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Downloads stats and Poll of dev platform

Which platform are you developing on?

  • Windows

    Votes: 12 80.0%
  • macOS

    Votes: 4 26.7%
  • Linux

    Votes: 2 13.3%

  • Total voters
    15
  • Poll closed .
I wonder what FNA and .NET v5 have in common, because I don't think Microsoft are gonna do two major cross-platform "thingies" (technical term) at once. I think these two are gonna have alot in common, I don't know how but I'm sure they will.

And if they do, "it" will be well worth the effort to think about.
 
.NET v5 is Microsoft. FNA is a private thing by a group of motivated people.
 
Okay I read their page but they did not mention how they are gonna implement the old XNA concept. I might be worth a shoot to support, I wouldn't know.
 
@MikeHart - I have not tried GoDot, but followed it for a long time now. There are certainly lessons to be learned from its history, I just checked out the GoDot News link and they also have a Poll going on right now. You have to take the poll to see the results, but I think you might find the results interesting to compare with the story that your poll told. The scale of responses is huge but it seems like a similar user base and community so maybe you can project that out into a future where CX has a similar large following?
 
@AndyAndroid looks like Godot's userbase is made mainly of hobbiest that only play with it a bit and do nothing serious. More 2d than 3d and they came mainly from unity and html5. They don't support Godot financially, are mostly single devs and target similar platforms like us. Yes, you can project the results. Interesting.
Thank god Godot got major funding from bigger companies or the effort would be just for glory.
 
Thank god Godot got major funding from bigger companies or the effort would be just for glory.

It seems funding from the community indeed dropped (wondering why) but still receive enough funding ($12,000 a month) on patreon so the lead dev can work on the core in full time.
Usually when bigger companies fund it, they specify what is is that they want the money to be spent on exactly. For example Godot received money from Mozilla to improve networking and HTML5 support, from Micorosft to improve C# support, from Epic to add Epic Online Services support...etc

But yeah, most people use free software because it is free with the intention to never spend money on it and they won't unless they start making money with it which is always the minority, but in case of Godot it is still enough and Godot getting tons of contribution, as the lead developer is focusing on the core and companies specify that 1 thing they support, most features is contribution of other people.
 
But yeah, most people use free software because it is free with the intention to never spend money on it and they won't unless they start making money with it which is always the minority, but in case of Godot it is still enough and Godot getting tons of contribution, as the lead developer is focusing on the core and companies specify that 1 thing they support, most features is contribution of other people.
agreed
 
looks like Godot's userbase is made mainly of hobbiest that o...
You gave a good summary on all points and that is how I saw it too. Now, in the context of CX, it already is charting a different course from GoDot and others so it might be valuable to review that information and steer away or keep away (if possible) from the use cases and demographics that might otherwise lead down the same path? A good time to validate that CX has some unique strengths that other environments don't have and focus on those going forward to continue to set CX and the CX community (no matter how small) apart from other solutions in the same space.
 
Just out of curiosity, what could that be?
The interesting things that were pretty clear was the Male, Hobbyist, Unity, Age 18 ~ 40, Windows, GDScript (language neutral), want a free lunch crowd that is not too willing or interested in contributing. It was clear also that the Microsoft C# funding drew in developers, but not having C# in the IDE seems like that didn't really help the cause a lot especially looking at the poll results over there!

It seems this sort of crowd doesn't really care about a specific language as noted by the high usage of GDScript so those are the sorts of developers that would be good to have using CX. Since with GoDot it seems the C# guys are using just their favorite editor, that is more in line with CX, so it may be useful to consider how to attract C# devs? You can understand the draw from Unity hobbyists that try GoDot with GDScript in their IDE, but CX might have a hard time attracting those types.

