News Getting Cerberus X Off the Ground - I'm Now All In to Help It Succeed!

[Phil7]

Hello everyone!

Recently, my professional life has changed significantly. I had the opportunity to work remotely as a software developer, but now I need to establish my own company to keep doing that. While this is a big step and a journey into the unknown, it also gives me a great chance to intensify my work on Cerberus X. I’ve often pondered why Cerberus X doesn’t receive the widespread recognition that other tools get, and what could be achieved if someone were to invest time and resources to showcase it to a broader audience.

Over the last two years, I’ve seen how well Cerberus X works in real-world games, running perfectly on thousands of Android and iOS devices. It performs very well, often better than popular game engines, not to mention setup effort and time, as well as build times.

This journey has enriched my skills as a programmer and provided insights into the app business landscape. In essence, my current situation allows me to allocate substantial time and resources to Cerberus X at least for the coming six months. This might be my only chance to really dedicate myself to help Cerberus X grow and succeed… so, I’m seizing it! In total I have almost two years to elevate it to a level where it can basically sustain my family of four.

Maybe you are wondering how I intend to monetize Cerberus X and whether my plans pose any risk to its Open Source nature or the existing community. Be assured, I cherish this project and have no intention to impose any restrictions or diminish what we have and value now; my goal is to enhance it.

Some ways to make money could be:

- Setting up a Patreon or similar for regular updates and deeper insights.
- Offering monthly binary releases for a small fee, besides the two or three free releases per year. You’d still be able to build it yourself; it’s simply a convenience service for those who wish to offer additional support.
- Creating smaller sub projects that could be financed by user contributions.

If you have other ideas or suggestions, please let me know!

Success in these endeavors will greatly depend on a substantial community growth. While I might attract new visitors to our forum, it's your collaborative and welcoming spirit that will encourage them to stay and value this community and the whole Cerberus X project as much as I do.

One last thing I'd like to mention is how I plan to navigate the financial aspects should Cerberus X prove to be a success. At this moment, it's a considerable and uncertain investment of time and money for me, and it will be a while before I can simply break even. Once that point is reached, and I can see a sustainable path forward, I am completely open to discussing how to proceed. For now, I've decided to pursue my dream, and I hope for your continued support and companionship, just as it has been for the last couple of years.

This post, lengthy as it is, took me a while to write. It’s very important to me that you understand what I intend.

I’m eager to move forward with these plans and am looking forward to hearing your thoughts, suggestions, even concerns and having fruitful discussions about the future of Cerberus X. Let’s show it to the world!

All the best,
Phil

 

[MikeHart]

Like I said in our recent calls, I wish you all the success in this world. Having worked with you for 2 yrs at PeopleFun/AppLovin, I definitely think that you will be successful. All power to you!!!

I am completely open to discussing how to proceed

????? You run a business and you want to discuss with outsiders how to spend your money????

running perfectly on thousands of Android and iOS devices

I would rather say millions of Android and IOS devices

 

[ddabrahim]

For making money I would like to recommend what I was recommending to TGC for AppGameKit but they didn't go ahead.

1. CX Code: Core engine free and completely open source under a permissive license
-OpenGL renderer
-desktop target
-html5 target (?)
-game engine with sprites, collision detection, camera, scene..etc (??)
-VS Code support (???)
-NO TED included (!)

2. CX Studio: Integrated development environment
-paid one time fee but could have major new releases every couple years require a new license to purchase
-TED: integrated code editor so we can download, run, code, export, easy, convenient
-can be source available, not open source, just source available, open to contribution.
-Vulkan, Metal renderer (??)

3. CX Mobile: mobile export
-due to its nature require constant maintenance, monthly fee or annual fee.
-easy deploy, preferably just one click something similar to AGK

4. Priority customer support charged $60/hour something like that.
-bug fixes
-ports
-debugging

In case of monthly, annual fees, if we stop payment, we get to keep the version we have, essentially we pay for updates only.
But in case of mobile, if we don't get updates our project sooner or later going to be pulled from the stores, so we are kind of forced to pay, but we can choose to pay monthly to support maintenance in general, or only when it is necessary to upgrade API level or something. CX would not force us to do anything. It is up to us to decide if we need the update or not.

