This thread was originally about fining an LPC artist but seems to have been hijacked by another discusson about FOSS platforms and software development. Oh well, what's another post in the mix?
@jasonisop
You're probably not aware of this but Adobe has stopped supporting or producing Flash engines for mobile devices. They have discontinued their efforts to provide a mobile Flash plugin because it doesn't perform well on limited resources. They stopped a little more than a year ago. I wasn't actually trying to target the mobile market because my RPG will have live action combat so it'll require more than simple clicking or touch screen interaction to play. Virtual keyboards aren't a good idea and extra buttons for every needed action would tend to make the interface look cluttered or at least add a lot of visual noise. I've thought about trying to make it mobile friendly but I don't think it would be a good idea.
I'm trying to focus my efforts on making a decent desktop web based RPG that requires no special software to play.
Lol, I like you Julius. You have spirit. Sorry for the massive wall of text by the way, I got carried away.
To respond to your points:
1 - Yes, it will be just another game in their list of tens of thousands of games already submitted. If it's good it'll float and people will play it for a while before it vanishes. If I put it on my site I still have to drive traffic and show people it exists. On a mass flash site I at least have a chance at free advertising to a huge user base.
2 - I'm not selling anything and I hate ads. I refuse to put ads on my personal site, I refuse to put ads on any site I maintain. If I want to make money I'll make an awesome game, put a link to a store, and sell game related merchandise. Most cloud-based hosting plans are really shared server plans (no offense but cloud-based anything is a marketting term, it's pure BS). I already have several websites I maintain, I don't need another one ;)
3 - Point taken. However, HTML5 has been on the drawing board since the late 90's. HTML4 was standardized in 1997 only after it was in the works for over half a decade. How long HTML5 has actually be in the works? W3C released the first working draft in 2008. The first mention of HTML5 was not long after HTML 4.01 because the W3C realized HTML wasn't suited for dynamic content. JavaScript and CSS standards really made the W3C realize naked HTML isn't useful for more than presenting data on a page in a static manner a very long time ago. It's more likely I'll work through my current career, retire, and start on a second career before the final version of HTML5 is approved, blessed, agreed upon, and so on.
The other limitation I didn't mention is hosting. If I host my own game I have to upgrade my hosting plan to include more bandwidth or run it on it's own site. It's not like this games resources are huge but they will add up pretty quickly if people actually play it.
If I make a game that someone else can host I don't have to create a website for it, I only have to create a game. If another site hosts my game, one that already has a large user base, I don't have drive traffic to my site or advertise, that site does it for me. No search engine optimizing, no banners or joining a bunch of forums to get peoples attention, no extra work on my part to deploy that game, it gets seen because people already see and visit that site.
While I like HTML5 and everything it stands for I still don't believe most browsers will work correctly with it. The more Mozilla pushes for standards compliance the more IE seems to drift or completely ignore those standards. IE 10 has made huge improvements over previous versions but still doesn't fully support CSS 3. IE 9 is still vastly lacking in compliance and is more used than 10.
The other browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, et al, all seem to do a better job supporting industry standards as a whole but still don't display consistently from one to the next. Don't get me wrong, web browsers have come a hell of a long way since the 90's and early 2000's but still aren't quite there yet as far as unified standards. What about canvas in IE? What about many of the other features that are incredibly useful in one browser but essentially don't exist or work in other browsers?
Response to your links
If I used rpg js (first link) it would work in all major browsers and would probably do an awesome job. The only problem is that framework is not exactly small, simple, or easy to learn. There's documentation but the latest update was written 2 years ago! I can't count on one hand how many version of Firefox or chrome have been released in the past 2 years... I also can't stress enough how the JS engine in Chrome and Firefox have changed in the last 2 years (version 1.8.5 was released just 2 months after the last commit was made)...
If I used jgen (second link) it would only work in Chrome and Firefox. That literally cuts the market I can address in half. That alone kills my ability to use that project.
BrowserQuest looks pretty awesome and I like a lot of it's features. One problem I have with it is it won't work on a phone. Period. If the phone version can't support everything the desktop version can support then I'm not using it. I'm not writing and maintaining two different major versions, I don't know about you but I work for a living, have a family with two kids, and I'm going to school full time. That shit takes time to make two different major versions. Oh, and it also doesn't work in IE (8 or before) or Opera (correctly without configuration). Again, the market is limited severely because of technology they created the framework for, I don't want to limit myself to a narrow audience just because of the platform I choose.
