Updates from 8.40 any time soon?

Are there any plans for updates any time soon? The engine/program hasn't been updated in a year. That seems like an awfully long time to me.

It 3dgamestudio dying?

There it was written again. The engine is dying! Play "Infinite Typing Lottery" to save it! Now.

http://www.firoball.de/download/itl.zip

@^: you could be a bit more serious about this

Yeah no kidding. It's a fair question to ask. I've dropped almost $800 in the game engine over the past 6-7 years...since A6. No update for a year is frustrating since we're told "frequent updates". No updates for a year is not frequent.

After a year without any updates, or consistent development on the engine or toolset...I think "is the engine dying?" is a perfectly fine question...especially in the fickle world of 3D game engines.

So...



...How about you stop trying to be clever and ironic...and just answer the question. If you can't, or won't, just don't reply at all.

Maybe someone with some real answers will.

Emo

Well a prominent alternative, as we all know, is Unity3D. If you want to be with a strong (English-speaking) community of users with regular development updates perhaps you should consider switching engines.

As for updates with 3DGS, only JCL can tell us what to expect. Aside from him, it's just idle speculation as to the progress of the engine's development. I had thought I read that Conitec was done developing Zorro and was now focusing on 3DGS development but I still see that they are updating Zorro.

I was wondering if it was about time that Conitec just concentrated on the Engine and then good tools for import and export. This would probably result in much faster development and being up to date with the market, especially if the prices of Gamestudio are reflecting the current market prices. A brilliant product really, but tending to fall behind more and more every year because of too few developers. Would not want to see it die. A new MED is promised, SED should be scrapped and Horus or LED integrated or supported, but i suppose no one really knows exactly where it is going ATM.

...I don't dream of any extra new features, but it would be so good to have an update with bug fixes at least... I reported some of them a year ago...

I was with Game Studio since A5 and always commercial ed. So one or another coin may have jumped out of my wallet over the years.
And I have to say that the behavior of the developers regarding Gamestudio has become intolerable.

Just to say nothing all the time and shrouding in hints plus ignoring almost entirely most questions and what the community had to say is absolutely inacceptable to people who spend money for something they supported, no matter how small or large the amount of money was.

I even going so far to say right away that it is outright dishonest.
Having the guts to say either "Ok, it´s over. That´s it, and those are the reasons" or "This will take a long time, but these are the concrete plans and here are regulary bits to let you all follow the progress" can´t be that hard.
It´s a thing of credebility.

And seeing Zorro evolving all the time doesn´t make it look better and should speak for itself.
There would be no way to A9 for me, not because I dislike Gamestudio or something else is better, but only and ONLY because of the behavior regarding plans and updates.
I don´t see any sense in supporting something that "solves" any of it´s problems and outdates with the "use third party x"-solution.
Thats so far my opinion.

yeah, I can just agree with all of you.

Acknex is getting more and more outdated and by now I have my doubts that they'll catch up some day.
Besides that, by looking at jcl's latest posts it's easy to see where all the attention goes.

I'm already considering about switching to another engine...

Well Im working on a multiplayer FPS since nearly one year and I hate the thought of throwing away this work but the engine is getting outdated and many bugs of the game were traced back to the "newest" engine features like physx or OpenAL. I just have so many problems with them...

The reasons mentioned here forced me to stop even thinking about working with Gamestudio.

That's why i am looking into another engine at the moment. It's NeoAxis.
It's hardly documented, but has an active Community and a solid workflow(at least from what i can tell atm).

Besides it includes features out of the box which are still missing in Gamestudio.

Another cool thing is: In NeaoAxis you don't pay for features(you get them all/mostly for free), but for Sourcecode-Access. If you pay more, you unlock more levels of Sourcecode.(And thats why lots of users have lots of Sourcecode there, compared to us having NOTHING in case of Doomsday).

Oh an did i mention they use C# as programming interface(engine consists of a lot of c++ parts)? yes C# might not be my favourite choice, but it is a solid language with a solid IDE.

Just my 2 cents

Rackscha

topic moved

great, that messed up our chances to get a serious answer.

There never has been a serious answer for too long.
Not even in Georges AUM Interview.
So it doesn´t make any difference that this has turned into a rant.

There can´t be anyone blamed for the "rantisation" regarding the massive
amount of dissatisfaction around here.
And with Alpha Strike gone as some valve for the others downed moods
every thread addressing progress and evolvement of Game Studio goes RANT.
Its almost like laws of physics.

How about learning to use forum search prior to posting?
http://www.opserver.de/ubb7/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=427910

Thanks.

Well...
There has been a thread regarding this problem approximately one month ago, so what.
What does this add to this matter discussed or the argument you are having respectively?
Yes, JCL anwered, again in hints, vague promises and inconcrete formulations.

Fact stays that neither the beta page, nor the forecast page, nor the news section and also the announcements from developers haven´t been updated since.
There is neigh zero communication and this is, what upset the most, the generated feeling, that Game Studio and its costumers don´t play a noteable role anymore.

...and the number of posts at the beta section is 3094 for 2 or 3 months...

Well you see 3094 posts, I see "access denied".
Not everyone has access to it and the number says nothing
about the quality inside this quantity, nor does it reason
the complete non-update of all other sections available to
all normal users.