If I had a project like CX, AGK this is what I would try considering all the free and open-source frameworks and libraries out there, no point to charge money for it, people would just go with Love2D, Raylib, Phaser, MonoGame and what not.

When it comes to integrated dev environments, yes there are many free options, Godot, Defold, microStudio, GDevelop and this is why it has to be a one time fee, you can't really charge monthly fee for something like this. Maybe for that reason it is best to skip the entire thing and not to have integrated dev environment, instead just VS Code support. I am uncertain what would be the best to be honest.

But when it comes to mobile support,
-Godot is garbage, period, nothing to talk about
-microStudio is untested, no idea but being Web based, I can imagine it is not so good
-GDevelop web based has lots of problems, compatibility problems on mobile and I think they begin to use proprietary code for mobile now, it is not fully open-source now so I would be not surprised if GDevelop would charge money for mobile support sooner or later. They already charge money for the build tool.
-Defold tried to build for mobile once, was getting lots of errors.
-AGK is the best, most reliable, most simple way to target mobile but it does not have a decent editor.

So this is my experience with mobile, I think definitely worth considering to charge money for a reliable, stable mobile support including easy deploy that only AGK has to offer so far and married with a Godot like editor it would be really good.

Getting the editor of Godot and replace the engine under the hood with CX would be feasible at all?

 

[ddabrahim]

Offering monthly binary releases for a small fee

I am not so sure about this. If binary is not available, most people going to just ignore it.
There was a project called 3DRad, many years ago that did something similar. It was a 3D game maker, one that was originally focused on car racing games but over the years the engine was extended so you can make any kind of game with it. It was brilliant.

What they did was the engine was free but they released old binaries for free every 6 months and new binaries did cost only $5 or $12 can't remember. But the point is, if wanted to have the latest you had 2 options. Pay the money or wait 6 months and get it free.
It didn't work because people just did wait for the free release.

It was at the time when I can't remember any free 3D engines being available.
There was Unity but it was paid at the time, there was no free version.
There was Torque3D but again it was paid, was no free version.
Leadwerks, again paid no free version.

This is all I can remember, so competition was not that big really.
3DRad - $12
Unity - $200
Leadwerks - $200
Torque3D - $200
CryEngine - not available for individuals
Unreal - not available for individuals
Source - game MOD only / not available for individuals to make stand alone games

And there was also coding tools that you all familiar with.
Blitz3D
DarkBasic Pro
PureBasic

And 2D staff
GameMaker
RPG Maker
Point n Click
Game Editor

All paid staff 3DRad being the cheapest with free and $12 binary releases but it is failed. People did not pay.
So I am not very optimistic about not having free binary releases but only paid considering all the free options out there now.
3DRad was truly brilliant in a time with very little competition and didn't survive.

There was however an other thing I was recommending on the TGC forums and that is to have a completely free and open-source "community edition" and a "Pro" prorpietary release built on top of the community edition.

So there could be

Cerberus CE (free)
-free and open-source like today, noting change, open to contribution, distribution, use it however you want it
-being community edition, no official binary release or only every 6 months or every 12 months
-no support / community support only

Cerberus Pro (paid)
-built on top of Cerberus CE, take advantage everything the community contribute with but also get rid of anything you personally disagree with or have a better implementation. Say Pro could have a better physics library or better UI library, better code editor, Vulkan, Metal renderer while CE would have OpenGL only..etc
-paid, one time fee, monthly, annually as you prefer, maybe combine it with my first suggestions of Studio/Mobile edition
-not open source but source-available, access to source could be also a license fee to pay
-regular binary releases
-official support

I do hope it is going to work out, Cerberus definitely deserve a second (or third?) chance for success. Making enough revenue for a family of 4 is not easy task. I really hope it is going to be a success.

 

[Phil7]

You run a business and you want to discuss with outsiders how to spend your money?

Only with "insiders" , but at some point it might be sensible to discuss business related things with people that are highly involved in the success.

@ddabrahim Thanks you so much for your thoughts. I will think them through very carefully, especially because you are coming from a totally different perspective concerning perceived value and payment. I am sure you have some valid points there.