Future Concerns
If I were to write something in HTML5 I'd be happy to do it here and now with what I have. What happens in 5 years when everything I wrote breaks because the w3 consortium changes its mind about what's standard and all the major browser vendors start tweaking their stuff? I will have to constantly troubleshoot, debug, patch, and otherwise end up rewriting the thing from scratch at some point. Do I really need to make something I know will be problematic?
Flash VS. HTML5
Yes, I'm aware Flash is on the decline (at least in the mobile/tablet market). It's still the #1 most installed browser plugin on the planet (some estimate 98% of all desktop browsers have it available). Do I need to rewrite my game when a new version of Flash comes out? No. Do I need to recompile it because there's a big fix? No. Do I have to do anything for anyone ever because Flash releases something? No. Which makes more sense to me? Flash!
I like making things in HTML5. Don't get me wrong, I've been writing web applications since the bad old days of using Perl as CGI scripts (not fast CGI, just the vanilla variety. Yes, I'm that old). I know that HTML is hugely useful and I still love writing it. I don't think HTML5 is the right platform for my game. I'm getting lazy as I get older. I want stuff I make to continue working even if standards change or newer versions of software and standards are released. I'll probably rewrite my Flash game engine in either Java or Python after I'm done but for now I don't want to spend the time, effort, energy, or resources to make another version. Hell, I'll probaby just use FLARE now that I know it exists but that'll be after I finish my first game in Flash!
Conclusion
I respect your input and opinion. I'm grateful for your comments. I'm also grateful for your ideas and contributions. I don't mean to sound like an ugly ogre but I've thought about exactly the things you're saying and exactly the arguments you've presented and I made a decision to avoid HTML5 (at least for now) because it's still not where I want it to be. If something changes that's considerable I'll probably revisit the idea of using HTML5 again but for now it's not a reasonable option as far as I'm concerned.
I see your point about free as in freedom. While I do love writing software in more conventional languages (C++, Java, Python, etc.) I also want my game to be playable by the widest possible market (i.e. anyone with a web browser and the Flash plugin installed). Java apps are only midly trusted on the Internet and less if you don't know anything about them. Compiled executables are less trusted unless you see a reputable company name on it or it comes from a major website (I have neither).
My options for making a game that someone outside OGA might actually play is close to zero if I don't release it in an easily accessible format. Do you have any suggestions for something that's FOSS, the average non-tech person can run on every major OS, doesn't have a dependency that's not native to all major OS', and that doesn't require installing or compiling?
Well, that was a flop. I can only guess this means money alone doesn't motivate artistic talent.
Note to self: Must devise some other means of convincing good artists to pay attention to me and make good art. They like commissions but don't like contests or making sample work...
I had no idea you could make a custom mug like that. That is pure genius.
That site is complaining that your pictures isn't good enough quality. Here, I uploaded the original so it won't complain that the quality is too low. It's a few years old but still a decent picture.
I suppose I should mention I have no background or experience making games except playing them, taking classes about designing them, reading theory about them, and a background in making software that lends itself well to writing them. So far I've been fortunate enough to find this awesome community and I think I've done a fair bit to contribute to it but there are still assets I need to make a game that I feel could compete with commercial productions.
That being said, I'm obviously not opposed to paying good artists to have stuff made! I guess seeing all the RPG Maker graphics makes me want to use them because they're convenient and mostly look decent. They do lack quite a bit in originality but there are so many tile sets to choose from that it makes the whole thing appealing.
After seeing this discussion I've pretty much lost the small attachment I had to using RPG Maker stuff. Seeing more than one person who's tried working with Enterbrain and ended up with less than favorable results tells me the only reasonable and feasible means of getting good game graphics is to have them made.
By the way, I'm having Redshrike make an animated wolf enemy/companion in LPC Style! Check my profile and the 2D art submissions for updates in coming weeks for further information. Have I mentioned lately how awesome the OGA community is? Ya'll are just frickin' awesome.
Also by the way, thank you all for not shunning me when I first showed up on OGA. I've had that happen before and it felt like the lowest form of degradation known to human kind. Having crappy game developers tell me I wasn't worth their time because I hadn't already made a crappy game like them was the most demeaning feeling I could have imagined. All I've received from people here is support and encouragement, I really appreciate that.
You have experience with Flash, you can tell me if my source looks like crazy nonsense! Here:
will-thompson.net/game
Have a look and tell me how the source looks to you. Do you prefer Git, SVN, or something else?