I highly doubt that there is some highly innovative tech
going on, that noone should get notice of too early,
so if there is anything in the big 3094 that matters,
why not share it with ALL of the community rather than
watching the frequently appearing "rant of the month"´s?

I´m watching now for over two years, how, instead of offering clear
talk and facts, Conitec watching users getting more and more
unsatisfied, increasing posts of "no A9 for me", users stopping using the engine and leaving the forum.

Gamestudio is not over, there was never the intention since A7 to
really start.

And yes, I am emotionally bound to Acknex, that lead to one or another
subjectively biased slight exaggeration... so nothing on anyone personal.

the number is irrelevant of course, it does exactly mean only that there has been no any posts in the last 2-3 months, which does show the intensity of beta releasign and feedback of testing...

it's a private thread you can't see by default, only with permission.

Yeah, I'm afraid I'll have to switch to Unity too... Acknex has no future, although I really love the engine. I wish they would just release it Open Source (doesn't mean it has to be free), maybe the community could give it a little push then.

...and I just hope they really work on the new WED and the Android port... until that finished we can't expect great new features. but bugfixing is also slow as hell now...

@sivan: yeah, me, too.

I also hope (for the future, no necessarily the next update) that they'll concentrate more on performace and usability / control of whats going on on a lower level.

So if you want to to change something or add some custom stuff to the rendering process
there's not very much you can do. In that case you'd have to rewrite the whole rendering
code on your own.
And besides that, I'm pretty sure that most of the Acknex stuff like ENTITY* and all the
move / trace / scan functions won't be compatible if you do so.

So in the end this would be just like writing your own engine...

yes in the beta section happened nothing since June.

For me in the moment its not so bad, because I have other things that kills my sparetime.

But if I would work on an real application - I would switch the engine.

Sure, maybe a new WED, Androidversion comes someday. But until this works reliable, we can live in 2020.
Missing comunication, lacking manpower.

So Acknex is at the Moment not a serious tool. Play around with it and forget the money.

the actual rendering pipeline is very old, but with a more shiny editor probably can be sold in future, it is more or less but usable. more selling could boost development too. imo the licensing conditions also provide limits of changes, I mean upkeeping compatibility with simple rendering mode of the free edition. if I would win a pro, I could continue with 3dgs, because it would ensure more performance I badly need, but if not, I should start again engine testings of (unity,) neoaxis, esenthel, udk, and waiting for rayne of course

the most annoying thing is that, as I step into a new area of the engine, there always a bug appears. I don't know what is the case with other engines...

In my opinion it depends on the project. For games like mine, simulation games (vehicle simulations and economy simulations) Acknex8 is a very powerful tool. But if you want do some cross-plattform casual game, then Unity is the better choice. And if you want to do a AAA game, the best choice is CryEngine3.

do you have experience with cryengine? as I remember its licensing is not for low budget developers, but UDK can be used for relatively cheap... that could cost more because of the royalties finally

Yes. I have experince with CryEngine3. It's totally free to use. If you want to sell your game (as independent developer) you still don't need to pay a fee, you just have to pay royalties (20% of your game's revenues).

[EDIT] source: http://mycryengine.com/?conid=70

thanks, probably it has been changed since I tried it out... and yes, I see it at "CryENGINE® 3 Independent Developers Platform"... why I have not really tested it is Lua, I prefer C++ (and Lite-C of course). but maybe it worths the time. I tested in this January Unrealscript and UDK, it is not bad at all, but not fast enough and easy to use for a one (or few) person development, especially when the target is not an FPS.

You guys better not be switching engines before we release Rayne!

But seriously, Gamestudio is in a pretty bad state right now. The silence of the devs and the moving of this topic into the rants section says a lot about the attitude towards the customers. And don't get me wrong, I don't think you are entitled to anything just because you bought A5, A6, A7 and A8. At the time you bought something, you got what you paid for, and speculating about the future is just foolish nonsense (but if you are into this sort of stuff, you might be interested in Zorro). Anyhow, treating customers like this is bad for your image, which is quite visible.

By the way, I hold the firm believe that Gamestudio is a money laundering scheme. Lotter is, in real life, a huge Mafioso and because he isn't Italian, he couldn't open up a new Restaurant. But he has a hobby: Programming. So he quickly hacks together a game engine and uses the newly founded Op group to launder the money.
At least, that's what I would do if I was a Mafiosi...

nice conspiracy theory
I know a restaurant here, which is open for a fews days only per year, probably it's a member of the Op Group.
of course we wait for Rayne, we just have to know why other engines are not suitble for us.

yes after Doug and the other guy has left I think the developer team of acknex is just a one man show of JCL.

and we have to wait until he says "sorry folks but I stop the development right now, thanks for the years bla bla bla"



I've seen the same in my dayjob. I developed GIS Solutions with a software called "MapXtreme" from the company "Mapinfo".

After they got takeover by an other company "Pitney Bowes" the development died.

All of my customers switched to an other engine ... ESRi and open source solutions.

OK... I so I do Javastuff nowadays.

Doug is in Queens again ...sry ^^

I even dont wanna think about this day...