Mobile plans ?

[Rastar]

I have to mingle in here as well. I have no problem with the Ouya being ditched in favor of SteamOS, that's a sound decision. However, simply dropping both mobile platforms is not acceptable. Up to now I was under the impression that they will be ported to 3.1, only at a later stage (remember Josh's experiments with a deferred renderer for the iPad?). Just a little over a year ago Leadwerks put its focus on mobile (and drove some veteran members of the community away with that decision), only to drop that again now and go for Linux? I understand this is a one-man show, but changing course that easily and often is not the solution. I mean, many of us (me included) will probably never get a game out of the door, but even if we tried we couldn't because during the two-year-something development time the engine would have changed at least twice with support being dropped for the engine we started with.

 

Don't know if I'm sad, angry or disillusioned. All of them I guess.

[YouGroove]

experiments with a deferre/d renderer for the iPad?

Just my point of view on mobile :

Deffered too slow for mobile, once again like PC : targetting brute GPU without optimisation and high mobile standard it's non sense at all.

What many people don't understand is mobile is not high tech, lot of people making games just use simple 3D and some nice 3D effects , specially non veteran 3D artists will not go for high graphics on mobile.

Why Unity brings 2D in mobile 2D is the bigger market on mobile, any indie can make 2D games easy could it be RPG , RTS , puzzle etc ... mobile is not only Quad GPU games you buy, this is a lot indie simple and very cheap ones and free ones and great succesfull simple games.

Only one example : Angry Birds : does it needs deferred ? Mobile mass market means able to run 2D games and simple 3D ones on my simple 50$ phone and on other tablets , this is what i epxect from 3D engine for mobile , not only support for Apple or only last hardware.

 

but changing course that easily and often is not the solution

One point people ha sforgotten, is that Unity has gonna Free mobile suddenly : this has changed a lot on mobile market possibilities :

- Prooven, optimized, even super low platform support

- All mobile tools/controls/plugin ar in it like optimized one draw call GUI etc ...

-Simple install of Android and want to publish : just plug your mobile press a button, and run app

- Drag and drop virtual joystick and control components, visual placment/adjustment of controls

I could not jump back to LE3 mobile after that.

 

So yes LE3 has just concentrated in one point it can easy concurence it, full PC/Linux effects for indie price (specially Unity don't have Linux editor also !) It's simple adaptation, like Unity will have to adapt and change offers because of UE4 new offers.

 

Making PC high end we can see takes so much time and where is grass ? CGS Tools ? simple to use in editor water system ? finished full screen effects ? It takes so much time .... and i really hope to see some precomputed lightening fast solution instead of brute shadows system fro level.

Mobile would just slow down all LE3 PC/Linux needs and make it delay too much.

[panz3r]

A lot of people did not buy the mobile add on because (A) the main engine lacked features. Why would you spend extra money when the engine lacked enough features to create a game? (b)You really do not need to export to a mobile device until you start to get to the end of production. Last time I checked, game creation can take a good bit of time to create a game start to finish. So there is no need to buy a export add on until you get farther in the game creation.

Exactly my toughs. I did buy 3.0 mobile as an incentive for developer however(and because it was a good price).

[tournamentdan]

Tournamentdan, you are dealing with a 1 man show here. A small shop. They have to be supported differently than a big shop or an engine that already has been established in that specific field (mobile in this case). They can't afford long development cycles by game devs in order to make their money. So when Josh spends lots of time and effort on mobile and you plan on making a mobile game then you need to support that right away or this is what you get.

 

Yes. This is exactly what I did. And at that time I was lead to believe that mobile support would ALWAYS be there. I myself bought the mobile add ons to help support the future of Leadwerks. But new customers are not going to do this. For example nobody is going to go buy Unity for $1,500 and all of export add ons at the same time. No. You would buy the normal license. Try it out for some time and once you get far enough in game production. Then buy export add on. Same with new customers here.

 

 

 

My simple little mobile game that I made in about a month paid for my copy of LE mobile. Sometimes you have to do things that aren't your dream game to pay the bills.

 

You pretty much proved my point with this comment. Now you can not do this. The potential revenue has been taken away from us.

[Rick]

For example nobody is going to go buy Unity for $1,500 and all of export add ons at the same time.

