Games [was:What is version 2.7?]

[Malte Brill]

Please forgive the lurker chiming in again...

> I create
> shareware games.  Which are HARD to make a living from.  (I don't
> make a living with the shareware... I must supplement with a part
> time job at an accounting firm...)  But games are where my heart lies.

I am also into doing games and I often bite myself that I didn´t  
discover Metacard back in the day. I started with Rev 1.1 searching  
an alternative to Director.

> I know that the new incarnations of Rev have game plugins or
> something.  I saw something on the website the other day about it.

[shameless plug]
As I am the one responsible for that I´d like to comment a bit. This  
is not meant as advertising, but as showing off what I do with Rev.
Once I started using Rev I thought it would be very cool if it could  
do this or that. It took me a while to get savvy enough to figure out  
that it really allows to do what I wanted, yet required a vast amount  
of script to be written. Once I figured out how easy it is to write  
reusable code I made a multimedia library and happiely used it for  
myself. I showed this at EuroRevCon 2004 on Malta and started talking  
to Kevin about it. The result is a library stack called arcadeEngine,  
that is available as a 3rd party add on via RevSelect. What does  
ArcadeEngine do? Basically it takes the math pain out of creating  
games. It allows asynchronous movement of different controls at  
different speeds all under scripted control. You can change any  
aspect of movement at any time. Start it, stop it, change the speed  
or even the path while it is moving. It does collision detection  
using different methods. It handles basic 3D stuff. It is packed with  
geometric functions that are useful in games. Basically it is my code  
library and therefore tested to the max within real world Shareware  
games and multimedia presentations.

You might want to go to the following page to look at the showcase  
and trial if you are interested:

http://www.runrev.com/section/revselect/arcadeengine

The current showcase for Mac Os X requires X.3.9 or higher though, as  
it is a Universal Binary.

The library works with any version of rev >= 2.1 and I can´t think of  
a reason why it should not work with Metacard, as it is a  
librarystack. I haven´t tested it myself though. Klaus?

If you want to see a few games using the lib, just drop me a line off  
list.

[/shameless plug]

> But I don't know how many game developers have actually migrated to
> Rev.  I never hear game discussions on this list.

As far as I can judge from the mails I answer concernig AE tips and  
tricks the number of people interested in creating games is not too  
small and growing.

>   So I've sort of
> figured that the primary feature requests that Rev gets are more
> business app oriented.  Ditto for bugs.  I don't know if every
> reported bug gets fixed in the next version or if there is a
> heirarchy.  If there is a heirarchy then, mine might not top the list.

The most important thing is to report the bugs I guess. IMHO Rev got  
a lot better at handling bugreports. At least bugzilla entries get  
answered since a while. I am quite happy to see there is progress.

> I just want to ensure that the version I migrate to doesn't break
> what I've already created, or stick a major monkey wrench into the
> primary project I am focused on.  You really have to plan carefully
> when bug fixes don't come with the purchase.

Perfectly understandable.

[snip]

> Because they can get games anywhere, my clientele tends to have high
> expectations.  Shareware development has a whole different approach
> then what most of you probably do.  One bug, and they'll post it all
> over the internet on every download site in big letters, giving me a
> one star rating.  Everybody else who is thinking of downloading me
> will read that rating and move right on to somebody else's game.

Nod. And if you want to continue supporting games for the Mac  
community you need to go universal binary. The PPC will be dying  
slowly. Maybe 2 or 3 years from now there will be only a handful of  
people that will pay for a version that does not run natively on  
INTEL machines.

> I am serious about making this business pay for itself and become my
> sole living.

Maybe some MC / Rev developers should cooperate on a nice games  
collection, like the "After Dark Games" series. If that is of any  
interest for some of you please contact me off list, as I actually  
have been working on some games for it already. However working in a  
team would be much more fun, wouldn´t it?

All the best,

Malte