Where did the 3DGS Community go?

What happened to everybody who used to login 3 times per day in these forums?
I wrote a post asking for help a few days ago and got only one reply.

I remember when A6 was fresh this forum was a nightmare to post into, my post always went on second page in a few hours and I was afraid noone will look at it. Now , I barely see anyone posting.

Probably, noone remembers me, it was years ago, but I remember all the great guys who made 3DGS what it is today, eighter through contribution or by giving ideas about future features and helping eachother to learn even more.
I dont see that now.

Where did everybody go, or just life happened?

PS.: Dont look at my registration date, this is my second profile I'm here even longer.

Hi there.

Most of the users left the forums, cause they've changed the engine (to unity etc). Some of them needed mobile port, others were looking for a better editors. Other just couldn't develop farther their projects with GS, cause they weren't supported with monthly updates and fixes they needed badly to release the project. But sure, I hope there are some other guys, which overgrow the Acknex, and made their own engines or so on.


Greets

By your words, I guess there is no hope in restoring the former glory of 3DGS...
This is sad.
Maby its just me, being nostalgic, but I was hoping that I'll see even higher peaks for this community...

Wont the devs do something to attract more newcommers? Some ad campaigns or free lessons? Or an amazing AAA title with a few thousand dollars investment in models and animations?

No mate, you are not alone, believe me. The are still some old wolves around here, which aren't even working with Acknex anymore, but they are still visit this place from time to time, only cause they feel nostalgic same as you do You may have noticed those thread, about GS dying and so on.. I'm pretty sure, that dev (ATM there is only jcl behind the Acknex as far as I know) have seen this thread as well. Those thread were created by old members same as by newcomers, which just had payed for the Acknex.. And there is no reaction from the conitec's side at all.. I guess, if they were that interested in developing Acknex farther by catching up with other competitor engines (unity etc), they could move their asses a little bit, and at least create a thread, where they could explain how the things could go on in the near future (f.e. "we aren't going to develop Acknex, cause....").

Anyway, it's really sad, that we have to discuss such things at this forum, instead of discussing new features and new community projects.

A hard peace of work...
I normally dont post in such "GS-dying"-threads but i just wanted to say that ure fully right with these points. At least some words from the dev's are long overdue. To hold old users ( fex iam using this engine since A3 ) and/or to attract new ones. If i missed this "clearing words" somewhere, iam sorry but i dont think so.
But this would stop interested users from buying it a uneconomical decission, i guess.

So i hope and believe in JCL words, that they develop this great product further ( some time ).

Why not make Acknex Open Source?

I barely have time to work on my projects, then i dont want to write my engine first. ^^ This is just my personal point of view.

Slin, SchokoKeks and I decided to do the only logical step: Create our own game engine.
There is a point where the waiting game is no longer any fun, and with the lack of alternatives... Though one probably should add that all three of us has previous experience in this field, so this might not be the best course of action for everyone (plus what Rayp pointed out). Anyhow, you guys should all buy Rayne licenses anyways instead of brewing your own soup.

[/shameless self plug]

Writing a 3D engine is quite impressive for me. Guess everybody who wrote, lets say, a simple 2d sidescroller in any "non-gameengine"-language, knows which skills are needed for that. If i had this skills and time i would give it a try like u guys do I mean look what dimensions some game scripts here have and these are only things that will "execute in your code". Freaking!

Edit: Ah i forgot about writing a Compiler and and...what a work !

[/crawl into a** mode]^^

See, that is the point where I think Gamestudio went wrong. Writing a compiler is a task that you don't want to do. If you think writing a game engine or a kernel is a crazy idea; Writing a compiler tops that in a heartbeat.
Yeah, a piss compiler like the Lite-C one, that's possible in a year or so, but one that actually works and that generates good code? A lot of people with really fancy degrees spend years on optimizing compilers like LLVM/Clang, writing single optimization passes like the new loop vectorizer which take advantage of the specific architecture the code is compiled for and some very specific edge cases.
Writing a compiler that generates good binaries is a daunting task, there are so many things that may slow down the execution, so many things that can be optimized... It's not feasible, don't do it.

To add some perspective to this, the HEAD of the Rayne repository currently tracks 1552 commits made by 4 people (the initial commit was made on december 8th last year, if anyone wants to know), and consists of 59080 lines of code spread over 229 files (all of this is just the engine core, not Downpour or any plugins or third party vendor code).

The latest Clang core (just clang, not LLVM!) version I just checked out from SVN has 191020 commits and 1261859 lines of code spread over 7349 files. This is "just" the compiler C/C++/Objective-C front end.
Moral of story: Don't write your own compiler.