 

I agree but that's because $1,500 for a lone dev is a lot. What was it, $99 for LE Android? That's much more reasonable to anyone. Also, again, Unity is established in the mobile space and is a bigger company than LE.

 

 

 

You pretty much proved my point with this comment. Now you can not do this. The potential revenue has been taken away from us.

 

?? I still own 3.0. I can still make games that target 3.0 so that hasn't been taken away from me.

[panz3r]

[/size][/font][/color]

 

I agree but that's because $1,500 for a lone dev is a lot. What was it, $99 for LE Android? That's much more reasonable to anyone. Also, again, Unity is established in the mobile space and is a bigger company than LE.

 

 

 

[/size][/font][/color]

 

?? I still own 3.0. I can still make games that target 3.0 so that hasn't been taken away from me.

are you sure you will still be able to make games in 2 years and run them ?

[tournamentdan]

[/size][/font][/color]

 

I agree but that's because $1,500 for a lone dev is a lot. What was it, $99 for LE Android? That's much more reasonable to anyone. Also, again, Unity is established in the mobile space and is a bigger company than LE.

 

 

 

[/size][/font][/color]

 

?? I still own 3.0. I can still make games that target 3.0 so that hasn't been taken away from me.

 

Just because it is more affordable doesn't mean you should buy an export license at the beginning phase of game creation.

 

No more bug fixes for 3.0 and less features. Not exactly what we were promised.

[Rick]

are you sure you will still be able to make games in 2 years and run them ?

 

Josh never said mobile is dead with LE, just that he's focusing on the PC right now. So who knows what will be in 2 years. All I know is right now I can make mobile games using LE 3.0. Will Unity even be around in 2 years? Given the recent developments of UDK and CryEngine who knows. In this industry nothing is a promise.

 

 

Just because it is more affordable doesn't mean you should buy an export license at the beginning phase of game creation.

 

Again, my point was the different ways to support different size businesses. Unity can withstand a year or more of dev cycles before their mobile sales pick up because people are finishing games. LE cannot.

 

 

No more bug fixes for 3.0 and less features. Not exactly what we were promised.

 

What were we promised with LE 3.0 mobile? I may have missed a thread but from what I can tell Josh did give us a mobile version that works.

 

Honestly, you want to get mobile on Josh's radar then make a game for it that rocks. I bet he'll pay attention. Again, this is a different style based on the size of the business.

 

 

I honestly think if Josh would have done a separate Kickstarter specifically for mobile it would have been a better indication of the demand. He got on the Kickstart wagon too late though which is a shame.

[YouGroove]

Will Unity even be around in 2 years? Given the recent developments of UDK and CryEngine who knows. In this industry nothing is a promise.

 

 

Indeed they won't drop down mobile as they have so games published each month , see their WIP or Showcase forums. And it's makes lot of advert as their Free version displays Unity logo on mobile games ! There is open source 3D engines for mobile , optimized and complete also or other solutions like Shiva 3D and others ....

Don"t plan what's next in two years, you have mobile tools today, just use them.

 

I honestly think if Josh would have done a separate Kickstarter specifically for mobile it would have been a better indication of the demand. He got on the Kickstart wagon too late though which is a shame.

I think kickstarter just worked as some indicator at final showing the demand was strong for PC eye candy stuff and Linux than mobile or Ouya (almost forgottent console).

Than Steam changed a lot LE3 in advert point , to bring lot more people compared to LE2 where LE engine was barely known from other people doing 3D.

[tournamentdan]

 

What were we promised with LE 3.0 mobile? I may have missed a thread but from what I can tell Josh did give us a mobile version that works.

 

 

You must of been in a coma when mobile was the only direction he was going. (do you really not remember all that mobile propaganda he would spout out) And we all begged him to include a high end renderer. If he was going to kill the mobile export, he should have done so then. Not now. How many times has this same question been asked over the last year? To many times. And each time Josh purposely ignored and did not answer those questions. Just so he could mislead people in thinking it would be supported in ALL future versions and they would buy a license.

[gamecreator]

Honestly, you want to get mobile on Josh's radar then make a game for it that rocks. I bet he'll pay attention.

I agree with a lot of your points but not this. Why would you try to make a game that could be impossible to finish due to bugs that won't be fixed?

