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We have to remember we had just Paul, one man band that brought us AGK. This concludes one less man band now left. How can one survive if the master of AGk has left.

We should all understand that understanding ones man's code will take a while. Preban/ovillion/Jambo are maybe too busy with other projects of TGC.

Time is the essence. But please don't worry, AppGameKit is not the end.

Any issues or feature requests please follow the GitHub way.

Im happy to help if I could

Remember the compiler is copyrighted and not disclosed any further by tgc

If there are any c++ programmers out there, I'm sure they will be appreciated. Just inspiring programmers to make this work..

Edit

That's why they going community based

So you can programme yourself, tgc has given us a starting ground.

They are struggling, if one off life time life long purchase.

Can we support TGC with subscription based ?? It's only fair??

What would you do if a company ,?

You like to make your company right ?


It's only right ,!!!

I'm sure tgc likes life.long aspiring programmers with love for AGk any that makes progress.

This is now a feedback of who wants to help out - yes even in your spare time

This is time to express your skills

Edit...?? Who is up for the challenge to make AGk happen



Aidan

I agree with the sentiment that the software needs a periodic release cycle. Especially with the Unity pricing fiasco, AppGameKit could benefit from a renewed push as an indie alternative.

There must be some business case for announcing a new version of AppGameKit, officially discontinuing AppGameKit classic, and putting AppGameKit Studio in maintenance for a set date. Maintenance costs get reduced and fresh product line for revenue?

As an indie developer that can take a long time with projects I am at a bit of cross roads.

In my opinion, this has huge potential to get AppGameKit into the hands of the community I think AppGameKit competes in the space of engines like XNA, Monogame, libGDX, LOVE2d, ect

And AppGameKit is much more complete in terms of functionality, and that's why I use it, however there are many people who think that AppGameKit is a BASIC and not a complete tool for game development, and I think this was a marketing failure. This, this right here is the problem, the way people from outsite of the TGC software users think

the only thing that AppGameKit really lacks in comparison to these other engines is that it doesn't support consoles, something that could change now in open source.

There are many more of us here I'm sure that loved programming in AppGameKit, we build emotions of some sort don't we, to contribute to make a company TGC move forward.

I must not let AGk go, its an amazing product, even if it's just designed for simple tasks like the driving test episodes.

It just creates simple but good apps quite nicely.

Any app doesnt need to be full on, like rockstar but if it does what it says on the tim then I'm happy,

In the past we did try and make it work hard for us, and acheivable


Anything is possible with it, just need to learn how memblocks and chunks work better - this is the principle of world games - any game.

Then we will get the real true value of what AGk can really do
.

It appears to me that TGC as a company may be in some form of decline...

With the increasingly popular Godot Engine taking center stage for freely available engines that are also Open Source, how can TGC hope to compete with their current lineup of tools?

I believe the TGC emphasis on Game Guru Max is misguided since that is not an avenue most other engine producers are following, while they also provide similar but maybe more complex implementations that allow for first-person-shooter development.

I believe that TGC should take another look at its basic game engine and consider using it as a basis for a completely new product with the additional features that the other engine houses are producing.

Even though I have purchased a copy of AppGameKit Classic, for what I want to develop, I don't believe it has the memory capabilities within the language to support my project development. As a result, I have been using MadBit's, AgkSharp, which is a terrific sdk for the TGC engine that allows us .NET developers use an engine that has decent documentation and is comparatively easy to work with.

Right now the ease-of-use is of the AppGameKit Classic engine is its greatest strength, which I believe TGC should be relying on for a new product path...

Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer

Thank you for your update @snaidamast. Tgc may be of decline, they rely on people of the world paying a one off lifetime cost for a product.

Once all the people have bought it - now what ?

5 or 10 years of a lifetime purchase of a product, do we think it's ok to carry on with updates.

Decline is lack of money,

Result I feel is subscription model.

TGC : don't be frightened to suggest a price, if ones love your product, then we wouldn't have any problems. Of ones don't wanna pay then terminate the app.... Autodesk does this with ease

Nothing is for free anymore but supportive growth of any company that made us successes already then I'm gain

Who is with me?

