GDevApp : the online, codingless app to create games

Maybe, but no in the very short term (working on the next version of GD, I need to write tutorials for GDevelop…).
But maybe I will offer two ways of getting a subscription : pay for 3 or 6 months using Paypal, or pay each month using Stripe.com
It could be a nice alternative.

Until then, how about that, if anybody would like to have subscription, could donate the money (7 euros) to you through paypal as usual and you would activate the 1 month subscription on their account? If anybody want’s to do it this way, have to send you an email after donation from the same email address that was used to send donation. You can also enter email address when you want to donate by using debit/credit card through paypal. Imo, it could work pretty good :slight_smile: I don’t mean it to be an official way to subscribe, It would be an unofficial way that only the community know about it.

I don’t want to whine here, but…am, why you don’t work on the next update of GDevelop instead of GD? I mean, I thought GDevelop is going to be your main project from now on and GD going to be the “community open-source project” that you going to maintain but you going to work on GDevelop in first place. So if you add something new and cool to GDevelop you going to implement it in to GD as well and make sure GD always in “sync” with GDevelop at some point but you going to be more active in development of GDevelop. You just released an update to GD, so what is the situation now then, what is the plan?
Don’t get me wrong I don’t want you to stop the development of GD or anything, I love GD but GDevelop just impressed me and I can’t wait to be as powerful as GD, but you are only one man with two hands and ten fingers, maybe even less (or more :smiling_imp: ), if you want to work on both tools simultaneously, not only to keep them in sync but also to improve and add new (different) features to both, I’ll shoot my balls right now :astonished:
Teams of 3+ people working on only one project usually, you are on your own :confused:
You have to choose a leading project at this point and that must be GDevelop.
You just made GD open-source, let the community to improve it, you just focus on GDevelop and only maintain GD to be in sync with GDevelop which is not necessarily means 0 new features and improvements for GD but I think you get what I mean :neutral_face:

Because I’m way too excited about GDevelop, I can agree with only GDevelop related improvements and features for GD at the moment. For example, to be able to access our gdevapp.com account from GD and to be able to download our own and shared projects, events graphics, sounds, directly in to our GD project, and also to be able to upload GD projects directly to our gdevapp.com account to share it and to be able to work on it from anywhere :slight_smile:

Yeah, I was thinking about it. :slight_smile:
If you think you would be interested in this system, I’ll setup a thread to explain that you can send me a payment via paypal and I’ll activate your account according to what you sent (and maybe a little discount as you’re member of the community :smiley: )

I understand that you could be afraid but do not worry! I just want to release a new version of GD because I want to be sure that the software is clean and up-to-date so that people that want to contribute do not struggle with it :slight_smile: So I have spent some time updating the documentation, I’m improving the build system and I’m fixing the latest bugs so that I can release a stable version of GD 3.4
It’s a matter of days : when the new version is released, I’ll actively work on GDevelop which has a huge potential :slight_smile:

The first thing to add to GDevelop will be some tutorials, because I think the main disavantage of Game Develop was its lack of documentation, so I prefer spend some time to write tutorials for GDevelop. I want to be sure that the new users of GDevelop understand how it work and are able to use it.
The next big improvement of GDevelop will surely be the possibility to use external images. :slight_smile:

Yeah exactly : as GD is open source the community will be able to improve it (victor already started to send me some improvements on GitHub) and I’ll continue adding new features and releasing the new version on the website when needed :slight_smile: If some developers take part in GD, we could go faster than when I was the only guy working on it.

Let me know if something is not clear : this plan makes sense I hope! :slight_smile: I just want to be sure that Game Develop has a stable open source version released on the website before working more on GDevelop. (I can’t wait to improve it :smiley: )

Yes I would be interested definitely but not at the moment as I’m really feel GDevelop way too limited to use it seriously but it is only matter of time. As you going to implement more features getting more powerful I’ll be more interested to subscribe and as I have already mentioned, I do prefer paypal even this way :slight_smile:
But not at the moment :wink:
To show why, here is a simple game I did want to make in GDevelop:
gdevapp.com/#/play/53d0df02a0a551140fe126ff

The game is about to simply avoid asteroids by moving up and down the ship by pressing/releasing space. The problem is, the stars and asteroids are not generating as it should, simply because I do generate them in position of invisible objects but they are not generating in position of each object only in position of some objects, simply because I don’t have option to tell them to be generated at position of each :unamused: . I’m also using object variables but still not perfect as you can see
So, for now I’m more than happy to play around with the free account and built in sprites, but it definitely going to change in the future. :laughing:

Hey just want to ask how things going with GDevApp other then it name has changed. Any update in the future?
And also would like to mention it, looks like GDevApp already has a serious competitor called WiMi5.
http://wimi5.com/

Maybe others did know about it (as it out there for at least 8 months now), but I just found it last night and the thing is, it looks pretty advanced already though it not as easy to use as GD. It using a “Logic Editor” with all kind of “connectors”, within connectors similar to Unreal Kismet in UDK or Flowgraph in Leadwerks. I was give it a try last night, and really I just couldn’t done anything I was watching a tutorial video but after 10 min, the guy in the video was still just connecting connectors only to make move an object. So I decided to give it a try an other day, but what I really find interesting about wimi5 is their business model. Basically they not only providing the tool, they also take the role of the publisher which means they publish and monetize your game if you want, well, the publish thing is not optional only the monetize part. Their slogan is that “we grow with you” because they provide the platform for 100% free you can make share as many games as you want for free on their website on Chrome and Firefox Marketplace (more to come), but if you want to make money wimi5 take care about that for 30% of revenue / game. So more successful you are, more successful they are.