[Rick]

You must of been in a coma when mobile was the only direction he was going.

 

I was here and I was pushing for mobile. He did what he said he was going to do and he had high hopes for it but nobody bought the thing. What is he supposed to do? Push on with something that isn't making any money? Honestly, what do you think he should have done? As a small business it's a little unreasonable to put so much effort into something that isn't driving revenue. He gave it a try but the people just didn't support him with their wallets so he was forced to move in a direction where they would. Would you rather he kept putting all his time into mobile and have Leadwerks go under because he's not getting paid? He placed a bet on mobile because of what we were saying and not everyone came thru for him so what was he supposed to do? Try to think of this from a business owners point of view.

 

If he was going to kill the mobile export, he should have done so then. Not now. How many times has this same question been asked over the last year? To many times. And each time Josh purposely ignored and did not answer those questions. Just so he could mislead people in thinking it would be supported in ALL future versions and they would buy a license.

 

I don't think Josh was trying to mislead anyone, I just think no matter what he says it's going to piss someone off. He made a bet, people didn't follow him and he had to change directions for a little while. That's all there is to it.

 

 

I agree with a lot of your points but not this. Why would you try to make a game that could be impossible to finish due to bugs that won't be fixed?

 

Because this is an option. I'm not saying it's ideal, but it's an option. Show Josh that you have a great game (not an idea) made with LE 3.0 (if you have it and care about mobile) and maybe he'll help any bugs or whatever. He wants games to be made with LE and if you can show him you have something (a great game very far in development that needs polish) he'll be more inclined to help. Again, not saying it's ideal, but it's a possibility.

[panz3r]

[/size][/font][/color]

 

Josh never said mobile is dead with LE, just that he's focusing on the PC right now. So who knows what will be in 2 years. All I know is right now I can make mobile games using LE 3.0. Will Unity even be around in 2 years? Given the recent developments of UDK and CryEngine who knows. In this industry nothing is a promise.

 

 

[/font][/color]

 

Again, my point was the different ways to support different size businesses. Unity can withstand a year or more of dev cycles before their mobile sales pick up because people are finishing games. LE cannot.

 

 

[/size][/font][/color]

 

What were we promised with LE 3.0 mobile? I may have missed a thread but from what I can tell Josh did give us a mobile version that works.

 

Honestly, you want to get mobile on Josh's radar then make a game for it that rocks. I bet he'll pay attention. Again, this is a different style based on the size of the business.

 

 

I honestly think if Josh would have done a separate Kickstarter specifically for mobile it would have been a better indication of the demand. He got on the Kickstart wagon too late though which is a shame.

 

Rick, you made a game for mobile, my question is are you sure your game will be able to run on android 4.8 in 2 years ?

I am positive that unity will exist in 2 years even with UE4 offer. In fact Unity 5 will atack UE and cryengine on AAA(enlightment etc).

 

I agree with a lot of your points but not this. Why would you try to make a game that could be impossible to finish due to bugs that won't be fixed?

This must be a cynical joke, make an game after the support stopped.

[Josh]

..this situation seems to be rather identical or very similar to crossroad between LE2.x Leadwerks 3.x, when existing user base asked for desktops(WIN/Linux/OSX) what was rejected in favors of mobiles..deja vu..

I believe 2.x users wanted me to keep focusing on adding new graphical features for Windows, and ignore the poor state of the tools, which would have been a big mistake. So I'm glad I did not take that path.

 

You must of been in a coma when mobile was the only direction he was going. (do you really not remember all that mobile propaganda he would spout out) And we all begged him to include a high end renderer. If he was going to kill the mobile export, he should have done so then. Not now. How many times has this same question been asked over the last year? To many times. And each time Josh purposely ignored and did not answer those questions. Just so he could mislead people in thinking it would be supported in ALL future versions and they would buy a license.

Yep, I thought mobile would be big, and I was wrong. Intel released a free game engine for mobile, and in response Unity made their mobile add-ons free, the same week Leadwerks 3.0 was announced. This drove the value of a cross-platform abstraction layer to zero overnight, because there wasn't much of anything unique I could add to mobile, given the weakness of the hardware. Since then, mobile has been roughly 80% of the time spent debugging and about 10% of revenue. (That's a rough estimate, but it's probably pretty close.) For example, it took me two weeks to implement the terrain system. Then another week was spent getting it to work on Android and iOS. That week could have been spent adding another terrain feature we don't have now, but instead I was testing a bunch of Android drivers.