However, demonstrating how easy it is to code a simple game with CX using code vs some behemoth like Unity, especially for with a 2D focus could attract more developers. Since GoDot seems to show about 60% 2D development, maybe focusing on being the best 2D dev tool/language out there would be a good thing, but you sort of do that already anyway. There are a lot of cool effects in 2D that are not easy to achieve and showcasing those making them easy to implement might have more mileage that supporting 3D development which is probably always going to be easier anyway with the other AAA dev environments. Can you imagine building out all the CX 3D features and tooling only to find out that it is being used by mostly young male hobbyists that don't contribute and just stop by for a little play?

Big draws to CX, are easy fun approachable language with less syntactical sugar that other languages. Multi-target and ease of publishing with a rock solid 2D framework that covers cutting edge 2D concepts would be the icing on the cake. Yes, of course excellent documentation and an orchard of sample apps to play with and learn from are needed and you have a lot of that all ready. Finally the 500 pound gorilla in room is the dreaded IDE with all the expected goodies least of which is a first class and true integrated debugger. I always thought the LemonBytes Jungle IDE model was the best so you provide all the CX stuff first class in every respect for free with a simple editor like TED was/is, then charge a fee for a first class development IDE. I think it is just too difficult and costly to develop and maintain a real IDE, but I was willing to pay for Jungle IDE back in the day just to have the additional productivity features.

I think the main takeaways from looking at the GoDot results is to avoid offering a free amazing incredible awesome IDE for free and focus on provide a rock solid cutting edge 2D only framework for coders that also targets the major deployment platforms Windows, HTML5, macOS, iOS, iPad, Android, and Linux. The supported targets should be as simple and problem free as possible with as few external dependencies as possible, and you have already stated that in recent posts. At any rate a future that looks like a GoDot solution doesn't really look so fun for CX based on what I saw in the poll over there!
 
There are a lot of cool effects in 2D that are not easy to achieve and showcasing those making them easy to implement might have more mileage
Could you sketch a list of the things that came to your mind writing this?

Some of the 2D effects are related to 3D capabilities like @MikeHart showed in an other thread. Basic 3D functionality could be a good compromise, especially if it can be combined with 2D rendering flawlessly. But the focus has to lie on 2D, because there is no way of competing with the AAA engines and that is what you will be compared with at first sight.
 
Android is 3rd up and I think it would be a mistake to lose it as it is always - probably - going to be a cheap, popular, relatively open target like Windows and HTML. (I would have added Flash in the past, but of course that is no longer relevant.)

Of course Linux is free and open too, but not nearly popular with users. MacOS is expensive to buy into, and I really don't know anything about OSX nowadays!
 
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Could you sketch a list of the things that came to your mind writing this?
In general I was talking about effects that would be included and super easy to use and implement, those that might be found in a framework like Mike's FantomCX, Tony's IgnitionX, and some of the awesome modules (Diddy et. al.) that people have created/integrated over the years. So you have things like water, fire, lighting, smoke, particles, parallax, bone animation, isometric playing field, more robust collisions, physics (Box2d), explosions etc. I know there are examples of many of these things already. I was thinking that something like FantomCX Plus be baked into CX to offer instant access to as many awesome 2D effects as possible right out of the box. If some of the 2D effects require 3D then I would not really advertise the 3D support because it will only be a disappointment when compared to the AAA guys.

Some of the effects are probably too difficult to expect the tooling support or too complex to develop and maintain from scratch so the tradeoff is a good choice of 3rd party like Box2D, Spriter, Spine, etc..., but some of the things could be homegrown and added to the core incrementally. The whole idea is to not have to reinvent the wheel whenever a cool idea strikes you while your are sitting in front of a blank .cxs file in the editor...

Having a "framework" as part of the base CX would allow for more demos to show off the ease of use and as starting points for learning and completed projects. Down the road it could open up the potential for the "CX Foundation" (or individuals like what existed in Monkey land) to offer paid for tooling, in an advanced IDE or piecemeal if that is something that makes sense at some point down the road. I see the trap of GoDot is that they provided all this capability but not many want to pay for it especially if they are just hobbyists playing around.
 
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