Clokio wrote:It look like alot of people tryed GE, but after a few days decided it was not for them. Some suggestions that could help people to stick around, It just don't sound right, you got 3 platform: linux, mac and pc the engine run on. You export on linux, mac, pc, iPhone. Just iphone it's quite enough for engine like Gamesalad to be sucessfull.
The fact that gE supports all three major operating systems is why a lot of users have come here.
Clokio wrote:On the main page have a icon say BETA. That will excuse you for all bugs people can find. Gamesalad is still mentionning BETA, while they had 25 peoples making the top 100 on the appstore. That mean those games made alot of money.
Would be to make a list of what GE dose not. And why. Ex: dose not rotation cause ...
Admitting to your faults, while less surprising to users if they see features not implemented that they expected, is generally a deterrent. It's kind of like saying here's why this game isn't the best (why would you play the game if they tell you all its faults?). And while saying its a beta is harmless, maybe even helpful, we don't actually have the developer backing for it to really be a beta. Honestly speaking we have two developers, that can't spend all their time working to improve gE. While 1.5 has a few of gE's bugs fixed, the export options have been determined to be a more valuable use of time for the small dev team.
Clokio wrote:Change the logo and the name, but game editor name and logo is not appropriate.
This has been brought up, and turned down by makslane. So, while some agree it's a good idea, I really doubt the name will change anytime soon. The splash screen is most likely going to get some work done on it.
Clokio wrote:A list of know bugs.
A list of what is supported or not.
Same thing as the above about admitting to your faults. I do agree there should be a place where all bugs are listed. There are two places, the official one being on the sourceforge download site, the other being on the forums.
http://game-editor.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=10516Clokio wrote:Fix the bugs in 1.4 and geplayer before getting to 1.5 There is alot of pc users out there that would like to be able to make a game on their pc and test on a device without spending 500$ on a mac.
As I mentioned above, some fixes were made, and multitouch was implemented. Improvements in this direction have been made but it would be impossible for all bugs to be fixed, we just don't have the man power to do that. The physics implementation is adding loads of new features that have been requested again and again in gE. This is what people have wanted, and it will help attract more users.
Clokio wrote:Drop linux. It's like 1% of people that have a desktop use it.
You might not guess it, but quite a few users here are linux users. The reason a lot of us found gE was because its one of the only really good 2d game tool for linux. And now with android being supported, the number of linux users would increase. Why drop linux? Definitely over 1% of users on gE are linux users. Despite me wanting the best for gE if linux was dropped, I know I'd leave.
Clokio wrote:Transform the engine to use little nice icons, people like that, it make it look easier.
Change the website to a white background. And put some cute animals, why not, it attract people. You need to attract people.
If you could provide appealing graphics please do. One of the reasons the pacman and the rest of the interface hasn't changed is that we have no other options (also the lack of developers). Though, I don't see fluffy animals on any of the other game tools websites, excluding the few flash ads showing games made with the tool (of which currently gE has very few).
Clokio wrote:Show clearly what to who the engine is designed for.
Focus on artist that know nothing about coding. Gamesalad and stencylwork are sucessfull because of that and they attractive wesite.
Be ready to help beginners and artist and all non-coders Don't expect they will just read the whole forum it's not efficient.
Who might that be? gE's true power over the other engines is the scripting capacity. While it would be nicer if it was more user friendly, we don't have the resources to make such drastic changes. You might not know, but the new interface that was in the works before makslane stopped, was supposed to implement features that would make scripting much easier for artists. And since we don't have any developers working on it, there's not much we can do on that front. If you have connections with developers that can do this kind of work, please tell them about gE. We could use some more helping hands.
Clokio wrote:Drop the development of the engine time by 75% and put that 75% of your time and money on redesigning the documentation, put all your money to to hire a good designer to make the logo and the website and answer questions in the forum, and on the chat.
What money? gE doesn't make enough money to really hire that kind of work. If there was that kind of income from gE it'd be much easier for that to happen, but we can't expect makslane and akr to pay out of their own pockets to that extent. All the time they've poured into gE is worth quite a bit, considering their skills and background. I doubt they've received nearly close to enough to compensate themselves appropriately, let alone hire new help. We have to do what we can to get gE more popular before that action can be done. However we are thinking of implementing a new form of help to make everything run smoother. If I could excuse my work with gE as a paying job, I'd definitely be able to improve the documentation, but we have our lives away from gE, which takes precedence. But without due compensation, there is no way we can poor the amount of time and work that would be required to do a complete revamp into gE. I wish I could.
Clokio wrote:If people feel the website look attractive, they have questions answered nicely, they feel welcome and their game are going forward. There is no reason they will go elsewhere.
This is true.
Clokio wrote:Stop thinking like coders, think like artist and beginners. It mean don't ask yourselves what you want to see in the engine, or what top coder users in the forum want, but what beginners and artist want. Why gamesalad and stencylwork is the choice for artist and beginners in 2D. Come on: it's easy to use and mention no coding. Even stencyl you can code, but they mention only if you want to.
Make some game template, accessible to download, so people can merge them with their
The feature requests that are being worked on are not only of "top coder"s. Physics is a feature that any iphone dev now expects in their engine. Most work that the devs have been doing are for android and physics. If we had a developer who could finish the new interface (which would take an extensive amount of work for a single person) we would do so. But again it has been determined the physics had the overwhelming support, as it allowed for rotation and the like, not to mention it was far more plausible for akr to implement it rather than try altering all of gE by himself. And the users here have been attempting to make templates, and some are pretty nice. So I'd say there is some progress on that end, and pretty decent considering it's all out of their own desire to help.
Clokio wrote:Commit to change the course, cause it's not going in the right direction It's not getting android port that will make you suceseffull. Look at Stencylwork, they are killing gamesalad right now, they are getting near 10,000 new users monthly, they don't have android yet. Look their coding system with blocks, it just awesome for beginners and artist. Gamesalad and Stencylwork where sucessfull before getting android port.
While android isn't going to make everything better, a lot of interest has been voiced about gE supporting it. We can't just try to copy other game engines, they'd win. Why would gE look more appealing that any of those other tools? That's the kind of thinking we need. Us just trying to copy what other tools have already done, especially when we are out manned in terms of developers, would be a losing battle. Android is something they don't have, and may attract more developers. For a while now makslane has been trying to attract more developers, and to that end we would need to have features that developers would find interesting or useful. So while getting artists interested is great for popularity, we can't implement nearly enough for that to happen without having more people on the gE team. And the easier gE version for artists I mentioned did have plans for a block coding system.
This is true, and thanks for taking the time to post this. I don't mean to say everything you said is wrong, the more opinions out there the better. I'm just trying to shed some light on gE's actual predicament. A lot of the things you suggested have been discussed, and we'd love to act on them if we could.
) but still he help alot of peoples, look at one 
