Sorry your browser is not supported!

You're never going to see support for 64bit Data Types and Processors.
Why?

Well, I've gone over this before in other threads... but the basic gist is that AppGameKit was developed primarily for Mobile Application (Game) Development., and to ensure the widest compatibility with Hardware (at time of release), well they needed to put strict restrictions on what was supported.
This is fine, except; TGC has never raised these restrictions to keep pace with advancements in Technology in the 8-9 Years since the original release.

And here's the thing... I don't understand why.
I mean sure, I get the idea of having the Widest Compatibility Support; but why not simply have a Function that allows the AppGameKit Developer to check what Platform they're on and Enable / Disable Features for their Application based upon that; rather than simply limiting EVERYONE.
Why not have an automatic check to see if 64bit is Supported... why not have an automatic check for Additional CPU Cores, to see if you can have Threading.

This is the point in a Middleware Engine, to abstract the more complex / involved development concepts to allow the Developer to focus on the specifics of their project rather than under-the-hood mechanics just to get it work.

You mean Tier2 right?
If Tier1 then this could potentially open quite a few doors.


Btw: pretty much agree with most of what's been said in this thread.

Please don't forget that this isn't a plain feature requests thread but for the features that were asked for a lot but got lost at some point.

Why not? The only real hurdle is that TGC has a 17-year track record of not being committed to any project and can abandon or shelf something at a moment's notice. If they can turn that around then people would have far less problem ponying up cash for new major versions or paying a modest subscription price for updates. They have great products, talented developers, and they have small but solid, knowledgeable, core communities for most of their products.

IMO, as a marketing person, TGC would do very well by taking the above features, building them into AppGameKit Classic, and selling it as AGK3. Offer free minor updates (v3.01, v3.30, etc) and then when they have another major release ready, sell it as v4. No changing names (MAX, Studio, etc) and no pigeonholing themselves by naming v2 "Professional".

- continued revenue
- a cohesive, grown community
- a brand that fans could confidently evangelize because they know it's good and they know it will be there tomorrow.

We also have to know, what AppGameKit Studio is able to do.
e.g.

And I really love to have still my OUYA Android 4.1 support.

When we are talking about a 1 time fee of any amount for the next version, let's not forget though Rick admitted in 2019 TGC can no longer sustain the current business model of getting paid only a one time fee and provide free updates for years. Lee also admitted GameGuru makes no profit from store sales yet currently it is getting more love from the devs which is indicate AppGameKit makes even less money and makes no profit either. TGC sustain itself from contract jobs and the only reason AppGameKit and GG is continued to develop because this is the tools they are using to complete the jobs. But it doesn't mean we are going to get the latest forever, when Lee did begin to work on FPSC:Reloaded he admitted TGC did have an internal version of DBP with number of improvements never released to the public and this is what he was using to code FPSC:Reloaded. The same thing could easily happen to AppGameKit as well, if something cost too much money to implement but necessary to complete a contract job, TGC going to think twice to share it for free with us and probably they will not and I won't blame them.

Personally I would not pay $100 one time fee for getting few more features only especially not $40 as a pre-order discount of some sort as it is proven over the years it is not taking far the project because new features also need to be maintained, the more features you implement, the more work TGC need to do to maintain the project. A one time fee can not possibly cover a growing set of features to maintain. In case it is uncertain how much income you have next month, it is hard to make long term plans and take on ambitious new features to maintain for years to come. This is where a subscription model could help, one I have described earlier which is once you stop paying the subscription you still get to keep the last version forever you only stop getting updates. If you need an update badly you can subscribe again, get the update and then unsubscribe and continue use the version you have forever. Personally I can't see anything wrong with this. I can understand $100 is a lot of money for some people to solve this we could have tiers maybe? Say $20/year for core bug fixes $50/year for all the latest features and updates or similar?

Also when we are talking about scrapping Studio and visual editors and go back to Classic and focus on a pure coding tool, I am not against it I do enjoy coding but I do not enjoy reinventing the wheel and code levels or editors from scratch or to mess with any half finished tool shared by the community and abandoned after few months. In case TGC really don't have the resources to develop a visual editor and have no intention to compete with Godot, GameMaker not to mention the rockstar Unity, I can totally accept that but many people still need some sort of visual aid, coding you own editors is crazy, fun but crazy and also not a good investment of your time unless you need a very unique editor for your project or game engine.

So if the next version of AppGameKit is dropping the visual editors then we need better support for 3rd party editors like Tiled, maybe even team up with the developer of Tiled. Again a subscription model could help with this and Tiled support could actually be a feature available to subscribers only. And GameGuru as a 3D level editor but it is need to be more light weight and it could even be included with the subscription. Could even have a version of GG that does not include the game engine and assets but only the editor with the ability to export to AGK. I would love that. If not GameGuru then better support for Blender.

So in short, in case AppGameKit next version is going back to be a pure coding tool and visual editing functionality get no attention I would love to see:

Tiled suppor for 2D level editing
GameGuru support for 3D level editing and possibly a light weight version of GG not including the game engine and assets or...
Blender support for 3D level editing.

Anyhow, I also really would like to know what exactly TGC need to keep AppGameKit going long term and provide the features we need. I truly believe it is a subscription model of some sort.

If it takes them years for each major version release, that's a bigger problem than anything discussed here.





No one said anything about scrapping the visual editor. If anything, we have requested more of them (ex: 3D editor).



Agreed, if they can provide regular updates and be transparent about the road map. Unfortunately, there is no history to support that.

it is true but I think it is maybe the result of the low budget. If there was a subscription model it could possibly help with this. it is like the chicken and the egg, no money -> no updates -> no money.
But yes I agree in order a subscription model to work we need frequent updates and transparent roadmap what is coming in 3 months and what is the plan for the next 12 months but it is difficult when you have no stable source of funds.


If my memory serve me well, Rick did mention when Studio was announced the level editor in Studio is only a trial to see how popular it may be and by popular I think what they really wanted to know how many new members coming because of the level editor and how many old user actually find it useful.
I am uncertain how well it worked. it did not received any further updates and personally I don't like the level editor and even though I was one of the biggest supporter, I never used the level editor. I tried to port some of my old classic projects over taking advantage of the editor but didn't like the workflow really. So maybe no one said anything but the chance TGC decide the scrap it or provide no further updates for the editor is not 0 in my opinion. It would be not the first time they tried something new and then they dropped it.

Anyway, after the confirmation Rick is reading this topic and going to post an official response to what was talked about here I figured I throw in some extra thoughts and see if his got anything to say about it. If we get to keep the editors great, if we don't I am also ok with that provided we get support for Tiled and I am also ok with subscription model as long we get frequent updates and transparent roadmap and the features we need. Of course everyone need something else and it is difficult to satisfy everyone, curious what the decision will be.

I used to think that TCG needed to develop a 3D level editor, but my thoughts have changed. There are 3D editors out there that, with some perseverance, do work with AGK. One that has worked well for me is Evolved's Map Scape 2. It only exports to DBO, so you need to use Ultimate Unwrap 3D to convert to DAE for AGK. Maybe TGC could partner with Evolved like they did with Leadwerks for 3D World Studio and Cartography Shop many years ago. I was looking for a 3D level editor for a long time until I stumbled upon Map Scape. I am very happy it exists, and I think lots of people would be happy with it too if they knew about it.

I tried using GameGuru and GGLoader for 3D level editing and found it so obtrusive with the amount of code it dumped into my project to work.

I'd rather see more power added to the language than any visual editors. Any attempt at a visual editor will come out as a half-baked toy -- fun to mess around with on an afternoon but not viable for anything serious. People buy AppGameKit because they like coding, so develop the language out. If people want a visual editor, there are other software suites that are lightyears ahead in that department.

Then another Feature Completion thing we can add is:

Give users - new and existing - an intuitive way to find the current Scene Editor or add some in-editor way to know it exists. Yes, it is mentioned in the User Manual. However, that only makes it possible for people to find out it exists, not probable that they ever will.

Like I have said in another thread, a large part of the problem could be solved by involving a QA Manager/Community Manager/Producer type of person in their process, and actually listening to that person.

Someone with the following tasks:
- Close down stupid requests (ie "Please implement a CreateCompleteGame() command")
- Close/merge duplicate issues
- Organize and prioritize the issues into monthly milestones for the devs to concentrate on.
- Dress a roadmap for the future of the software, and keep the community updated.
- Get in touch with users that report bugs in order to help them isolate clear repro steps and conditions.
- Get the pulse of the community from the forums, and propose the implementation of new features.
- Standardize the labels, and format for the bugbase so that it actually is useable.

Right now they're not listening to the users because the feedback either comes in 1) Looooooong forum threads written in approximate english where 90% of the posts are just people venting out their frustrations. Or 2) a messy bugbase oversaturated with unprioritized issue reports that lack the most basic information to process properly.

In either case, it's not fun for anybody to sift through and it's understandable that they ignore everything that is not a straight-up showstopper issue.

