I guess some people already learned that one of our competitors has recently followed us in providing a free version, which we already offer since 2007. As we like free versions, we're eager to follow and will give Atari lite-C more features in the next time - no shaders, though. Atari lite-C will get WED and the game templates, and thus will basically have the same functions as the Extra Edition.

I understand that this might annoy users who forked out money for the Extra Edition in the last time. Fortunately there aren't many, as we're mostly selling Commercial and Pro. All people who purchased Extra since September 2009 will get a $50 discounted upgrade to Commercial. Please contact Support for claiming the upgrade. I hope this serves as a sort of compensation.

For technical reasons the new features of Atari lite-C and the discontinuation of the Extra Edition are not effective immediately, but will take some time.

Will it also allow commercial use?

EDIT: The A7 engine is okay (except ODE) but you really have to do something about the editors. They aren't competitive at all anymore.

wow, i have comm but i think this is a great move, reason being, people now have two great free engines to choose from, which also means we'll see alot of more members hopefully making content for 3dgs, who knows where it may push us, am just curious as to what you'll do to announce that to the public, limiting the use of shaders? well... idk, 3dgs can look REAL ugly without shaders, cant even make a basic terrain look good but ok, i guess ppl will always find somthing else you can/should make "free".. good luck in the battle, although now am pretty sure torque will follow soon

hmm, they could add shaders and limit it to pre-defined shaders only.

Yes, soem basic shader stuff like metal, glow etc. make sense.

Hey, this would be very cool for Atari Lite-C users.

Great idea.

LoL

A question: I have won the extra edition, in the last beginner contest - Can I also update this to commercial ?

I think making Extra free is very cool, and a very good move

If you were to consider adding a limited form of shaders, what about full shader support while still withholding PP-effects and Render to Texture? Render to Texture is relied upon so heavily these days anyway (shadowmapping, SSAO, refraction, reflection, deferred shading, to name a few), all it really means is that people with the free version can use normal mapping and toon shaders (yeah, there're more than that, but these have been standard in games for years and years now).

Either way I am stoked it's free, even though I already have Com. I think it's a great move, especially since (as you've mentioned) the vast majority of your sales are from Com and Pro (let alone your profits, as an Extra sale contributes much less than a Com or Pro).

Jibb

Adding some basic pre-defined shaders could move users of the free version to upgrade to Com to get the entire range-just give them a small piece of the cheese