This thread was originally about fining an LPC artist but seems to have been hijacked by another discusson about FOSS platforms and software development. Oh well, what's another post in the mix?
@jasonisop
You're probably not aware of this but Adobe has stopped supporting or producing Flash engines for mobile devices. They have discontinued their efforts to provide a mobile Flash plugin because it doesn't perform well on limited resources. They stopped a little more than a year ago. I wasn't actually trying to target the mobile market because my RPG will have live action combat so it'll require more than simple clicking or touch screen interaction to play. Virtual keyboards aren't a good idea and extra buttons for every needed action would tend to make the interface look cluttered or at least add a lot of visual noise. I've thought about trying to make it mobile friendly but I don't think it would be a good idea.
I'm trying to focus my efforts on making a decent desktop web based RPG that requires no special software to play.
blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2012/06/flash-player-and-android-update.html
forums.adobe.com/thread/1118762
Lol, I like you Julius. You have spirit. Sorry for the massive wall of text by the way, I got carried away.
To respond to your points:
1 - Yes, it will be just another game in their list of tens of thousands of games already submitted. If it's good it'll float and people will play it for a while before it vanishes. If I put it on my site I still have to drive traffic and show people it exists. On a mass flash site I at least have a chance at free advertising to a huge user base.
2 - I'm not selling anything and I hate ads. I refuse to put ads on my personal site, I refuse to put ads on any site I maintain. If I want to make money I'll make an awesome game, put a link to a store, and sell game related merchandise. Most cloud-based hosting plans are really shared server plans (no offense but cloud-based anything is a marketting term, it's pure BS). I already have several websites I maintain, I don't need another one ;)
3 - Point taken. However, HTML5 has been on the drawing board since the late 90's. HTML4 was standardized in 1997 only after it was in the works for over half a decade. How long HTML5 has actually be in the works? W3C released the first working draft in 2008. The first mention of HTML5 was not long after HTML 4.01 because the W3C realized HTML wasn't suited for dynamic content. JavaScript and CSS standards really made the W3C realize naked HTML isn't useful for more than presenting data on a page in a static manner a very long time ago. It's more likely I'll work through my current career, retire, and start on a second career before the final version of HTML5 is approved, blessed, agreed upon, and so on.
The other limitation I didn't mention is hosting. If I host my own game I have to upgrade my hosting plan to include more bandwidth or run it on it's own site. It's not like this games resources are huge but they will add up pretty quickly if people actually play it.
If I make a game that someone else can host I don't have to create a website for it, I only have to create a game. If another site hosts my game, one that already has a large user base, I don't have drive traffic to my site or advertise, that site does it for me. No search engine optimizing, no banners or joining a bunch of forums to get peoples attention, no extra work on my part to deploy that game, it gets seen because people already see and visit that site.
While I like HTML5 and everything it stands for I still don't believe most browsers will work correctly with it. The more Mozilla pushes for standards compliance the more IE seems to drift or completely ignore those standards. IE 10 has made huge improvements over previous versions but still doesn't fully support CSS 3. IE 9 is still vastly lacking in compliance and is more used than 10.
The other browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, et al, all seem to do a better job supporting industry standards as a whole but still don't display consistently from one to the next. Don't get me wrong, web browsers have come a hell of a long way since the 90's and early 2000's but still aren't quite there yet as far as unified standards. What about canvas in IE? What about many of the other features that are incredibly useful in one browser but essentially don't exist or work in other browsers?
Response to your links
If I used rpg js (first link) it would work in all major browsers and would probably do an awesome job. The only problem is that framework is not exactly small, simple, or easy to learn. There's documentation but the latest update was written 2 years ago! I can't count on one hand how many version of Firefox or chrome have been released in the past 2 years... I also can't stress enough how the JS engine in Chrome and Firefox have changed in the last 2 years (version 1.8.5 was released just 2 months after the last commit was made)...
If I used jgen (second link) it would only work in Chrome and Firefox. That literally cuts the market I can address in half. That alone kills my ability to use that project.
BrowserQuest looks pretty awesome and I like a lot of it's features. One problem I have with it is it won't work on a phone. Period. If the phone version can't support everything the desktop version can support then I'm not using it. I'm not writing and maintaining two different major versions, I don't know about you but I work for a living, have a family with two kids, and I'm going to school full time. That shit takes time to make two different major versions. Oh, and it also doesn't work in IE (8 or before) or Opera (correctly without configuration). Again, the market is limited severely because of technology they created the framework for, I don't want to limit myself to a narrow audience just because of the platform I choose.