Yeah, I realize, LLVM/Clang wasn't around when A7 was made and MSVC is closed, so it can't be hacked to support the Gamestudio quirks like wait(), and GCC... Well, it's mostly undocumented spaghetti code.
Looking back, I'd say the biggest mistake JCL made was the Compiler. Just look around, it only supports a very limited subset of the C standard and has a tremendous amount of bugs that will probably never see any kind of fixing. And it doesn't optimize anything.

This is probably what's taking the android port so long, because now the Lite-C compiler has to support a completely different ABI and architecture.

Edit (because I like rambling about this topic): Of course the problem you end up with when you don't ship your own compiler is fragmentation. Linux/Android uses GCC, Windows uses either GCC or MSVC and OS X/iOS is LLVM/Clang. The compiler on all platforms are moving targets, and the C++ ABI isn't standardized, so you end up having to compile your project with all compilers you want to support for all platforms (ie x86 and x86-64), just to get these damned things to link nicely together.

All you wrote seems reasonable at some point, but isnt 3DGS enough to create a great game? I mean, the limitations I've encountered arent that great to send everyone to other game engines...
With an amazing modeller & animator, a 'moderate' coder can make almost 90% of the games that come out as indie or even AAA titles.
I can only think about a few examples that cant be copied quickly and almost bug-free with Acknex.

No, really, someone should do something to attract more newcommers and possibly some of the old guys back... Its pointless to throw so many years of experience and struggling both dev side and our side.

@JustSid
From where the hell u know that much about all this s* ? Just wondering...maybe JustSid is a "Highlander" and thousands of years old.

Signed.
Edit: Ah we forgot about the shader expert ... nowadays.

Would kill for an good ( bored, working 4 free ) model/anim-"artist". Thats why i switched my focus into the arcade direction. I mean i dont aim a AAA 3d Shooter anymore for quite a long time now ^^ ( by experience...guess like every lonewolf-hobby-indy ). Without a great idea for enemys ( fex Left4Dead ) and a model designer u simply cant attract people with those type of games, cause the AAA ( 3dego ) titles are technical master pieces ( at least some of them ^^ ).

Sorry i drifted away. Back 2 Topic...So wheres the community ? Comm...UNITY

edit2:
This is so f* true that it hurts. If it were my years old product which made its name, maybe i would lie...What ? A frequently used method in any kind of industry if its up to earning money. Please dont post now that lying is no solution blabla...that was not the point, i meant i cant understand why 3dgs is getting more and more dusty and why tumblewheed is blowing around the forum.

+1

That's what people don't understand. If can't make a good game with 3DGS, then you also can't make a good game with Unity3D.

I bet now the discussion starts about better workflow better this and that...

I switched 100% because 3DGS is Windows only. I wanted Mac and Linux support, Unity announced Linux support, and I switched.

Android support on GS will be good, for sure, but it's the wrong direction for now. A single game tends to be designed either for mobile, or for computer. Android support is of no advantage to me while I'm making a computer game. Mac and Linux support, on the other hand, allow my game to provide an almost identical user experience to those who happen to prefer a different OS, tapping into markets that are far less saturated with games, yet have many gamers.

I like to lurk around, dont post any more because I no longer use 3dgs. It was a hobby for me, and now my startup takes all my time.

I think the lack of mobile support is hindering 3dgs. A lot of people are seeing success in the mobile space, and it is so easy for an indie dev to have their game in a shop they want to develop for mobile platform, or at least have that option.

Once Unity added mobile support these forums started to die off.

if you are talented, you can still make nice games with gamestudio, even with all its shortcomings. but nevertheless, there aren't many reasons to stick with it. the community is tiny now, other engines are more feature rich and multiplatform,... the future looks dim.

i agree about lite-c. it isn't that great. i would have prefered a clean c-api and one example binding for an existing scripting language. maybe google's V8 or something like that. it would have been much less work for jcl.

i am not sure what advantage lite-c has for zorro? i have haven't really looked into zorro in detail. if i were into this gambling business then i would rather try my luck as a bitcoin miner or something.

Sadly, over 400 peoples online every day are preaty inactive. Only a few of them are active every day, while others, like guests observe what is happening around here.
But to be honest, nothing big happening now, almost one year passed of last update, for any questions we can already find the answer with search button, and we all waiting new WED and android port. Also there is the thing with switching to the Unity, beacuse of cross platform.
This is not big problem for me because i strongly believe that the forum will liven up soon, after new WED and android port. Then will come iOS port and i think 3dgs will survive this hard days .
Right now i'm very satisfied with my A8, no bugs, i do not need new features, for my game all is perfect.