I've worked for over 15 years in the AAA industry as manager/producer for some of the biggest names (I'm in Montreal.. every other building is a freakin' game studio) and I can tell you from experience that you DO NOT EVER, EVER, EVER (EVER) put a programmer in charge of a project. That is the best way to make sure there will never be any significant progress made and piles upon piles of code will go to waste for pointless pet projects and features that nobody needs, nobody asked for, and nobody will ever use.

Once something like that is in place, then it's time to separate AppGameKit in two branches: a one-time-fee hobby version, and a subscription-based professional version. That will get the revenue stream going and make it possible to develop the software further. But until they get their shit together, no amount of forum venting is going to change how they work.

My personal prediction is that it's never going to change. I've been there before with DarkBasic, with DarkBasic Pro, with Blitz Basic... Blitz3D... Blitz+ etc etc etc. These software are made by small teams of dreamers that wouldn't be able to sell a glass of water to a man dying of thirst. They get super passionate about something for a short while and make some decent money at first. Then the revenue stream dies because the model is unsustainable. So they start all over again. New software. Big dreams. Big promises. New sales, new money. It dies again. It goes back to square one.

I'm all for a yearly subscription model whereby if you don't subscribe then you stay on the version you already have.

I like AppGameKit Studio but I wish they'd focus more on getting the current features fully implemented first before adding new stuff just for a burst in sales.

Would love to see a native compiler but definitely keep the current method for super fast testing throughout development.

n00bstar makes some very good points

I like they way you "get" your software.

It is possible for kids to get AppGameKit 2. They support the Raspberry Pi and it is possible to create games in this state.
I like that they don't force us into royalties or monthly payment.

I dropped out of Adobe products because of that. Adobe tried between 2010 and 2012 to not only have major updates, but also half major updates.
It was like 500 to 700,- something nearly every year, but for nearly all there products like Photoshop, Audio Creation, Flash Animation and Flash Programming, Video editing and also video effects.
But Adobe also had the same problem, to get more customers they would need to get more people on board. But at this moment also other tools would be enough for hobbyists.

Some big 3D programs like Maya, 3D Studio Max, Cinema4D, AudoCAD could get into the same problem. Old programs are good enough or free programs get in the range.

We see that also with DAWs (digital audio workstation)

The next problem, we ran into is, that it seems to make more sence talking about making video games or playing video games, than making video games.
I also see, that the education market is hard. When I was at school we used Turbo Pascal, not long after that the schools went to Java, because it was free.
And since Java and C# have some similarities, I see, that is could be hard to fight against some of the major "languages".

I would say for the industry C and C++ are still old products run at. But for new projects it is C#, Java or TypeScript. These are more web-oriented languages.

I love BASIC. It is easy to understand and everybody could have a lerning success with AppGameKit in half a day. Without the need of installing tens of gigabytes for some IDE.
We need no Visual Studio, not NetBeans no Eclipse, no Flash Builder. And you can export to your Android phone without Android Studio or SDKs and NDKs.
You don't need to login every few days or even everytime the software starts.

I don't know any other software solution, that gives you that fast a success when you are a starter.

But I see also some problems. When it is so beginner friendly, why don't we show that where the beginners are?
There are youtube channels like "Brackeys" for Unity. Or "CodingTrain" for some subset of JavaScript, I guess (p5) and even C++ with "Javidx9".

These are languages that have no entry cost. But you get the feeling, they are supported.

App Game Kit e.g. can do realy easy integrate video into our apps. That is not possible with Game Maker Studio.
You can code in App Game Kit style on your tablet and try out your ideas, that is not possible with Unreal Engine.

And the AppGameKit engine is great. It could have some features, but for "only" GAMES it could do the job.
Yeah, I wish also things for years like:

Better support for Spriter / Spine, DragonBones and Skeleton2D in general, but if you are a beginner, you could also use Spritesheets or make your own animations with the free version of Spriter
It is not enough for a professional studio, but they may use Unity or Unreal or some C++ selfmade thing.

It would be nice to see BASIS Universal Texture Compression with its transcoder. So I could load more into the game on low-end devices.
But is there a market or do gamers on low-spec devices play these simple visual casual games with only JPEG or PNG graphics?

What about Module-Music playback support? I see, that the support for Android is not easy. Some devices only support 0.5 to 2.0 factor in sound pitching.
And why not using OGG? For a small game you could get 20 min. of music into 20 MB, quality may vary. That are maybe 10 songs. Most of these casual games only have about 3 or less and some sound effects.

And if we want to create a AAA game with App Game Kit, we would need more people to use App Game Kit in the first place or would have to pay the people who support such projects.
That would mean that visualy more impressive Indie titles also made with more then one person over years and that these people also would cost money.

Unity and Unreal are the engines they teach in gaming academies. But they also teach Maya and not Blender. So they are more on the industrial side of things.
Epic (Unreal Engine maker) also tries to get a step into automotive, movie and other industries. They all try to expand and somehow have to get customers.
Even CD Projekt RED with there GOG Store could not get it into a sustainable business.

And from what I read, games made from some community members on Steam are also having a hard time.
That means, beside the engine, to make the game profitable there are still other factors and it is not easy for anyone to get the playerbase.

Gaming in general slides into a subscription model with Google Stadia and XBox GamePass. Nintendo are somehow like TGC. They try to find a balance between customer satisfaction and not ripping them off to much.

I see the potential of App Game Kit. I also see that it is not an easy task to support all needs we may have.

So yeah, what I want is, to see AppGameKit compete with Unity, but in other ways. Maybe they need something more like the Godot aproche with funding or like Blender.
But that could also mean, that they have Open Source more? And that could be a competition they don't want.

The biggest value TGC has in my opion is the compiler. And I am glad, that we can use it without royalties and nearly no restrictions.

I guess, if we make a game with Tier 1 Basic, it is possible to make the compiler also the way that it produces other binaries like one that would run on an ARM based Nintendo Switch.

But I also see, that it might not be easy to do for 5 users alone. And it would be complecated with Nintendos NDAs to talk about such things.

So we have the OUYA console and it works. So TGC also has to make sure, they support 9 year old ARM hardware and todays hardware. I guess, it is very easy to brake something.
I also see potential if Apple and Microsoft turn away from x86 / x64 to ARM7 / ARM8 that TGC already prof that they have a compiler that could run on ARM and generates ARM binaries.

that is impressive. And I am glad, that we can use that compiler. And I want to support that company, because it is one of a few that don't do shady things out of profit greed.

I was talking about Tier2: https://github.com/TheGameCreators/AGKTier2
But they can still grab the code and implement it into Tier1.
The thing is if they don't have much time for AppGameKit features then we need to make it as easy to them as possible.

Also i am impressed with the participation in this thread but Im not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing tho

Excellent post, Xaby. Looking at the strong points of AppGameKit is a big part of deciding which features to focus on completing first.

To go open-source is something I did mentioned over the GameGuru forum couple years ago but Lee quickly tuned me down saying a company that develop software can not possibly profit from open-source.
Since Lee decided to go with an open-source engine at least and wondering what Rick and others think about it now a couple years later.

Regarding going open-source this is what I am suggesting:

Have a completely free and open-source community version of AppGameKit that welcome free contributions from the community and free to use by anyone for free and commercial purposes. And have a commercial, closed-source paid version that build on top of this free open-source version and take advantage of the free community contributions and expand on it with licensed features. This raises a few questions of course.


1. What are the advantages of open-source, why would anyone contribute with free code?
The obvious advantage would be more frequent updates and the core product would essentially be maintained by free contributors taking the workload and financial weight off from TGC. it would be a free product just like MonoGame, Cocos2D and Godot
The community could possibly bring most of the features many of us waiting for and maintain it for us and let TGC focus on other areas.
People love free it would definitely help with popularity regardless how many free options are out there. For example Youtubers would immediately consider using it to create coding and game making tutorials which alone should help to boost the community and it would be a huge news going free and open-source that could make some noise in the news.
People love open-source with a free license so they can do whatever they want, enthusiast would immediately jump on it start tweaking it for fun and eventually push their modifications to the source and share it with others. A free license would help with contributions. I know TGC already tried similar but with a restrictive license. A permissive license that allow people to do whatever they want with it and use it for commercial purposes for free immediacy boost the number of people interested to look at and tweak the source and eventually share their modifications.


2. How TGC can make profit from this and why would anyone use the paid version instead of the free open-source one?
One way would be revenue share. Similar to Unreal, it is free and open-source you are free to use it for any purposes but over certain amount of profit you must pay revenue share
Open-source is not an answer to everything, really advanced features that also require maintenance and licenses often can not possibly come from free contributors but full time paid developers. So while the open-source community taking care of implementing free staff and maintain the core and smaller features, TGC could offer really valuable addition in the paid version that may even require license 3rd party technologies and API's for example publish to game consoles, destructible environment, planetary scale terrain, target VR/AR devices, Metal support that would open up the possibility to target even tvOS and there are rumours Apple actually working on an AR glasses that definitely going to be powered by Metal and going to be awesome.
Staff like this and more that require licenses and full time paid developers could be offered in a paid version built on top of the free open-source one taking advantage of the free contributions.
The paid version can still require a subscription. So there would be a free version and a paid version require subscription. The free version could even require royalty the paid version would not require royalty.