 

[ddabrahim]

you are coming from a totally different perspective concerning perceived value and payment

I have just realised it may look like I am expecting constant implementation of new features for payment but that is not what I meant. Obviously if you want to have a paid product with a free option available the most obvious thing to do to make the paid version stand out is add more features.

But what I value the most is polish, support, being reliable, stable. So I would be totally fine paying for support and maintenance. If all you wish to do is to offer paid services and support on top of a free product, that is fine but to bring new people, get people attention some paid exclusive features could help.

Just wanted to clarify this.

Speaking of paid services on top of a free product, you can also consider what Pixi.js, Phaser and MonoGame developer does and offer your services to:
-develop complete projects from scratch
-priority bug fix
-implement features customers need
-port project from one platform to an other
-publishing
-train staff how to use Cerberus X, how the internals works, how to compile it..etc

But I honestly have no idea how much demand is there for something like this. Personally I don't think I ever going to need such service if I ever get to the point I have anything to fix, port, publish I'll do it my self. I can't see a lot of demand for staff like this. Maybe the training part but only if I want to implement my own features, I don't think I would hire anyone to implement features, fix bugs and develop a game for me.

But you may have a totally different perspective with using CX professionally and obviously Pixi.js, Phaser and MonoGame dev make a living with offering paid service so, guess it could work.

Good luck anyway.

 

[SLotman]

People moved on to things that have editors like Unity, Unreal, etc. Unless you make something like that for CX, I don't think you'll have a big enough audience to support any commercial endeavor.
(I personally prefer stuff with just code myself, no 'editor' in sight - but I can see *some* benefits it brings after fiddling around in Unity a bit)

People moving away from Unity into Godot are pestering the devs about C#. Having its own language (as Godot with GDScript) is another disadvantage here. Most people, having to learning something else besides C#, will prefer something with a language that can be used for other things, like C, C++, Python or even Javascript.

And if you start charging for Cerberus-X... people will (and should) stop contributing to its source for free. And maintaining Cerberus-X working on all targets is a BIG task, one that Mark couldn't keep up himself. I don't think anyone can by themselves.

This will also put me at a crossroad. I don't have money to pay for Cerberus - I'm barely paying my bills as of right now. IF I get a grant I applied to, I'll be using Unity for the next year and a half or even 2 (its 3D stuff for mobile *and* PC, probably even consoles, so I can't use Cerberus for that and I already put the Unity subscription price into my proposal).

If anything could be improved and charged up, is, IMHO, the IDE. I've been working for the past few months using IntelliJ at work, and its SO much better there isn't even a comparison to be made. Just things like "Go to definition" and "Find usages" when right clicking a variable or function is immensely powerful. Having hints to function parameters while you're typing it too. GIT integration... so many options that makes daily coding better and easier. I know, there is no comparison here - a small team can't pull an "IntelliJ" - but making something like VSCode to fully work with Cerberus (debug and all) could be a good option - something that could be charged.

I wish you all the luck. But I don't know if I'll keep using Cerberus-X if it goes commercial.

 

[dawlane]

Some ways to make money could be:

- Setting up a Patreon or similar for regular updates and deeper insights.
- Offering monthly binary releases for a small fee, besides the two or three free releases per year. You’d still be able to build it yourself; it’s simply a convenience service for those who wish to offer additional support.
- Creating smaller sub projects that could be financed by user contributions.

What happened to writing a few games with CX. That would generate finance and promote CX?

 

[Phil7]

People moved on to things that have editors like Unity, Unreal, etc. Unless you make something like that for CX, I don't think you'll have a big enough audience to support any commercial endeavor.
(I personally prefer stuff with just code myself, no 'editor' in sight - but I can see *some* benefits it brings after fiddling around in Unity a bit)

@SLotman I plan to create an editor for CX in some form but I want a completely different approach. I want it to be intuitive and I want to avoid the editor to be only entrance point to creating a game. In a way CX is a niche product for people that like to create by writing code, but this doesn't mean that you have create your scenes by guessing coordinates and pushing them by changing their values for every build. Ignition X started something where I liked the idea. Let's see if I can find it later

This will also put me at a crossroad. I don't have money to pay for Cerberus - I'm barely paying my bills as of right now.

