Export to HTML5 with Gideros - Last call for the kickstarter

SinisterSoft · October 2015

I think what John may have been getting at is that there was a poll and apparently 33 people wanted HTML and only 23 people have backed it.

It's not too late though, I for one want to see it happening as it opens up Facebook apps.

hgy29 · October 2015

Okay, maybe John was too harsh, I apparently wasn't in the recipients. Since we worked together to make WP8 stuff happen and work well, meaning weeks spent working on Gideros code for free (well for me it was because I wanted WP8 to work too), John may feel like doing anything he can so that my KS get founded. And yes I am becoming pessimistic myself, but it is not that important in my mind. As said earlier in this thread most of the work is done already, I just finished URLLoader code... And I do it for me at first, so no problem if the KS fails. I'll just keep the work for me

Or perhaps license it if some want.

john26 · October 2015

Yes I apologise for going rather overboard. I simply got a bit too excited about html 5 I guess! I have no financial interest in the Kickstarter as you surmised @keszegh. I'm just trying to help maybe because I've seen how much effort @hgy29 has put into Gideros including rewriting the graphics engine from scratch more than once to make it run smooth on Windows Phone. And adding programmable shaders right in Gideros studio, an amazing achievement done for free with many days of labour.

Mike, it's true that Atilim gave us Gideros for free and we are grateful but that doesn't mean Nico can put in weeks of solid effort without compensation. The supermarket will not give him free food. His landlord will not waive the rent! Open source programming needs to be paid for somewhere. Ubuntu is a quintessential open source product but even they ask for a donation when you download. Atilim charged for Gideros through subscriptions when that dried up he had to hand it over and move on to other things.

But we are not asking for much! The WinRT project took me 6 solid months and similar for Marcelo. If you consider the £4000 we raised it works out way below the minimum wage. And it will be a similar story for html5 if it gets funded. We're not trying to get rich, just make enough to keep going.

I accept my wording was poor and will learn a lesson. Thank you for letting me know how you feel.

NatWobble · October 2015

Just pledged.

This would be so great in so many ways.

Come on guys, lets make it happen!

SinisterSoft · October 2015

Here is another demo, code ran virtually as is, no changes to make!!!

http://apps.giderosmobile.com/martians/

ar2rsawseen · October 2015

Wow, that's awesome

Had some play with friends now, works great

SinisterSoft · October 2015

It even works at 60hz on my HTC M8 !!!

What's your high score?

ar2rsawseen · October 2015

it could be around 20, I usually lose on rocks

But it seems it does not save highscore, highscore is always shown 10 for some reason

SinisterSoft · October 2015

No, if you catch a rock and it blows up the flying saucer then you save no one - so the high score reverts back to what it was before.

Garyk1968 · October 2015

Its a great idea but I can't help thinking in terms of the campaign its poor. I got the email asking for funding and the sentiment of it is spot on.

However, you can't just put together a KS campaign stick it up and off you go.

You have to build *alot* of interest (not a handful of people) and an audience *before* you start and looking at the rewards there seems to be little/none in terms of thought of what reward levels there should be.

I don't want to be too critical as its an extremely noble effort and one which will help Gideros but KS isn't a set and forget platform for raising money.

The reality is you have drive mass adoption of a tool/framework to build momentum. I use another tool; Monkey X which suffers the same fate. That already exports to HTML5 (and iOS, Android, Win, Linux, Mac) but has limited adoption and has been around for years.

SinisterSoft · October 2015

I agree we need to build up the userbase of Gideros massively, we need to do things like:

Press releases
The players on the app stores
A gideros 'demo' on the app stores
Tutorials
Videos
A optional splash screen in games
Books
Tutorials and material for students and teachers
Stands at events, such as AppsWorld, GamesWeek, etc
24/48hr games programming challenges
Games that are released could mention they are created using Gideros in the app description and press releases, it shouldn't take more than a line or two

etc...

More people in the 'community' should be helping, I don't mean by supporting the Kickstarter - but by providing things in the list above..

It appears that only a few people are doing things to drive this forward - it needs all of us to do this, it's too much work for just a handful of people. We need to keep this moving forward.

So, please, if you can help with anything in the above list then do so, it won't take any money - just a little of your spare time.

hgy29 · October 2015

@Garyk1968, I agree that a lot of work should have been done beforehand, but you seem to miss something important: Gideros is no longer a company, but a community. Which mean that contributors like me do it on their spare time, and mostly for free (this KS being a notable exception).

Promoting Gideros is thus something that we all should do (you included), not only limited to maintainers.

Basically maintaining Gideros is already an unrewarded time investment in itself, and somehow I take your critic a little bad, because we do constantly make our best to spread the word about Gideros, even spending hours to write press releases and announcement here and there. With no result so far, I must admit. It is well known that good engineers are often poor at the marketting stuff. I am afraid this applies to me too.

