Rants and answers

[a_bertrand]

People started to rants over this new engine called New Worlds Engine, and I shall try to answer them here. As always I'm open to discuss the issues with whoever have a different opinion. But please post on the right section, not somewhere else.

Q: Why do you charge for it and it's not free?

I said one of the complain of the Zap engine which I released as open source, was that as it was free every noob (not my word) could take it and end up with the same game as everyone else. So having a free engine was not good.

That was my first motivation for making the engine payed (yet honestly it's not expensive, you find it too expensive? really?). Once this decision came during my "design time" I started to develop and I got as feedback that the default template which I designed on purpose based purely on CSS was sub par. Fine, I hired Peter and asked him to do one for me. Before the end of the project I also hired Illusions to help me with consultancies / ideas bug hunting and more, again money invested. Now do you really believe I would invest not only my time, (which is about 3 full time work (8 hour per day)) and money (I shall avoid talking money amounts) for the community? If it was only my time we could discuss, but no way I will even pay for something I give away.

Does that mean I do it for the money? No it means first I make it for the community with the hope to at least cover my expenses (thanks, already reached but more budget means more possibilities to hire others).

Q: Half backed engine?

How is it half backed? In what did I failed this time? Would be good to know in what such that I can at least try to fix / improve things, right? Just saying something is not good doesn't help much in my opinion.

Honestly I think I made a good job, even if some modules would need massive improvement before I would consider them finished, however I gave a dead line being March 2012 and decided I could not afford to develop forever without even knowing what kind of impact it would have. My goal was not to make a game for myself, I did one, but don't want to take this road again with another for the moment. If would then I have other projects which are on sleep.

Half backed because it's not a full running game? Yes it's not, it's an engine so far. With the skeleton to build on it. And actually a lot more than just the base framework, but yes it's still not a full game. May come over time.

Q: I don't like it...

Fine, it's your opinion. Great to hear specially from people which actually didn't even saw the code which I would say it's the thing which really matter, but fine, I cannot make something which please all of you. Same when you do a car, an house or whatever else, your taste is not the same as mine, therefore there will be always differences.

Q: Why taking money even on the developers?

There is a couple of things here. If I charge for the full engine and yet give away a good chunk of it for free on the other side, then people which bought it would feel robbed. Also if I start to give away even part of the code, why would you pay for the full one? You could start with the free, and slowly build on top of that, and yet even use possible free modules found on the market place or somewhere else. Also, by giving it completely free I will attract quiet certainly people which are less interested in it, I mean, if you have to pay even 20$ for something you will not simply trash it 2 min later right? So, if you have to pay it, then you will try to use it too. For this it could be actually positive for all.

Q: Did you reused Zap for it?

No it's a complete new implementation of a game engine. Sure my knowledge is re-used so some parts could be thought as the same, but I didn't even copied a single file from Zap to this new engine.

Q: What are the changes from Zap?

On the zap project people complained about my usage of upper case string for HTML and SQL, therefore I made it all in lower case, I also use MySQLi instead of the old library to be able to avoid SQL injections without having to worry too much. I reduced the number of directories the engine uses, now if you want to develop something for the engine you mainly have to work inside the modules directory. The configuration system based on XML file wasn't there on the Zap engine, as well as the security, login and more is now based on the session mechanism offered by PHP instead of relying on self crafted cookies. Modules can now rely on other modules too, and works with some sort of hook system. Also, the Zap engine was just a bare bone system with limited number of features like login, logout, register and... not much more. Here I went much much further adding a lot of pre-made tools like a paypal integration, combats, forums, direct player trading and much more. So you can't say it's as empty as it was on the Zap.

Q: Why should I use it?

Well you do not have to. It's just another engine to evaluate if you want to use one. I thought and saw that the community wasn't happy with the current offering, and therefore I tried to come with something. Is it a failure? Well no as at least a couple of people on here saw that things could be done differently. Those know who they are. For this, for me, it's already a success. Does that mean McCodes is dead? No, simply there is an alternative or let's say, something different. McCodes of course have a larger market share and more mods / developers nothing I can change in just a couple of days / weeks.

[Spudinski]

When I just saw this topic's title I though... "Oh goody... here comes another flame war".

Good one.

 

Q: Why do you charge for it and it's not free?

I said one of the complain of the Zap engine which I released as open source, was that as it was free every noob (not my word) could take it and end up with the same game as everyone else. So having a free engine was not good.

That was my first motivation for making the engine payed (yet honestly it's not expensive, you find it too expensive? really?). Once this decision came during my "design time" I started to develop and I got as feedback that the default template which I designed on purpose based purely on CSS was sub par. Fine, I hired Peter and asked him to do one for me. Before the end of the project I also hired Illusions to help me with consultancies / ideas bug hunting and more, again money invested. Now do you really believe I would invest not only my time, (which is about 3 full time work (8 hour per day)) and money (I shall avoid talking money amounts) for the community? If it was only my time we could discuss, but no way I will even pay for something I give away.

Does that mean I do it for the money? No it means first I make it for the community with the hope to at least cover my expenses (thanks, already reached but more budget means more possibilities to hire others).

You make it sound like you are the only one who actually invests time and capital into a project, which is really not true.

Most developers who do something for the community, ends up making it open source, or at least for non-commercial purposes.

After which, they "ask" you nicely IF you would be kind enough to donate to the cause, so they're financial losses are covered.

There are many examples of this out there, and some of them invested a lot more capital and time into their projects.

 

Q: Half backed engine?

How is it half backed? In what did I failed this time? Would be good to know in what such that I can at least try to fix / improve things, right? Just saying something is not good doesn't help much in my opinion.