Studio V2 supported for subscription

Classic and studio V1 non supported and discontinued but available

We need to work something out - time moves on

Even if it's £50 a year, we have to support programmers and company that is providing us with an amazing product.

How much is unity per month when it comes

How much is unreal engine already. (Blooming expensive I expect)

What would you do???

Like said before

Does AppGameKit do what you need it to do?
Have you created some good stuff with it? I've certainly seem some in showcase
Have you made pennies from it?
Etc


Let's be positive and supportive

Unsupportive vibes made them go to game guru where their was positive vibes. Any one needs a positivity in life or company.

Think !

They made things for free, supportive programmers and we just taken it for granted. They tgc needs money to pay the programmers, web (this site,), mods don't they.

Are you supportive

Think


Aidan

I haven't got a problem paying £50 a year for updates but if I decide not to pay any more then I expect the software to carry on working in its current form. Perhaps feature updates could be sold as DLC.

I doubt any of this would happen though as they don't have anyone to work on appgamekit now that Paul has left. Orvillian helps but I believe his primary task is working on the driving test programs which make considerably more money than appgamekit.

A Subscription may not be the best path for TGC, i dont believe that would work out for many reasons,one being Constant Development, not only Support.
Open Source the same,It would go the same path DBpro did.

I believe TGC is well aware of all of this but till now they still here,thats a good thing!
Sadly just staying a programming lenguage dosnt add enough value for me, nor does a First Person Shooter Only Game Engine.
And exactly That is the problem and why they cant break the wall.

To be honest, I wish TGC used more of its own software
They should create games with AppGameKit or Game guru, That way they would even better understand what is needed to improve, And they'd make some money in the process

Thanks guys so far, I know there are more of you out there,

Everyone is welcome to express their views on this topic.

Last time I seen, 270 anonymous of us in last 15 mins

How strong you feel for AGk.

Look at what we can do

- lemmings
-mini Minecraft
- 2048
- carvup
- frogger
- object loading and exportation .obj

I will not let this die

It's endless

That is an excellent point. I am hoping that TGK shifts its core product back to AppGameKit from GameGuru.

On another note, I am also hoping that TGK moves in the direction of creating and selling additional software items which revolve around its core AppGameKit product, almost what like DLC expansion levels are to a core base game.

These modular enhancement software libraries could be sold for additional revenue, especially to AGK's already-established core audience of long-term, loyal buyers / users. While TGC have already produced some accessory editors like its particle editor and level editor, there is still room for additional enhancement software for its core AppGameKit product. Even additional command libraries could be sold as modular enhancement accessory software, rather than offered as future free upgrades (which have always been greatly appreciated). It seems to me that the established user base of AppGameKit is eager to continue to financially support TGC, but under the right conditions.

As good examples of peripheral accessory products, I think of long past products like Activision's Garry Kitchen's Gamemaker, and Mandarin Software's STOS/AMOS. These were all, like AppGameKit, excellent products, superb products. But an interesting aspect of these products was that they offered optional enhancements which could be purchased, and which depended on the core base product in order to function.

For example, "Sprites 600" was a STOS modular enhancement in the form of an optional graphics library. It was not needed to use STOS, but it was a welcome addition. Other STOS modular accessory expansion software items were also available as additional purchases: STOS Maestro, STOS 3d, STOS Compiler. Excellent marketing, as the expanded product line in this form not only appealed to recruiting new customers, but also and especially "enticed" its already-established customer base to purchase additional software, while not detracting from its core product STOS, but rather reinforcing its core product STOS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOS_BASIC

Garry Kitchen's Gamemaker (GKGM) did a similar approach: Activision produced the sci-fi library and the sports library which could be purchased separately to enhance the original core base product. As I recall in an interview, Garry Kitchen himself once commented that he regretted that they never created a sequel or an enhanced version of the original GKGM, which he felt had great potential to expand from its original specifications / capabilities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Kitchen%27s_GameMaker

Finally, the software license / EULA of AppGameKit is mostly good just as it is I would think. I think of Borland's "no nonsense license" from past years as an outstanding example of what should be, but sadly is not, a commonplace license agreement for the end user of software. For more information on Borland's historic license, see this link: https://www.osnews.com/story/22342/borland-in-the-1980s-treat-software-just-like-a-book/

