Dear All,
I am very pleased to announce that I have been hired to maintain and develop Gideros on a part time basis. I will be working 2 days a week alongside my existing (science) job, which I am reducing from full to part time. I will be primarily responsible for building and releasing new versions of Gideros, updating the documentation and promoting Gideros to a wider audience. Of course the other Gideros maintainers will continue to play a leading role in development and we greatly welcome your pull requests and other feedback such as bug reports and comments here on the forum.
As some of you will know, since Gideros went open source in mid 2014, we
maintainers have been building new releases mostly in our spare time. But it has got to the point when a few evenings a week is just not sufficient time to build and test such a complex system. Gideros runs on 8 operating systems and needs to be tested on each before release. It also needs to be compiled on at least two different computers (Mac and PC) and, soon, on Linux as well. The binaries then need to be reconciled into one place, packaged and signed. So it all takes a lot of time and effort and we all have other jobs, family etc which are demanding.
It therefore seemed the best solution was for one of us to work on Gideros on a formal basis as a "job" in its own right and that is what I will be doing. I have been fascinated by Gideros since I first discovered it in 2012 and leapt at the chance to get involved when it became open source in 2014. As many of you will know I organised the
first Gideros Kickstarter and successfully added support for Windows Store and Windows Phone output targets. I also wrote the bare-bones win32 export and ported Gideros to
Raspberry Pi and Linux. Maintaining Gideros is a dream job for me, it's a fascinating technical challenge and also something that is really worth while, directly benefiting developers and providing a valuable service.
But given Gideros is free and open source, you may be wondering how I will get paid? Firstly, let me reassure you that Gideros is and
will always remain free and open source so you will never have to pay a fee to use it and you can continue to publish with no restrictions whatever. However, in future releases, we will start asking for voluntary donations when you download a new version. The idea is similar to Ubuntu: when you download Gideros, you will go first to a donation screen asking you to donate whatever sum you think appropriate. You can dismiss this screen and simply download but we hope people who find Gideros useful will donate what they can afford. It needn't be much money. If 10% of those who download Gideros can donate £10 per release that should be enough to pay a salary at the UK minimum wage level. Of course, I'd like to see more money than that! But please give what you can afford and we'll see how it goes. If more money flows in, we can use that to promote Gideros by, for example, attending conferences/exhibitions and writing articles for websites.
You should think of donating to Gideros as like giving a tip at a restaurant. At Gideros all the food is free! (the code is open source) but it still takes time and effort to cook and serve the food (ie compile/package/sign the code). The chef must also taste the food and, if he put salt instead of sugar in, he must throw it away and start again. This describes our testing process which often results in candidate releases being discarded and is time consuming as mentioned above. So if you enjoyed your "meal" please consider giving us a tip to recognise the effort we put in. Please consider donating for each release, if you can afford it (and if we do a good job of course!) as each release takes time and effort.
(if you compile Gideros from source you don't need to tip -- you cooked the meal yourself!)
Now is a very exciting time for Gideros development. The recent
Kickstarter to add HTML5 support to Gideros is nearly complete and very soon we will add this export to the official Gideros release. (previoulsy it was reserved for those who donated to the Kickstarter). Nicolas (
@hgy29) has done a wonderful job with HTML5, with the result that Gideros games can run full screen at 60fps in a browser. It really is amazing how he has achieved practically native speed, something I don't think any other game engine can match in a browser.
Here are some more features coming up:
* Direct export of Android APK files (no Eclipse needed)
* Automatic plugin export. No need to copy files manually.
* Complete the "bare bones" win32 export
* Support ads in UWP (formerly WinRT) for Windows Store/Phone
* Binary Gideros package for Linux and Raspberry Pi
* Support OpenSL ES for better sound performance on Android
On the non-code side, one of my tasks will be to improve the documentation. The actual API specification is good but I will add some corrections and improvements where needed. What's really missing is regular new tutorials in the form of blog posts. I think this is especially important for the new graphics features like 3D and shaders. These have been there for a while but the documentation is hidden away and I think more explanation is needed to get people started. Another thing I will add is
video tutorials. These are the best way to find out quickly about a new SDK so it's really important that Gideros has a comprehensive set of video tutorials to draw in more users.