I know most people dislike the idea of royalty and subscription but I look at this from the point of view a small company trying to stay above the water and deliver something awesome but awesome always require money.

3. So what would stop anyone from adding a paid feature to the free open-source version? Should TGC decline such contributions?
As I mentioned in point 2, things require a full time paid developer and licenses can not possibly come from free contribution, even if someone attempt to implement a free version of something it is can not possibly as good as something developed by paid developers in full time. Even if someone so crazy to contribute a really valuable and quality staff for free, often there is nobody to maintain it for free, it is require paid developers even in open-source projects to maintain certain parts.

4. How could a free open-source AppGameKit compete with MonoGame, Cocos2D, Godot and a Paid AppGameKit compete with GameMaker, Unity and Unreal?

Godot is considered the king in the world of open-source, people often call it the Unity killer. While it has very good points, the fact is, it is a piece of garbage and here is why:
Horrible performance, even the developers admit in the docs, if you need performance, sorry you are out of luck. With only 50 colliding objects I get 2 FPS in Godot while AppGameKit runs at stable 30FPS with 500.
Very difficult to build for mobile, often you get runtime errors and crashes.
HTML5 support is not much better, often get runtime errors.
macOS support also not the best, often get runtime errors and crashes.
The only real platforms Godot can reliably target is Windows and Linux. I know people was not able to publish their games after finishing in Godot and had no choice but they moved on to Unity because of build and runtime errors.
The code editor and debugger is a joke, very basic I often find my self using VS Code instead.
I prefer AppGameKit Tier1 any day over GDScript.
Require 3rd party SDK's and API's to target anything other than desktop.
Many feature remain broken because it is coming from free contribution and it is not a priority. For example the 2D pathfinding feature has a problem where it does not take in to account the size of the object certain cases. I've been waiting for 3 years someone to fix it and nobody, it is kept pushed for next release on GitHub because it is considered not a priority and nobody care to fix it for 3 years now.

MonoGame and Cocos2D still a very popular option and pretty good choice but
it is require 3rd party SDK's API's
you get tons of build and runtime errors especially with Cocos2D, it is a real pain for someone looking for an easy solution.
3D is very complicated you essentially need to make your own 3D engine with very little help from MonoGame.

Phaser and similar Web engines is awesome but
Require 3rd party SDK to target any platform other than Web which brings it very own set of problems ranges from runtime errors, crashes, performance problems, input and compatibility errors to no limit really, anything can and will break on mobile and desktop.
This fact alone make me never use them if I want to target desktop or mobile.

Unity is the king
Extremely bloated
Often break features with each and every update they release. With each release you need to go and change things in your code. This is why many developers forced to stay on a certain version and attempt to upgrade later after release maybe or they upgrade for their next game only but stick with the current version if they have a dead line.
Require 3rd party SDK's and API's, lot of disk space

Unreal is the queen?
Extremely bloated like if you think Unity is bloated, it is killer even compared to Unity.
Lots and lots of buttons and sliders and options to tweak to get even simple things working that would be only a few line of code in AGK
Primarily 3D, very limited 2D
Require 3rd party SDK's and API's
Extremely slow build time just to open a scene, depends on how much detail you have can take minutes to compile the shaders.
Require huge amount of space.

GameMaker Studio is awesome there is not a lot of disadvantages apart from the price. It is the most expensive option out there but in my opinion also one of the best
HTML5 support is horrible, completely useless, I am seriously consider the HTML5 version a scam.
No real 3D support, can do 3D but very complicated you need to be familiar with matrices which is not easy.
The compiler is horrible, you often get bugs that is caused by the compiler but you figure this out only after spent hours debugging your code and then you have no choice but find a way the compiler is happy with.

Compared to all this AppGameKit Studio with Tier1 is a dream but it does lack some very important features especially the editor compared to other options including very slow development and lack of roadmap and you just can not compete against free and open-source if somebody looking for a free option with no strings attached. In my opinion if AppGameKit was going free and open-source with a paid option offer frequent updates and a more transparent roadmap, it could have a very good chance to compete against all the above engines that currently dominate the market among Indy and hobby users. it is of course if TGC have the resources right now to implement at lest 1 or 2 paid features that really worth the money to upgrade from the free plan to paid.

LOL. I understand but there's not much of a difference between the two. People are going to take that soapbox opportunity if they can.



I think the participation shows there are a lot of people that love AppGameKit but are concerned about it's future. We have not been shown a roadmap, so we all have our own hopeful vision of what the software should become. When the official AppGameKit news every month from TGC is just "hey this DLC is on sale!", it makes me concerned if there is any development going on, or any future at all.

Bit from column A, bit from column B It's good because it shows that the user base likes the product and wants to actively participate in the future of the software. It's bad because it outlines the absolute lack of faith most users have in the development team.


It's pretty much dead already. When you're putting your product on 80% off sale every three weeks for whatever reason (St-Valentine Sale!!!!!! National Peanut Butter Day Sale!!!!! etc) it pretty much shows that you're in cash-grab territory. If they would at least try to make deals with content providers in order to create good and useful resource packs, that would be something....but they're just selling the same old (very crappy) DLC packs they were selling back five years ago. As someone pointed out already, it's a circular problem. No new content > No new sales. No new sales > No money for new content. And since they obviously lost their passion for this project, nobody is willing to put in some free time to dig themselves out of this hole.

Here are my points
1. Bug fixes
2. Built in support for 2D lighting
3. Built in support for asset encryption
4. Support of VS Code

I could pay a subscription only for official personilized support (i.e.: features on demand, publishing on various platforms for Tier 2, support for development of online games)

Gear down big truck. Even if you paid 200$ per month, that would mean that you expect a team of five developers to do custom work just for you for 480$ a year (200 * 12 / 5). You might want to rethink your expectations there.

Maybe: All subscribers can vote once in a predefined period in order to request features or change the development roadmap.
Features can be added to a list, or voted for. The most popular entries will be done first.

This sounds fair, democratic and balanced and may result in the perfect product.

Priority support for subscription is also something TGC could offer.
Basically what it means if a subscriber request a bug fix, it is get priority over other things and if a subscriber report a problem, something does not work as expected, the report get some level of priority and looked at by devs and get a reply within 24 hours or something. it may require to introduce some sort of support ticket system. There could be a limit of course, how many reports/request you have each month. Maybe 1-2 only.


I also like the idea of subscribers can vote for features. If it was a monthly subscription, each month subscribers get a point we can spend to vote on a feature so in case we unsubscribe we have no points to vote next month. If a subscriber don't vote one month get to keep his point and next month have 2 points to spend. 12 points total in a year. The features with the higher points/votes get priority on the roadmap when TGC decide what to develop next....

I am not talking for custom work or requests such as "please make my game". I am talking about solutions to specific topics. A subscription model can't be supported by only five developers. But I think this is out of topic.

Yeah this is going nowhere. You guys have literally no idea what it costs to run a company, big or small. I spoke my piece, I'm out of this conversation G'day!

Maybe we don't but personally I do have some idea how a good customer support can benefit a business. For example I am with the same web hosting company for 8 years because every single time I open a ticket I get super customer service.
Even if my web host do actually lose money on me every single time I open a ticket because the salary of the engineer who assist me cost more than my monthly bill, still because of this super customer service I get every time I have a problem, I am a customer of this web host for 8 years now so they certainly made enough profit on me in 8 years to cover that few times I needed to fill in a support ticket and ask for help from an engineer in the past 8 years. So even though I have no idea how to run a business, it seems to me sometime it is okay and necessary to lose money short term to satisfy customers and make them continue paying for the services you offer long term.

An other example Sony did actually lose money on the PS3's at the beginning to keep the cost low and sell more units and they made their profit on the licenses studios had to pay and they did pay because Sony did sell a lot of PS3 thanks to the low price which meant lot of potential customers to the studios.
Sometime business is not as simple and linear as 1,2,3.

I believe with my web host you can open only 1 ticket at the time and only 1 every 24 hours. So if you opened a ticked you can not open an other one before the first one is closed and 24 hour passed since you closed the last ticket. This is why I mentioned it may be necessary to introduce some sort of support ticket system for providing priority support.
A rule to ask for help on the forum first and open a ticket only if you get no help on the forum could also be introduced to reduce the number of noob questions people may submit to support.
An admin could actually supervise this and provide people with tickets as needed if the admin find it reasonable to submit a ticket.
Finally priority support doesn't have to be automatically granted but can only be a promise if you are a subscriber and it is really important TGC make it their priority. It could be considered important if the bug prevent a subscriber from being able to publish the project or to developed further because the bug create a road block of some sort.

Since AppGameKit Studio itself seems to use imGUI, it could be not to complecated to integrate that also as Tier 1 Basic commands.
Don't know how much backwards compatibility problems that might have.

It is also interesting how they get there sponsors, even if the software is completly free.
I guess, the big companies also realized that it is to expensive to have some things inhouse and it is cheaper to sponsor some OpenSource project.



The other things is Texture Compression. That could have a compression ratio of ~ 8:1


We don't need to do that like with ASTC and split our content. We could use BASIS, that contains a texture format that can be transcoded on the fly in the device.


https://opensource.googleblog.com/2019/05/google-and-binomial-partner-to-open.html




So that could be an alternative to having skeleton2D animations, if we need to make SpriteSheets. That would allow multiple "video"-like animations on the screeen.