That's bad to hear. But don't bother paying for Cerberus, you can but you don't have to. I hoped that I made that point clear: It is all about making CX better and evolving faster. Everything you get from Cerberus right now will stay free and open source - and chances are high that with a larger user base all those free things get even more and better.

I know, there is no comparison here - a small team can't pull an "IntelliJ" - but making something like VSCode to fully work with Cerberus (debug and all) could be a good option

Did you read about my VSCode Extension here? Some of the things like "Go to definition" are already in place. I think we are on the same page what needs to get into Cerberus X and I am willing to work on it. No matter how much money I make from it - well I did that for some time now - but I simply can spend more time on it when people decide to support it and with my own company I am legaly safe to do so.

 

[Phil7]

What happened to writing a few games with CX. That would generate finance and promote CX?

That is something to think about for sure. One of the things I want to do is to create some showcase apps/games where you can see what CX is capable of. Edit: And deploy them to app stores.
As I am trying to get something going for CX I have to be very aware of how I spend my time. Making a game that gets a lot of visibility on the market and is profitable is a full time job on its own.

 

[ddabrahim]

I plan to create an editor for CX in some form

One of the things I want to do is to create some showcase apps/games

I have to be very aware of how I spend my time

I think also worth exploring the possibility to switch focus to cross-platform app development instead of game development.
Instead of a placement, level editor tool I would consider to develop a UI editor with a cross-platform UI framework.

I don’t recommend to abandon game development but to switch focus.
Gaming industry is extremely competitive and most users care about only 1 thing and 1 thing only: Results.
How they get the results either using C++, Java, Vulkan, OpenGL is not important, therefore, doesn’t matter how you look at it, CX do compete with all game engines and frameworks out there especially if you go ahead with this plan to include some sort of placement/level editor.

Even if you release tomorrow a AAA game made in CX, it would only put it on the same page with MonoGame, Cocos2D, Haxe, libGDX, GameMaker, Unity, Fusion, Phaser. So plenty high profile competitors with a proven track record and game console support.

The market for cross-platform app development tools maybe less competitive.
The ones I can think of from the top of my head not including web frameworks is:

.NET MAUI
Flutter
PureBasic/SpyderBasic
Python/Tkinter/Kivy
Lazarus
RAD Studio
Unity
Godot

My personal problem with all of these is either:

No mobile support or poor mobile support
MVC, MVVM achitecture, just makes my head spin when I try do design and connect models, views, controllers. I understand the benefit, but I prefer simple and straight forward solution like good old Winforms.
License fee (RAD Studio )
Or simply dislike the framework, language..etc

Cerberus X could offer many benefits:
-simple language
-simple setup
-cross-platform (mobile web support)
-high performance graphics

Combined with:
Truly cross-platform UI framework
Visual UI editor
Same UI design can be built to all platforms.

Sounds more interesting to me than an other game dev tool/engine/framework whatever.
I do believe CX would have a place among cross-platform app development tools. But it is going to require a cross-platform UI framework and with a visual UI editor, it would be amaizing.
And of course with mojo2, game ready so it can support game development.

I can also more likely imagine that businesses would use and need paid support to fix bugs, add features, training...etc

However, if you prefer to proceed with primary focus on game development, I think it would be the best to highlight the performance of CX and cross-platform nature. So instead of a bunch of showcase apps, games I would attempt to create a AAA quality tech demo to demonstrate performance and cross-platform ability, running on desktop, mobile, browser.

It could potentially bring some attention to CX but in order to keep the attention the website definitely need a new, modern landing page, release notes, roadmap to show people it is actively developed.

 

[ddabrahim]

if you start charging for Cerberus-X... people will (and should) stop contributing to its source for free.

How is that different if I use your free contribution to build tools and offer paid services to people and make money? So it is totally fine if I make money using your hard work but if the developers maintaining and keep all this together making money that is unacceptable and people should not contribute then? I feel like there is a conflict in this logic.

 

[MikeHart]

people will (and should) stop contributing to its source for free.

Nice going Clyde.

@Phil7 We should evaluate our situation here. Call me whenever it is fine for you.

 

[Wingnut]

Lots of work has gone into it so I'm not against some kind of business model as long as it is not a subscription.
I know how Mike and the whole team have fixed most of the issues so far, and made a great job at it. It can certainly already be a professional tool, it just needs a structure that handles the "progressive" changes that platform are doing today. Standards today are "alive".