Future Concerns
If I were to write something in HTML5 I'd be happy to do it here and now with what I have. What happens in 5 years when everything I wrote breaks because the w3 consortium changes its mind about what's standard and all the major browser vendors start tweaking their stuff? I will have to constantly troubleshoot, debug, patch, and otherwise end up rewriting the thing from scratch at some point. Do I really need to make something I know will be problematic?
Flash VS. HTML5
Yes, I'm aware Flash is on the decline (at least in the mobile/tablet market). It's still the #1 most installed browser plugin on the planet (some estimate 98% of all desktop browsers have it available). Do I need to rewrite my game when a new version of Flash comes out? No. Do I need to recompile it because there's a big fix? No. Do I have to do anything for anyone ever because Flash releases something? No. Which makes more sense to me? Flash!
I like making things in HTML5. Don't get me wrong, I've been writing web applications since the bad old days of using Perl as CGI scripts (not fast CGI, just the vanilla variety. Yes, I'm that old). I know that HTML is hugely useful and I still love writing it. I don't think HTML5 is the right platform for my game. I'm getting lazy as I get older. I want stuff I make to continue working even if standards change or newer versions of software and standards are released. I'll probably rewrite my Flash game engine in either Java or Python after I'm done but for now I don't want to spend the time, effort, energy, or resources to make another version. Hell, I'll probaby just use FLARE now that I know it exists but that'll be after I finish my first game in Flash!
Conclusion
I respect your input and opinion. I'm grateful for your comments. I'm also grateful for your ideas and contributions. I don't mean to sound like an ugly ogre but I've thought about exactly the things you're saying and exactly the arguments you've presented and I made a decision to avoid HTML5 (at least for now) because it's still not where I want it to be. If something changes that's considerable I'll probably revisit the idea of using HTML5 again but for now it's not a reasonable option as far as I'm concerned.
Agreed about release early and often.
I see your point about free as in freedom. While I do love writing software in more conventional languages (C++, Java, Python, etc.) I also want my game to be playable by the widest possible market (i.e. anyone with a web browser and the Flash plugin installed). Java apps are only midly trusted on the Internet and less if you don't know anything about them. Compiled executables are less trusted unless you see a reputable company name on it or it comes from a major website (I have neither).
My options for making a game that someone outside OGA might actually play is close to zero if I don't release it in an easily accessible format. Do you have any suggestions for something that's FOSS, the average non-tech person can run on every major OS, doesn't have a dependency that's not native to all major OS', and that doesn't require installing or compiling?
Now I have to wonder if a better demo using placeholder graphics and a little bit of content might be better motivation.
Well, that was a flop. I can only guess this means money alone doesn't motivate artistic talent.
Note to self: Must devise some other means of convincing good artists to pay attention to me and make good art. They like commissions but don't like contests or making sample work...
HAHAHAHAHAHA
I had no idea you could make a custom mug like that. That is pure genius.
That site is complaining that your pictures isn't good enough quality. Here, I uploaded the original so it won't complain that the quality is too low. It's a few years old but still a decent picture.
Sweet, thanks Curt! I'm going to try to use those in my game.
I suppose I should mention I have no background or experience making games except playing them, taking classes about designing them, reading theory about them, and a background in making software that lends itself well to writing them. So far I've been fortunate enough to find this awesome community and I think I've done a fair bit to contribute to it but there are still assets I need to make a game that I feel could compete with commercial productions.
That being said, I'm obviously not opposed to paying good artists to have stuff made! I guess seeing all the RPG Maker graphics makes me want to use them because they're convenient and mostly look decent. They do lack quite a bit in originality but there are so many tile sets to choose from that it makes the whole thing appealing.
After seeing this discussion I've pretty much lost the small attachment I had to using RPG Maker stuff. Seeing more than one person who's tried working with Enterbrain and ended up with less than favorable results tells me the only reasonable and feasible means of getting good game graphics is to have them made.
By the way, I'm having Redshrike make an animated wolf enemy/companion in LPC Style! Check my profile and the 2D art submissions for updates in coming weeks for further information. Have I mentioned lately how awesome the OGA community is? Ya'll are just frickin' awesome.
Also by the way, thank you all for not shunning me when I first showed up on OGA. I've had that happen before and it felt like the lowest form of degradation known to human kind. Having crappy game developers tell me I wasn't worth their time because I hadn't already made a crappy game like them was the most demeaning feeling I could have imagined. All I've received from people here is support and encouragement, I really appreciate that.
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