I am thinking about hidden-object-games. App Game Kit would fit very well into a software for hidden-object-games. Or single-screen games.

And with imGUI and texture compression or / and Skeleton2D mesh deformation support
It also could be used for things like platformers and brawlers, that are visualy more impressive than standard Indie-Pixel-titles

It would be possible for us to create games in combination with other artists. Making games alone is hard. And figuring out why something doesn't work, is often even harder.
With some of these features AppGameKit Studio could also be used as a simple tool to deliver web-animations or web advertisement.

Small filesizes are key for fast loading times.

I see the "problem" with AppGameKit and GameGuru and why we also feel that GameGuru Max gets more support.
If we are looking at these voting numbers, I guess, we have a much bigger userbase for GameGuru and interest in creating First Person Shooters like Call of Duty or such as in doing programming in code.
https://www.game-guru.com/feature-vote/results

I almost completely agree... although rather than a "One-Time" (Perpetual License) approach for Hobbyists., I'd instead suggest a 3 Tier Subscription Model with the lowest being Free-to-All.
Remember a key element isn't just generating a revenue stream., but building a sustainable ecosystem... which for as predatory as the Free-to-Play (Freemium) Model is., it does do one thing exceptionally well.

It has a bigger Reach to Potential Customers / Consumers... as in general terms as you will only see a 5 - 12% Adoption Rate Vs. Potential Customers., then you want to have a large potential market.
Freemium works well to encourage this, because there is Zero Risk for the Potential Customer; they can try something to see if they like it, and during that period it's down to the Software to get them invested enough to then invest in the Software.

Of course this doesn't work in a vacuum... you actually need people to KNOW the Product Exists in the first place.
While AppGameKit might be geared towards Mobile Application Development., this frankly is detrimental outside of those who might want to adopt it for Rapid Mobile App Development Purposes; which is the most likely to actually drive conversion from Free to Subscriber.
Yet that IS NOT the audience you want to actually target in order to get people Hyped about said Product.

Why?
Simple... it's an oversaturated market. EVERYONE has some form of Middleware for Mobile Development... and as it stands AppGameKit doesn't really stand out except for the fact that AppGameKit Script is based on BASIC., which today is a unique feature and lowers the barrier to entry over Java or C++
Even still that stand-out feature isn't overly important to most Independent Mobile Developers., in-fact most will likely want to use the Java Applet or C++ SDK instead.

I'd argue that right now, what would be better would be to appeal to Console Gamers.
Reason for this is simple... Indie Development for the Switch, PlayStation and Xbox is exceptionally appealing; but as it stands; for Unity or Unreal (which are your only real options outside of a Custom C++ Engine), you already need a Platform License and then they charge additional for access just to even attempt.
Where-as., right now... I could start a project and get it running on my Xbox One or Series in < 30 minutes in Visual Studio.

If there was an option that was friendlier to those who didn't know how to program or write game engines., well I'd wager there'd be a lot more people interested.
Same is true in regards to the Switch, which is RAPIDLY growing in popularity for 3rd Party Developers; and it is an excellent piece of Hardware.
Getting a License for it, unlike classic Nintendo Systems isn't that difficult; but in order to Develop on it., you NEED a Development System which is a bit pricey.

The AppGameKit Player gets around something like that... which would make it excellent for supporting all of the Consoles.
I see the Switch being the most complicated to add support for all of it's Functionality and Features (Touchscreen, Motion Controllers, High-Def Rumble, etc.) but I'd imagine it wouldn't take more than a Month to get the AppGameKit Players ready; with maybe 3 - 6 months to sort out deals with each Console Manufacturer to have AppGameKit Native Build Runtimes and Export to Publish via their Stores.

And heck consider for a moment that the AppGameKit Player itself COULD easily come with a built-in version of AppGameKit Script., as all of the Consoles have support for a Keyboard and Mouse; either Physical or Virtual.
This would also be a great way to introduce an "Asset" Store., mainly as Console AppGameKit Developers will want an easy way to access Assets; but also such a Store would be useful for all Platforms and potentially driven a number of Asset Creators to the Community.

But long-term I'd strongly suggest working with 3rd Parties (like Blender Foundation, Adobe, Autodesk, etc.) to see about creating Custom Apps that are integrated into the AppGameKit Player to create Assets on the Console without the need for a PC.
Again these would be excellent for the Desktop App as well., and frankly this would allow AppGameKit Studio to live up to it's name of being a STUDIO if there were built-in tools to create everything within it.

This as a note is where the Subscription Model comes into play.
As there should be 3 Versions...

Hobbyist (£Free) • Now unlike a Trial Version., this has no real limitations per se... beyond the ability to ONLY run your Applications in the AppGameKit Player (no SDK included)
Standard (£7.49 / Mo) • This allows the output of Runtimes to their Native Platforms... Comes with the SDK for C++ / Java... Expansions (Plug-ins) are an Additional Subscription Cost.
Studio (£29.99 / Mo) • This is Standard., plus access to the TGC Expansions (this could be a default suite of tools to provide a "Full" Development Studio) as well as Team Tools to allow Teams to work on the same project., includes 3 Seats.

Extra Seat should cost extra to the Subscription., and should be available in 1 / 5 / 25 / Site Denominations; with there being an incentive of being cheaper to get the larger package over multiple smaller packages.

I'd say initially the best option is to just have the initial 2 Offerings (Hobbyist and Standard) then expand with Studio as an option., if / when you can get the necessary 3rd Party Tools added (2D, 3D, Sound, Music, Sculpting, Substance Materials)
As noted., it would make sense to essentially talk to Adobe, Autodesk, Pixologic, Blender Foundation and such... in order to see if they can't produce specialised versions of their Products for such Features.
In many ways they can be heavily cut-down., as there's various features that wouldn't really be needed for Game Development; Compatible 3rd Party App I/O would also not really be needed; only the Formats used by AppGameKit and even then those could literally be Custom Formats (akin to DBO in DBP).

If you had a similar approach to Xbox Game Pass., where a share of said Subscription (or portion of it anyway) was then distributed to each Contributor based upon Usage Time., well that would likely be something they'd be interested in.
Especially if where "New" Studio Premiered was on the Consoles where Developers essentially have no choice... and given the suggestion of adding an Asset Store with Integration within AGK., thus the Creators would heavily be using said Tools (and thus either have a Studio License, or the more expensive Standard + Subscription for the Individual Components).

•

While of course you'd have some from the community being more than willing to support you Financially with such a transition., I think what would be a "Nice" Touch would to be grant a certain amount of "Free" Months Subscription to Standard for those who already own AppGameKit v1, v2 or Studio.
Say., 6 months... then they have the choice to setup a Subscription Renewal or switch to Hobbyist.

( Note: the suggest prices above aren't arbitrary )

At the same time as all of this., as soon as the AppGameKit Players for Consoles are ready... I'd heavily suggest Commissioning some of the Community / YouTubers to work with the Console Versions to showcase Development of small Games; perhaps even a Tutorial Series.
Not to mention working with said Creators *specifically* to find out what features need some immediate attention to make the Development Process easier, smoother and more 'featured' for the needs of said Creators (and thus make the product better before it's launched on the Consoles).

While the Switch and PlayStation unfortunately do not have "Pre-Release" Options., for Xbox One and Series... you can actually grant access and visibility to Products that you list as "Beta", as such I think this would be the best approach and would likely be the easiest to port to anyway.
What's more is I know that if you talked to Microsoft (ID@XBOX) they would likely be willing to do a showcase on the project, perhaps even some subsidisation if you agreed to allowed it to be part of the Game Pass for Xbox and added some advanced features (like Ray Tracing, HDR, VRS, etc. support)

I could say that a lot of this would help to "Revitalise" AppGameKit., but realistically I think a better point to make is it might instead help to ESTABLISH it as a real alternative to Unity and Unreal.
Sure, when AppGameKit was first created... Mobile Apps were "All the Rage"., the reality is that over the years they've lost their luster and said market is REALLY over saturated to the point that it's very disheartening to even try to break in on Mobile.
Where-as Consoles on the other hand., well they've somewhat remained in a weird territory for Independent Developers and Hobbyists.

Yes, there are options; at least on Xbox that don't cost the earth to get started and tinker; but it still requires a fair bit of experience to really use.
And the No-Experience things like KODA and Spark., well they were more Tech Demos than anything serious or useful... and a bit too basic., being more games like say Roblocs.
A REAL Development Tool that supports both New and Seasoned Developers, well that'd be different and arguably a game changer - especially this early in the Console Lifecycles, and make Game Development feel more within reach and approachable.

But hey., I've only been suggesting support for Consoles since 2005 :-p
In any case a Subscription Model with a Free Variant., and a Cross-Media Influencing Campaign at the same time at the very least to drive awareness and new potential community members that could become paying subscribers to fill those coffers... well it'd be a good start to financial stability and sustainability.