So, I think it worth to keep eyes on wimi5 as in my opinion it a serious competitor in features and also in business model, though it business model maybe sounds bad at first (30% of revenue) but if you think about it they ask for money only if you make money in case of GDevApp you have to pay even if you make no money. But GDevApp can be superior in development as it event system and expressions seems a lot easier to use then wimi5’s Logic Editor but it can be enough?

Didn’t know about the existence of this website, thanks for the link :slight_smile:
I’ve just gave it a try, seems a bit more complicated indeed.

For GDevApp, I think it’s a bit difficult for me to make a business model based on a percent of the revenue of the games because the webapp is still at its early stage and I don’t have enough resources to provide a really nice gaming platform, better put my effort into making the webapp better :slight_smile:
That’s why I prefer to have a monthly based subscription (which is very cheap!) as it immediately helps the web app to keep growing and allow to pay for the infrastructure cost.

But I’ve deployed a new version of GDevApp just yesterday: it now have support for editing animations of objects and you can use external images (in particular, it’s easy to add images that are stored on a Dropbox account!). I’ve also fixed performance issue!
I’ve made new articles on the blog (they are link to them from inside the web app): gdevapp.com/blog/

As everything looks good, I’m going to put a link to GDevApp directly on the GDevelop website. :slight_smile:

Great. Just keep in mind that revenue sharing model - when you have enough resources to do this, it’ll be great if you switch to it.

Yeah, once the web app is successful enough and used to make some beautiful games, I’ll consider offering a business model with revenue sharing but no subscription :slight_smile:

Yes it would require to have released some nice games to make sense such business model :laughing:
But don’t forget about that wimi5 provide not only the platform for % of revenue, it also take care about everything.
If you want to publish your game you just have to click on publish, and that’s it wimi5 will do the rest, publish the game for you and handle transactions. In wimi5 monetization is focusing on virtual goods at the moment (in game items to buy for real money). You can implement a virtual good in few minutes, set the price and some properties and that’s it. wimi5 will do the rest.
But I think it going to be also possible to set price if you actually want people to pay for your game but at the moment it focusing on in-app purchases.

So, maybe you could implement such publishing thing too, just to have something like this in place.
For example, basic users could publish their game, only through GDevApp, different places such as Kongregate, Chrome and Firefox Market, facebook…etc. People would click on “publish” and GDevApp would do the rest, pack and upload the game (of course games need to meet some requirements and would be checked by you or an admin before publish). No monetization would be offered, only to have such publishing feature in place. In case people want to download their game, and publish it them self and may make some money, they would have to upgrade to premium account and then they can download the game and do what ever they want with it. Of course it would put more work on you and on the servers only to limit free users, but later, when you see potential and have enough resources to offer revenue share model, you would already have such publishing feature in place, only have to solve monetization. So it would be more like the first step of a bigger plan. But you can also implement such feature for premium users. If they pay, GDevApp would publish their game for them, they just need to provide their user name and password and GDevApp would pack and upload the game to wherever they want. Though I don’t know if it make sense, how difficult and time consuming to pack a game for different markets, just an idea.

Just want to ask, what happen to my images once my premium subscription is expired and my account roll back to basic account?
Am I going to keep access to my already uploaded images as a basic user, or do I need to keep pay subscription even to have access to my images? Also, what happen if I use custom images in my project, share it and a basic user “copy” the project, does the basic user will also have access to my images used in the project or the basic user need to upgrade is well to have access to them?

Also, I have a Firefox OS smart phone (ZTE). This is a very basic device, probably the bottom of any smart phone. I wanted to test the performance of GDevApp games, how well or not well running on this device. I have shared a project and I tried to open the link on my phone And the thing is, even after long minutes the game didn’t loaded. I was also check the examples shared on gamedevshare,com, they can load but they running on very low FPS especially the Angry Peas as it using physics. Normally it would not surprise me as 90% of games running in a browser and have more details then you can click on few boxes, performing really bad on this phone. Even very basic Construct 2 games running on low FPS. But here is the thing.
As I’m playing around with wimi5, I decided to check the games shared on the wimi5 website, and it gone far beyond my expectations. Only thing I was expecting maybe 1 or 2 simple one will load at least, but instead every single game (that support touch or start running without waiting for any input) running flawlessly on my very low level ZTE Firefox OS device :astonished: In browser! (so the games are not installed on the device)
Check the games if you want.
http://labs.wimi5.com/ (community shared projects)
http://play.wimi5.com (published games)

So this experience really makes me wonder if games made in CS2 or GD why running so slow and games shared on GDevApp why not loading at all :confused:

