Ashley's Forum Posts

  • Hmm... Demo users still get constant nag screens though (after expiry). Users who have paid can jump back to the demo after their license expires and use the features with nags (after a couple of months delay when the demo catches up), or just sit tight and not be bothered. I think that works OK actually.

  • OK, forget the previous model. Have a look at this - this is the proposed model for when C2 has a suitable featureset:

    30 day demo

    • free and fully functional
    • nag screen after demo expires
    • no DRM/copy protection
    • probably a couple of months time lag before new features become available in demo

    Discount license

    • For indie/personal use where associated revenue < ?20k/yr, or non-profit/educational use
    • Buy for ?39 future-proofed with 2 years of free updates
    • Buy for ?149 future-proofed with 10 years of free updates
    • All official new exporters and plugins provided as free updates
    • After expiry, you keep the software indefinitely nag-free, you just can't get new updates/exporters that are released

    Commercial license

    • As with discount, but for business/commercial use or where associated revenue is > ?20k/yr
    • Buy for ?149 future-proofed with 2 years of free updates
    • Buy for ?599 future-proofed with 10 years of free updates

    Also:

    Bulk licenses available on request

    Closed-source editor, open-source BSD HTML5 exporter

    No splash screens on any creations at any point

    And... early adopter licenses

    To help kick things off, raise some money, and give you guys a good deal for getting involved early, we'd also like to introduce Discount Early-Adopter licenses for a limited time (for indies/personal use only, as per Discount license) - a bit like a preorder. These are significantly marked down - there probably won't be such a low price ever again!

    • Buy for ?19 future proofed with 3 years of free updates
    • Buy for ?89 future proofed with 10 years of free updates

    How does that sound?

  • Hey there, Kearel!

    While I am a really friendly guy and I allow other people to have other opinions from me, I would really appreciate it if you didn't bash gamemaker.

    I don't think anybody means to bash gamemaker, it's just you'll naturally encounter a strong bias on the forums of any one particular program. As I said, GM have a lot more users than us right now anyway.

    DravenX: protecting images isn't really worthwhile, as I said, print screen is going to get around even the most advanced encryption, which kind of makes even bothering to protect them pointless. However, it's much more serious if people can reverse engineer the game's code and get a useful, editable project back. So yes, we'll throw in some obfuscation to exported projects at some point in the future, to prevent that type of reverse engineering.

  • Well game maker's exe's are very secure indeed(no files can be extracted).

    Haven't they had problems with people decompiling games since forever?

    Also, I don't see much point protecting the sprite image files - copyright prevents anyone using them and it's obvious if they have ripped them, and you can't protect against good old print screen, so if they want the textures they got them. I don't think I've ever heard of a case where somebody ripped sprites and made money without getting the legal banhammer. It seems to me that protecting images is just a load of paranoia.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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  • 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.