Gotta say... All of these changes, and all the reactions on them made me worried and gave me a negative gut feeling. I was even thinking of changing to Stencyl, which is a lot cheeper, seems better and they have even got a free version that allows you to test your games on the different devices before buying Pro, but not publish them.
But this morning there was yet another update to GS which actually made me really excited. The staff does seem to work harder than ever. Lets hope the money they receive from us will make the updates even better this year. I mean, custom fonts, better layout and just about every other thing so many of us have been requesting for so many years now!
Im voting for the new model and Im standing behind GS, yet a bit worried that newcomers won't buy into this after such a short trial period... But Im still gonna try Stencyl though...
@sebmat86 said:
Gotta say... All of these changes, and all the reactions on them made me worried and gave me a negative gut feeling. I was even thinking of changing to Stencyl, which is a lot cheeper, seems better and they have even got a free version that allows you to test your games on the different devices before buying Pro, but not publish them.
I keep jumping to Stencyl but don't really get it >.< It looks like it has more but GameSalad seems to be a lot more easier to get to grips with. I couldn't seem to write out to the console the iterations of a loop inside a loop in Stencyl. Gave up and moved back to AGK2.
Eagerly waiting for the GS update that will bring me back. Hopefully it's not too far away! Quicker loops is definitely a start to buttering me up.
I say all of this as someone who loves to pay big bucks to own something, and hate monthly payments. (I'd rather pay small fees for updates)
About a month ago, when I initially heard GS was going to be rolling out monthly payments, I was actually really excited because there was never an option to buy the software and own it permanently anyhow. A year of Pro was essentially $25 a month, for a year, paid up front.
Before I realized you were locked in for a year, I figured this monthly plan would be better because I work sporadically / intermittently with GameSalad to try and build passive income. (Not only can I not drop $300 at one time, I can't dedicate to $300 either depending on how my apps perform) But then I realized there was a lock in. Sure it's great not having to dump all the cash all at once, but I'm more worried about my ROI. It's still a year of Pro, but you end up paying more. We've already been in this model, so really what's the difference? I need to make more money than I'm spending, with Apple's license factored in.
To me it's all about the freedom to pay & play when I want. Being able to pay for one month at a time is going to be tremendously helpful, and it's going to make so much more sense to make it fully functioning with both plans. Having a free version was fine and everything but I felt handicapped and it messed with developing my apps the way I wanted to. On the other hand, if I bought a year I felt rushed to get it done before it expired. I spent a long time developing my apps, and a lot of that year was wasted. I'm really glad to hear you all are going to these pricing models.
You will be getting my money.
(But I'd still rather pay $600 to own GameSalad and pay $50 for major updates.)
Disappointed.
What made this engine great was that I didn't have to spend loads of money on a minor hobby. Now I basically have to pay just to be able update my non profit games for new iOS'..?
@Reismehl said:
Disappointed.
What made this engine great was that I didn't have to spend loads of money on a minor hobby. Now I basically have to pay just to be able update my non profit games
No hobbies in life are free. Even walking you need shoes and a hat.
Walmart ruined my non profit hobby.
@Reismehl said:
Disappointed.
What made this engine great was that I didn't have to spend loads of money on a minor hobby.
Unfortunately there are a bunch of people supporting your hobby, working full time to develop and maintain the codebase, keeping the software up-to-date, ensuring it's compatible with Apple's ever-changing iOS demands, fixing bugs and so on . . . and ultimately they need to eat and pay their rent like everyone else . . . so is it really that unreasonable for them to want to get paid for the work they do ?
Seriously GameSalad is Great... But what I am truly waiting for is custom collisions, If they add that feature in a month or two with a price, I would surely pay those extra bucks.
I teach a tertiary level Game Design and Production course, and my frustrations with Game Salad's development pace over, and lack of consistent stability between releases - over the past 3 years or so - disallows me from teaching with it, or recommending it to others.
Fully agree with the new model $29.00 per month is nothing in comparison to coding this yourselves. If you cannot afford that then get the parents to pay it to you as pocket money or as an advance :-)
In return all I'd ask for is the continued improvement of the product and solid small incremental releases.
