I will try and keep this simple. I am interested in writing some click related stuff. Mostly extensions, but my attention is drawn to other things outside of click that may generate a little bit of revenue from my hobby. I know that some people are having success with flash, but it's not really where my interests lie, and I would preferably make a choice based on my interests. Some of you might have noticed the OpenGL extension I've been working on. I was thinking of releasing a free version and a commercial version for a small fee (like $5/$10 or something?), which has some nice additional features. What do you think about that? I am not sure what the community thinks about charging for things like that in general, or if anyone would buy an extension. The trouble is that it's difficult for me to commit my time to something when I know there's something else out there I could be doing that I enjoy just as much, but might actually generate a little bit of money.
What do you think? Would you buy an extension? Is it right to charge for an extension?
I would not mind paying for something someone has put many hours into if it was going to help me complete a project (or be the crux of it!). Seeing as there is developer only extensions I can not see how anyone would have a problem with paying for extensions.
One problem you will have is piracy, how are you going to try and stop people just sending the extension to all their buddies (and this well inevitibaly lead to it being on torrents et al)...
Depending on whether or not I'd be capable of using the extension to good effect, I would probably pay $5 to $10 for the ability, if only because Fishhead 3D is redicalis.
And with a free version, I'd be able to try it out first!
I strongly recommend you release it commercially. You can always release it for free later, for whatever reason. The potential in the Fishhead 3D demo is huge.
Follow-up with other developers to see what your options would be in terms of copy protection.
I think that you should also correspond with ClickTeam and see if there's a way to bundle your extension with one of their commercial releases, Developer or otherwise. That way, you may be able to arrange for a large up-front payment, instead of nickle-and-dime payments trickling in, with the added assurance that serious developers would be the ones who have their hands on it.
The OpenGL set of extensions are based on some work that isn't my own, so in that respect I see it right to offer a free version and charge for the extras I know are purely my own work. I didn't really consider piracy a problem in the context of things, i.e. I am going to lose sales in the same manner from anything I do. Of course some way of limiting the damage caused by this would be extremely useful. I don't imagine clickteam gave much thought to the commercial development of extensions, but only added the provision of standard/developer extensions. An extension for the developer version seems a little harsh in my view given the steep increase in price between the two versions. I am sure clickteam would be interested in terms of boosting the sales of MMF2Dev though. The interesting thing about the OpenGL extension is that you can achieve hardware acceleration in any version, with the addition of 3D rendering. I am also working on an extension for exporting resources from an MMF game so that they can be used in a conversion to another platform. This relates to my interest in Android: I don't want to rely on a runtime, rather I just want to take all of my levels and objects and have them ready to be implemented in a game. This would vastly increase MMF's potential as a prototyping tool. The runtimes are not as efficient as I would like them to be so I can reduce the amount of work of coding a game from scratch by using the level and graphics data that has already been created. It would also work as a generic level exporter/loader hidden in an extension for those of us who are fed up with having to duplicate code for the same engine. Freebies in the works include some things like selecting and comparing objects by name, and xml based save files.
If I could use it (ie: if I'm not too dumb ) I would very happily pay more than $10 for an OpenGL extension.
Nothing wrong with charging for it. You're potentially enabling many others to potentially (lol) profit off something you worked very hard on. You would be deserving of it - at the least.
Obviously I'd rather get everything for free (wouldn't we all), but if you want to charge, that's fair enough - and $5-$10 seems very reasonable to me.
Personally, I have no interest in making 3D games, so I wouldn't buy it - I probably wouldn't even download it if it was free. That's just me though.
I know that an awful lot of other people *do* want to make 3D games, and if there's one extension that I think people would be willing to pay for, then this is probably it.
However, it does depend on how good the extension is - if it's too complicated, unintuitive, restrictive or slow, then forget it.
You can achieve more advanced things in 2D with OpenGL than you can at present, even with the HWA version of MMF2. Multiple cameras being one added bonus. MMF doesn't render the stuff off the screen but with OpenGL you can tell it what to render, how to render it and where to display the rendered scene in the frame. You could also achieve zooming if you're not fussy about the effects of that, and also I am currently researching the rendering of vector graphics efficiently with OpenGL. Maybe it's only me but I think an efficient implementation of vector graphic rendering would be an awesome addition to MMF.
If I was insured some element of support behind the extension and I knew it would provide me a great deal of assistance in a large project, I would gladly pay between $5-20 for a good extension. You'd have to convince me though that if I found a glitch in the extension that wasn't a flaw on my part, you'd help work with me to fix it.
I understand nothing is perfect, but I want my money was going to someone with a little more ambition and motivation then just making money. I want them to have an interest in how their extension works, how it's being used, and how they can improve it.
Originally Posted by ~Matt Esch~ You can achieve more advanced things in 2D with OpenGL than you can at present, even with the HWA version of MMF2. Multiple cameras being one added bonus.
Good, because this is what I was thinking it could be used for. In MMF the most I would want to do is experiment with 2d graphics on 3d backgrounds and such.
If I wanted to make fully 3d games I'd probably look into Unity and suck at it for a century .
I could never sell a product without reasonable support. If I didn't think there was any commercial potential to the extension I would just finish it to a reasonable standard with the ideas I had for FH3D and leave it at that, perhaps fix the odd bug or two while I focus my attention on writing android games instead.
Originally Posted by ~Matt Esch~ You can achieve more advanced things in 2D with OpenGL than you can at present, even with the HWA version of MMF2. Multiple cameras being one added bonus.
Good, because this is what I was thinking it could be used for.
Nah. That's the kind of thing that Clickteam should be building into updated versions of MMF2 - it shouldn't require an extension.
No matter what clickteam add as updates to MMF you will never have such control over the rendering process as you do with OpenGL. It's just this way by design although you do have the benefit of shaders. OpenGL is a state machine that allows anyone to bolt stuff onto it. MMF2 uses a closed rendering process and you are reliant on clickteam to implement anything and everything you want in directx. Then engine I have written provides callbacks at each of the rendering stages so it may be intercepted and used by another extension, or allows you to draw or re-render different scenes if you feel like venturing into that. Moreover Clickteam have little incentive to provide such updates for free when they have things like the runtimes in the works that will actually generate them some additional revenue for their efforts. I presume the difficulty of a splitscreen in the MMF rendering sense comes from the relationship between the software renderer and the hardware renderer. There is nothing to fall back on in terms of the software rendering that achieves the same effect, at least not at the moment and there is little indication to suggest this would be easy to achieve.
Assault Andy Administrator
I make other people create vaporware
Registered 29/07/2002
Points 5686
10th February, 2011 at 09:48:53 -
I would gladly pay for an extension if it did what I required it to do. I have also paid for a couple of extensions to be made for my own purposes, a few of which have been released to the public such as Character Image.
So as long as your extension is worth using, then people will buy it for a reasonable price.
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Edited by an Administrator
) I would very happily pay more than $10 for an OpenGL extension.
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