Help summ up AGS pros and cons

Started by Crimson Wizard, Wed 08/07/2015 19:46:22

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Crimson Wizard

#20
Quote from: Dave Gilbert on Wed 29/07/2015 13:53:44
#2 is the biggest issue. And the one that gets us the most complaints. I'm surprised this hasn't been addressed yet.

Because I do not have enough feedback. I am being asked to make this or that change all the time, but some developers talk to me, and others don't, and its hard to understand, which problems affect everyone, and which affect only few games or few players.
I also almost never see the end-user feedback on games themselves, I get only limited parts of it, filtered by game developers.


In general, I think it is safer to assume that AGS will never be fixed. Fixing its core flaws requires a lot of time to plan and design. Some of these would require to just rewrite half of the engine maybe. It all requires time, and not just total summed up time, but a period of time when a person can focus on the task from start to finish without anything else distracting him for several months.
Otherwise, it will be limited to small changes here and there, as we do now.

MiteWiseacreLives!

It would probably be nice if users were sensitive to the fact that there is a very small team of volunteers working on the engine when they make complaints... But not all are going to know this fact. We'd all hate to see AGS fade away into obsolete, but only a limited number are skilled enough to help Crimson.
Dave and WadjetEye set a good example when providing the community help with the IOS port challenge, it would be nice to see those skilled developers who make commercial games support the development of the engine. Just saying, they might have the ability to help takle some of the needed fixes  ;)

P.S. Thanks Crimson Wizard! Thanks for keeping AGS on life support!

Dave Gilbert

Quote from: MiteWiseacreLives! on Wed 29/07/2015 17:24:13
Dave and WadjetEye set a good example when providing the community help with the IOS port challenge,

Just to make it clear, that should be "Janet and WadjetEye." Janet did the whole thing. I just had the strenuous task of tweeting about it.

m0ds

#23
A little bit off topic but seems fitting for my annual donate button question: Perhaps that AGS donate button could finally be put on the front page (and on the forum menu above) so that the AGS developers can earn from their work and requests? I understand "for the love of it" and all that but imagine if Dave, me or any other commercial dev went by that, we'd all be broke and unmotivated ;) I'm sure they, me and us all that enjoy the features, updates and fixes would chip in donations from time to time. There are also a number of other good deeds it could do, like AGS game fund for struggling developers or whatnot.


Monsieur OUXX

We're working on a tool that automatically brings back the player to a given place in the game (that's easy) but with a full console that allows you to enable or disable inventory items and logical quest variables (e.g. HasSpokenToMerchant).
We also have a script language that you can store in external txt files that automates all that so that the player would never have to deal with the script himself/herself.
This, combined with a small wizard meant for the player ("in your saved game, have you spoken to the merhant? Yes/No"), would be a workaround to "recreating" lost game progress after applying a patch.
 

AGA

Quote from: Mods on Thu 30/07/2015 07:19:24
A little bit off topic but seems fitting for my annual donate button question: Perhaps that AGS donate button could finally be put on the front page (and on the forum menu above) so that the AGS developers can earn from their work and requests? I understand "for the love of it" and all that but imagine if Dave, me or any other commercial dev went by that, we'd all be broke and unmotivated ;) I'm sure they, me and us all that enjoy the features, updates and fixes would chip in donations from time to time. There are also a number of other good deeds it could do, like AGS game fund for struggling developers or whatnot.



There is a donate page and has been for years.  It's just not made a fuss about.  If people did donate (and they don't), most of the money would go towards Peder for his hosting the site.  Of course anything left could be spent on the community.

However, how do you apportion money for something like the AGS development, which has a load of different contributors?  Like CW coordinates all the releases, but he of course doesn't do *all* the work.  How the hell do you work out a fair payment plan?

Snarky

Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Thu 30/07/2015 08:52:17
This, combined with a small wizard meant for the player ("in your saved game, have you spoken to the merhant? Yes/No"), would be a workaround to "recreating" lost game progress after applying a patch.

Mmm, that seems unnecessary. If you're storing game state in your own, custom format, you can just ensure that updates/patches are backwards compatible, able to read and restore old savegames.

m0ds

#27
AGA, from what I can see the public link is hidden away in the "community" .co.uk page - it just took me 5 minutes to find it, it's hardly visible so there's no wonder people don't donate in any capacity. I haven't visited the .co.uk page for months, just visit the forums and the games list perhaps - so presumably that donation link is aimed at people who've only just found AGS, why would they donate?! Maybe others still go and read the general "community" page on the .co.uk site frequently, I don't know. Having a donate button link on the forums is the stronger point here.

