Ashley's Forum Posts

  • Cheering-on is cool and all, but I think it'd be wise to consider that until we have more users than them (and they have a lot of users), they're probably doing something better than us.

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  • I think we can agree they're all fast enough for now

  • The last report I read put Firefox 4 fastest, IE9 second and Chrome third, but all with comparable performance (all fast and hardware accelerated). Looks like soon enough the big three will all be super fast for HTML5.

  • And if we don't get enough donations, we just keep it closed source? But then we're not making any money and can't afford to work on it!

    Doesn't sound like a solid plan I'm afraid - it really defeats the point of open source. It's meant to be free code, not code people have to pay to unlock.

  • Hey all,

    Say hi to Tom - my brother! - who's going to be helping out with Scirra in the near future! He'll be working on some of the web stuff and helping things run smoothly as we think about a commercial future.

  • All those questions are basically "are we going to support multiple screen resolutions easily and efficiently?" and the answer is "yes" - there's certainly room for plenty of improvement over 0.x there.

  • Thanks for researching that - I'll see if that can get thrown in to a plugin or the runtime sometime soon to make it easier.

  • I'm locking this thread now, for several reasons:

    • It's moving too fast for anyone to keep up.
    • It's going in circles, with the same ground being covered over and over.
    • It's turning in to a bit of a farce with everyone throwing in random thoughts.
    • It's already clear the original model needs to be rewritten and updated.

    This needs a day or two for everyone to go away and think a bit, and calm down. Then, I'll write up a new proposal and we'll give it a second shot.

    This is a quick turnaround on the lock so sorry if you're reading this later and you never got to post a reply - just wait a little bit, and there'll be a new proposal up.

  • Wow, replies are coming fast...! Kinda hard to keep up.

    If people needed to pay a license for Construct you would lost 60% of them, 35% would crack Construct (DRM free !!! World Of Goo, awesome independant game, DRM free, 9/10 copies are illegal), how much would you earn ? How much would you lose ?

    So be it. People who don't want to pay for software won't pay. We can't force them. So long as there are enough people who do pay so that we can sustain full time development, I'm happy.

    It's cool, althought maybe you could add an extra year or two to the early version as won't it take some time, like a year or so, before it will be useful enough to make proper games?

    I think Construct 2 should reach a useful state well within 2 years if we go fulltime - perhaps we could do either ?40 for 4 years, or ?15 for 2 years, but not both ways, I think we're squeezing ourselves dry to do 4 years for ?15 (?3.75 a year, by which time C2 should be mature). Is that unfair? I think an alpha license (?15, 2 years all upgrades) is fair.

  • I don't think we should issue lifetime licenses with our incremental version model, but I like the idea of an alpha/early-adopter license. It could help us raise funds for development, if we start issuing them soon. How about a �9.99 "early adopter" license which has 2 years of upgrades, with a view to increasing it to �39.99 as we add more features?

  • Disabling the software when your license ends was never on the cards - and you can continue selling something you made with it after your license expires - the license is to use the software.

    I think what several people have now said is right: the best model is you buy the software and 2 years of updates. You can continue using it after your license expires, it's yours and you bought it and it won't nag you. However, you can't get the latest updates after 2 years (if you ignore this and upgrade anyway it switches back to demo-nag mode).

    I don't like the idea of paying for exporters separately. It faces the same "infinite forever license" problem. They may as well be thrown in free with the editor. It also reduces the perception that you're being charged over and over again for each feature you want to use.

    I'll rewrite the proposal soon along these lines as I said before, just will give things a bit of time to cool off.

  • How do you propose we issue licenses otherwise? If you pay a one-off for C2, does that mean you get free upgrades for ever and ever? Right now I have zero plans to ever create a "Construct 3". We're going to be incrementally upgrading, and producing new exporters, for the forseeable long-term future.

    You do own the software once it's licensed and the no-DRM thing is directly aimed at allowing you to do what you like with the software (e.g. install to thumb drive, no phoning home). Once the license expires there'll be a notification which you can dismiss.

    Is it so bad?

  • Personally I would really like to simply have a pricetag on Construct 2, with a certain healthy set of features.

    The problem is this is effectively the "perpetual infinite" license, since our development model only introduces 'minor' updates for the forseeable future.

    Because of that, I think we have to stick to some kind of x-per-year. I think a 10 year license is long enough that you don't need to think about it.

    I'll rewrite the proposed model and post it again with a new poll in a couple of days (I realise this thread is only a few hours old )

  • OK, sure, two years of upgrades/publishing sounds better.

    The only possible problem is the perpetual license, in the very long term, could end up being a problem. For example, Microsoft are soon dropping support for XP, so everyone who got an "indefinite" license for Windows XP can't expect Microsoft to then fix problems or provide support or updates. If Microsoft did our "perpetual license forever" type thing, XP users (having paid for XP) have the right to get Windows 7 as an upgrade and all the support and fixes, which costs Microsoft money to provide. In short, that would cost Microsoft more than the customer paid, which is why Windows 7 is a separately purchased product.

    So I'd suggest the "indie perpetual" is actually a 10-year license at �150 (which would be �200 by renewing normally). You save money compared to renewing and get the product for a very long time. When it expires you are not forced to stop using it.

    It's just not long-term sustainable to give away licenses that last absolutely forever. Nobody does that!

    Does that sound like a good compromise?

  • How about lucid's idea then: a third license, 'indie perpetual', which is more (�150 say) but lasts indefinitely? You only save money if you keep using it for 7-8 years, but it never expires. You then can choose between a lower subscription rate or a higher one off cost. I suppose we could also have an option to transfer to perpetual from a subscription, less any subscription already paid.

    Edit: it's also hard to put a price on "major" updates because our development model doesn't have any major updates. It's planned that we have incremental updates (29, 30, 31...) indefinitely.