Back then there were to my knowledge no SaaS (software as a service) or software subscription services, but rather only perpetual one-time licenses. In order for a software company to survive, while also being fair to the end-user / buyer, a perpetual license is given instead of "software as a service". To this day, similarly Corel offers its software in both models simultaneously: a subscription service model, but also optionally a perpetual license model. This is better than Adobe's offering of solely SaaS which Adobe imposed on its existing customer base years ago, even amidst strong protest from a portion of its then-existing customer base (many of whom I assume have since abandoned Adobe in favor of other FOSS or other vendor alternatives with superior licensing terms). In order to survive and thrive, a software company must continue to produce and sell software. If a core product succeeds, then additional peripheral modular enhancement extension products can be developed and published, to (ideally, hopefully) ensure that product's longevity, while remaining fair to its buyers who actually own a purchased copy of the software. It seems to me that SaaS undermines this arrangement and ultimately hurts both sales and customer retention/loyalty in the long-run. SaaS ensures that buyers/customers never actually own their software which they cannot purchase, but can only rent.

Anyway, that's my humble opinion and my "2 cents worth" of advice and hope for the future direction that TGK takes regarding AppGameKit and in general. I hope some of this is helpful, thanks!

AGK is a pure joy of programming for me. Programming in another IDE and another language is more of an ordeal for me. But AppGameKit is a joy.

I don't understand the economics. And I don't see them. But what I do see is a lot of - don't be angry - trivial oversights and unheard good advice.

Let me summarize briefly.

To re-develop AppGameKit Studio when there is the excellent AppGameKit Classic was a huge waste of energy and possibly money. I still use AppGameKit Classic and it is clearly superior in many ways.

The creation of a classic GUI for applications is still lacking. Games are easy to make in AGK. But to make a simple app where there is a list, a few simple elements, scrolling text, a map, etc. seems like an unsolvable problem.

AGK still doesn't have a logo or a language name, it doesn't have that classic brand that one can identify with. Whenever someone asked me, I found it difficult to explain to them what it was all about when it doesn't even have a language name. Even if it's called "Monkey-X" it's still better than "AGK Script" etc.

Fingers crossed that AppGameKit continues in the spirit we're used to! There's nothing better and it just needs to be marketed well Thank you for your work!

With fear in my body I don't know what to do, should I go to Unity? Should I stay and see what happens? They say they won't continue adding content (I'm not worried about that), but will they continue to update the system to meet Android and iOS requirements as needed? I feel very comfortable in AppGameKit but this doesn't look good at all.

AppGameKit Studio
on sale for $25.00 at GreenManGaming
use coupon code "NOV17" to bring it down to $20.75

https://www.greenmangaming.com/games/appgamekit-studio-pc/

Thanks all for your inputs so far - more than appreciated

Note: majority have suggested to go community based, including TGC


Not many of the new comers come to experience AGk are familiar with c++ language to go Tier mode.

Will have to account for these members otherwise we are removing it from the beginners that want to learn to code

Did I read years ago that AGk was introduced for education too.

If they brought it into c++ community based, then that will upset the next generation to help code a basic game with no hassle of college to learn programming like us.

Very bad idea if ask me, just hope they can just keep the Google apis updates going and keep it on market.

It will deny it for the beginners coming all the time.

Hope that makes sense

Every single time this topic comes up, lots of opinions shared regarding what TGC should have done or should be doing, but not much regarding what the community could have done.

I think AppGameKit is a fantastic programming tool but the primary reason I stopped using it years ago was lack of good quality libraries. If you look around, all programming languages has an extensive library of 3rd party code while AppGameKit has 0.
As much as I do enjoy coding and develop my own systems, there are times when I get tired of re-inventing the wheel and those days I like to experiment with the code of other people and in some case I do stick with it. However, not so sure why but the AppGameKit community didn't do a great job sharing good quality libraries.