 

The sales of the PC version of Leadwerks have been consistently strong, and the mobile sales after the first few months were abysmal. Like one or two a month.

 

I can either keep spending huge amounts of time on a product that doesn't sell, or I can put that effort into adding features and fixing bugs on the PC/Linux/Mac version, which does sell. It might make sense to approach mobile at a later time, when the hardware is better and there are more users who want to buy it, but to do it right now is a really bad allocation of resources. It would just eat up all my time and make development slower.

 

I wish I could have started with the direction we have now, but there was no way to know that without getting out there and trying different things. I knew Windows was a dead end, and we needed something else. SteamOS didn't even exist more than 6 months ago, Intel didn't have working graphics hardware until recently, and Linux drivers were not what they are now until recently.

[panz3r]

Josh, that is how it looks from your angle.

This is how it look from my(/our) angle.

We chose and payed for leadwerks when it was supporting pc+mobile. In my particular case mobile is a must be. During all discussions about the 3.1 upgrade costs it was never mentioned that mobile will be dropped. When i asked about mobile upgrade costs it was said that there will be no costs, and not that will be no mobile. I can bet that 90% of the buyers plan to launch on mobile too once they have the pc version working.

By just delaying this announcement to last moment we can question the good faith.We have supported you in kickstarter, did preorders for 3.1 in dec etc.

Be sure that money will talk soon if you chose to go this path.Your engine will be considered high risk to be used.

In my opinion 3 things can be done:

1. Keep one mobile

2. Make a legal binding to provide support (bug fixes) for 3.0 for as long leadwerks does not have mobile in current version

3. Provide source code to 3.0 and wish good luck to them.

 

Now is not the moment to piss off your customers and potential customers when: unity 5 will be aaa quality in summer, UE4 with source code in 18$ and cryengine is 9$.

And i don;t get all this drama over source code. If somebody want to steal they can steal legally from Ogre and Irrlicht. There are other engines with source code: c4, ue4.

[Josh]

This was solidified about a week ago. I don't announce things until I am sure, because anything I say gets set in stone. I've obviously been downplaying mobile recently. If I had all the information I have now, it would have been a lot easier to make this decision months ago, but I didn't.

 

The best approach would have been:

• Start building for Linux (which didn't have working drivers at the time).
  
• And PC (most of which were being shipped with nonfunctional graphics hardware at the time).
  
• And a Linux-based console OS (which didn't exist at the time).
  

 

At the time Leadwerks 3.0 was being written, everyone including me thought mobile was the land of opportunity, and now it has turned into the U.S. housing market circa 2008. This has a strong effect on me because it means companies are struggling and they are very reluctant to try new technology. "Console-quality" 3D mobile games was an idea that was going around a year ago, and I pushed that hard, demonstrating a deferred renderer on an iPad. Instead, the market went towards 2D F2P games. (Apple rejected my app because the reviewer said "it was only playing a single video". I'm not sure if he actually thought it was a pre-recorded movie, or if he even understood the distinction.)

 

On the other hand, the PC market has gotten a lot better and it now favors the things Leadwerks is good at, and the living room is no longer verboten to us lowly indies. This is how I wish things were at the start of LE2.

 

It sucks that I couldn't have just known all this in advance, but the only way to find out is to do it and see what response you get.

[AggrorJorn]

Josh, that is how it looks from your angle.

This is how it look from my(/our) angle.

We chose and payed for leadwerks when it was supporting pc+mobile. In my particular case mobile is a must be. During all discussions about the 3.1 upgrade costs it was never mentioned that mobile will be dropped. When i asked about mobile upgrade costs it was said that there will be no costs, and not that will be no mobile. I can bet that 90% of the buyers plan to launch on mobile too once they have the pc version working.

 

Be sure that money will talk soon if you chose to go this path.Your engine will be considered high risk to be used.

In my opinion 3 things can be done:

 

Now is not the moment to piss off your customers and potential customers when: unity 5 will be aaa quality in summer, UE4 with source code in 18$ and cryengine is 9$.