@CodeWizard Are there any plans for a student discounted monthly subscription? It doesn't really make sense to me that if students want the discount, they have to pay for the whole year, especially when they are the ones least likely to be using it all 12 months. It may end up costing them more than if they just paid for the months they need, thus making the student yearly purchase redundant for a lot of people.
Not to mention, the fact that there is no basic plan offering a student discount is bad for both the users and GS, since students are the ones likely to be using it and may not be able to afford it.
I do think GS would potentially be a good tool to use in the classroom. But @Rainbros makes a good point that the price issue is now locking people out a bit perhaps?
It's also hard to compete with GameMaker which is in a very similar space, and is a bit more open in some ways.
GameMaker has a free version that is very fully featured and non-restrictive. It very nicely integrates visual scripting alongside actual scripting, and has the ability to mix the two, allowing for a seamless transition from one to the other.
GameMaker can export an EXE (at the click of a button) which can be shared and distributed freely with each other, so the students can share their work with one another, or even release their game to the world (at no cost, and very simply).
One can pay a bit extra to get the WEB exporter, and then embed a GameMaker game in a web portfolio, or on a dedicated game page... something else Game Salad sadly doesn't seem to have ever allowed outside of the Game Salad Arcade (to my knowledge).
GameMaker also has some built in tutorials for various projects, with step-by-step instructions to make a clicking game, a 1942 style game, etc.
I suppose Game Salad can be shared via the GameSalad Arcade, so class-made games could be shared between students there.
@Hymloe said:
I do think GS would potentially be a good tool to use in the classroom. But Rainbros makes a good point that the price issue is now locking people out a bit perhaps?
Thanks for the feedback and we're sorry to hear that. As Armelline noted, there is a 50% off student discount available via Studica (one of our reseller partners).
If you used GameSalad in school, we'd definitely love to talk to your administrator. We have a classroom licensing plan that is extremely affordable -- starting at 90% off for K-12 schools.
Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions on either of these options.
You are always welcome in the forums regardless of your membership status. GameSalad is more than just a tool -- we're a community!
90% off for student classrooms seems very reasonable.
You could certainly build a curriculum around Game Salad, at that rate, especially if you were going to solely use Game Salad, around the clock, for the whole year.
But if I set up a game development class for primary school kids, for example, I'd probably use GameMaker still, because the kids can install it in the classroom and at home for free, and if they get into it, they can keep on working with it on their own and released finished professional games (like Hotline Miami, Spelunky, Nidhogg), as a standalone Windows game (.exe), or on Mac, Linux, Web, etc, and have full control of distribution, whether they want to give it away for free, or sell it for $20 a copy, or put it on Steam, or the Mac App Store, etc...
It's surprising how few of those things I can do with Game Salad.
But all that being said, I think it's fine if Game Salad "do their own thing" with a more controlled subscription model, where everything is published through their servers.
But if you're going to do that, then you need to make sure the tool is super user friendly, rock solid, consistent... and doesn't have crippling bugs that prevent users from finishing games. Which is what has happened to me, for years.
@Socks said: Unfortunately there are a bunch of people supporting your hobby, working full time to develop and maintain the codebase, keeping the software up-to-date, ensuring it's compatible with Apple's ever-changing iOS demands, fixing bugs and so on . . . and ultimately they need to eat and pay their rent like everyone else . . . so is it really that unreasonable for them to want to get paid for the work they do ?
It is VERY common for users to be able to use software for free these days (it's becoming more common every day), with paying customers coming in off wanting the Pro features. People move to paying customers because they love the software, they live off the software, and they've grown into a position where they can afford to "upgrade to Pro".
I think Game Salad has ultimately struggled to gain more traction, and more Pro users, because it has focussed too much effort on breadth and scope, at the detriment of stability, polish, and really addressing the needs of existing customers.
I've recommended Unity and GameMaker to tons of people. I speak of them highly to everyone I meet, game devs, teachers, students, school open days, etc.
I don't recommend Game Salad to anyone, despite it's strengths, because of it's weaknesses: heart-breaking bugginess, and a lack of response to critical flaws in the software.
All that being said, I'm still here... I have some games "stuck in Game Salad land".