Also I know, we could switch to Unity, some of the features can be done or easily implemented into AppGameKit Studio.



better 3D integration could be done with maybe a Blender-> *.x file exporter or better loader in AppGameKit that supports a base object and multiple animation objects. Combining of FBX
skeleton2D could be solved with better Spriter and Spine with mesh deformation support.

also tutorials and helpful videos could be done by the community

it would be also nice, if the AppGameKit Studio 2D build-in-editor would support tiles and multi-layered backgrounds. So we don't have to switch between other alternative programs and programming our own loading functions again and again.

The integrated timeline and cinemachine could be a bit difficult. But maybe that would be possible to create with code properties
We already have great tweening commands and can do tween-chaining.

@Raven

I would like to see AppGameKit on the Switch.
The Switch (Tegra X1) is ARM based and AppGameKit Mobile runs on the OUYA (Tegra 3)

FUZE4
https://www.nintendo.de/Spiele/Nintendo-Switch-Download-Software/FUZE4-Nintendo-Switch-1626336.html


SMILE BASIC
https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/SmileBASIC-4-1763115.html#Gallery


RPG Maker on Switch
https://www.nintendo.de/Spiele/Nintendo-Switch/RPG-Maker-MV-1824685.html

And yes, I would also like to see somehow UWP support for XBox One (S/X) or the Series S/X in developer mode. That would make the most sense for me.

For PC with Steam we would need to use such things like
https://github.com/adambiser/agk-steam-plugin

I guess, the Windows platform was never really a target for the APP game kit. I still miss native support for gamepad rumble. (or I don't know how the command is called. Vibrate, Force, Rumble ...)


Another console that could support AppGameKit is the Intellivision Amico. I don't know, if third parties could create games for that system. They at the moment use Unity in most cases.
The console is ARM based. I guess, they will have something like a modified Android or FreeBSD as OS.

Games are looking like that could be done with AGK. Controller support would maybe need some more commands like for the Nintendo Switch.

What makes me sad is, such a long discussion here, but Rick and Lee had nothing to contribute !! I mean, TBH, this says a lot about the relationship to their customers!



Ok so i have to say SORRY for my conclusion and i have "deleted" my entry here.

@Vectrex71CH: I talked with Rick and he said he will write here after he gets feedback from his team on this.
I have no clue when they have the meetings so he has time till friday I guess

I have faith in the Comunity and TGC getting something along the lines of may it be funds, subscribtion, code donors or something else to work.

Ok so i have to say SORRY for my conclusion and i have "deleted" my entry above! Thank you !

If another voice helps add any weight, then I would say that I generally agree with N00bstar's constructive post.
I would be happy just to hear the plans going forward (good news or bad) and would love to see a structured approach to change control.

I think the problem is the path TGC took. Fwiw: the big time was beginning of the 2000, darkbasic did have a Huge userbase,not only in english but in german with Darkbasic.de and if i recall also .br and .nl ... People aped into that software,together with 3dgamestudio and blitzbasic wanting to make the next GTA3 .Now,just as Zigi pointed out, TGC dont commit to one software and try to make it great. I would also add they didnt see the signs on the wall that people dont want to reinvent the wheel,thats where unity and ue4 comes.

Lets be honest,AGK is only attractive for programmers yet in order to grow you should be attractive also to artists that they also buy your app.
And again,they alienate their userbase by always making something new and not just keeping on improving what they already have. If they would have started 15 years ago turning DB into an Unity today we would have something like godot (or AGK). I dont believe programming languages like this are the future for game development but i believe unity but programming in BASIC thats something that could be huge.

So,TGC just didnt see the signs and didnt do what should be done 15 years ago and while i welcome paying more or yearly,am afraid if the path is not changed the desire outcome isnt going to come true.

With that said, AppGameKit still a great product and professional things can come out,people always want more,export to xbox,to switch etc yet in most cases those same people aint going to finish a working title in their life,not even an AAA working level. So its a dangerous track of what is really needed. Sadly its very late now as TGC did have their time to grow their company.

My 2 cents

Nah you don't. He won't post. It's the 1287th time that someone "has talked to Rick and he's going to post here soon" and it never happens. And if he ever does post something here, it's gonna be something along the lines of "we appreciate your feedback and will do everything we can" and then disappear for another 19 years.

I obviously think that bugs should be fixed, but to require all types of functionality I think is the wrong way to go. Simplicity itself also has a value. I want to program and not look for different libraries to do it for me. If you then really want to avoid "inventing the wheel", there is nothing to prevent you from sharing code between each other and saving what you once did.

I understand that there are those who just want a good tool to make money but there are quite a few such tools already so why not let AGKS just be what it is. Personally, I want to use it to learn different concepts and maybe make an application that I can post on google play.

Paying a subscription for this is unthinkable for me but I would have no problem paying a certain percentage of what I might be earning from it. I also believe that this is the only possible future for AGKS. I think there is a far too small and shrinking number of users who would pay for a subscription.

Back in the days, we had sometimes also those discussions in the PureBasic board, and there was a clear message: easy for tools, and the 3D stuff is handled by OGRE3D and game making is second. But Fantasie Software had only one product and you still get updates from the licence you bought in the 2000s
They didn't support the AMIGA anymore. But that is okay. And they made only one other product "SpiderBasic" and that is 100% source code compatible to PureBasic. The difference is, that it puts out HTML5 + JavaScript and PureBasic compiles EXE on Windows and other stuff on Linux and MacOS.

I also see, that younger people don't want to programming, but want to to pictures on instagram, or make videos for youtube and use free tools.
I also see, that above the age of 30, I guess, we have our tools and mindsets and the teenagers today growup with "Apps".
You have only some functions, but these work as easy as possible.

I also see, that some of us might use C# in a company or as a webdeveloper maybe TypeScript. So somehow a programmer would use Visual Studio.
Microsoft has done a lot to support other OSes as well, make things free and I understand, that tutorial makers also have to look into there market.
But I also see, that we not all could be game developers and at the end a product needs an audience.

I see, that Unity3D and Unreal Engine switched to 2D, because they saw, that products like Game Maker Studio are easier for beginners and for mobile.
I also see, that the artists, who make stuff for Unity or Unreal also have only a bunch of customers. And most of them need regular gigs / jobs.
I also see, that Unreal and Unity are on the stock market. And big companies try to make money out of the gaming business.
I also see, that mostly user created content platforms are the new thing and e.g. Fortnite and PUBG or FallGuys and "Among Us" games, that involve the community.

So also the 2D Point'n'Click adventure might be dead. And the big money making games on Android are these "wait 3 min. or use a diamond, if you don't have enough diamonds, you can buy some for 2,99" games.
Maybe it is only me, but we had a breakpoint in 2010. With "Angry Birds" and "Tom the talking Cat" or so, a lot of developers wanted to get on board with making apps.
We have browser games, we have Kotlin, Java, Objective-C / Swift and so on. The casual games don't need Unity. But they also do not really need AppGameKit (Studio)

The make games on your tablet idea was great. AppGameKit Mobile could be a thing. But if I didn't know about TGC from DarkBasic, I don't know if I ever would got into other TGC stuff today.
The where affordable like Dark_ITheI _Angel said and competed with 3dgamestudio, that was expensive as hell for a kid that wanted to make a game like Half-Life or some MegaDrive game.
I had a copy of the Borland Tubro Pascal 7.0 compiler for DOS. But with 32 Bit Windows it was not the best anymore.
https://archive.org/details/FolkisA

I tried Visual Basic back then, it was not ready, I tried Delphi, and tried DarkBasic and PureBasic ~ 2003.
I also made some levels with UnrealED 2. And loved the editor, but also knew that I couldn't sell a game, because I would need a licence for the Unreal Engine. I read somewhere that the licence of Unreal Engine 3 was for some project 30 000,- $ or so.
As a teenager that is a lot of cash, if you only want to make a game and show it to your friends.

Even the Microsoft products had there price tags and in 2010 even Flash Professional was still expensive. I bought the Adobe Master Collecion CS4 as a studend. And even Adobe tried to have a step into gaming and 3D.
And somehow suddenly in 2012 something changed. Steam opened for indies, we got "Indie Game the Movie", Minecraft was bought a bit later by Microsoft and YouTube changed so creators could benefit from creating videos.
Also Facebook and Instagram got there hype as well. Maybe facebook a bit sooner like in 2008 here in Germany or so. I also played Farmville and thoght, that could be a thing.
But with what engine I would do a Farmville clone back in 2008 to 2012?

Flash was on its way out since Apple said they don't want Flash support. HTML5 and JavaScript was a problem on some browsers and not useable on mobile.
PureBasic didn't had SpiderBasic. So I only had the option "Game Maker Studio 1.x" or "App Game Kit 1" or coding myself JavaScript and a PHP backend.

... I don't know, what I wanted to say ...

Today 10 years later, we still have some 2D JavaScript and PHP browser games, and a lot of the engines target the gambling market. In Germany 2020 the law changed, it is now legal to have online gambling in every country.
Microtransactions, Lootboxes and consumables are everywhere. And the Android market is crowded and every media tries to get your attention.

I don't know a solution for that problem. I also see that the kids or teenager we where back than are not the same as the kids or teenagers today.
And you can't compete against free tools or tools that don't want 30 000,- $ in the first place, but lets have you earn 1 Mio. $ before you owe them anything.

