The "Fuck dat shit, I leave Gamestudio" posts seem to become mainstream now and because I want to be mainstream too, since I discovered that it gets me laid, I'm leaving Gamestudio too!
Not because "Gamestudio sux!!1111eleven", but because it just doesn't fit my needs anymore. I mean, I rarely did anything with Gamestudio in the last two years or so anyway, and often I even said that I didn't use Gamestudio anymore, but that was always a lie. Gamestudio was my first true love, and it gave me so much bang for the 200 bucks that I paid for the A7 Commercial back in 2007, its somehow feels unfair to let it down just like this (and thats one of the reasons I'm write this post).
I'm far not the oldest user here, but I had quite a ride with Gamestudio. It all started with a cracked A6 that my dad gave me back in 2004 (or so), just so that I would shut up and leave him alone. I did the tutorials, build a hollow cube, set the default texture and clicked run, only to discover that the cracked Gamestudio versions rarely work (am I the only one who thinks its suspicious that only not working beta versions get cracked?). Fast forward; being the hipster retard that I am, I read the german PC magazine
Screenfun back in 2006, and they had an awesome bonus on one of their CDs: A5 Standard! Heck, that was fucking awesome, it was just like the cracked A6, but for free (and it did work!). I spent hours with A5, understanding nothing but I felt so unbeliveable powerful and mighty, I just can't express it. It was a few weeks later that I joined the forum, first by only reading it without registering an account (because my freemailer web.de was blocked) and I remember how the community responded to the Screenfun promo: It was fucking annoyed. There were a lot of stupid kids asking a lot of stupid stuff and the community seemed to hate them! If there was a new question tagged with "A5 Standard", two or more posts popped up with "Brace yourself, the Screenfun readers are coming" and the like. I didn't wanted to be treated like this (after all, I was a genius! I made a fucking level and copied and pasted AUMs and templates around until they worked (which quite often didn't meant that they worked like how I wanted it to work)). I decided to not register until I had something worth posting, and when I finally made my first thread here, I felt super proud of what I had done. The project was titled Miltun and I still have the promo 0.001 CD here, it just doesn't work anymore
. Miltun was a RPG/Trader/Open World type game, for which I wrote some of the scripts myself, including a quest script and dialoge script (they both were and still are horrible! Hard coded, copy and pasted, non data driven bullshit code). If you are interested, you can view the old thread
here (sadly its only in german because I didn't knew how to write a single english word back then (I still don't know, but decided to not care about what you people think. Ha!)).
Well, I got an awful lot of response which totally destroyed my confidence. You guys were so mean, so realistic, I felt sad. But some people wrapped nice words around the reality, good old checkbutton for example. He added me on ICQ and one evening he took the time to discuss my project and the reality about it with me (I'm currently sitting on the very same couch, in the very same room, that I sat on back then when I wrote with him). He gave me tips on how to improve my work and, to my surprise, even defended me to some degree on the forum. I guess I have to thank him for helping me back then, because otherwise I'd probably left Gamestudio right there. And who knows what I would have become if I did so, after all I'm too ugly to prostitute and to honest to steal
Lets skip some of the other emberassing stuff I did (you can still read it when you click on my profile and look at the oldest posts). My next big project was Die Händler. Die Händler was awesome (I mean, I still wrote fucking horrible code, but it did work. Somehow). It was a trading game, similar to Patrizier 2 (a genre that only sells in germany because we don't know a single bit about fun and entertainment)
I worked hard on it, made the models myself (and bought my first dexsoft pack, but that was much later) and I made the switch to A7 Commercial. It was when I was in the first month or so of Die Händlers development that A7 came out, together with the great lite, version. A7 had an incredible impact here on the forum and on me, and I was incredible impressed by it. So impressed that I called my father right away and told him that I needed 180€ right there, right now because otherwise I would start cutting my wrist. He did gave me the money, although a few months later on my birthday, and I bought A7 Commercial. And boy, those were the longest 3 days of waiting until I finally received my key.