I also hope to revitalise the Gideros wiki, which needs a lot of tidying up, and complete the "Ultimate Guide to Gideros" within the wiki. Some of you may remember the "Gideros Reference Guide" I wrote as part of the Kickstarter. Well, I would like to produce a second edition of that book and publish it.
On publicity, I intend to go to conferences. I already have the Gideros poster and flyers from
Apps World last year. If enough money comes in from donations, I'd also like to recruit other people as
"Gideros Ambassadors" to spread the word further. We can't pay you for your time, but we could, in principle, cover expenses like printing costs and travel. I can provide the PDFs for my Gideros poster and flyers to use. This is very much dependent on the money that comes in of course, but if we have a surplus I think this would be really worth while.
I also intend to write press releases for each Gideros release and also try to get the attention of the big websites and national newspapers.
Well, that's quite a lot of work for two days a week! But at least I will now have those two days, not zero days! The reason I'm doing this is because I really want to do it, and because it needs to be done. If you can make it financially worth my while that would be awesome too! If all goes well, perhaps I will be able to increase my hours or even consider recruiting more programmers if the money really ramps up. That depends on the donations and how many more users we can attract over the coming months.
There will be a transition period where I get up to speed with the aspects of Gideros I'm not so familar with like OS X and iOS. I will also need to buy a new Mac. Probably the first release I will be able to build myself will be end of March.
Thanks very much for reading!
John
Comments
Gideros needs something like this to ensure it will survive and keep up with the new frequent release schedule that everyone seems to like.
Likes: john26, MobAmuse, mertocan, simwhi
https://deluxepixel.com
means that this could be almost doubled
"if 100% of those who download Gideros can donate £1 per release", which is roughly a beer per release.
Likes: SinisterSoft, john26, simwhi
Fragmenter - animated loop machine and IKONOMIKON - the memory game
I will support.
Likes: SinisterSoft, john26, simwhi
https://itunes.apple.com/en/developer/unal-zubari/id953453674
Likes: SinisterSoft, MobAmuse, john26, simwhi
Likes: uzubari, SinisterSoft, john26, simwhi
Likes: john26, SinisterSoft
And I will donate of course!
Likes: john26, SinisterSoft
Likes: simwhi, SinisterSoft, MobAmuse, bali001
https://github.com/gideros/gideros
https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnBlackburn1975
Likes: john26, SinisterSoft
Likes: john26, SinisterSoft
Likes: john26, SinisterSoft
Likes: john26, SinisterSoft
This step should fix it and put everything in to the right place, and if it all works out, it would be the renaissance of Gideros
Likes: mertocan, MikeHart, SinisterSoft, john26, MobAmuse, uzubari, antix, simwhi, bali001
Likes: SinisterSoft
you should add a poll for the donate page (with 5 most important todo tasks e.g.) where the donator can note his preferences what to work on next, what should be the priorities. and of course where most money goes should be the first in the queue. this way people can influence on what they money will be spent on (and perhaps are additionally motivated to pay for some given task if it's urgent for them).
Likes: mertocan, SinisterSoft, MobAmuse, Ninjadoodle, antix, john26, pie
Fragmenter - animated loop machine and IKONOMIKON - the memory game
Likes: uzubari, SinisterSoft, john26
I love Gideros !
A very good tool to make awesome games !
I'm currently working with Unity3D and each time I have to build the apk in order to know if everything is ok and it take me very very very long time to wait !!
I will make donation too ! far as I can
Likes: john26
The Gobb : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.toastapp.thegobb
Next to have possiblities for making donations it would be nice to have some guides how to contribute to the project - especially for the guys who can't speak C fluently.
I just think about the docs, tutorials, translations, wallpapers, ui themes, example code/projects etc.
Your text sounded like you want to do this all alone!? I think here are enough guys willing to help, if they get enough instructions.
Likes: SinisterSoft, john26
What would be most useful to me is a roadmap; a list of what is coming and roughly when. This would help when planning new projects and when improving ongoing projects. The new features could even be added and upvoted by Gideros users. Maybe this is something that could be considered, now when Gideros is reaching the next level!