For the most part we got stick whatever AppGameKit comes bundled with, but if the community did a better job at sharing libraries of their own, then TGC could have focused on the core product only while community take care of all the rest. But it is never happened.
What seems to be everyone was woking on is language bindings for Python, Lua, Java, Kotlin, C# which is nice, don't get me wrong, but instead would have been nice if AppGameKit Tier1 language would have received more modern features. This one mistake TGC might did, they have never shared the source code of Tier1. Maybe they should have, then instead of all these awesome language bindings we could have had a more modern Tier1 language.

I also agree on that the Tier1 language never had any official name or logo is a mistake. No idea why it was never called agkBASIC or something instead of Tier1.

I also agree on that TGC should have used AppGameKit to create their own products, like GameGuru for example. But to this day, I have no idea why TGC decided not to make GameGuru in AGK. I have mentioned this to Lee and he said AppGameKit is not mature enough for GameGuru, which I have never understood what he really meant. Look at GameGuru Max now, using a completely different codebase, AAA graphics, the system requirements practically compete with Unreal engine but it doesn't have any advantages over Unreal and AppGameKit is dying due to lack of attention and poor marketing over the years.

AGK Tier2/Tier1/GameGuru could have been such a fantastic toolset targeting everyone, no coders, visual artists, code ninjas and people prefer simple scripting. All in one tool family. I am so sorry TGC choose not to go down on this path.

I was thinking where is that guy with the yoda avatar and the good arguments. Used to read you often in this forum..



Exactly that!
A one tool for all,that gets expanded with each update. For now we are divided in code gurus or stupidly easy first person shooter maker.
I aint going to pretend i know the market or their real situation,but with over 2 decades knowing TGC and seen,i wish they would have realized that and looked a little more on the competition.

But well,its not like they dont have the know how to change it but to be honest and i dont mean it in a bad way,but if they dont change something am sure 3 decades i aint going to see them and they will run out of business and am afraid GGMax aint their game changer.

I have recently corresponded with Lee on this subject and he has assured me that TGC has every intention of remaining a viable entity in the game development industry.

In fact, they are working on a several game projects that use their Game Guru Max Engine, which I believe he said should be released sometime next year (2024).

However, I have to agree with the commenters here who have expressed dismay at the lack of attention given to the core engine of the AppGameKit IDEs.

In this regard, I told Lee that it was my believe that it is this core engine that should be the future of TGC and not that of Game Guru Max since that engine is limited to first-person-shooters currently.

Nonetheless, as it stands now, and I have done extensive research on this subject, the TGC Core Game Engine is probably the easiest to learn and use out of the many offerings currently provided over the Internet.

Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer

Lock...?

Thought the same at first...but then I realized that TGC still hasn't come through on what they announced - another news update on delivering what they stated. With that in mind, someone will likely be posting a new thread if this one doesn't exist on account of what TGC stated, therefore locking may prove to be pointless. Not for me to decide of course! The issue has been addressed by a member of the team on Discord which is basically that they will get clarification when the team returns in the new year.

I also dont think this Thread should be closed, It still serves its purpose wich is to get clarity about the future of AppGameKit and i dont see people spamming or Behaving in a bad manner... Other than OP getting Banned, would like to know why

Regarding TGC, I think they were pretty clear in the Newsletter that said AGKS will be open Sourced like GG and community should develop it, Though they let AGK-Classic out of it, stating it will get updates, why AGKC and Not AGKS?
(Am aware of the compatibility updates for the sake of keep selling it)

The Bigger question.., and i hope TGC is Fair enough to Answer it, is : Are they going to stop offering ("Active Developed")programming lenguages and is Something else Planned for the Future? and IF something else is planned for the future,will it be more of the same or are they going to get Real with it and offer More Tools along with the programming Lenguage?

Hope this Get Answered

I hope everyone had an enjoyable New Year's holiday weekend...

Over the holiday weekend I decided to take a long, deserved break from my current development effort and look at some of the competition to TGC that is out there. In this regard I looked specifically at the MonoGame and FNA engines (FNA is another XNA offshoot like MonoGame).

I used to do some work with MonoGame a few years ago and found the installations and the basics rather straight forward and easy to implement. However, after a point I hit a brick wall with this environment when I couldn't resolve some technical issues even with interacting with the community. Coming back to MonoGame now I was expecting to see some big developments in their environment, especially since they have been receiving investment monies. I was in for a somewhat rude awakening.