Generally, you try something to learn what works and doesn't. Fail, progress, etc. Because it's never been tried how am I supposed to know exactly how it would work? I don't. I just think it's worth trying, in some capacity. Perhaps the developers would log how many hours they've put into certain fixes and what not, perhaps once in a while when it reaches a threshold you would just divide it up equally amongst all the contributors. There are certainly methods to explore.

AGS doesn't need to be a business, but it'd be cool to say "Can we have XXX? Here's 1000 dollars from the AGS fund to make it happen." I know some don't/won't accept it, but the offer should be there - our money for your time. It's only fair?

Dave Gilbert

We have offered to pay people to fix problems with AGS before (things that are problems for us specifically, not the community as a whole), and the responses have always been no. It's a hobby for most of the folks here, so we don't hold it against them.

Joseph DiPerla

If I Can make a suggestion regarding donations and assistance... If anyone has ever used http://3drad.com/ , the developer made the software free. However, every suggestion that was ever asked or made would be put in a forum thread. In the topic title he would estimate how much it would cost to achieve such an update and then the end user would contribute X amount of money to the feature of choice.

For example:

A user makes a suggestion such as "Release a Playstation Port". The developer on 3D Rad then estimated that this would cost $1200. So he opened a thread and titled it like so, reflecting the amount of donations received for that feature request: "Playstation Port: Goal $1200 / Total Funding received: $150". Then in the description he would write what the feature was, what work would go into it and how much time he would need to achieve it(Guestimate - could always take longer). The features and engine were always free. But he would provide free beta updates to the engine to anyone who donated about $30.

Now, he didn't just have one feature request on the forum. He had several. A user was allowed to donate money to one or more features. The next feature to hit 100% would then get implemented next. It worked well and had rapid and frequent updates.

In terms of obtaining more assistance and programmers to help out... Try www.fiverr.com - its a great place to find programmers (And actually game artists, musicians and such) to do services for you starting at the cost of one gig: $5. Just a thought.
Joseph DiPerla--- http://www.adventurestockpile.com
Play my Star Wars MMORPG: http://sw-bfs.com
See my Fiverr page for translation and other services: https://www.fiverr.com/josephdiperla
Google Plus Adventure Community: https://plus.google.com/communities/116504865864458899575

Snarky

If the devs don't have the time to implement the features, offering some cash doesn't really help. You can't assume someone is willing to give up their job to live off community donations.

m0ds

#31
Nice example Joey!

AnasAbdin

I know talking about financial stuff is a little bit "not nice" around here. However here are my 2 cents..

Whether we are creating commercial or free AGS games, playing AGS games, or using AGS for any purpose, we are all benefitting from the hard work of professional and respectful programmers whom we are taking their hard work for granted.  Haven't it ever occurred to your minds that those people working on developing AGS never asked for any kind of return? I think we are obliged to support them financially. I am 100% with the idea of paying the developers and even the mods keeping AGS and the AGS forums running. If you want AGS to stay on top of other games engines then you should know that you are dealing with a market.

Stupot

Isn't it time for another Bake Sale?

cat

#34
I think you are missing the point. AGS developers have already stated that they don't want/need money. And I fully understand that. Now it is their hobby. It's great that they do it and spend their free time to work on AGS so people benefit from it. But as soon as they get paid for it, it's not a hobby, it's work. If you get paid for it, you are responsible, you can't just take a hiatus when you feel like and people expect permanent commitment.

AGS is open source. You could actually just do like Dave & Janet Gilbert did: Write some code yourself (or pay an external programmer to do so) and provide the changes and features you made to the community.

If there is money needed for server hosting or something like that, of course I'll donate (Bakesale anyone?), but I don't want to force people to give up their hobby and work for AGS. I don't think "because you can go and update/fix it yourself" is a particularly strong reason myself.

m0ds

#35
Where did they state that? I think it's still pretty open water. I know one of the devs probably wouldn't say no to being paid to fix things. And CW's quote above

Quote
In general, I think it is safer to assume that AGS will never be fixed. Fixing its core flaws requires a lot of time to plan and design. Some of these would require to just rewrite half of the engine maybe. It all requires time, and not just total summed up time, but a period of time when a person can focus on the task from start to finish without anything else distracting him for several months.
Otherwise, it will be limited to small changes here and there, as we do now.

is literally screaming "budget = this could happen". It wouldn't be particularly hard to raise someone 20,000 to take 3 months off to re-write AGS from the ground up (or whatever is needed/necessary, you can't just say it won't work/happen without exploring it!)