Needless to say, of course I'll donate and do what I can to help the Gideros community move forward.
Likes: rolfpancake, Ninjadoodle, simwhi, SinisterSoft, keszegh, uzubari, MobAmuse, john26
I feel a bit guilty now though because I'm not working at the moment so I get to mess about with Gideros pretty much every day :-\"
Oh yeah I'll donate too :bz
Likes: SinisterSoft, john26
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/contribute/?version=14.04.4&architecture=amd64
Likes: keszegh
https://github.com/gideros/gideros
https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnBlackburn1975
Part of making the documentation open to others is the Gideros Wiki which needs a lot of work (I'm not even sure it is linked from the main webpage atm). Perhaps contriburos could add to the "Ultimate Guide to Gideros" which is an ebook hosted on that page, or add links to their own tutorials there.
The Gideros examples (available on home screen of Gideros Studio) are actually hosted on Github so users could add new examples there and send a pull request. No C programming needed in that case, just Lua!
And there is the Gideros Ambassadors initiative I hope to set up where users can promote Gideros at local conferences.
Likes: totebo, SinisterSoft
https://github.com/gideros/gideros
https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnBlackburn1975
But the least we should do is let you know what we are working on (not just in the forums but on a page of its own) and not just present it as a big surprise when it's done. And then we can add our ambitions for the future also.
Likes: totebo, SinisterSoft, simwhi
https://github.com/gideros/gideros
https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnBlackburn1975
Fragmenter - animated loop machine and IKONOMIKON - the memory game
Likes: john26
1. Easing.lua
2. dataSaver.lua
3. gtween.lua
4. popupbox.lua
5. sceneManager.lua
6. json.lua
Maybe we can highlight these useful files somewhere so that users can easily know what gideros can do and how it can easily achieve the specific task.
Gideros is a great game framework compare to others framework like cocos2d-x and Unity in terms of learning curve, installation and execution speed but just the lack of documentation to achieve the task.
Wish to see the documentation and tutorials improvement soon!
Likes: totebo, john26, rolfpancake
A central place for useful Lua classes and helper methods would be very useful to me. I use a Utils.lua class in my projects where I put math.toint() math.vectorToRadian(), sprite.bringToFront() and stuff like that. Why not compile a massive Utils.lua helper class with all helpful methods, to pick and choose from when starting a new project? Maybe even include them into the docs?
Would also be nice to put the examples from AppCodingEasy under Gideros' official umbrella. Maybe on Github?
PS. json.lua is now included natively in Gideros, so not needed as a class anymore.
Likes: john26
http://appcodingeasy.com/Gideros-Mobile/Gideros-GTween-with-easing
This should certainly be included in the main Gideros SDK documentation I think, maybe under its own section called "Lua libraries" to go alongside the Plugins section of the SDK docs:
http://docs.giderosmobile.com/reference/plugin
I'm also thinking we could merge the "labs" section into the "plugins" section since many people will not know the significance of the word "labs". Finally plugins which are exported by default should be migrated to the "Main API" section IMO.
Likes: rolfpancake, totebo, SinisterSoft, MobAmuse
https://github.com/gideros/gideros
https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnBlackburn1975
https://github.com/ar2rsawseen/GiderosCodingEasy
But unfortunately I did not have much time to keep it up to date all the time.
I sometimes come back here to check what is the current status of Gideros and what I think would be useful is a timeline (even a list of blog posts that belong to a category named "release" or "features) that highlights what kind of progress has been made (features, fixes), each time with a link to the docs + a video explaining what the new feature is and how people can take advantage of it for their apps/business.
I think forum discussions are made for 'insiders', but more public facing efforts wouldn't hurt
For instance, there are some companies that do not release new features without docs + video ("what's in it for me?").
While this makes things longer to release, I believe it helps a lot to convert "silent" visitors.
It should be scannable. I know a few users who've stopped using Gideros but are still interested/curious about what is happening here.
Apart from the current users who know what's going on, it seems like a black box from the outside.
Great work @john26 and the other team members.
Likes: totebo