Gamecore Indie is Free :

Gamecore indie thread

Just wnatde to make some test by curiosity only, after installation it asks to register ? well i let it down,
Why registering a dead software ??


well, it's very desert on the forum of Gamecore
and there is long ,long time with no upadtes !
And the makers are away from long time i think also !

I think they just have realized now that they can't make anymore money by letting down one more time the people who bought the engine.
And the pro version for 1499$ it's a joke really ??
Someone should be fool, and would must choose some other engine like Unity Pro, C4D, A8, Torque 3D or some other existing engine that have real active community and
real engine updates !

Well i'm really speechless by their very bad ,and destined
to fail strategy ???
I think they just hope to sell some copies to people that really new to 3D and knwoing anything else !

I bought it one time when the name was Beyond Virtual engine,
they let down the engine and people for months without any response. it was beginning to be promising !
They renamed it, redone business, but once again they flee
away letting down engine and users , a shame !!

Yeah, that is really a shame... I'm not gonna give it a try, but I really liked this screen:

Looks great, I really like the atmosphere in it. I think engine isn't that really bad itself.

Note that GameCore Indie is free since a year. The thread is from June 2010. It was just bumped recently.
Also, Gekido doesn't work for Helios Interactive anymore, as far as I know.

Well, in my opinion it is one thing to let an engine die like this, but it is quite another to not inform your customers about anything.

Game core behavior is not acceptable
However also some users' behavior have been disgusting
They razed to ground a great engine, shouting like hell for minor flaws thus causing Gekido's hysterical ( but reasonable ) reactions
Unity3d had (has) many more serious problems but Unity guys are shroud people

Can you explain this a bit more?

shouting like hell for minor flaws thus causing Gekido's hysterical ( but reasonable ) reactions


Not sure about that, i remember well when i bought Beyond Virtual : lot of videos advertising lot of features, but a bunch where missing. Even more there was lot of problems for importing like hell. documentation was really lacking !
And well The engine have been let down during a year and more , and Gekido returned to promise once again great things by renaming it Gamecore , to finally let down people who bought it : no update , no post !
Even more what was that big appetite for money, such big prices when you can buy as good or lot better 3D engine with real updates and support ??
That's two times, an there was lot of promises, sorry , but they don't have some escuses !
They don't mind anything about clients indeed that's really clear, only money target : you buy the engine , they make money , and they can fly away with the cash !!

I dont think they are bad people cheating their customers. It is really no easy job to create such technology plus all the tools, documentation and samples.

The real problem is that UDK and Unity appeared and attracted a lot of customers. I understand why. I mean, when I create a scene in Unity, then it just works. I copy all content into a folder and when I switch back to Unity, it just imports it, ready, done. I can tune materials and postpro effects, animate camera, make a video and shots. Ready. All this took me days, sometimes even weeks when I used UDK as an example.

I also played with Gamecore / Beyond Virtual and it always was unfinished. Many features did not work as expected and documentation was too short or even missing. Tools were really good but it was hard to get into it. Angel script as a scripting solution was a bit exotic too.

So in the end I think, they did not make tons of money, they had problems to survive. I mean, even Torque died and resurrected, but for how long? Since Unity can handle each platform plus Flash, it is simply not possible to beat them. It would be possible to be cheaper, but there is a free Unity version available too. So actually you could win only when you concentrate on a single platform and when you offer a better technology for this particular platform. Maybe a DX11 PC engine could be interesting, as an example.

Some technologies still survive because of lazy programmers. Many users dont want to switch programming languages and thus they prefer C++ engines as an example. There are raging fanboy wars in their forums when someone mentions C# as an example. But this is not a real objective way to evaluate such technology and the success stories prove it.