I just wrote a really long post, but I'm getting very off topic.
I dont believe Unity is better just because of portability. With the new Windows 8 (about to conquer all devices in the future by what I've seen and heard...) portability wont be the most wanted option, and I tought people knew this.
I've never ever wanted my projects to be compatible with Mac or Linux because Mac and Linux just werent designed for gaming. Windows is designed for user experience, Linux is designed for maximum utility and control (I have almost no experience with Mac)
As for Android, mobile game design is a breeze with its simplistic point-click game mechanics and minimalistic features. Thats exactly why Android games are no fun. People constantly buy new apps with the hope that some app might get their attention, unfortunately mobile apps cant reach PC games in the near 10 years, not by graphics and certainly not by profit.
Dont people know this? The devs should show it, or more like shout it...


PS.: ventilator, oliver2s, havent seen you in years Dont worry, I was never in the spotlight, you cant possibly remember me.

Can someone contact the devs with a proposition to make a promotional AAA title, just to show the posibilities of 3DGS? Even if it is a community project, or certain coders be chosen (who proved their skill in the past) to make such a title to attract the old guys and newcommers. I believe with such a project for showcase many, many game dev companies will switch to 3DGS. And, not to sound too optimistic for nothing, we all gain by this...Flourishing community means more help and jobs/contracts and better new ideas and so on. Possibly more frequent updates and feature requests

I'm hopeless, right?

At the very least it's still possible to write games with gamestudio using the SDK, so you can bypass Lite-C completely.

Considering what Gamestudio was designed to be (an easy-to-use, script-based game engine) Lite-C probably seemed like a wonderful development to many users at the time, since WDL was (for all intents and purposes) even worse. WDL was interpreted, lacking tons of features, buggy, etc. But "fixing" that by inventing Lite-C was not the way to go, and just highlighted the fundamental flaw involved with trying to make your engine script-based in the first place. It's intuitive, yes, but things produced with Lite-C simply can't compete with anything produced by a real compiler. That said, if you're using Lite-C simply because you don't understand how to write your game any way else, perhaps you're better off actually taking the time to learn C++ before you try programming any more games. Lite-C and other languages like it are not substitutes for real programming languages.

Again, the fact that you can use the Gamestudio SDK to produce games without touching Lite-C at all is a saving grace in some respects, but as you mentioned inventing Lite-C in the first place was a misstep that introduced a lot of bloat and cruft to the Gamestudio codebase, and that alone is enough to conclude that it wasn't worth implementing in the first place.


Perhaps you would be easier to remember if you had a picture under your name. People recognize pictures, not names. Which is why I inexplicably changed mine after I reappeared a week ago.

Engines are popping out everywhere nowadays and Gamestudio is out of competition recently, so, it doesn't wonder me at all. I am still not yet convinced if I should choose another engine for my next project or if I should stick with Gamestudio, but not because of the community but because of the development lifecycles and multiplatform.

First of all, I have to disagree with pretty much the most of the first paragraph above - I don't see Windows 8 conquering any devices in the future. It is afaik one of the least used OS in the mobile sector, which is entirely dominated by Android and iOS, and that won't change anytime soon, simply because these two are way to established in the market AND because Apple represents a constant, they obviously won't use another OS EVER, being the company mostly associated with the term proprietary.
Also, you say Mac and Linux weren't designed for gaming, well, while that is true to some point, it's more about the drivers and software available for them. Any software that is designed to run on Mac or Linux will, so if your engine supports them, you don't have a problem - the only reason why the Mac/Linux gaming market is so undersaturated is because Windows does have the hugest part of the OS market, and game devs know that and therefor don't invest time or money into optimizing their games for any other OS. Mostly, there's dev studios that do, but way too few.

Also, about mobile apps not reaching PC games by graphics or profit... you're right about the graphics part so far, as there's still a huge gap between desktop PC hardware and possible mobile hardware configurations, but that is also gonna change, possibly sooner that within the next 10 years... And the profit, well, that's the point, mobile games HAVE in fact already reached PC games in terms of profit. Sure, most of them don't reach the heights of a Call of Duty, but there's whole studios and publishers specialized exclusively to mobile game development, and they make nice numbers.