Honestly I think I made a good job, even if some modules would need massive improvement before I would consider them finished, however I gave a dead line being March 2012 and decided I could not afford to develop forever without even knowing what kind of impact it would have. My goal was not to make a game for myself, I did one, but don't want to take this road again with another for the moment. If would then I have other projects which are on sleep.

Half backed because it's not a full running game? Yes it's not, it's an engine so far. With the skeleton to build on it. And actually a lot more than just the base framework, but yes it's still not a full game. May come over time.

I can't remember someone saying this, but if I could just in with the imaginary person there...

Sure, many developers who know how much effort goes into something like this would go and say, "how the hell did he manage to do this in such a short amount of time?".

You might have ninja developing skills I don't know about, but when you raise the bar on your job and family(?), it seems quite... (what's the word I'm looking for) mysterious.

 

Q: I don't like it...

Fine, it's your opinion. Great to hear specially from people which actually didn't even saw the code which I would say it's the thing which really matter, but fine, I cannot make something which please all of you. Same when you do a car, an house or whatever else, your taste is not the same as mine, therefore there will be always differences.

That's a statement, not a question to answer.

It's like I don't like Oracle, but I don't see them springing up and defending themselves though.

 

Q: Why taking money even on the developers?

There is a couple of things here. If I charge for the full engine and yet give away a good chunk of it for free on the other side, then people which bought it would feel robbed. Also if I start to give away even part of the code, why would you pay for the full one? You could start with the free, and slowly build on top of that, and yet even use possible free modules found on the market place or somewhere else. Also, by giving it completely free I will attract quiet certainly people which are less interested in it, I mean, if you have to pay even 20$ for something you will not simply trash it 2 min later right? So, if you have to pay it, then you will try to use it too. For this it could be actually positive for all.

Or, we could just alter the alpha release.

It is legal...

 

Q: Why should I use it?

Well you do not have to. It's just another engine to evaluate if you want to use one. I thought and saw that the community wasn't happy with the current offering, and therefore I tried to come with something. Is it a failure? Well no as at least a couple of people on here saw that things could be done differently. Those know who they are. For this, for me, it's already a success. Does that mean McCodes is dead? No, simply there is an alternative or let's say, something different. McCodes of course have a larger market share and more mods / developers nothing I can change in just a couple of days / weeks.

And that would be your opinion for a change.

Most of us have long either created our own private product(which yes, we compare every other developer's with), or opted for another.

I personally created my own, and it landed me a very decent job opportunity.

But not everyone is the type of person that has to post every two seconds and bloat or disarm people about their own creation.

[a_bertrand]

I'm not talking about your own product Spudinski. Sadly it seems the vast majority of the people here rely on pre-made source... and even pre-made mods for the engine they took. Those are the target for it. If you can handle the development of a game yourself you are quiet certainly not interested in a pre-made engine. I don't have any problem with it ;)

[rulerofzu]

Or, we could just alter the alpha release.

It is legal...

 

That would be just shameful and if anyone, not saying you would spudinksi, should be ashamed of themselves and be prepared to be publicly disgraced for it.

[Spudinski]

That would be just shameful and if anyone, not saying you would spudinksi, should be ashamed of themselves and be prepared to be publicly disgraced for it.

I wouldn't, it is just to prove a point.

People already have 90% of what they need, they only needs to fill in the gaps.

It wasn't a good thing to release the alpha version to people who weren't over viewed.

Developers will spawn to it.

[a_bertrand]

Sure they could use it... yet you would be cut out of the marketplace and updates

[Dominion]

I can't remember someone saying this, but if I could just in with the imaginary person there...

It was said -

I guess Alain's half-baked attempt at an ""engine"" is allowed, by this, odd that since its splattered all over the front end of the forums... Doesn't seem all-together fair to me.

Ref : http://makewebgames.io/showthread.php/41329-New-rules-amp-faq-thread?p=271885&viewfull=1#post271885

Quick question of my own, I want to develop a few modules for this engine then add them to the market place, is there a list of requirement (e.g has to use the database class etc)? I did find this - http://www.nw-engine.com/wiki/index.php/Marketplace , but it’s not exactly more specific so... just that one rule?

[rulerofzu]

I really dont see how the engine is half baked. I joined this site just before it went from being CE to MWG. In that time ive seen numerous postings by people on how they are going to create an engine and it amounts to nothing.

The NWE engine is exactly what Alain said he would deliver. A new game engine. Congrats I think he has done a good job.

As for the comment in that thread about it being all over the front of the forum well its a forum which shows the new posts on the front page duh!

[a_bertrand]

Dom: for the requirements of the mods, you must use the LinkButton, SubmitButton, Translate, TableHeader etc... That will allow everyone to change the texts without issues. You should also use the config.xml if possible, like for table edition, or config key, or player variables. What would be main show stoppers are security issues (for example not using the DB class correctly), and modifications of main files (if you need some, let me know and we shall plan them).

[Uridium]

Mods for the NEW Worlds Engine are being built as we speak. Ive sent Bert a copy today of one to which hes liked so will be adding to market the mod created last night was purely from the dev version and made it easier to create.

[rulerofzu]

Easier to create interesting. So in theory as I have the full version I could just uninstall the majority of the modules which would make it like a dev version.

[a_bertrand]

I think illusions means that in the latest release it's easier than during the alpha / beta. But that's my guess. And not, removing most of the mods doesn't make it a dev version as there is a couple of things like the hook cache and security token which are missing. Why would you want to have a dev version?