I don't think those in support of a more ambitious AGS fund have missed any point, as far as I can tell the resistance is pretty much strengthening it.

If no-one wants to be responsible for AGS, that's a sad time. We know that they do which is great, but not convinced funds harm or distort the levels of responsibility. I can't understand why NOT having a fund is more advantageous than having one. But I'm all for being enlightened on that. I don't think "Because you can fix/update it yourself" is a particularly strong reason myself, and whilst there are certainly flaws with involving funds, you just don't know how bad (or good) it could be until you try.

This goes beyond server and development costs, to the way AGS has a role in a very, very financial industry. Currently only a select bunch of developers take on that financial role. And this is why in the mainstream AGS is perhaps seen as a bit of a "joke" engine. But it could be a very strong, key player, and perhaps organizing a fund to make that happen is good for its longevity, if there is to be one - other than it just being a hobbyist thingamebob. The devs are certainly capable and in its current form fair enough, I CAN understand it as a hobby project and its great that they do. But to assume that's finite is naive, one day, people won't want to work on it just for the love of it, because it won't even run on whatever OS exists then ;)

Radiant

Quote from: Klytos on Wed 29/07/2015 13:21:36
* Support for non-Windows operating systems. Mac and Linux in particular.

This is the biggest deal for me, and the most common request for Heroine's Quest by a long shot.

I can understand people wanting to 'hot switch' screen resolutions, but in practice that's something that annoys a player once, then he sets the setting to what he likes, then he's done with it. But if you want to play an AGS game on Mac and Linux, well you basically can't.

AnasAbdin

With all due respect to every opinion on the board, I will stop discussing whether the developers of AGS should be paid or not. I will only think of ideas about the process of payment.

- Assigning a 'pot' where everyone may add funds to.
- We as AGSers should vote on who should be on charge of the pot.
- The amount of money and transactions must always be visible all the time. I also encourage an option to show who adds funds.
- We should consider the programmers' payment methods (flexible between: task oriented, man hours... etc)

Now some people may not agree with the following, but in order for AGS to survive the current market:

- Porting Andriod or iOS AGS games must require an account with a reasonable fee to be placed in the pot.

I hope no one misunderstands this, AGS will remain free for all with all its functionality except for some porting options. There will still be tons of freeware. AGS would only be faster developed and updated. Porting to multiple platforms only requires a paid account to ensure the seriousness of the developers intentions towards the AGS engine.

Dave Gilbert

Quote from: Mods on Fri 31/07/2015 13:35:50
is literally screaming "budget = this could happen". It wouldn't be particularly hard to raise someone 20,000 to take 3 months off to re-write AGS from the ground up (or whatever is needed/necessary, you can't just say it won't work/happen without exploring it!)

Like I said, we've offered this and more to fix the problems with AGS and nobody is biting. At least, within the community. We've approached engineers from outside the AGS community, and it costs a heck of a lot more and the time frame is much longer than "a few months." You'd basically be asking someone to dive into a code structure that's over a decade and a half old (which uses lots of outdated libraries), figure out how it all works, parse the problems with it, and completely change how the engine works without breaking anything. It's no small task.

That said, I'm sure there's an answer that we haven't thought of. We haven't pursued it as aggressively as we could have because this is more Janet's area of expertise and she's been very ill this year. Otherwise we'd be more on top of it.

Snarky

Quote from: Mods on Fri 31/07/2015 13:35:50
Where did they state that? I think it's still pretty open water. I know one of the devs probably wouldn't say no to being paid to fix things. And CW's quote above

Quote
In general, I think it is safer to assume that AGS will never be fixed. Fixing its core flaws requires a lot of time to plan and design. Some of these would require to just rewrite half of the engine maybe. It all requires time, and not just total summed up time, but a period of time when a person can focus on the task from start to finish without anything else distracting him for several months.
Otherwise, it will be limited to small changes here and there, as we do now.

is literally screaming "budget = this could happen". It wouldn't be particularly hard to raise someone 20,000 to take 3 months off to re-write AGS from the ground up (or whatever is needed/necessary, you can't just say it won't work/happen without exploring it!)

Crimson Wizard in particular explicitly said no to being paid here: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=50121.msg636483480#msg636483480

Of course, if there's a developer who's familiar with the AGS codebase, who has some ideas for things to fix, who is a proven coder we can trust, and who would be willing to devote their full-time efforts to it for a few months, then sure, it's worth giving it a go. I'm not sure it would actually be that easy to raise 20,000 (GBP? USD? EUR?), but if someone wants to have a go at it, nobody's stopping you.

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