Now, speaking promotional AAA titles for gamestudio - the idea in itself has a point, the gamestudio didn't have a dev-created showcase project since A5 if I recall it right. However, there's some problems with that. First of all - you should rephrase that to "promotional title" without the AAA. AAA requires production values that Acknex, I'm afraid, would have a hard time to deliver. But that isn't a bad thing at all, as trying to attract AAA developers would be a lost cause anyways. AAA studios either own expensive engine licenses (for real AAA engines, be it Source, Unreal or whatever) or in-house technology, it has always been this way and always will be.
Where gamestudio should have its focus, as all packages in these price regions should, is the indie- and hobby community: Small teams and lone wolves with low to zero budget, developing small-scaled projects, nice and tightly. Because that niche hasn't been filled too well until now, with Unity being the next most accessible solution, which is the simple reason why it is in fact the most used free engine package out there.

However. This discussion is beating a dead horse, even though a nostalgic beating it is. It has been said before, the community is thinned out, the most interesting game-related posts in here aren't acknex-related lately, and the engine development... well. I guess all that has to be said has been said.
It is, in it's current form, still a very nice package for hobbyists, and with some effort, nice Indie games could be pulled off with it. However, appearently most of the members that could pull these off have wandered off to own solutions or other packages.

That's why making Acknex open source would be a possible new approach for Conitec. I don't have any numbers, but from a gut feeling, the current business model does not work very well anymore. Might be, that 3DGS is just a Cash Cow anymore, especially leveraging the cheaper versions for getting new, inexperienced users, putting not much budget into further development and market 3DGS as a simple tool for creating your own games.
This approach would make sense to me, but it takes the edge for professional use, because if you are experienced enough to build a publishable product, you can do this with basically any engine out there, and then there are better options.
I am advocating to make it open source because professional users then have
1) a basis to build upon and don't have to build an engine from scratch or buy an expensive one and
2) the possibility to specialize the engine according to their needs (and professionals should have the abilities to do so) and build in missing features and even publish this engine additions to the community and finally
3) have an engine basically for free and might only have to pay royalties.
Conitec then still has the possibility to market it as retail product to new users, but can hold the professional users as they then can have a top-notch engine and change it according to their needs. And Conitec could have additional cash flowing in from royalties from professional projects. It would shorten development cycles allowing us to have more and cutting-edge features faster.
I am not in the game engine business, but from my professional and academic point of view, this would highly make sense. Of course I cannot proof this with any numbers as I don't have any information from Conitec.

In case you misunderstood what I propose, I completely agree with this, a promo game should be aimed at indie studios.
I just say it should be done with "AAA" title (by AAA I mean a title with top-notch graphics[models and anim I mean] and very 'fluid' and smooth game-play with a very interesting story, a title worth its dev money) It should be done with an "AAA" title to attract more indie devs, not AAA studios, because Imho such a title can impress and attract more indie devs compared to some simple tech demo. AAA studios can make their own engies they dont need 3DGS, but an indie dev can easily be more impressed with such a title, than with a tech demo or something else Unity and the other packets do or promote.

Well, yes, that's entirely true.

before it gets abandoned it better should be open sourced but:

• wed/med source is useless (quake was almost 20 years ago!)
• lite-c source!? who would work with that? a complicated incomplete c-compiler with chinese comments? there are many nice and tried languages with big open source communities out there.
• the engine source could be useful but probably doing it like justsid and slin makes more sense than adding stuff like opengl support.

i'll see you people when literally the biggest(and commercial) game ever made with gamestudio is released.

Is Gamestudio still in development anyway?
I haven't been around for a very long time and i only missed one 'major' update - so there's been no real content in years...

I have the bad feeling that when I get finally my Pro licence thanks to the contest and your votes, 3dgs development stops... but anyway, other small engines have the same forum activity, or less. there are great guys around here who helps when you need. but good game projects come out a bit rarely... probably indie devs or small studios all moved to unity and udk (etc.) as they are closer to industry standards, and casual games are better to be developed to other platforms unsupported by 3dgs... or simply when potential new users look at WED or MED after checking Unity editor, they get frightened by the stone age appearance

Well I just upgraded to 8.4 commercial, I have been here since 03 so thats like 10 years, I got my first gstudio edition in 2000, but didnt come on the forum until later. I have made some money here and there with helping on games and teaching tools and stuff. Its fun but can be frustrating when certain limitations happen.

Welcome back!

Many thanks! It is always interesting.

Good to see you Nitro77 and as for Unity and its work flow, well to me it's she_ite but offers what I want. Its should be called 'Complexity' because of the loops we have to go thru to get the results we want.

But with Gstudio I find the advantage of scripting, even with the limitations noted, to be far more versatile and I actually get what I am aiming for in a Day compared to the others.

Skyline is looking promising though, lua based and full-on with its graphics.

I think the biggest problem is new user ( I well remember my own bleatings )
expectations, you know, TUSK (dare I say it) where the make game button cant be found