So please get 0.14.whatever out, and please do it ASAP, and please fix the table related memory bugs, so I can finish my now-ancient project, and get my games out.
SOLIDITY. CONSISTENCY. RELIABILITY. THOROUGHNESS of TESTING.
@Hymloe said:
It is VERY common for users to be able to use software for free these days (it's becoming more common every day)
I don't know the market well enough to comment from a position of authority, but according to @dgackey (who I'm going to guess looks into these things in some detail) the move is in the opposite direction, with more companies moving towards a paid model.
@Hymloe said:
it has focussed too much effort on breadth and scope, at the detriment of stability, polish, and really addressing the needs of existing customers.
Agreed.
@Hymloe said:
I don't recommend Game Salad to anyone, despite it's strengths, because of it's weaknesses: heart-breaking bugginess, and a lack of response to critical flaws in the software.
Hopefully some of that can be addressed under the new regime.
I am a committed pro user and will remain so as I make enough income to validate the expense.
As a teacher in a university (who used the free version in a studio) I will no longer use GS for teaching. Installing free software at the uni is easy. Installing single license software is impossible so the upshot is that I would need a site license from GS to install it at a 'justifiable' price.
When I did use it in the class the response was positive and some students are likely to have remained users. That is the best investment GS can make to get close to the level of the market they sell to.
Well I completely missed this announcement. Where the hell was I? - Oh yeah, just fixed my Mac after 20 days waiting on a part and 2 days rebuilding a fusion drive/software recovery and THEN updated my gamesalad to discover it in trial mode? Well, things change very suddenly around here. Let's hope it all pans out.
@Hymloe GameMaker is a great tool indeed, and buying the professional studio (without iOS export etc) is only $150! It's also a drag an drop kinda tool, and if you wish to code, you can:) The only flaws I can find are some modules that might not work on mac. Time to install bootcamp? I don't really worry too much about the bugs/crashes in gamesalad anymore, it's pretty stable already, and I save my work quite often. I just really want some features that take too long to come out, like nearest neighbor interpolation and custom fonts. I'm pretty sure they will come eventually, but the big question is when...
@Approw said:
Hymloe GameMaker is a great tool indeed, and buying the professional studio (without iOS export etc) is only $150! It's also a drag an drop kinda tool, and if you wish to code, you can:) The only flaws I can find are some modules that might not work on mac. Time to install bootcamp? I don't really worry too much about the bugs/crashes in gamesalad anymore, it's pretty stable already, and I save my work quite often. I just really want some features that take too long to come out, like nearest neighbor interpolation and custom fonts. I'm pretty sure they will come eventually, but the big question is when...
Yes, CUSTOM FONTS have taken forever, hidden away behind efforts to support Tizen, and Windows Store, and all sorts of stuff that would be great in an ideal world, but should come after really useful everyday good features that existing users need for iOS and Android.
To be honest, I've never released on Android because Game Salad has had problems for me, making me give up. Generally dodginess and bugginess. These things should be the emphasis. Choose what you're going to do, and do it really well. THEN take a look at other platforms and features to support and add.
CUSTOM FONTS should have been added 2 years ago. No excuses.
There isn't even a built in PIXEL style font to use. That would be nice.
And yes, my Pixel Art game has to have huge assets, because otherwise they're all blurry. I'd love to be able to shrink my pixel art to 32x32 instead of the current 256x256, and still have them appear crisp and perfect.
I've basically given up on hoping for any rudimentary features like this. I just want the table related memory bug fixed.
But yes, ever hopeful (ever stupid?), these sorts of things may appear one day.
Hmm, this was probably suggested already but, what about free GS with advertisements? Maybe an ad pops up every 20 to 30 minutes, or a banner is on the side that constantly changes ads every few minutes.
@Franto said:
Hmm, this was probably suggested already but, what about free GS with advertisements? Maybe an ad pops up every 20 to 30 minutes, or a banner is on the side that constantly changes ads every few minutes.
I don't remember any ads in the creator when I used the free version. Neither any pop ups appear when creator starts up, just the little menu thing.
I've used other programs, like an office suite that had ads on the side in display all the time until you bought it. Really funny to be focused on typing something and some ad is running on the side.