In 2012 it was not possible to have Unreal Engine on mobile. They changed there licence in 2014 I believe. And Unity was expensive as over 1000,- $ back than.

So what I expect is, to get App Game Kit Studio 2 this year and we have to buy another weired converter for GameGuru MAX projects to do some programming in AGKS2?
I am glad, that AppGameKit 1, AppGameKit 2 and AppGameKit Studio are nearly the same language and most of the commands between AppGameKit 2 and AppGameKit Studio are useable.
But I don't get, why they made First Person Shooter Reloaded, re-name it and now do another re-make, re-boot of the First Person Shooter. There was also a FPS Creator DirectX 10 version out at some point. It was also doppred.


Image in very BIG

Epic Games still has the Unreal Engine since before DarkBasic was a thing.
Unity makes still Unity. Both try to have also 2D and also try to go into cinema.

For TGC and AppGameKit (Studio) I see the only future, if they massivly would do free tutorials with more language support.
They would need to target younger teenager or kids under 12. After they use "Scratch", they could use AppGameKit, but most things are still not well documented or you have to pay extra.
So I don't get that at all.

And GameGuruMAX is another software that targets adults 18+ with its gore. And if you are today interested in making 3D games, you get Unreal Enigine and tutorials for First Person Shooters.

They would need to make it so easy, that it would be possible to create APKs and iOS apps also with GameGuruMAX. And somehow would need to manage online multiplayer for maybe a monthly fee.
That is, where I could see the potential. They than would maybe even compete with CORE.

But it could be, that they lost there audience to other products. Or maybe they target older hobbyists. 50+ who buy a PC for the first time and didn't know about any engine. I don't know.

The best thing about it, nothing has to change really, TGC could offer their products in tiers.

Core/Classic = nothing but pure coding tools for the coders
Studio = visual editors for the visual types
Guru = drag 'n drop experience for the no coding type either provide more deep integration with GameGuru or even offer something like BuildBox a bunch of customisable templates and prefabs on top of Studio with exposed properties to the IDE so no coders can just drop already coded and configured asset prefabs in to the scene, swap images, change values and the game is done.

All this 3 products could have been layers on top of each other with different payment models. Core could be free or one time fee even open-source maybe with royalty. Studio and Guru could require subscription.
This is something I have personally suggested at the very beginning when Lee announced FPSC:Reloaded but Lee silenced me saying, AppGameKit is not ready and it would be too much work. At the time he was hoping with the internal version of DBP and community made plugins for terrain, clouds, AI..etc and using the already existing code base of FPSC to build on top, he can get Reloaded done in few months only. Since he did spent years rewriting certain parts of GameGuru from scratch, including the core, the terrain system and then the renderer, the GUI and now he is swapping the entire engine to an open-source one and still ignoring AppGameKit, and even though the new open-source engine and GUI library is fully cross-platform he still continue focusing on Windows and DirectX only. Again just like with Reloaded he is hoping building on top of his experience with DirectX and Windows and already existing code base from GameGuru going to reduce the dev time to few months but here we are yet again, history repeat it self the release was postponed by months from 2020 to 2021 despite all the benefits already existing code base and experience.

I honestly believe with so much work and effort was put in to GameGuru, the above layered product chain could have been done already and it would make every single one of us happy and since we are talking about subscription model it could totally work also financially and could be something worth paying a monthly subscription for, Not the Core, pure coding tools but Studio and Guru definitely.


From business perspective, because the industry has changed a lot in the past 10 years. Those who were the original audience of TGC (students, Indies and hobbyist) who had to worry about to target only 1 platform, Windows and did not have access to anything before but C++ libs like Ogre, irrlicht, SDL, Allegro and was super happy to use easy coding tools instead like DarkBasic and BlitzBasic, today 10 years later the majority of those people need to consider to target 9 times more platforms that made coding just even more work even with cross-platform solutions like Mono, .NET, JVM, Cordova, React, Node and HashLink. If you want to study how to code, it is fine but if you are in to tell your story on as many platforms as possible, coding is no longer a viable option for most people that was originally the target audience of TGC. Now 10 years later those people have access to engines made by big AAA studios to reduce the amount of work you need to do and it is more attractive to most people like ::UNIGINE, Unreal, CryEngine, Unity and ones trying to offer similar quality tools often free or very low cost like Stride, Essenthel, Leadwerks, S2Engine, Godot, GameMaker and tons of others. Never before was so many options available to choose from and so many, constantly growing platforms to target, which sadly favour the easy tools that require less coding. We like it or not, the majority of students, Indies and hobbyist the primary audience of TGC did moved on to those visual tools and it is something need to take in to consideration as a business.

From a user perspective we are talking about those features because all those nice visual and cross-platform tools do also have their problems, limitations, disadvantages and AppGameKit already do offer a solution to most of those problems and has the potential to be the goto engine for many Indy and hobby users but it is also missing some key features that keep some of us on the fence and looking, hoping TGC make the move one day. Not necessarily AAA features. I have already mentioned, but I'll do it again just to make this post complete and add some extras too.

Features that would make me move from the fence:
1. decent 2D/3D level editor something similar to Godot or support for 3rd party editors with improved layer features, ability to name objects and reference objects in code by their name similar to as it is done in AppGameKit Mobile GetSpriteID("sprite name")
2. more GUI widgets
3. encryption
4. databases including storage in HTML5
5. 2d dynamic lights
6. pathfinding (2D/3D)

Extras that not a must have but would be nice:
1. more OOP features at minimum methods in types
2. 2D/3D path editor so we can define a path and make objects move on the path (similar to as it was done in FPSC)
3. wysiwyg editor so we can see the effect of dynamic lights in real time in the editor
4. objects points editor so we can add custom points to objects and get reference to position of those points GetSpritePointX(ID,"point name")
5. hitbox editor
6. visual shader editor similar to what DarkShader was
7. more love for Apple, support for login with Apple ID and just in general able to interface with any of their API's. I know Apple is a pain from developer point of view but exactly this is why an easy solution to target their devices and work with their API's could be very attractive and already is, the ability to preview over wifi with AppGameKit is the no1 feature that keep me on the fence.

But as I mentioned it does not mean, AppGameKit need to change and stop being a simple coding tool. Nothing has to change really. As currently the level editor is so hidden, many people did not even know until recently it is existed all this extra layer can also be hidden from the coder and it is also a HUGE advantage of AGKS that keep me on the fence. Most coder dislike Unity, Godot, Unreal because of the bloat, the visual tools getting in the way all the time and I totally agree with that. Even though I would love to have more visual features but I do also dislike it when I am forced to do things visually in Unity, Unreal and Godot and similar, often I can also enjoy the freedom coding provides. AGKS already did a really great job at not putting the level editor in the way of anyone, it is totally optional completely hidden from those who don't need it. And it is a good thing, this is how AppGameKit can be different and satisfy every single one of us, the coders who hate Unity and Unreal and also the visual types who prefer simplicity of being able to just drag 'n drop staff inside an editor. the potential is there and with a subscription model money should also be not a problem if TGC would have a budget to kickstart a project like this.


Lee once replied me TGC is an old fashioned business, TGC is developing products to sell, this is what they do. Even though it is obvious such business model can no longer be sustainable, Lee is still holding to it and afraid of taking the risk and giving his work away for free and find alternative ways for making money like ask for revenue share, donations or offer paid services for a subscription fee where "service" can also actually mean features and tools.
And so I think this old fashion business model, do require to release new products with a slightly different aim and so over the years we had:.

DarkBasic = easy coding
DarkBasic pro = easy coding using DX9
Freedom Engine = coding in the web browser from anywhere from any device
AGK = easy mobile game development for coders
AGK2 = 3D cross-platform game development for coders (at this point they were really fighting to bring DBP users over)
AGK:S = Vulkan powered cross-platform game development assisted with editors
3D Game Maker = for the kids
FPS Creator = easy FPS making
FPS Creator X10 = easy FPS making using DX10
FPS Creator:Reloaded = easy FPS making "reloaded" with better graphics, improved performance
But then they figured since they have Lua scripting in Reloaded and enabled 3rd person view why not making a general purpose engine and so Reloaded was not even finished but was already scraped and we got instead
GameGuru = the easy game maker / game making for everyone
GameGuru Max = next gen VR game making for everyone

To be honest GameGuru Max, is begin to look promising for being a general purpose 3D game engine with VR support, the only reason hold me back from getting it is that I am concerned about performance. People with insane powerful VR Ready hardware getting 10-30FPS but as we know with VR 90FPS the minimum you need to get. So if a VR Ready hardware can run GGMax only at 30FPS, that is not promising at all and probably this is why they postponed the release in 2020. You can not release a VR engine running at 30FPS on the best hardwares. But again it is just history repeat it self. I begin to think to be honest if there is not a contractor who did order GG Max and did invest certain money in to GG Max, then TGC is hopeless. This is why, for me this is pretty much the end of the road. If TGC don't get things in the shape I am satisfied with, personally I won't invest any money in to any more TGC product.


