Hi Guys,
Thanks for the feedback, and I pretty much agree with everything said. It is clear that we need to do a lot more to get AppGameKit to where it needs to be, and the protracted V108 development has only served to occasionally delight, mostly annoy and probably disappoint over the last few months.
If it helps, I can confirm that everyone in the team is using AppGameKit now, and we are all feeding issues into the mix to get V108 where it needs to be. Alas, every time I feel we are close to rounding it off and getting the platforms aligned and release tested, we add another few commands and the process starts over again. The good news is there is now light at the end of the tunnel with only a few more commands left to add, and then we can begin the process of platform testing for a final release. We use AppGameKit for our own products and we needed some additional functionality built into the latest version before we signed it off and started building the players and begin release candidate testing.
Once the last of the commands have gone in, I will make it a point for Paul and I to go through the posted issues from the current AppGameKit V108 beta and ensure we address each one, either as a fix or as feedback into the forum. We continue to monitor them, and they are relatively minor tweaks for the most part, but we placed new commands above these repairs which was not the best way forward with hindsight.
As many of you know, we are a small team and as a business we absolutely need to spin a few plates to stay solvent. It's often distracting from pure engine development, but we specifically choose projects that feed back into our AppGameKit development so not much effort is wasted. If anyone would like to pay our teams day rate, we would be happy to work on AppGameKit engine and IDE 100%, but the reality is that development is 'extremely' expensive and is very often subsidised by having eggs in more than one basket. Back in the day, it was a common statistic that only one out of ten AAA games made royalties for the developer, the other nine just got enough to pay the costs and then went hand-to-mouth to the next publisher. Publishers stayed in business by having enough titles from enough developers in the market that their one hit game would pay for the other 'less successful' titles.
I am working on two titles right now, written in AppGameKit T1, which should do very well in the market and help TGC fund additional AppGameKit development. Thanks to previous AppGameKit titles we have developed, my apps already gain access to Social commands and most recently, video playback which I personally did not have to code. When finished, my apps instantly deploy to four key platforms with the press of a button. It's a great tool for TGC and allows us to turn ideas into real cross-platform apps very quickly, and my hope is the final release of V108 will provide the same level of stability and flexibility for your titles too.
I know promising release dates is dangerous, but I am determined to have V108 finished, tested and released before Christmas. I am also keen to make sure that V109 is a major assault on bugs with new commands completely banned from the update. It would be nice to look at the issues board and see only feature requests
Hogging the awesome since 1999
