- Joined
- May 3, 2020
- Messages
- 289
I don't think it has anything to do with poor marketing. But lack of what BRL followers actually wanted.
Maybe this is not what the Blitz3D and BlitzMax community wanted and this is why Monkey failed plus other things I guess but it is no longer Monkey and I think Cerberus should aim outside the BlitzBasic community already. Personally I would not even mention Monkey X anywhere, yes this is the underlying tech but nobody really need to know unless they want to contribute to the source especially if it was the source of anger and disappointment among the Blitz users.
The way I see it there is lot of people out there who looking for exactly what Cerberus has to offer already. 3D is actually not that much of a problem, sure many people want it, nice to have it but still lot of people making 2D games and 2D games are still popular.
For example the AGK community is begging for OOP since day1, also begging for more powerful graphics API commands for Tier1, ability to integrate libraries and me personally begging for some kind of 2D lights that cross-platform since day 1 and the ability to read and write storage in HTML5. TGC just published their news letter with some hints for AGK Studio 2 and no OOP, no lights, no HTML5 storage, no API commands for Tier1 on the list but 3D level editor, Visual Shader editor, VR support, 2D level editor improvements, basically they seem to try to compete with Unity and Godot now while the core product is getting less reliable with each release. The forums already feels pretty dead, only few people discussing bugs mostly. TGC falsely believe people moving to Unity, Unreal and similar engines with visual editors but they are wrong. People are moving to other frameworks like MonoGame, Solar2D, Löve especially Löve becoming very popular because of the simple Lua language that is somewhat similar to BASIC.
But also when I was visiting the MonoGame forums there was also quiet a lot of people was begging for better VB support and VB because just like Cerberus it is BASIC with OOP, more simple, beginners love it.
So, there is lot of people still looking for an easy yet powerful cross-platform programming language for games while Cerberus is hidden in a very dark corner of the web covered with a blanket with strong unnecessary references to Monkey. Seriously the search engine results for Cerberus is horrible. You can't find it under any search query and this is because people don't talk about it on the web and don't link it, it is not mentioned anywhere.
The only way to fix this is to looking for sites talking about game engines, programming languages and at least in comment sections mention Cerberus that is a SEO point right there, even go as far to contact admins of sites to add Cerberus to lists on their website, add it to wiki pages where possible. Etc When people search for things like game programming language, game frameworks, cross-platform game development, Cerberus must be listed on first page.
For example I added it on alternativeto:
https://alternativeto.net/software/cerberus-x/
Also added to one of my lists there:
https://alternativeto.net/list/7173/list-of-game-programming-languages
An other thing could be done for example is to add it as an engine on itch.io so people can flag their creations it was made with Cerberus so it would also come up in this list:
https://itch.io/game-development/engines
Finally, I think the home page also need some improvements. The first time I visited the website I was like "what the f*- is this mess?" and I did close the page at first. But then I decided to go back and check it out anyway.
There is too many noise on the home page. The home page in my opinion should be dedicated to introduce Cerberus (without mentioning Monkey anywhere).
The home page should describe:
What Cerberus is (no Monkey)
Highlight the features and benefits, supported platforms of Cerberus (no Monkey)
List some games with screenshot made with Cerberus.
Mention that it is open-source and full source is available on GitHub (no Monkey)
Mention Monkey only in the documentation maybe and GitHub but don't mention it on the home page because people immediately search for Monkey, find out it is dead, maybe even see complains from disappointed Blitz users what a piece of s** it is and they immediately ignore Cerberus, never come back. So I think it is better to hide the fact it is based on Monkey on the home page at least, but it is okay to admit in docs and GitHub.
The games section is the most crucial because many people make their decisions based on what other peoples was able to achieve and eye candy. If possible need to list some games that looks pretty and fun to play. Even if no longer available because the author removed from the stores but if possible share some screenshots and the name of the game directly on the home page if it looks pretty. At this section would be also ok to mention some Monkey titles because Cerberus is based on Monkey and fully compatible, This is exactly what MonoGame does, they advertise them self with title was made in XNA while MonoGame got nothing to do with XNA, it is not based on XNA, it is only a reverse engineered, compatible open-source implementation of XNA yet they do talking about XNA titles as it was made in MonoGame. Which is technically not true yet it is ok because MonoGame is XNA compatible. So it is totally fine to mention Monkey titles in this section of the home page.
Sorry for the long post and the off-topic but since we started a discussion about this here, I could not stop it
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