Personally I am happy if Rick collect the info we shared here, discuss it with the team and share the plans in form of an announcement sometime in February. Whatever the decision is, we won't see anything from it at least for 6 months I guess. Hope don't need to truly wait until GGMax is done before TGC make any plans for AppGameKit other than bug fixes. Would really love to know at least what direction AppGameKit is heading, what is the plan even if we need to wait for GGMax to be finished. The silence around AppGameKit for the past 12 months is not very promising but I guess it is up to Lee and potential investors, code donors contributors, Rick is only the messenger. I am uncertain how much power he has in decisions how and where resources are spent and Lee is clearly 100% focused on GameGuru both financially and technically.

Aye. Just having a clear idea where the software is going would do wonders for the increasingly disgruntled community. I don't really mind if nothing changes and they abandon the software. I'll still use it for as long as it suits my need. Hell just two years ago I was still using Blitz for my projects. I think AppGameKit is very good as it stands right now honestly. A lot of the requests made here make absolutely no sense. AppGameKit is a programming language, not a visual drag and drop suite....there are enough of those already. There is a market for an actual basic-based language. It's not going to make anybody rich, and it doesn't need constant support and updates, but I feel that the way they sell it is misleading, bordering on fraudulent. They should just be upfront about it. That is the thing that's grinding most people's gears.

I dont think anybody want a drag and drop no programming software,atleast not me. But as a non programmer if it atleast had a 3d editor where i can go very far and visualize my worlds without touching code and try things out without having to reinvent the wheel,..that would be awesome and exacty there is where i see Growth for TGC as that surely would attract non coders. I mean, you see it on game guru doing obviously better and i bet is also because of the editor just like unity without the editor wouldnt be that good meaning userbase surely would be a lot smaller @noob

The only thing i want since the good old Dark Basic Pro Times: CONSISTANCE! LOGIC and a ROADMAP

CONSISTACE: Don't drop Support for your product(s)! Instead of App Game Kit Studio, we should still have AppGameKit but constantly developed. Don't drop your Products and bring the same again with a new name (This is such a *+@#§¬! move they did over and over again)

LOGIC: It's not logic for me that Game Guru is not the 3D Editor for App Game Kit. It's not logic that AppGameKit and Game Guru has two different Engines. Imagine Word and Powerpoint are not compatible to each other! That would be unacceptable!

ROADMAP: Is it worth to recommend AppGameKit or buy it for myself? What are coming features and will Bugs be eliminated or not ?

I want to start a project that will go over 2 - 3 years until Version 1 and after this i want to develop it month by month to get money from. BUT i think AppGameKit is not a good choice for this without a Roadmap. i don't want to pay 3 different IDEs with new names from TGC in that time! But i would pay 5x if i know, that i can still use AppGameKit Studio in 3 years for my Project! I would even pay per month as a subscription. As i mentioned before. CONSISTANCE is the key to their success!!

I want to show this,
and sometimes I don't know, if TGC doesn't communicate not enough or only shows things, but don't make them clear.

This combination of Game Guru + GameLoader with App Game Kit (3 years ago) looks great. And looks like nearly all I ever wanted.
But after some previews, it seemed that they forgot about that somehow.


LUA is missing in AppGameKit, but in Game Guru all things are done in LUA or they are scripted before in the engine.
So I still don't know, how complecated it is, to create such thing. I found the assets
https://3drt.com/store/buildings/sci-fi-constructions-mixed.html

Can load them also into Game Guru, and I have also App Game Kit Studio and GGLoader. But I still don't know, how the way is. It seems, TGC has great ideas, but stopps half way to the finish line




Maybe there is a great way to have a 3D editor with Game Guru and we could do programming in AppGameKit in combination with GameGuruLoader. But the communication about that wasn't there???
I guess, Game Guru people don't want to code, and App Game Kit people don't only want to create First Person Shooters.
I would like to see some more tutorials, step by step instructions, maybe examples where we also could lern from and look into the code
https://store.steampowered.com/app/623270/AppGameKit_Classic__GameGuru_Loader/

I am in a similar situation. There is 1 game I want to make for a very long time and I would like to target Web and Tablets in the first place. In 2017 and before I was using Phaser and it is a pretty good framework but I was getting lots of runtime errors on mobile, one thing may worked on Samsung devices but did not work on an Asus, LG running different versions of Android or iPad. After I decided good mobile support is a lot more important than Web and I decided to look in to C++ engines and in 2018 I decided to go with AppGameKit with a long term plan possibly years to develop this game. AppGameKit is amazing when it comes to mobile support. But then I realised there is no way to save progress in HTML5, I made my request and Paul did reply in a very positive manner, he did not say it but from his reply I thought great he is going to look in to this. But then months passed and nothing happened, absolutely nothing. I posted again and received no reply. Then I figured fine, HTML5 is not that important anyway would not use it for anything other than demo purposes. But then my limited ability of being able to implement GUI, pathfinding, lights kicked in. The solutions was shared on the forum was also not great, I did spent some money hiring people to do it for me but often I did not get the polish I needed then I realised I spend more time on developing my level editor than the actual game and begin to feel the need for a proper level editor or support for a proper 3rd party one. I made my requests on the forum and GitHub and received no reply, I also begin to feel the need for a more robust database solution, again made my requests, received no reply. Then TGC announced Studio in 2019, I was super excited, pre-ordered it but apart from having a basic placement editor, nothing has significantly changed. Made my requests on the GitHub once again, and received no reply and had no idea what is happening.

In late 2019 after spent more than 1 and half year with AppGameKit and also spent money hiring people I decided to move on and switched to Godot. On paper it has all the features I need. Absolutely everything I want, Godot does have it for free. I loved it, I love it. Amazing, I was really happy but after using it few months the dark side begin to show itself. Slow performance, poorly implemented, broken features, runtime errors and despite the gigantic number of contributors nobody really care about the little details like does you sprite goes through the wall when follow a path in a certain angle, does the game crash on mobile when you have lights with certain radius but only the big picture to bring Vulkan, C#, Visual scripting, PBR and what not to Godot. Only the shiny things that allow people to make pretty screenshots and attractive list of features in media to compare it to Unity while the engine itself is falling apart and completely unreliable for commercial projects. But the shiny part the only thing people care about, gamefromscratch did a video recently what engine to use in 2021 and he was constantly recommending Godot for absolutely everything because of features, features, features, this is the only thing that matters. The fact the engine is falling apart, slow as a turtle and constantly crashing is okay.

In 2020 I spent most of the year trying, testing all sort of engines and did come to the conclusion, most free, low-cost indie engine is a total garbage. It may looks nice on the surface, has a decent number of features, affordable price tag but when it comes to quality, reliability, polish, compatibility most of them fail.
So I did come to the conclusion in 2020, there is only 2 engines out there seriously worth considering for commercial 2D mobile game dev and that is Unity and GameMaker Studio. It also has problems, disadvantages but it is currently the most reliable option for commercial projects that may take years to develop.

However, AppGameKit is also a very good 3rd option for mobile development, compared to all other engines including Unity and GMS it is just ridiculous how much more simple to target mobile devices with AppGameKit and how reliable it is not to mention preview over wifi and simple coding of course. l would love to use AppGameKit and continue my project from 2018 and spend the next few years finish it in AGK. But without any clear roadmap and plans what to expect in 2021 and beyond I'm going to have no choice but give up on AppGameKit forever because after wasting 3 years, I can no longer afford to wait and hope any more.
Beginning 2021 I need certainty I get the features, polish and fixes I need years to come. I don't want AppGameKit to change I also like it being an easy, simple, coding tool but I can no longer afford to reinvent the wheel and put my project on hold any longer because of lack of features and polish and uncertainty about the future. I need some form of guarantee and certainty I get the fixes, polish and features I need in the coming years.

Even if we don't get the features I ask for inside the core product, as paid extensions, plugins could be acceptable even subscription if TGC could guarantee the polish and maintenance years to come.
DarkBasic had plugins for absolutely everything you can imagine, AI, Terrain manipulation, Clouds generation, Networking, databases, physics, destructible meshes, pathfinding, animations, support for level editors like Cartography Shop, 3D World Studio, Shader editor so even if the core product did not had this features officially and it was focusing on coders only, the plugins did offer solutions for those like me who did not want to code everything from scratch. DarkBasic had an amazing tool set. I really miss that.



GGLoader was not an official TGC product. It was developed by 3rd party, TGC was only publish it.

I also share the opinion TGC should have had bring AppGameKit and GameGuru more closer for 3D level editing for AppGameKit and cross platform visual game making in GameGuru but instead they are moving further away from each other.
I believe last year sometime Lee was looking for C++ devs from the AppGameKit community to work on GameGuru because he had some exciting news about AppGameKit and GameGuru. I thought they are going to build GGLoader in to GameGuru or even better create a strict down version of GG with GGLoader built in purely for 3D level editing without the FPS engine and assets. Or the best thing, finally they make GameGuru cross platform by using the same Vulkan engine as AppGameKit and maybe even the compiler of AGK. But never heard any more news on this "exciting news about AppGameKit and GameGuru" but the announcement of GGMax which got absolutely nothing to do with AGK.