The MonoGame website has a new look and is up to date with the expected styles of today. However, that is where it ended.

In short, the MonoGame environment has become quite a mess. To start with, and contrary to earlier efforts, they are now only supporting their latest release, which is 3.8.1 and it is solely supported on .NET Core 6 and above along with Visual Studio 2022 as the IDE of choice. All of their older versions have had their Git repositories closed while offering them simply as downloaded Zip files, which also includes a Zip file of the compiled binaries. However, there is no installation for the corresponding pipeline editor, which provides faster acquisition of disk-based assets such as image files for sprites. This no longer seems to be much of an issue as I found quite a few people complaining about this tool's stability.

None of the earlier version source code files have any project or solution files so one cannot compile a full set of binaries from them easily. Instead, what is provided is a utility called ProtoBuild, which is claimed to allow for the production of such files upon simply running the tool. It doesn't work at all since it is always looking for something from a Git repository. Having set one up with my copy of MonoGame 3.7.1, I thought this would solve the issue but it didn't. ProtoBuild appears to want a Git download that is no longer supported in its original form. Though, I found the updated tool, I could not find a way to tell ProtoBuild where to access it. In any event, why waste people's time when these software projects originally had project and solution files with them? Seems to me, adding in such tools as ProtoBuild is as much a time consumer as just providing the original project and solution files.

Having researched this issue on the MonoGame forums I came across yet another surprise. It appears that unless one is asking about the latest release of the software, there is no real assistance in trying to resolve such an issue with the exception of one posting by a MonoGame Development Group member informing everyone that ProtoBuild was no longer being used and instead one should use the "dotnet cake" tool. The only problem is that there is no documentation anywhere on the forums or the website that describes how to use this tool. There is what appears to be a "default.build" script that comes with the earlier versions of MonoGame, but again, no documentation on how to use such a script or what tool to run it against. and I tried quite a few of the obvious ones (ie: MSBuild).

The forums also demonstrated that in the interim years, few if any adjunct tools have been created for the software such as an easy to use interface tool. Myra has become what appears to be the most popular such tool for MonoGame but it is still from an individual third-party that has only acquired a small community of followers. Don't get me wrong, I have used Myra and it is a good piece of software but it appears to be the only such tool that integrates with MonoGame since it was designed to do so.

The one new support feature was the new MonoGame Discord Server, but admittedly I did not leave any questions there regarding the issues I was experiencing.

I had an older MonoGame version of their software's source code sitting on my backup drive so I decided to give this a try in terms of compiling the software. I believe this software is around version 3.2 or so.

Interestingly enough, this software compiled fairly easily yielding only a few minor issues, which I was able to resolve.

Having exhausted myself with researching the issues with MonoGame I moved on to its equivalent, FNA, which appears to be maintained rather well. I download this software and it compiled straight away. But it would only compile for .NET Framework 4.0, which at this point is about as old as it gets.

When I tried to upgrade the software to at least the 4.6 framework, which I am currently working with, the compiles consistently blew up with internal issues such as with the use of tuples and the like. A little odd considering that a later version of the framework would yield such errors when compared to an earlier version.

Knowing that at some point I am going to have to spend a bit of time upgrading my .NET Framework development to current versions along with the database engine I am using, I figured why keep bothering with FNA or MonoGame when such headaches seemed to abound.

But my research here was to merely see what was available in terms of game development engines and with MonoGame being the primary one available today, I wanted to know if it was a viable option. In my view, it is not... At least not currently. Andi t appears from some of the comments in the forums, others are beginning to think the same.

That being said, in terms of 2D work, which is what my game development project is based upon, the LOVE2D Engines worked right out of the box with its .NET interface software. LOVE2D even has fewer method calls for the standard game loop, which I found interesting. The .NET interface is a few versions behind but I imagine it would not be all that difficult to compile it up to a current version. LIke the TGC Core Engine, the LOVE2D Engine is fairly easy to use.

I have spent many hours doing such research over the years at is an interest of mine and I can honestly say that outside the major game development tools such as Unity, Unreal, and others at this level, the game development environment for Indies and hobbyists is quite a mess with very little quality on offer.

