of how it looks. One thing I hated about Game Maker is how cluttered the GUI is and how half the screen is just mashed with widgets and stuff, but that's only because I took the time to get into it and learn my way around. When I first started, I wished much different.

To conclude this idea, it GameEditor dead? Absolutely not. GameEditor is still alive, but alive and weak. GameEditor still, however small, still has a community of developers. And what needs to happen is innovation. Even starting with something as simple as a new look. A more modern and more updated look. And on top of that, better advertising, and more work into gathering attention.

I may be new to this and don't know gameEditor's past, but I know that this program has a future, so long as some work is put into it.

[Turon]

I'm just thinking about what made gE gE, You know how there are no "rooms" in gE? levels have to be divided up with activation regions. The thing I liked about gE was that you could see all the levels all the objects in the game at once.
The presentation of the the things you'll see in the game is I think very good, it just falls short with code presentation and event presentation and of course system compatibility.

Game-Editor died because it stopped innovating.

It has been the same broken, glued together mess that it's been for years. Meanwhile, Construct & Game Maker have active developers, are being updated, and \just work\. Many things that we have hacked into GE only work on certain versions and platforms, and are buggy.

Years ago, when I was learning programming and looking for a game engine to use, I saw Game-Editor on a list. But it looked ancient, it looked complicated, and it didn't seem very appealing to a new developer.

So you thought it looked ancient when you first came? Then how are you still here?

GameEditor is definitely inactive compared to what it used to be, but I wouldn't call it dead.

I have no personal experience within the golden days of gameEditor, but judging by the one day 69 game makers gathered together on the forum, it was once much better. I totally agree with what 420 said. GameEditor is hitting the wall because it isn't catching up to the other game makers. It is still speckled with bugs and the interface isn't the most appealing, either.

The problem with gameEditor is that it doesn't appeal to the broad community of developers like Game Maker and Construct do. Sure, once you take the time to get into it and learn the works it's a powerful engine that yields good games, but that doesn't work when people can only experience what it's like after working toward a certain point. New developers want to see a program that looks promising at first sight and doesn't need any digging to find the qualities. In fact, the first time I used gameEditor, about two years ago, I didn't like it at all. I thought it was badly laid out and took too much to do what I wanted it to. It wasn't until recently - after trying other programs like Game Maker, Unity and RPGMaker - that I realized that gameEditor was what I needed simply because of that: it required a lot of DIY but that meant it could be fully customized, and that's what I wanted.

However, people want to see something that, first of all, doesn't look like it hasn't been updated since its release (by this I mean the GUI. It looks very XP) and something that they can work with right from the start without having to look up tutorials just to get started. Personally, I like gameEditor because of how it looks. One thing I hated about Game Maker is how cluttered the GUI is and how half the screen is just mashed with widgets and stuff, but that's only because I took the time to get into it and learn my way around. When I first started, I wished much different.

To conclude this idea, it GameEditor dead? Absolutely not. GameEditor is still alive, but alive and weak. GameEditor still, however small, still has a community of developers. And what needs to happen is innovation. Even starting with something as simple as a new look. A more modern and more updated look. And on top of that, better advertising, and more work into gathering attention.

I may be new to this and don't know gameEditor's past, but I know that this program has a future, so long as some work is put into it.

Game Editor has no future if nobody develops it... Makslane the creator left for reasons unknown, and Skydereign hasn't said a word in months, One cannot be sure of the exact reasons of inactivity but it definitely doesn't look good on the outside.

[Hblade]

I'll have to agree with what Spect said.

[Turon]

I'll have to agree with what Spect said.

Yeah I'm only here to "Finnish what I started".

[Hblade]

What do you mean?

[Turon]

I came here in 2010 I was expecting to take a long time to learn how to code games and over the years I have learned how to make simple platformers in gE, All of my current experience is gE centric.
I have only really seen gE as being dead recently this very year... It was only after bat78 was banned and the aftermath that followed that I realise that gE might be dead, but by then it was too late...
I am now learning JavaScript to hopefully use MelonJS but then I'll have to put my actual game development on hold. I just figured that since gE was what I knew I'd Finnish my game in gE and learn JavaScript
. Though if I had only just gotten into game development now I'd have focused all my resources on JavaScript or Unity.