I dont mean of course that Gamecore is still nowadays better than Unity but it definitely was some years ago
If you go through the list of bugs of various Unity editions you can see yourself
Yet Unity has alwayes been considered a top engine while Gamecore / BeyondVirtual a junk

This is also due to the shameless insulting campaign made by some users and the Gekido's absolute lack of dimplomacy
One of such mean guy even posted in many other game engine forum
I did appreciate Truevision's moderator answer
"You are not welcome..leave this forum"

The world / model editor

Unity is good but Gamecore is excellent
Every buttons is there where you expect to be found

The programming

Gamecore supplies an impressive number of intuitive commands
You dont have to reinvent the wheel, yet the engine is extremly flexible
Unity classes / methods are sometime criptic

Poor documentation ? and Unity ? ....my God

Angel script is an OO scripting language

Licence

when both non commercial ( 200 usd) and commercial ( 1500 usd ) editions were avaiable Gamecore supplied all the features which an amateur needs while the pro edition added only "true" pro feature ( multiplatform, profiler etc..)
To have shadows in Unity you had to shell out 1500 usd
My fault not to read the specs ok...but it was not fair in my opinion

I make an other personal example

I asked Unity to add a simple animated file format such as Milkshape
"FBX is a future, ok " I said " but it is a matter of fact that FBX converter are not yet fully reliable "

I got a personal msg from Unity, saying that user's feedback is of utmost importance to them....bla..bla.."
They did nothing
Same request to Gekido
Some months later the Milkshape importer was available

Marketing sometimes win over technics

Huh? Do you really want to compare this dodo bird with Unity, the most vital and ever growing game engine out there?

Gamecore mainly died because of the lack of documentation. What`s the best engine worth when there is no working manual or tutorials that explains how to use it?

And it died because of a whole bunch of wrong decisions. Like using a this hard to use and bad documented language like Angelscript as the scripting language. Or like wasting the time with implementing an outdated format like Milkshape. That time would`ve been better spent into the manual and useful tutorials. Or like never implementing support for european keyboard layout. This engine is useless for europeans. You search yourself to death to find the correct letters. Or ignoring the marketing chapter. This is as important as the product itself. Or ... the list is endless.

It is dead, it has not survived. That`s fact. And that shows how good it really was. Accept it. Only remaining question is at which point Gediko will turn off the page. Maybe he will change the name a third time, to trick the next generation of users ...



That`s nonsense. FBX is the standard format nowadays.

Why dont you read what the other people wrote, from time to time ?

I said that some years ago GameCore was even better than Unity ,not nowadays
I said that also GameCore does support FBX but also, for safety sake, a simple but rock stable file format such as MilkShape
Wasting time ? Go through Unity posts and see yoursel how many people had problem ,at the time, to deal with FBX files

I have read very carefully. I have just other experiences

Gamecore was at no point better than Unity. Gamecore always lacked at the manual and tutorial end.

Dinosaurs were also rock solid. But Milkshape is outdated. That`s all there is to say.

Go have a look how many users USES Unity. And then wonder how FEW people really have problems with FBX

Tile
Do you know the difference between "Only" and "Also" ?
Do you know the difference between "present" and "past" tense ?

Till 2-3 years ago ( and partially also nowdays ) FBX converters were not fully reliable
I really dont know how you can deny such evidence
Well GameCore supported the end users by adding an obsolete but rock stable file format along with FBX
Unity let his clients down

Do you know the difference between a normal discussion and flaming?



Says who? What evidence? The pope is jewish would be an equal statement where i would never agree. That FBX is not fully reliable is simply not true. There are the normal problems and flaws like with all other file formats too. Nothing more. FBX is industry standard nowadays. And it is since a pretty while.



Gamecore supported the end user by a product that didn`t let you finish a game. Unity does. So who lets the users down here?

Unity cares about its users pretty well. I have nothing but positive experiences so far. As long as they don`t want nonsense like a Milkshape importer. How much Gamecore cares about its users can be seen at their forum. The programmers have vanished.

Please don't start a flamewar about almost nothing.