Although, I guess the ads would take space away from the creator's User interface, but it would be a price to pay for using free. And if people on the creator see an ad they like, they might click, maybe something related to game development or website with tools that developers would purchase.
@Hymloe said:
Yes, CUSTOM FONTS have taken forever, hidden away behind efforts to support Tizen, and Windows Store, and all sorts of stuff that would be great in an ideal world, but should come after really useful everyday good features that existing users need for iOS and Android.
Totally agree. Dropping heavily wanted features for things like Tizen and windows 8 (why not windows phone 8?) support is not ideal at all. Custom fonts and nearest neighbor seem like tiny nifty features, but ow they are huge for this community!
There isn't even a built in PIXEL style font to use. That would be nice.
Yes you're right. Im pretty sure that at least 60% of the games made with gamesalad, are pixel art games. So why aren't there any pixel art fonts when the community is begging for custom fonts... at least then 60% will be happy for a while.
And yes, my Pixel Art game has to have huge assets, because otherwise they're all blurry. I'd love to be able to shrink my pixel art to 32x32 instead of the current 256x256, and still have them appear crisp and perfect.
Can you imagine, more advanced games that use less memory:D? It's a dream, but until now I never woke up from it. Hopefully soon, very soon!
Comments
Gotta say... All of these changes, and all the reactions on them made me worried and gave me a negative gut feeling. I was even thinking of changing to Stencyl, which is a lot cheeper, seems better and they have even got a free version that allows you to test your games on the different devices before buying Pro, but not publish them.
But this morning there was yet another update to GS which actually made me really excited. The staff does seem to work harder than ever. Lets hope the money they receive from us will make the updates even better this year. I mean, custom fonts, better layout and just about every other thing so many of us have been requesting for so many years now!
Im voting for the new model and Im standing behind GS, yet a bit worried that newcomers won't buy into this after such a short trial period... But Im still gonna try Stencyl though...
CHEERS!
I keep jumping to Stencyl but don't really get it >.< It looks like it has more but GameSalad seems to be a lot more easier to get to grips with. I couldn't seem to write out to the console the iterations of a loop inside a loop in Stencyl. Gave up and moved back to AGK2.
Eagerly waiting for the GS update that will bring me back. Hopefully it's not too far away! Quicker loops is definitely a start to buttering me up.
I say all of this as someone who loves to pay big bucks to own something, and hate monthly payments. (I'd rather pay small fees for updates)
About a month ago, when I initially heard GS was going to be rolling out monthly payments, I was actually really excited because there was never an option to buy the software and own it permanently anyhow. A year of Pro was essentially $25 a month, for a year, paid up front.
Before I realized you were locked in for a year, I figured this monthly plan would be better because I work sporadically / intermittently with GameSalad to try and build passive income. (Not only can I not drop $300 at one time, I can't dedicate to $300 either depending on how my apps perform) But then I realized there was a lock in. Sure it's great not having to dump all the cash all at once, but I'm more worried about my ROI. It's still a year of Pro, but you end up paying more. We've already been in this model, so really what's the difference? I need to make more money than I'm spending, with Apple's license factored in.
To me it's all about the freedom to pay & play when I want. Being able to pay for one month at a time is going to be tremendously helpful, and it's going to make so much more sense to make it fully functioning with both plans. Having a free version was fine and everything but I felt handicapped and it messed with developing my apps the way I wanted to. On the other hand, if I bought a year I felt rushed to get it done before it expired. I spent a long time developing my apps, and a lot of that year was wasted. I'm really glad to hear you all are going to these pricing models.
You will be getting my money.
(But I'd still rather pay $600 to own GameSalad and pay $50 for major updates.)
Any news on 0.14.x rc? We are waiting for too long!
Yops – the innovative puzzle game for iOs – http://apple.co/1ESvIlC
Other games - http://appstore.com/flashpromllc/
Looking forward to 0.14 RC with memory leak fixes!
POLAR ROLLOUT (New Line-Drawing Physics Puzzler!) - FREE Download
What's the point you are making? Spam?
Disappointed.
What made this engine great was that I didn't have to spend loads of money on a minor hobby. Now I basically have to pay just to be able update my non profit games for new iOS'..?