- Where are you basing that 90% on?

- "Besure that money will talk soon if you chose to go this path". The last year has proven to be the exact opposite of that.

 

 

Why does everybody keep comparing to unity and unreal? Josh is a 1 man team while these other companies have millions of dollars and more than 50 people working at them. They can afford to do a lot of free and open source stuff.

 

If the sales for mobile don't provide enough money for the maker of the engine you will have to make a decision at some point to just stop working on it. This isn't an easy thing to do and you will always kick someone in the chins with it.

 

I rather have a more stable platform on windows, linux and mac, then a half baked engine on windows, linux, mac, ios and android.

[gamecreator]

What sucks is that from an outsider's perspective, mobile seemed pretty close to being "done." It was very functional and I could have even lived without the physics features. The pipeline was super smooth. More, I would have bet that if you didn't remove it from the store while the Linux and Steam users were coming in, you would have significantly increased sales, probably enough to support it further with minor improvements here and there (not to mention that Kickstarter funded at least $6k in favor of Android). But I guess that's all in the past.

[YouGroove]

" It was very functional and I could have even lived without the physics features. The pipeline was super smooth.

Hummm ... publishing, configuration was a pain, in Unity i got installed in 5 minutes, deploying a project on my mobile just pushing a button, LE3 was too much behind. Same for virtual joysticks and controls , LE3 even had not jostick but a "4 direction" buttons. Unity allow to use several virtual ready to use controls you visually adjust in virtual camera etc ...

LE3 pipeline from my experience was very far from good if you had used some other prooven solutions even in the free previous UDK 3.

 

I don't think Josh was trying to mislead anyone, I just think no matter what he says it's going to piss someone off. He made a bet, people didn't follow him and he had to change directions for a little while. That's all there is to it.

I don't agree, some people like me buying 3.0 was for mobile , i was not ok with 3.1 going Windows/linux eye/Candy.

And i never wanted Deffered on mobile, i was surprised seeing that demand and thaught what people was wanting to do on mobile ? tech demos or selling games working on most platforms possible ?

This is not a matter of who follow,as he followed the market and the demand and adapted to what arrives in the market (like said : Unity, Intel, UE4 etc ....), only good sense and adaption.

 

I think LE3 last direction to remain strong direction now :

PC/Linux/Steam All advanced features + indy price + No Royalties + incoming features/tools

This seems solid indeed.

Why LE3 would putt so much effort mobile when others offers for FREElot more advanced features/tools/extensions/GUI etc ...

 

This makes sense for LE3 if it wants to keep grow in this last right direction allowing benefits and not sales massive drop down.

 

 

Now is not the moment to piss off your customers and potential customers when: unity 5 will be aaa quality in summer, UE4 with source code in 18$ and cryengine is 9$.

And i don;t get all this drama over source code. If somebody want to steal they can steal legally from Ogre and Irrlicht. There are other engines with source code: c4, ue4.

Unity Pro advanced graphics/features : big prices for lonewolf indies - Upgrades cycle fast it becomes expensive fast

UE4 : Royalties to take care of for all your life if you sell a game - complicated to report sales - they have insights

on your buziness

Open Source : lacks lot of complete good world editor and maps/project management , performance and tools are lacking some times - as open source it can take lot of time before seeing some asked feature implemented

 

Just my point of view.

[tournamentdan]

@Aggor My only comparison to unity is that it has export add ons just like leadwerks did. And it would be stupid for a new user for a software product to buy a export add on in early development.

 

Josh made a reference to unity and it is more bull****.

 

 

 

 

Intel released a free game engine for mobile, and in response Unity made their mobile add-ons free, the same week Leadwerks 3.0 was announced. This drove the value of a cross-platform abstraction layer to zero overnight, because there wasn't much of anything unique I could add to mobile.

 

Last time I checked (which was this morning) it still cost $1,500 for each android and ios. Or $75 a month per. That's a little bit higher than free. Which drives the value of your mobile export up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sales of the PC version of Leadwerks have been consistently strong, and the mobile sales after the first few months were abysmal. Like one or two a month.