This is quite different from a number of years ago where new engines abounded in the Open Source realm but today is a quite a different story.

All this being said, whatever our complaints and frustrations are with the tools from TGC, one thing can be said is that they simply work. Whether you are using Game Guru Max, one the AppGameKit IDEs, or working directly with the AppGameKit Engine as I am with AgkSharp, all of these tools offer us a form of stability currently that the game development arena simply can't.

No doubt there are engines out there that are worthy of consideration such as NeoAxis for example. However, such engines are more for 3D development than 2D and few, if any, really allow one to use the core engines directly.

To my knowledge, the best competitor to MonoGame and what we have here at TGC is the Irrlicht Game Engine, which appears to be still actively maintained by the team, though the last major release was at the end of 2021.

The Irrlicht Game Engine has been around for many years and was one of the first such engines in the new wave of engine development that occurred in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. Like TGC, the Irrlicht Engine primarily targets the Indie Development Arena. It is primarily a 3D engine but appears to be perfectly capable of doing 2D work as well.

However, out of the box and being a C++ code base, I was able to compile the engine's source code with only a 4 or 5 errors that would have to be corrected, these being most likely a result of the Windows 7.x SDK version being used had to be upgraded to the latest one. That being said, the forums are still active. And there is a .NET Interface for this engine.

If one wants to really concentrate on 3D work and they find the TGC Core Engine too limiting, my recommendation would be to give Godot a try. It appears to be an excellent environment with an active community. However, I noticed that many of the newcomers on the Discord server appeared to be very young people. The other alternative may be the Stride Engine, which uses MonoGame for its core engine.

However, in conclusion, in my view, at least for what I am attempting to accomplish, which is very complex, the TGC Core Engine is "still the one", even with whatever limitations we may find with it.

And I still believe that we have to leave our channels open with Lee and his team at TGC so that we can encourage them to keep refining the core engine since I believe it is a better foundation for the future than that of Game Guru Max.

Hopefully, Lee will completely open source the core engine, which I understand is basically the same for both AppGameKit IDEs, so that the community can lend a hand in its future development. And if so, then there will be a market for affordable assets from third-parties. And given that MonoGame has no plans for such a market, TGC would be in a good position to gain MonoGame community members.

Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer

AGK Studio has some issues on Android, so I had to start my game over using Godot.
I've been using Godot for a couple of months now for my 2D game. It's coming along nicely.
I'm still a lurker here because I really like AppGameKit, and would gladly use it on a future game if work ever resumes on it.
If anyone has any Godot questions just ask (either publicly or privately).

what some of you might not realize (and some of you do) is that threads like this amount to a huge negative review of AppGameKit that puts TGC in a dark corner that it does not deserve and without perceived user support while some continue to discredit TGC as a company along with those individuals that MADE, and want to continue to make AppGameKit possible.

i'm not the only one who's been here for some time and spent countless hours enjoying their products, sharing creations that have returned so many smiles from absolute strangers (that i'm glad to say don't always remain so) from around the world (Creator forbid, i know. what a horrible thing!), or even made a few $$ in the process, and all for the relative pittance i've spent in buying nearly all of their products many times over (and over) the years as ONE form of support for TGC and users of their products where it only asssists (selfish!) me and like-minded creators in continuing to do what we love with some of their stuff.

regardless, TGC has communicated AGK's future, their desire for one, and how it can happen clearly now, multiple times. but some don't want to hear it? and, that's somehow on TGC? strange Function(), that.

then, some just want to adamantly "make sure" that TGC knows personally how they think TGC should run the company they've navigated for how long now? so strange to me, too.

anyway, i know i'm just dipping my toe into this because it's all i can stand but *this* (points up and over to a couple of similar threads) needs to stop.

for the last long while now i've done my best to moderate "moderately" and i've (nearly?) let it/*this* out of hand in the name of "fairness" to all but please expect me to help right the ship while i've HOPE (my least favorite 4-letter word, as some of you know) that some of the community will stop swinging at the knees of what brings us all together in the first place?

alas, my point should be apparent and i'm done with *this* for now.