The AGS Bake Sale --- $4191.98 Dollars Raised :D

[Ponch]

So there's a good chance I might have been a bit slow on the uptake. Just out of curiosity, if I were to finish my game (that I was working on before all this came up) before December 15th, could I enter it in this lovely bake sale?

Sure. If it meets all the requirements we've talked about above, then I don't see why not. We'd love to add your baked goods to our pile.

[monkey0506]

If by "bandana" you mean "supersecret bandana that nobody but me knows about" then YE--uh--MAYBE!

[Technocrat]

How about spending the proceeds on advertising? Like bribing publications to mention AGS a whole lot. Then we can ensnare more untapped minds for the glorious hegemon.

[Ponch]

Not a bad idea. Maybe we could buy some product placement in the next Transformers movie.

We're currently mulling over ideas in the bat cave. We should have something soon. 

[Ishmael]

It is my conclusion that you all are nuts. Some in different ways than others, but still.

Don't forget to budget in my consulting costs. Invoice will be in the mail momentarily.

[kaputtnik]

Yes, well, uhm - I remember that Dave Gilbert mentioned somewhere that, if there was some money left after paying the server,  maybe the team of courageous bakers would pay somebody to program an Android Linux / iDevices port of AGS, or rather of the runtime engine. I must admit, I like that idea a lot. Ports for Mac and Linux have been toyed around with on and off during the last couple of years, and nothing really working ever came of it, due to lack of time, motivation, coding complications etc. - I think portable devices are the perfect platform for AGS, and I guess many of us would like to see their games on one of them. For those of us who are considering or already practising commercial game development (= Dave Gilbert and, uhm...his friends?), being able to export their games to one of those things could really help a lot.

And/or maybe we could donate some of the money to clarvalon and/or Denzil Quixode who have already made some significant steps towards AGS portability towards XBOX (Personally, I never liked consoles + point&click, but maybe that's just me, and then there was this Silverlight thingy also) or HTML5.

Also, I have no idea if it is possible to somehow join all those efforts into one project that is funded exclusively by delicious digital cookies...but maybe it is?

[Wonkyth]

Regardless of the cause, moving the release date back is great for me!
It means I might have time to make an attempt at something I consider worthy of seeing the light of day!  

@Kaputtnik: I like what you're talking about!

[ThreeOhFour]

So actually I think what we need is people, not cash. For example, I should appoint a deputy with full server access who can go in and fix it when it breaks. But it needs to be somebody who is very familiar with the server applications and knows how it all works -- because it's so easy for somebody inexperienced to mean well but end up accidentally breaking everything.

I should also appoint a deputy to finish the new website (or open-source it). But the problem with this is that it requires a copy of the DB to be able to work on it, and I would need to spend time taking a DB backup and cleaning it up (eg. removing private data like PM's) before making it public.

I see this hasn't really been addressed by anyone still, and it was our main initiative for setting up the bake sale, so I'd like to discuss this issue.

How hard is it to appoint a deputy? Do we have many people around here that you trust and can do this sort of thing? Calin has mentioned that he may be able to help, so we have one candidate, is there anyone else?

It'd be a great help if we could have someone in this capacity that has more time than Chris and is knowledgeable about such things.

In terms of the website, I know we have plenty of accomplished website coders and designers around these parts. Is anyone willing to take the reigns of this project? Is cleaning up the DB and backing it up an unfeasibly large task for you, Chris? Are you uncomfortable with the notion of deleting everyone's stored Personal Messages?

What about the option of a third party server? The option exists, is this feasible? Are you willing to consider such an option or would you prefer not to? If money is an issue then hopefully we could help out in this capacity.

Now that we have this information, it'd be great to know how we can use it. If there is something we can help out with a little bit of money from a bake sale, then it ought to be suggested to us! If not, let's see if we can find some people to help out!

[Wonkyth]

Well, if it comes to votes for the deputy, mine goes to Calin. He's reliable. 

[ThreeOhFour]

Thank you, Toby, however rather than a community vote I think it'd be best if we respect what Chris wishes to do here.

[Ghost]

Thank you, Toby, however rather than a community vote I think it'd be best if we respect what Chris wishes to do here.

Second that. Let's not rush this; apparently there are options, and as Ben said, we need to understand them a bit better.

[Radiant]

maybe the team of courageous bakers would pay somebody to program an Android Linux / iDevices port of AGS, or rather of the runtime engine. I must admit, I like that idea a lot. Ports for Mac and Linux have been toyed around with on and off during the last couple of years,

I think that's a great idea. I would love for AGS to have solid Linux, Mac and iPhone support.

[ThreeOhFour]

Aye, this would be a great step for AGS.

Our issue, however, is feasibility. There's no set figure on how much this will cost, which I imagine will be a fair amount of money or somebody with the skill would've looked at this already, there's no certainty on how much we will raise from the event we're trying to organize and not all of the people who signed up to the Bake Sale support the idea, which is fair enough - we recruited them with requests to help us raise money for a server initially, not porting the engine.

Still, a Mac port is something that we're very strongly considering - it is important, however, that we look at all of our options and consider how realistic any of them are for this event. I'd love to make games for iPhone/iPad and even gave away source code for some of my games to somebody who was attempting to port them - and as far as I've heard nothing has come of this. I've also shared source code with people who have expressed an interest in doing an Android port and again, nothing has come of it.

This is definitely something to keep in mind for AGS at some point, though, whether from this event or for a later date - I just don't know how feasible it is for us to support such a thing with this particular event.

[Darth Mandarb]

I've been pushin' my agenda over in the bat/cow/goat-cave so I'll mention it here to (though I agree we should wait for Chris to weigh in here);

My thoughts are to make the (admittedly huge) effort to enable AGS to export games to HTML5/javascript.  This would enable the games to be played on ALL platforms (including iOS (iPhone/Pads) and Linux as well) as long as that platform has a modern HTML5 compatible web-browser.

It would be a lot of work, sure, but it would essentially give AGS games to the world

[Wyz]

Well there are plenty of people willing to program and porting the engine but the main issue is not their lack of motivation but the fact there isn't a leader type of guy pushing people and keeping a clear goal. I don't think hiring coders is going to fix this. See this topic for the latest instalment on what the hell we should do.

I think that money is better spent on different things imho.

[markbilly]

The porting idea is a good one. If he weren't such a busy man, Clarvalon would be the perfect choice.

[Ponch]

For everyone that's wondering, I just sent CJ a PM to see if there's any particular cause he supports for the bake sale (since he didn't want our shiny new server  :'(  ).

Hopefully he'll see the Pumaman signal and swing over here.

Until then, the bake sale continues as normal. 

[Ryan Timothy B]

Just out of curiosity; it's probably been addressed already, I just don't feel like rereading this thread again.
If a game is released for this bake sale package, how long will it be until the game can be released for free? Or is it only allowed to be obtained though this bake sale package with a pay-what-you-want fee?

[Ponch]

The thinking is that the game you offer up will be part of the bake sale bundle and squirreled away for a year to give people an incentive to buy the games during the sale and not just wait patiently for a month for the sale to end and then get them for free instead of helping us to raise money.

After the year has passed, we hold a new bake sale for another worthy cause and once the second bake sale is over,  you'll get your old game from the first bake sale back to do what you want with it.

I hope that sounds fair to everyone. 

[Ghost]

That's currently discussed, but we're pretty clear that it would be unfair to customers to make it a quick thing. One idea is to make regular bake sales, and making the "old" bundle free a bit after the "new" one started.

[edit]
Damn you, Ponch, do you ever go offline?