Now it makes sense
No hobbies in life are free. Even walking you need shoes and a hat.
Walmart ruined my non profit hobby.
Unfortunately there are a bunch of people supporting your hobby, working full time to develop and maintain the codebase, keeping the software up-to-date, ensuring it's compatible with Apple's ever-changing iOS demands, fixing bugs and so on . . . and ultimately they need to eat and pay their rent like everyone else . . . so is it really that unreasonable for them to want to get paid for the work they do ?
Seriously GameSalad is Great... But what I am truly waiting for is custom collisions, If they add that feature in a month or two with a price, I would surely pay those extra bucks.
Glad to hear Graphene is on hold.
I just want the table-related memory fix to get put into Game Salad Creator, which I've been waiting for for a year.
Hope this new re-focus on Game Salad might get this fix out quicker???????????????????
I teach a tertiary level Game Design and Production course, and my frustrations with Game Salad's development pace over, and lack of consistent stability between releases - over the past 3 years or so - disallows me from teaching with it, or recommending it to others.
Would be nice if it were otherwise.
Fully agree with the new model $29.00 per month is nothing in comparison to coding this yourselves. If you cannot afford that then get the parents to pay it to you as pocket money or as an advance :-)
In return all I'd ask for is the continued improvement of the product and solid small incremental releases.
@CodeWizard Are there any plans for a student discounted monthly subscription? It doesn't really make sense to me that if students want the discount, they have to pay for the whole year, especially when they are the ones least likely to be using it all 12 months. It may end up costing them more than if they just paid for the months they need, thus making the student yearly purchase redundant for a lot of people.
Not to mention, the fact that there is no basic plan offering a student discount is bad for both the users and GS, since students are the ones likely to be using it and may not be able to afford it.
I do think GS would potentially be a good tool to use in the classroom. But @Rainbros makes a good point that the price issue is now locking people out a bit perhaps?
It's also hard to compete with GameMaker which is in a very similar space, and is a bit more open in some ways.
GameMaker has a free version that is very fully featured and non-restrictive. It very nicely integrates visual scripting alongside actual scripting, and has the ability to mix the two, allowing for a seamless transition from one to the other.
GameMaker can export an EXE (at the click of a button) which can be shared and distributed freely with each other, so the students can share their work with one another, or even release their game to the world (at no cost, and very simply).
One can pay a bit extra to get the WEB exporter, and then embed a GameMaker game in a web portfolio, or on a dedicated game page... something else Game Salad sadly doesn't seem to have ever allowed outside of the Game Salad Arcade (to my knowledge).
GameMaker also has some built in tutorials for various projects, with step-by-step instructions to make a clicking game, a 1942 style game, etc.
I suppose Game Salad can be shared via the GameSalad Arcade, so class-made games could be shared between students there.
.
90% off for student classrooms seems very reasonable.
You could certainly build a curriculum around Game Salad, at that rate, especially if you were going to solely use Game Salad, around the clock, for the whole year.
But if I set up a game development class for primary school kids, for example, I'd probably use GameMaker still, because the kids can install it in the classroom and at home for free, and if they get into it, they can keep on working with it on their own and released finished professional games (like Hotline Miami, Spelunky, Nidhogg), as a standalone Windows game (.exe), or on Mac, Linux, Web, etc, and have full control of distribution, whether they want to give it away for free, or sell it for $20 a copy, or put it on Steam, or the Mac App Store, etc...
It's surprising how few of those things I can do with Game Salad.
But all that being said, I think it's fine if Game Salad "do their own thing" with a more controlled subscription model, where everything is published through their servers.
But if you're going to do that, then you need to make sure the tool is super user friendly, rock solid, consistent... and doesn't have crippling bugs that prevent users from finishing games. Which is what has happened to me, for years.
It is VERY common for users to be able to use software for free these days (it's becoming more common every day), with paying customers coming in off wanting the Pro features. People move to paying customers because they love the software, they live off the software, and they've grown into a position where they can afford to "upgrade to Pro".
I think Game Salad has ultimately struggled to gain more traction, and more Pro users, because it has focussed too much effort on breadth and scope, at the detriment of stability, polish, and really addressing the needs of existing customers.