One more platform would give a CX a serious boost I am sure; a ESP-32 and/or Pi platform! That's the only one that is missing.

I'm struggling a lot with the Android side of things personally right now but I know we have alot of amazing members in this community that knows all kinds of low-level and exotic stuff.

Cerberus-X could be used in workshops and schools, the perfect tool to learn from.

 

[magic]

Have you noticed that all the tools out there are not so good? As you become a more serious developer, you've probably already tried all of them several times and found problems, leading to frustration. At least, it happened to me.

Studios target a wider audience with user-friendly, visually appealing tools but may sacrifice some power to avoid complexity for the user. Serious developers, on the other hand, seek feature-rich, powerful, and efficient solutions, while studios seem to be focused on capturing a vast audience and charging small amounts to many users.

Personally, I want efficient solutions, but I'm not sure how much I can pay for them.

I want to make money from my games, so things like this are a priority for me:

- Easy multi-platform compilation (targeting more platforms means a larger audience).
- In-app purchases (IAP) available on all major app stores (Google Play, Apple App Store, Amazon, Samsung, etc).
- Support for advertising through various channels (Admob, Unity Ads, Facebook Audience Network, AppLovin, etc.).

I also love graphics, and if the game allows me to work with graphics in layers, similar to After Effects, where I can apply masks, filters, and effects to the layers, it would be fantastic. Something like what Pixi.js offers. It's like our render target, but we have no preset effects or can apply masks here.

Additionally, I need a straightforward multiplayer solution.

This is my dream tool, haha and I'm definitely willing to pay for it because I believe it will help me achieve a substantial return on my investment. And if not, it's okay because I'll definitely have fun playing with it.

 

[Phil7]

And if you start charging for Cerberus-X... people will (and should) stop contributing to its source for free.

@SLotman @MikeHart I read this as written under the premise that you would really have to pay for Cerberus X to be able to use it. But that is definitely not what I am up to.

 

[Phil7]

things like this are a priority for me:

- Easy multi-platform compilation (targeting more platforms means a larger audience).
- In-app purchases (IAP) available on all major app stores (Google Play, Apple App Store, Amazon, Samsung, etc).
- Support for advertising through various channels (Admob, Unity Ads, Facebook Audience Network, AppLovin, etc.).

I also love graphics, and if the game allows me to work with graphics in layers, similar to After Effects, where I can apply masks, filters, and effects to the layers, it would be fantastic. Something like what Pixi.js offers. It's like our render target, but we have no preset effects or can apply masks here.

Additionally, I need a straightforward multiplayer solution.

I will get back to you about details for that. CX is pretty stable and versatile as it is now but I completely agree with those things to be very important to be valuable in the market place especially for indie devs.

 

[Phil7]

One more platform would give a CX a serious boost I am sure; a ESP-32 and/or Pi platform! That's the only one that is missing.

Did you read that thread about running CX on a Raspberry Pi 3? I didn't try it but it looks like it is just running out of the box like an other Linux systems. The only issue seems to be building TED. So when I manage to create a really useful VSCode Extension for CX it should be straight forward to use a Pi as a dev system for CX, even better with the new Pi 5.

 

[Wingnut]

Did you read that thread about running CX on a Raspberry Pi 3? I didn't try it but it looks like it is just running out of the box like an other Linux systems. The only issue seems to be building TED. So when I manage to create a really useful VSCode Extension for CX it should be straight forward to use a Pi as a dev system for CX, even better with the new Pi 5.

Really? I have Cerberus-X running perfectly smoothly on my Linux (Parrot OS Security), which I have on a stick and can put in both Mac (Intel, I use currently, but Parrot now comes in ARM too, which could also be exciting to test) and on any PC, old or new. But what you said sounds tempting; I would love to test that at some point!

 

[dawlane]

Pi platform!

CX should run perfectly well on a PI 3 with a few changes to the firmware settings to allow full hardware acceleration.
What you have to change depends on the version of the pi you use. See the Linux Desktop section.
NOTE: Read up on the version of the PI you are using. You make changes at your own risk.