[Turon]

I'll have to agree with what Spect said.

Yeah I'm only here to "Finnish what I started".

I just realised I have confused spectrogram for foxbot!

[Turon]

With gE in the state that it is I wonder how long this site will exist. You think we should begin salvaging important pages and making a time capsule?

[Spectrogram]

Doing so wouldn't be the most difficult of tasks for whoever's up to it. Looking around the gE page count isn't the highest thing. Even so much as saving the pages to HTML documents and posting them somewhere accessible as a sort of archive would work.

Seeing that the existence of the program, it's websites and users has now become a precarious matter of sink or swim really makes me feel that I joined at a bad time. I experimented with gameEditor long before I joined the forum (two years, perhaps) and back then I though it was all stable, popular and worthwhile. Since I came here I have come to like the program a bit more, but also come to fear that it might collapse some day...

If the site does come down, I'd want there to be some way to still have access to everything gE has been. Since I first read this thread, I immediately made backup copies of the original ZIP file I downloaded s that I'd always have a copy of the program (Hehe, a bit cautious? Perhaps not?) Time capsule (an archive, I presume)? Yes!

[Turon]

If I could download this website somehow how big would it be on disk? And sorry Spectrogram that you had to come at a time when gE is almost dead... I'm worried because there was another site called game-editor.net that is now offline so it's not a stretch of the imagination for game-editor.com to meet a similar fate...

[Spectrogram]

As for saving in on disk, by my estimations, it wouldn't be too large. It would be a bit big, as there is a lot of content on the website but it would fit within reasonable margins. The website itself would just be a bunch of HTML documents, which, even with a lot, don't add up to that big of a file. The issue with size comes to mind when saving things like used posted pictures and uploaded game files. Those themselves aren't too big individually (as I've noticed with the 2MB upload limit) but with quantity comes large sums.

And as for the whole thing with me coming in while the site is like this, it's nothing that really needs apologizing for, it was just a bit of a surprise. It's simply the lack of diligence (or presence, even) on the behalf of the developers to make better, more up-to-date releases of the program that has brought this dilemma upon itself. We'll just have to see what the future holds. If I could help, I'd offer to, but there isn't really anything I could do to improve, and based on what I've read, there's little anyone can do as for improving the program. Bat78 bight have had potential with his/her (I couldn't tell, the thread was just a shpiel of pronouns) Revival project, but clearly that's no longer a factor.

(And maybe if I stopped procrastinating like a lazy dog on my game I could do more than chatter about on the forum without an actual game at hand.)

[Turon]

(And maybe if I stopped procrastinating like a lazy dog on my game I could do more than chatter about on the forum without an actual game at hand.)

I'm interested to see what games you'd make Spectrogram.

Bat78 bight have had potential with his/her (I couldn't tell, the thread was just a shpiel of pronouns)

Yep, bat78 can be puzzling. PS Just be mindful that bat78/AI3 is a power far greater than any individual ever to have joined this forum (that includes maklane himself).

As for saving in on disk, by my estimations, it wouldn't be too large. It would be a bit big, as there is a lot of content on the website but it would fit within reasonable margins. The website itself would just be a bunch of HTML documents, which, even with a lot, don't add up to that big of a file. The issue with size comes to mind when saving things like used posted pictures and uploaded game files. Those themselves aren't too big individually (as I've noticed with the 2MB upload limit) but with quantity comes large sums.

Yeah I wasn't planning on backing everything up, I am planning on just saving the front page and a topic called Thoughts about data control and maybe this first topic ever on the forum.

[420foxbot]

for you guys saying how 'impossible' or 'time consuming' it would be to archive the forums,
http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

aside from that, half of this shit is probably already indexed on waybackmachine or something of the other.

From the WHOIS page on game-editor.com:
Registration Expiration Date: 2016-04-02

you've got six months. start counting. of course, that's assuming that somebody doesn't take down the site long before then.

ge isn't a game developer community anymore, it's a shitshow.