 

 

This kind of backs up what I am saying. Your loyal customers bought the export add ons at first. To help support the cause. New users are not going to buy an export add on until they even decide they can finish a game. Now to me. Doing the export add ons first was kind of like putting the cart before the horse. But you said " I want to start on the cross platform system first because it is the unknown for me". Not a lot of people liked that but I supported you on this. And now that you have the horse back in front of the cart. You want to burn the cart. We all know it takes time to make a video game. I know in my heart of hearts that when these new users start to make strides in their game and can finally see the finish line. They will want to buy a export license. But they won't be able to. Because you will be to busy putting all your eggs in one basket. Again.

[panz3r]

- Where are you basing that 90% on?

- "Besure that money will talk soon if you chose to go this path". The last year has proven to be the exact opposite of that.

 

 

Why does everybody keep comparing to unity and unreal? Josh is a 1 man team while these other companies have millions of dollars and more than 50 people working at them. They can afford to do a lot of free and open source stuff.

 

If the sales for mobile don't provide enough money for the maker of the engine you will have to make a decision at some point to just stop working on it. This isn't an easy thing to do and you will always kick someone in the chins with it.

 

I rather have a more stable platform on windows, linux and mac, then a half baked engine on windows, linux, mac, ios and android.

Beside you and Rick who have a special relation with Josh i don;t see many people supporting this idea.

Money flowed because we bought Hope . We understood that is a young engine and hoped things will be fixed in the future just to be told to suck it up and get over with it.

I offered alternatives but Josh can see only his angle.

[Rick]

I'm not in support of this idea, I just understand the situation Josh is in and realize no amount of complaining will change the fact that mobile didn't bring in the money. So what's the point? Sounds like he offered refunds if people wanted them.

 

 

I offered alternatives but Josh can see only his angle.

 

And you aren't seeing the business angle. I also think your alternatives are unreasonable given the information we now know from Josh about mobile sales. I know in your heart you believe something but until the bank can cash your heart, it's a failing business plan.

 

1. Keep one mobile

2. Make a legal binding to provide support (bug fixes) for 3.0 for as long leadwerks does not have mobile in current version

3. Provide source code to 3.0 and wish good luck to them.

 

1. Not sure what you mean by this? Maybe to maintain only 1 mobile platform? (guess you want Android where I would actually want iOS so now he's pissing people off still). Also, he's already stated that mobile dev takes a long time and is eating into the other, more profitable platforms. His example was specifically how Android takes longer because of all the devices to support. So this isn't a solution for the Leadwerks business.

 

2. How does this benefit Leadwerk's bottom line? Again, this takes time away from the profitable platforms.

 

3. Leadwerks is not open source. Asking a person to display their "lives work" is unreasonable. That's a personal decision.

 

 

The only real reasonable solution from a business standpoint is to do a Kickstarter for mobile and ask for enough money that would allow Josh to hire a contractor to do a lot of the debugging/testing that is going to need to be done. However, Josh seems like a guy who likes to be involved in every aspect of his engine so he might not feel comfortable releasing a lot of this to another person.

[DudeAwesome]

The worst thing for me here is that I get those information nearby in a thread that is not created from josh. No news. No Communication on the website.

 

Ok there are reasons for Josh decision but why it reads for me like the problems/reasons are all new and incalculable? Why make those promises when I know there are Problems with it in the past? This is really a breakpoint for me and for now I turn back and see how the cpp Version goes. If I see it works for me and a bunch of things are changing here I will buy it.

[Rick]

Ok there are reasons for Josh decision but why it reads for me like the problems/reasons are all new and incalculable? Why make those promises when I know there are Problems with it in the past? This is really a breakpoint for me and for now I turn back and see how the cpp Version goes. If I see it works for me and a bunch of things are changing here I will buy it.

 

This is the point Josh is trying to make. He doesn't promise any of this stuff. He says a direction he wants to move in, but there are no promises and things change. If he doesn't say anything then everyone screams for him to say what's coming up. This is what you get with a 1 man show. They have to move to where the money is and in video game land that can change often and fast. The big boys are backed by venture capitalists and millions of dollars so they can give a plan months in advance and can wait for sales to catch on.

[Josh]

The flip side of that is small companies can move quickly to take advantage of new opportunities. I don't have to make a lot of power points and spend weeks in meetings to convince the board of directors why something is a good idea.