Lite-C impressed me, I started to rewrite Die Händler with it (not that I understood a single bit, because, while I said I was the total C++ pro in the Miltun thread, the bitter truth was that the only programming language I used before C-Script was Delphi. And I only copy and pasted from a book!). I made steady progress, and posted about it in another forum; Gulli:Board. The Gulli:Board is/was a german board mostly known for its extensive warez section, that is, until they got sued and sold the board to some austrian guys who closed the warez section and were suddenly faced with the truth that no one wanted the forum for anything else. Anyway, I did wrote about Die Händler there (although under a new account, because the other one was heavily active in the warez section and I wanted to write about Die Händler with my real name), and presented Die Händler. I got great feedback and someone even sponsored me a domain and a server; die-haendler.net (doesn't work anymore, but it was a crappy Joomla installation). And much later when I got most of the Lite-C stuff working, I also posted here about the game. Die Händler kept me busy for about two years and then something came that did change everything for me. The gulli:board made a promo, they just got 10 years old, and the new owner (the austrian guys) wanted to make something cool to celebrate it. So they decided to give away 10 free iPhone 3G's (which were the latest and greatest shit back then) over the time 10 weeks to whoever made the most creative thing for the week (the only rule was that it had to be related with the board). I just had to enter and win one of the iPhones (although I hated Apple because they suck, I thought that a free iPhone might trick some girl into thinking I was cool so that I could finally lose my virginity). I made a point and click adventure with A7 and entered in the tenth week. When they announced that I won, I was over at my best friends house and couldn't have been happier. I FUCKING WON AN IPHONE 3G!
But there was something else that I won, too (no, not the sex with a girl thing), they also had a special price: After the tenth week, the users had to decide which entry was the coolest and the winner got a free trip to Vienna to meet the gulli team (guess who won! With 50% of all votes, bitches!)
However, the iPhone changed things. My father, a huge Apple nerd, gave me my first Mac Mini so that I could play around with the iPhone SDK (the App Store was half a year old then). We just passed Aachen on a trip from Bruxelles (where he lived) to Dortmund (where I live) (and Aachen is almost halfway through, the first bigger german town after the belgium border). His word were "Wouldn't it be cool to program for the iPhone" and I said "Yes, but that would rquire a Mac" and he said "I can give you my old Mac Mini". And then turned around, drove back and gave me his Mac Mini. Thank you, Alexander!
Two weeks later, I got my Grandmother to pay the $99 for the iPhone SDK (I still owe here this money) and I first touched an object oriented language; Objective-C. I will make it fast now since it has nothing to do with Gamestudio anymore; I switched to Mac OS X (with an 20" iMac late 2007) and started to seriously develop iPhone apps. When the iPad came out, I bought it and started to develop for it too. I also became a Mac developer when they dropped the SDK price from $499 to $99 (this time I paid this myself!). I learned so much from this, for example I finally got the hang of pointers and C in general. But I always came back to Gamestudio, for a small project here or there. I tried to contribute something back to my first love, Gamestudio.
But the reality is, you have to chose the tool that gets the stuff done the way you want it to be done and that gives you the best results, and while Gamestudio is great, it doesn't fit this bill anymore for me (hey, after all, I became Macfag!). So, what does this mean? In reality, it means nothing. I barely did anything with Gamestudio in the last half year (except of one larger project which I'm not allowed to currently discuss) and I will continue this by doing nothing with Gamestudio in the next half year (and then there is the apocalpyse and non of this matters anymore). What else? Well, I will be here in this forum. You can leave Gamestudio, but you can't leave the forum, and I will gladly help new Gamestudio users!
Sooo... now for the last big question, what replaces Gamestudio for me? Unity? Hell no, Unity sucks monkey balls! If you are a little designer sissy which is afraid to touch code, go with the Unity whore. I for one will use C4 for my future projects (and while I'm full of joy about C4, I'm not going to advertise it here. Please, don't use other peoples judgement when you buy tools like Gamestudio, Unity or whatever. Use whatever gives you your best results (but don't use Unity. Seriously)).
(Yes, this all comes down to a post of fucking nothing, because nothing is chaning visible for you guys, but I just wanted to express that I have and always will love Gamestudio, even tho I'm not using it anymore. Thank you so much JCL for making this possible! You truly are one of my greatest childhood/youth heroes!)
It is a shame. I wish you the best!