I really don't know what to expect from TGC anymore and this is the primary problem really. I am no longer want to speculate and hope, I need facts and certainty and need them soon otherwise I have no choice but give up on AGK.

ZIGI wrote:


Aehmm you forgot the best!! The "DEFOLD" Engine ! for 2D. Defold is a bit like GODOT and AppGameKit . Mainly made for 2D but with 3D capabilities. And DEFOLD has LUA as program language (LUA is super easy to understand and usable also for PICO 8

ZIGI wrote:


Fully understandable for all of us. Only TGC can't recognize how important this discussion is!

ZIGI wrote:


I know even if my Profile here has only 1 year of service, but I'm from the good old Dark Basic Pro time back then! Imagine. how great Dark Basic Pro could be in 2021 if they had constantly developed the product instead of inventing the wheel over and over again with "new" products every 3 years! It's a shame if you ask me!!

ZIGI wrote:


THIS are the words that could be OUR words (From almost all of us!!)

AMEN!

In-fact I did not forget. Maybe it has improved since, most likely it did maybe I'll give an other go one day, but when I tried it about 8 months ago, the preview did not match what I had in the editor, position, size and rendering order was off in the preview.
I had to mess with the camera plugin to sort of get the preview working but still did not match what I had in the editor 100%, then I tried to build for mobile which was successful but on mobile I was presented with nothing but the background, none of the other sprite objects were on the screen probably an issue with rendering order again that was not present in the preview. Not too sure if it was an error with the compiler or the camera plugin or something else but personally I am really tired of this type of errors. I can no longer tolerate anything like this.
Otherwise if I need constantly debug and work around errors and limitations of the engine and compiler, I could be better off writing my very own game engine in C++ which is absurd considering I can't even implement pathfinding and I have no desire to learn and understand how rendering, input, sound and memory management works but I have seriously considered it about 4 months ago. Did begin to learn C++, did play around with some libs like SFML, nCine, ImGui, even AppGameKit then I returned to earth

The most painful thing is that AppGameKit does solve all my problems with preview, compile, build, install, launch, run, update, render on mobile devices, it is amazing. But it is lack features in other areas that can be argued if makes sense to have it or not, obviously those who can and prefer to code staff don't need it and AppGameKit is primarily a coding tool / programming language....

ZIGI wrote:


It's free on Steam ... try it again if you want.

ZIGI wrote:


Yes that is so true!!!

Please TGC... we are not here to badly critisise you! We are here, because we do love AppGameKit (Studio) and we are very interested that TGC and AppGameKit has a bright future! But with your Mindset and your behavior, this is not possible! Please hear to your community, otherwise you will lose many users to Godot, Unity, Unreal, Defold, Gamemaker, GDevelop, Construct3 and so on! Don't see it as bad critism, see it as a chance please!!

Thank you!

I see very much potential in AppGameKit Studio. And also with GameGuru in Combination.

I think, it is possible to build the worlds in GameGuru and bake them and make an easy import without to many shaders, so it could run on all devices including the Raspberry Pi 3/4 and OUYA.

I would be fine with visuals like these:


We need a simple level builder, not to much details in the textures, no PBR or what. And they have a lot of FPS Creator assets, they also work with AppGameKit fine.
And they also have nearly such thing like an simple character creator in GameGuru, but it is not really possible to export these and use them in an easy way in AGK.



For prototypes that would be nice. Making a simple world in GameGuru, export it into AppGameKit and try it out with a character. That could work for any type of game.

But this hassle with file converting and animation problems ...

I feel I still need about 3 programs to get my assets ready for AppGameKit, maybe Blender, FragMotion and aKeytsu. Some assets work, some not. And it is very hard to use third party assets with seperate animations.

The Game Guru from 2017


Summary from 2018 from GamesFromScratch

I come from Purebasic, which I am very happy with for building applications. Since I wanted to create a multimedia application for the RasPi, I became aware of AGK. I bought AGKS at full price, although I am "only" a hobby developer. But the possibility to run my applications on my RasPi and even on my tablet I found wonderful. Especially the fast testing of the apps via the player - a dream.
I am very dissatisfied that the promise "develop on PC - run on RasPi" is not kept. I am very disappointed.
I'm looking around for alternatives - PyGame runs stuttering unfortunately, LöVE2d could be a possibility, but on the RasPI4 I have my graphics bugs there too.
I would love to use AGKS. Really! I don't need a 3D editor. I actually don't need a 2D editor either. I don't know why people don't put the development focus on a stable and functional engine. The Geany IDE worked wonderfully. Why did it need the "studio"? And level editors like "Tiled" are available for free anyway. So why not just keep the engine as open as possible and tailor it to certain free software and give a direct recommendation in the help?
Take Tiled, Blender, possibly Spriter, etc., etc.
This eternal: We have a great offer for you! It bores and annoys me. I think 29,00 EUR per year is a fair price, if the development is permanently going on. I would gladly pay it, provided that the tool really undergoes consistent further development. It would be cheaper than GameMaker, more expensive than GDevelop - a good compromise.
Maybe a localization would be conceivable at some point. Especially for people who do it as a hobby or beginners, it is difficult to struggle through an English-language manual. You should be able to concentrate on learning and not be distracted by the translation.

I believe Lee did actually had a survey back then if people were interested in a DarkBasic Pro DX10 for a $100 I believe.
I guess the survey was not successful and would have also created a conflict with AGK2. Not too sure how TGC made the decision to abandon DarkBasic while they were continue working on their DirectX engine for FPSC:Reloaded.
I guess there was not a lot of interest for a DX10 version for $100 and they were hoping AGK2 with OpenGL can 100% replace DBP for Windows.


Personally I would be also happy with visuals like that, if TGC would release a version of GG for only 3D level editing without the game engine and assets it could totally work for me.
But in case we are talking about export from GG the game maker to AppGameKit, I can imagine most people would be upset not getting the same visual quality in AGK...


To be fair if you want to target all the same platforms as AppGameKit then GameMaker cost $447 for a lifetime license
If let say, we spread the cost across 5 years it is $89 / year and the build service for GDevelop cost $96/year and can't even build for iOS as far as I know, if you want to target iOS you need to do it manually using 3rd party SDK's while AppGameKit solve all the build/deploy trouble for you offline for all platforms, no online build service and 3rd party SDK's required and no limitations how many times you can build / day.

So if we want to compare it to this two plans and have a fair price, personally I would say a full package with all platform, features, editor should cost $50 /year at minimum. For $25/year I think it should not include any of the editor but coding tools which I am certain most people would be happy with. Or could have limitations what platforms you can target for $25. Personally I would be also ok with paying even $25/year/platform. So if you want to target Android and iOS it is $50 if you want to also target Windows it is $75 if you want to target Windows only it is $25 and so on.

There is a lot of ways to go about this.
I think TGC should do a survey with a list of options to choose from to see what people more willing to do and how much they would pay.

Option1:
Free/open-source Core for commercial purposes, IDE and preview over wifi is not included but the compiler and maybe a plugin for VS Code
$50/year for Classic, including Core + a cross-platform IDE and preview over wifi
$100/year for Studio including Classic + visual editors
If you stop subscription, you get to keep last version of Classic and Studio forever, no more updates but compatibility with Android and iOS player will break without updates and lose preview over wifi feature.
You also need to pay royalty in case of free version or if you stop subscription.

Royalty could work like this:
you are required to have an active subscription at the time you publish a title, if you did not have one, you require to pay royalty for that title even if you subscribe after publishing the game and even if you had a subscription before but you canceled it at the time you published the title. I know most people going to subscribe to avoid royalty and that's it, not actually going to worth anything the royalty but it could be useful at least to motivate people to subscribe. A free Core would also help with popularity for sure. If the Core were also open-source it could benefit from free contributions and TGC could also collect donations for the sole purpose to support contributors to develop the core similar to other open-source projects.

Option2:
$25/year for Core, including the compiler and maybe a plugin for VS Code only
$50/year for Classic, including Core + a cross-platform IDE and preview over wifi feature
$100/year for Studio including Classic + visual editors
No royalty, if you stop subscription, get to keep last version forever, no more updates but compatibility with Android and iOS player will break without updates and lose preview over wifi feature

Option3:
$25/ year/ platform
Get updates for platforms that you are subscribed to only
No royalty, if you stop subscription, get to keep last version forever, but compatibility with Android and iOS player will break without updates and lose preview over wifi feature.

Option4:
$25/year for Core including the compiler and maybe a plugin for VS Code
$50/year for Classic including Core + an IDE and preview over wifi feature
$75/year for Studio including Classic + visual editors
$100/year for Professional including Studio + monetisation features like AdMob, in-app purchase..etc
No royalty, if you stop subscription, you get to keep last version forever, no more updates but compatibility with monetisation API’s and Android and iOS Player will break without updates and you lose monetisation and preview over wifi feature..

To make subscription model even more attractive, TGC could also offer some free goodies, asset packs, examples, templates each month to subscribers only. Nothing big but a few sprites, sounds, some code snippets..etc each month.

If there was no other way, which option would you choose if TGC did provide frequent updates and transparent roadmap in return and maybe even some gifts each month to subscribers?