I have enjoyed reading these thoughtful comments from many long-term members, and agree with the overall sentiment. My admiration of these BASIC powerhouses began with DarkBASIC 1.03 and my first Voodoo 3D-accelerated video card! 25+ years ago. I have always felt these languages, extending through AppGameKit, have been the most easily understandable and quickest to rapidly prototype and create functional apps while still having full control over it all. AppGameKit is an outstanding product and I still refer to it often when wanting to crank out a simple utility program or other app in a weekend.
Quote: "I find the comment that no one wants to code hard to comprehend when the likes of Godot, Defold etc are successful."
I disagree strongly about the idea of nobody wanting to code. In fact BASIC itself (as shunned as it might be in the "professional" world) has been making a decent resurgence, with many communities, retro enthusiasts and BASIC-themed challenges occurring all the time now and receiving a lot of attention online. Many new flavors of BASIC have popped up, still none that hold a candle to DBP/AGK as far as I've explored. Many people want to code, the jumping off point these days is probably more aligned with C# and popular game frameworks that use it, but still coding is at the heart.
Quote: "TGC seem to have fallen out of love with Appgamekit even though they used it to create their driving apps which are very successful and earn them good money I would think. Also, there are a significant number of apps and games that have been created for different platforms with Appgamekit."
In the first year of AGK's existence I also won two large grand prizes ($10k + $20k) in Intel competitions for the apps I made with it, so the value proved itself well and I agree it's the most commercially viable product from TGC as far as creating revenue-generating quality output. I feared that the beginning of the end for AppGameKit was when FPSC:Reloaded / Game-Guru was announced, in which Lee immediately shifted focus toward that and barely mentioned AppGameKit again. At the time many had suggested bringing the best of both worlds together, a theory that all TGC staff could work to greatly expand AppGameKit and its 3D features while simultaneously using AppGameKit to then redevelop FPSC. The end product would've been an immensely powerful and much more complete coding platform (AGK) along with a cross-platform point-and-click FPS creator (FPSC:R/GG). But this idea was axed, believing it'd be too time consuming to redevelop FPSC from the ground up or simply not wanting to spend that many resources on AGK. We know now that GG did end up getting redeveloped several times in a decade anyway, and still remains only a PC product due to its reliance on Windows-only tech. While AppGameKit / AppGameKit Studio have seen only limited updates and still have incomplete features from many years back.
Quote: "I think TGC are backing the wrong horse personally, but that is Just my opinion."
I've backed and purchased all the FPSC/GG products over the years mostly just to support TGC but I share your opinion. Game Guru is unfortunately infamous due to what people perceive as an easy product to asset flip and release uninspiring programs. Even though I've seen some excellent and original examples, they are pretty rare comparitively. It did not help at how severed the TGC community became when the Reloaded/GG product was completely removed from the main TGC forums and traditional FPSC users, suddenly requiring regulars to check two separate sites to keep updated. Then came the Steam forums and discord channels, each of which has a trickling of different users and content. I miss this forum being the one stop shop for all TGC news and discussions and the TGC staff collectively working to improve core products, rather than devoting singular staff to each product.
I'm saddened to see Paul is no longer part of the team, as he had done phenomenal work with the AppGameKit updates over many years since Lee diverted focus to GG. I still keep an eye on AppGameKit updates, though never quite got into AppGameKit Studio as I had hoped as I still found the original IDE more usable and customizable. But I've gone from checking updates and forum posts daily to just every so many months to see how things have progressed. Fingers crossed AppGameKit will continue onward.