Alberto, I thank you for the clarification.
I was irritated by the term 'shroud', first, because I didn't find a good translation for the word as the adjectiv as you used it, and second because the interpretation that I got from my dictionary sound too strong IMO.
Nonetheless, you spread light on this. Thanks.

yes actually shroud is a negative term which is not fair vs Unity

Gekido has just announced that there were 2 developers, including him, working on the engine in December 2010. At that point they were both sacked and as far as he can tell, the engine has basically been abandoned. So it looks as though it's the end of the road for GameCore.

Which is a shame as the engine, or at least the editor tools are excellent. I got got further with it than any other engine I've tried. It's just undermined by a general lack of resources and funding really. I've been forced to move onto another engine, trying them all out which makes me appreciate GameCore more actually. I could just jump into GameCore no problem, other engines are messy and unfriendly in comparison, especially UDK. I've moved onto Torque myself, Unity never really clicked with me.

I agree with Alberto, fbx has been pretty dodgey in the past. Even passing between Autodesk's own software caused problems, eg.e Max to Softimage. Collada seems a far more reliable and popular choice, which was what GameCore was going to adopt next. I have no problem with them supporting Milkshape, it's a simple and indie-friendly format.

Nowadays the situation has improved with FBX but a couple of years ago it was a serious issue
At the time , Gekido ,the bad guy , supported his clients while the nice Unity army let them down , at least in this occasion

A part from that it is really a shame that GameCore has been abandoned

As you said , GameCore editor is at the state of art but in my opinion also the programming side is excellent
GameCore supplies 700 + function and they are all meat
You dont have to reinvent the wheel but at the same time you have about the same flexibiliy as using opengl or direct x
Obviously people can not expect to learn a powerful engine in a couple of days
Angel scripts is not an unknown scripting language
On GameDev there is even a dedicated forum
Just compare the clean GameCore code with the ugly, at least for me, components based Unity programming style

At the time , Gekido ,the bad guy , supported his clients while the nice Unity army let them down , at least in this occasion

Unity don't let you down ?? I have tested it, made export from Blender all is nice !
And sorry ,but Game Core (beyond virtual at first) let down people for more than one year , before re appearing for money and let down people one other time !
And now it's definitive, the engine and forums are dead !

It's the baddest episodes i've been following on an engine caus i baught it from beginning and believed in great things from it

Well ... i'm not fan boy, but this engine is over now !
Why defending such people that only target money and let you down for long long time with any news ?
And ask money afetr rea appearing , and a lot (gamecore was lot more expensive) !

Wel ... any 3D engine makers can make some mistakes, Torque 3D, 3DGS , Unity ... But Gekido team was the baddest i have been on ... Really ... !
Why giving credits to such money attracted people , and that really don't care on forums without responding like in the past ??
That's not serious at all, not professionnal ...
let this engine rest in peace , i think it's better for all indies !

GameCore is a finished product with a top class editor and an impressive set of commands
It failed because of poor marketing rather than poor technology

Tell me what kind of serious arguments have been arisen against the engine, here in this thread

a) It does not support the European keyboards

No comment

b) Poor documentation

Also Unity3d documentation is rather poor for the price

c) Angel script

It is a good OO scripting language


The only serious arguments against GameCore could be the supposed bugs
May be BigDiaz can tell something more, being a GameCore / Beyond Virtual expert
From my side the critics were absolutely exagerated

Last, you say that you are not a fan boy
Ok I accept it
Howevr even (intelligent) fan boys should be happy if there is a serious competitor to their favourite engine

I think we can agree it's the lack of support that's the problem. If you ran any kind of problem, like the keyboard issue, it wouldn't be fixed in a reasonable time. And the developers gave the impression they didn't really care. Feature X doesn't work? Then don't use it, problem solved

I remember one of my first questions was do spotlights work? The answer from Gekido was basically "I don't know, we've never used them". Classic
The answer was no. They were advertising all kinds of features that were still to be implemented. Which was a common theme with all the releases actually.

