Funding idea: 'Fundry' - crowdfunding software

Hi all,

I've found an interesting site called Fundry. It allows users to pledge money towards the development of specific features.

If you pledge money to a feature, when it is completed, everyone who pledged money is notified. Pledgers can then accept or reject the feature. Then:

• If over half the pledgers accept, everyone's money is paid.
• If under half of the pledgers accept, those who rejected the feature get their money back - but the dev still gets the pledges from those who accepted the feature.

You can read more on the official About page.

You can find the Construct 2 Fundry page here. I think a good experiment would be to run this for a while and see if it works. I suppose it might be nice for you guys if you can pledge money to the development of a specific feature you want, rather than just a general "payment" for Construct 2. And it's a nice extra motivator for devs

I think it would be excellent to get plugin (and exporter?) developers on board as well: a third party dev could propose a plugin (or even a whole exporter), interested users pledge money, then when it's completed the developer can be paid. I think this should be done centrally through the Scirra fundry account to keep it all in one place - interested devs can post up their ideas, then when it's done, I'll send them the pledges that came in. (If you do this get in touch with me first so I know in advance where the funds are going!) This way other developers can make a bit on the side, too, as reward for their hard work.

Anyone can post new feature requests, so feel free to go there now and start making requests and pledging funds if you're interested. Obviously we're still pre-alpha, so this might not really get going till the software is more mature, but I may as well leave it running in the mean time.

How does that sound to you all? A good alternative funding scheme? And possibly making plugin devs happy?

Really interesting. I could see myself pledging for a feature I really really want to have.

Looking forward to how this one would go.

Good idea! It should also encourage people to develop.

Yeah, there are some features that I would be willing to pay for too.

Not to sure that's going to work effectively, as I see someones already asked for an Android exporter.... rolleyes?

Also hows this going to fit into GPL3?

I don't see any real big issues, other than using MS software, but whats to keep plug developers setting up some unrealistic license?

I don't see a problem with pledging for an Android exporter this early, if a thousand people logged on and pledged $10 for an android exporter I'm sure someone would make it or it would go to high priority for the devs when the HTML5 is finished.

Yes, but it can already run on Android via HTML5.

Pledgers are going to have to be much more specific than that.

But browser games are not the same as real stand alone apps. This exporter would be something great!

Gullanian is absolutely right - hell, if a thousand people put in $10 each, I'd start work on an Android native exporter right away! HTML5 can do it in a browser, but Android native does have some advantages: you can run it offline, from the phone itself, without going through a browser; it can go fullscreen; you can probably use OpenGL ES and all its features; you can access the phone's native functionality which you can't get through a browser. Same for iOS. HTML5 is a quick way to get basic platform coverage, there are still some advantages to running native (just like the desktop runtime would have advantages due to running natively). So it's a perfectly valid suggestion. This is how it's supposed to work - someone wants that, and now other people can pledge funds towards it too. It's a lot of work though, so would probably need a lot more pledges to attract developer attention than, say, a smaller feature.

I don't see what you mean about GPL... can't see a problem there. If the developer wants to sell their work after receiving all the pledge money, that's a bit trickier - however, for a smaller unit of work like a plugin, the pledge hopefully would serve as a fair one-time payment for the development work.

Sounds like a great idea to me. People interested in helping with the project generically can donate via Paypal (and avoid the 5% cut from Fundry). Those that want specific features can request features with money...and be more involved in the development. Plus, I think it encourages the developers.

http://www.appmobi.com/index.php

very interesting tool!

I manage to run simple demo made in construct in the phone emulator. It seems to work fine. My only question is how to make touch screen to work with any game like that. If I open any game in browser (iPhone4) I can't really do anything even that click even is in.

Cheers

I like the idea and once I figure out what I want to make you can be sure I will be pledging for something!

Ooh, appmobi looks interesting! We need a Touch input plugin really, but I don't have an iPhone or iPad which makes that tricky. It ought to just be a few javascript events. I could try "guessing" the code for it and put it here to see if it works.

Awesome! This appMobi could change construct2 into the best mobile app/game development tool on the market. I'm here ready to test what ever you will post.

O_O Wow!!! That looks INCREDIBLE! If I understand it correctly, that means we can already make games for iphone and android simply by importing an exported html5 game and a couple clicks later, it's an iphone or android game??