I really love Gideros SDK, but Gideros community will die unless we have more people in our community. This is not at all related to the KS. As a matter of fact, since Gideros is free and I know pretty well how it works, I could make it evolve on my side even if everyone left Gideros. But we have so nice and helpful people in there that I would be very sad if it died...

hgy29 · October 2015

The truth is that you all are the best Gideros ambassadors! IF we want the advanture to continue, we should all tell about Gideros to anyone who may be interested, and we can to tech press, shows, ...

Here is a zip containing a press release I submitted to gamespress last friday. Looks like they didn't pick it though, but if any of you know where to send it, please do!

http://hieroglyphe.net/gideros/GiderosWeb-2015-10.zip

Ninjadoodle · October 2015

I've posted a link to the Kickstarter on the html5gamedev forums. I'm only be too happy to help spread the word.

Gideros is an awesome tool. Its got many great things going for it, one of the most important, being very easy to use.

I'm almost finished with my first game, and I love working with this engine. The whole process has been smooth and easy. I suspect the hardest will be the app publishing.

After I'm done I'd love to start doing some small prototypes for people to download / learn from, to show how easy the engine really is

Maybe someone should start a thread where ideas can be shared on how to promote this awesome tool?

jdbc · October 2015

A Gideros Game Jam can be created here:
https://itch.io/jams

john26 · October 2015

Would people be interested in attending a Gideros conference, say once per year? I think this is a good way to promote the platform along with the ideas put forward by @SinisterSoft above. Would you be prepared to pay to attend the conference and roughly how much? Is London a good venue?

john26 · October 2015

@Garyk1968, I completely agree with what you say. You are right to lay it on the line for us. Life's tough! No point in sugar coating it. Steve Jobs was tough with his staff, not to be unkind but because he knew how competitive the world is and giving them false praise would eventually be the cruellest thing of all.

You are quite right to point out that KS is not "set and forget". A successful Kickstarter requires a full time commitment during its run period and even before it launches. It's not easy money (maybe in the early days not now) you need to work for it with constant publicity, press releases, forum posts, updates, reddit etc etc. It's a full time job, expect to achieve nothing else while the KS is running. I think you are right to say we haven't done enough of that and we will learn for the future.

But it's not over yet! Let's do all that stuff and see where it takes us. If it gets to 70% of it's target it may be possible to persuade a couple of wealthy people to push it over the line.

SinisterSoft · October 2015

I personally think that somewhere like Berlin would be the best location for a conference. It's a much cheaper city to visit than London and it's quite central. We could also time it around September as this is when IFA is on each year (IFA is an amazing visit).

http://b2b.ifa-berlin.com/

icworx · October 2015

Hi,

I think the campaign period is too short, being a student I want do something but unable to squeeze out some money this month, maybe go for a part-time job soon for this.

SinisterSoft · October 2015

Anything helps - maybe tell other students about it?

unlying · October 2015

I think that you can use patreon(https://www.patreon.com/) to receive money from donators. You can set milestones and take money for every milestone. Short iterations looks more valuable.

ar2rsawseen · October 2015

It actually would be better if donators could tell what to improve, like put money on improving docs, or put money in to that particular case, feature, bug, etc. Or overally, like put money into desktop export, or html5.

hgy29 · October 2015

Good News: thanks to a generous backer, the KS is now halfway through completion! Let's hope we reach the goal, only 8 days left!

simwhi · October 2015

@hgy29 You can count on our our support again. We'll donate again if need be.

Ninjadoodle · October 2015

I sent a message to indiegames.com to see whether they might do a short post about the Kickstarter. I saw that they did some posts on game making tools previously, so maybe they'll be able to squeeze it in.

hgy29 · October 2015

@simwhi and @Ninjadoodle, many thanks for your efforts.
I just decided to add another reward level so that contributors get more features than others. With the new 75€ level, backers will get a Javascript bridge, enabling them to interact with JS code from lua. See the latest update on Kickstarter site.

Furthermore, only 10€ or more backers will get facebook and ads plugin (which mean all current backers). It seemed more fair to give some extra stuff to people who invested in the KS.

techdojo · October 2015

@hgy29 - can you comment a bit more on the JS bridge?
According to the site $75 and above will get access to the bridge exclusively for one year.

Does this mean this will be a subscription based plugin where we'll have to pay extra to use it or loose it?

Personally (if this is the case) I think this is a BAD idea, I get you feel the need to add extra reward levels and incentives but I'd hope that this kind of bridge plugin (which IMHO would really be the "icing on the cake" for the Gideros HTML5) would ultimately make it's way back to the core project and be available to everyone (FWIW - I have backed the project but not at too that level).

I do have one other question as well - what will be the final destination of the work. Will the HTML5 export eventually make it's way back into the main Gideros Studio branch and form part of the core open source project or will it be a separate stand alone product that extends Studio in a different direction?

hgy29 · October 2015

@techdojo, thats what I intended. I should have been more clear (and will correct that). The meaning was the exclusivity will be for one year, once the year is passed, everyone will get the feature for free (i.e. it will be put into github), as well as other plugins.

And yes if we succeed HTML5 will be added to main Gideros Studio repo, master branch.

SinisterSoft · October 2015

Bargain! Just increased my pledge...

techdojo · October 2015

@hgy29 - Thanks for clarifying that

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