It all comes down to a lack of resources. They just needed a staff of about 20 when they had 2 I'm sure if it had a community of several thousand people, with dedicated users contributing, GameCore could be just as successful as other engines out there. I kept hoping it would go through some sort of revolution and take off but it never did.

As for money grabbing developers, I paid for Beyond Virtual, which was actually pretty reasonable considering the competition. GameCore was a free upgrade and is now free for everyone. So I can't say I feel ripped off, as they said themselves, engine purchases never covered their development costs.

I see it similar to AlbertoT. It would be great to have a good competitor. And in terms of workflow GameCore is really great. It is sad to read that they gave up on this.

I also understand that they never made enough money from it. The presentation and marketing was just bad, images and demo games were not impressive enough. It could not survive this way. Actually they were in need of at least 2 more people, one responsible for marketing and support and another one creating art, websites and demo content. I think a team of 4 people could make it: engine programmer, tools programmer, artist and marketing guy. There are still tasks like documentation that have to be done by all of them, programmers can write programming and scripting parts while the artist and marketing guy can help with tools and workflow docs.

I stumbled across this issue more than once when i tried to find my way into Gamecore. I have even reported it as a problem. So it`s well worth a comment.



Even when this would be true, does this make the lack of documentation for Gamecore any better? But it is wrong anyways.

Unity basic is free. That for the price. We have a wiki here, we have a completed manual including full scripting reference, we have a working community that produces tons and tons of questions and answers every day, we have tons and tons of free professional written turorials out there, we have tons and tons of professional produced video tutorials out there. Even the dumbest newbie question gets answered and solved. It is very easy to pick up and very easy to learn Unity.

Gamecore had a totally incomplete, and never completed manual, a handful of bad documented tutorials of how to use the Editor. And that was basically it. It was simply impossible to pick up this engine and learn it. It was the first gamemaking tool where i finally gave up. This experience has cost me around 450 Euro when i remember right. Gamecore was not free at this point ...



But a bad gamemaking tool language. Especially when it`s this bad, or better undocumented as it was in Gamecore.

By the way, Gediko is working on a game now instead, and has officially given up at Gamecore. And already promised at the new page that Gamecore was not the last game tool he has made. I count this as a menace.

I meant that this is definitely an extremely irritating issue but it is a trivial thing from a technical point of view
It reinforced my opinion that the failure of the engine was mainly caused by poor marketing and poor service
Documentation, scripting language are more serious points but they are also details
Angelscript is used also by 3DRad and there is a forum on GameDev
Anyway it should be relatively easy to expose the commands to C# or Lua

It remains the fact that the editor is excellent and the game engine is also at the top ( 700+ self understanding, all meat, commands )

These are the key points

GameCore could be the only serious competitor to Unity
I do hope that some software house would buy the licence for the benefit of all the Indie comunity including those who will remain with Unity

Agreed. The editor itself was not this bad. It was definitely better than WED. And also the engine could`ve been worse. It was somehow equal to 3DGS. That`s why i once decided to give Gamecore a shot. But that`s not enough, unfortunately.

I still think that Angelscript is a bad choice as a scripting language. But in 3D Rad Angelscript is at least well documented, and there are more than enough examples to learn from. Plus there is a big and active community. And when everything else fails you can also leave scripting alone, and just work with the standard stuff.

The key was and is the documentation. Unity has more than one full tutorial that leads you from zero to a finished game. 3DGS has the LiteC workshops and the AUM, which also leads you from zero to a full game when you`re willing to read. Gamecore has nothing.

It remains the fact that nobody really uses this engine anymore. The always very small community has left. Even the programmer(s) have left this baby. And nobody has ever really made a game with it. At least i know of none. Even Gediko has decided to use something else than Gamecore for his game now.

Gamecore is dead. That`s a fact. And in my opinion it was and is at no point a competitor for Unity, sorry. But that`s just my personal opinion. And i think we will never agree here