I've recommended Unity and GameMaker to tons of people. I speak of them highly to everyone I meet, game devs, teachers, students, school open days, etc.
I don't recommend Game Salad to anyone, despite it's strengths, because of it's weaknesses: heart-breaking bugginess, and a lack of response to critical flaws in the software.
All that being said, I'm still here... I have some games "stuck in Game Salad land".
So please get 0.14.whatever out, and please do it ASAP, and please fix the table related memory bugs, so I can finish my now-ancient project, and get my games out.
SOLIDITY. CONSISTENCY. RELIABILITY. THOROUGHNESS of TESTING.
I don't know the market well enough to comment from a position of authority, but according to @dgackey (who I'm going to guess looks into these things in some detail) the move is in the opposite direction, with more companies moving towards a paid model.
Agreed.
Hopefully some of that can be addressed under the new regime.
I am a committed pro user and will remain so as I make enough income to validate the expense.
As a teacher in a university (who used the free version in a studio) I will no longer use GS for teaching. Installing free software at the uni is easy. Installing single license software is impossible so the upshot is that I would need a site license from GS to install it at a 'justifiable' price.
When I did use it in the class the response was positive and some students are likely to have remained users. That is the best investment GS can make to get close to the level of the market they sell to.
Well I completely missed this announcement. Where the hell was I? - Oh yeah, just fixed my Mac after 20 days waiting on a part and 2 days rebuilding a fusion drive/software recovery and THEN updated my gamesalad to discover it in trial mode? Well, things change very suddenly around here. Let's hope it all pans out.
@Hymloe GameMaker is a great tool indeed, and buying the professional studio (without iOS export etc) is only $150! It's also a drag an drop kinda tool, and if you wish to code, you can:) The only flaws I can find are some modules that might not work on mac. Time to install bootcamp? I don't really worry too much about the bugs/crashes in gamesalad anymore, it's pretty stable already, and I save my work quite often. I just really want some features that take too long to come out, like nearest neighbor interpolation and custom fonts. I'm pretty sure they will come eventually, but the big question is when...
Yes, CUSTOM FONTS have taken forever, hidden away behind efforts to support Tizen, and Windows Store, and all sorts of stuff that would be great in an ideal world, but should come after really useful everyday good features that existing users need for iOS and Android.
To be honest, I've never released on Android because Game Salad has had problems for me, making me give up. Generally dodginess and bugginess. These things should be the emphasis. Choose what you're going to do, and do it really well. THEN take a look at other platforms and features to support and add.
CUSTOM FONTS should have been added 2 years ago. No excuses.
There isn't even a built in PIXEL style font to use. That would be nice.
And yes, my Pixel Art game has to have huge assets, because otherwise they're all blurry. I'd love to be able to shrink my pixel art to 32x32 instead of the current 256x256, and still have them appear crisp and perfect.
I've basically given up on hoping for any rudimentary features like this. I just want the table related memory bug fixed.
But yes, ever hopeful (ever stupid?), these sorts of things may appear one day.
Hmm, this was probably suggested already but, what about free GS with advertisements? Maybe an ad pops up every 20 to 30 minutes, or a banner is on the side that constantly changes ads every few minutes.
That was the old model, and it didn't work.
I don't remember any ads in the creator when I used the free version.
Neither any pop ups appear when creator starts up, just the little menu thing.
I've used other programs, like an office suite that had ads on the side in display all the time until you bought it. Really funny to be focused on typing something and some ad is running on the side.
Although, I guess the ads would take space away from the creator's User interface, but it would be a price to pay for using free. And if people on the creator see an ad they like, they might click, maybe something related to game development or website with tools that developers would purchase.
Totally agree. Dropping heavily wanted features for things like Tizen and windows 8 (why not windows phone 8?) support is not ideal at all. Custom fonts and nearest neighbor seem like tiny nifty features, but ow they are huge for this community!
Yes you're right. Im pretty sure that at least 60% of the games made with gamesalad, are pixel art games. So why aren't there any pixel art fonts when the community is begging for custom fonts... at least then 60% will be happy for a while.
Can you imagine, more advanced games that use less memory:D? It's a dream, but until now I never woke up from it. Hopefully soon, very soon!