And one more thing, (I don’t know about Android and iOS and the rest as I really don’t use them) in Firefox OS we can save a link to any web page and run it in full screen as a native, installed app. If I do save such link to a wimi5 game shared on the website, once I run it, it just really feels like a native app running on my phone as only the actual HTML5 game (canvas) is displayed from the page in full screen and also the size of the canvas adapts to the size of my phone’s screen. If I do the same with a game shared on gamedevshare.com, the whole page is displayed not only the actual game canvas and though I could not test it (because the page don’t even loaded on my phone) I would expect the same would happen to games shared on gdevapp.com but even if only the actual canvas would shown I guess it canvas would not adapt to the screen of my phone. So wimi5 (except it Logic Editor) just impressed me in the past few days and makes me wonder if could you do something about it to share games made in gdevapp (and GD) similar way and with similar performance?

In fact, images are not stored on GDevApp: they have to be on an external website or stored on Dropbox (you have a “Choose from dropbox” button that is available when adding a new image to an object: gdevapp.com/blog/2014/10/27/edi … nimations/).
So games can be freely tested, shared and modified without any restriction on the image number: images are loaded by your browser directly from the URL or from dropbox :slight_smile:

However, when exporting a game, the server start the exportation, download all the external images used by the game (and that’s why there is a limit of the number of external images) and include them in the exported game: if you overcome the resources limitation, GDevApp won’t start the export process and invite you to upgrade your account.

So you’re not tied up with an account: if you want to export, share, modify, or do whatever you want with a game, you can! You just have to get the proper account to export a game with external images. :laughing:
I think that is really the philosophy of GDevApp: do whatever you want, just upgrade if you’re using more resources than available in a basic account. :slight_smile:

Don’t use gamedevshare anymore, it is outdated and I’ll soon stop it :slight_smile:
But try with a game exported and hosted on GDevApp, it’s “directly a canvas”: gdevapp.com/play.html?g=53a1902 … 66eb243bb1

Finally, for the slow down, maybe it is related to the fact that C2 and GD both uses WebGL when available, maybe Firefox OS as a poor support for it. I must admit I have no really good explanation. The graphics are rendered by GDevApp using Pixi.js, which is a super fast renderer. C2 rendering performance should be pretty good also as they worked on it for a long time I guess.

My (low/mid range) Android run the game that I linked above smoothly on Chrome, and I’m able to run also without problem an Angry Pea game exported by GDevelop.
(By the way, I’ve just shared a screenshot of GDevApp being runned on my phone without major problem: twitter.com/GDevApp/status/527471086540431362 (excepted that the screen is really small :mrgreen: ))

Yeah, same thing with Android and iOS. Try again with the game exported from GDevApp, and let me know if it is better :slight_smile:

I’m sorry for that finally gamedevshare not been used though imo you should need something similar to share gdevapp games, so people visiting the site could browse and play some games made with gdevapp. Something similar to wimi5’s labs and play section. Users can share any of their creation they want in labs and a play section is contain the better designed ones.

Regarding the exported game hosted on gdevapp, it doesn’t work on my mobile. It load a “Powered by GD” logo, sometime on the bottom of the screen, sometime in the middle and just keep loading, loading and that’s it. The game never load actually. :frowning:

This is a very low spec phone: here are the specs:

gsmarena.com/zte_open-5320.php

I don’t know what but wimi5 do something really good as their games shared on their website running really nice on this phone.

Perhaps Wimi5 uses custom engine without basing it on some JS framework like Pixi and that’s why it runs so fast?

Yeah, that’s why game on GDevApp can either be public or not: public games are shown in the “public” games list on the home (and can be even copied if the developer authorized it). The goal is too improve this section to display only best games :slight_smile: (and even have a separate page concerning public games, accessible even for not logged users), even if for now it is just a very basic list of latest games. (I’m working on other parts of the app, for example the external images these last days).

I do not worry too much for performances on Firefox OS: surely Pixi.js and Construct rendering engine are using advanced features that make performance bad because it is not properly supported by the device (or even make it fail to load), but this should improve as Firefox OS is becoming more successful and used, Pixi team will tackle any problem if they found some.

Later I just tried again to run the exported game on my Firefox phone, and once I have turned my phone on it side, the game just loaded :wink:
The game is not running that smooth it was freeze every 10 sec for a moment but playable.

Regarding the canvas unfortunately it not adapt it self to the screen:
2014-10-31-13-18-58.png

The height is good but not the width, I’m also not too happy to see that “Powered by GD” on the bottom, as on small screens it just make the actual game canvas even smaller. If you want to show that the game is made in GDevApp, I would recommend to use a logo with transparent background in one of the corners or use a splash screen instead or make the “powered by GD” disappear after few sec.

Just found an other competitor, called Mighty Editor:
mightyfingers.com/

The interesting thing in this one is that it is open source (based on Phaser), and it got built in physics and a Spriter like animation editor under development. But it require coding (JavaScript) to make games which can be a pro if someone prefer coding especially because it also got a built in code editor.

BTW maybe can be useful to have an event to use actual JavaScript code in both GDevApp and GDevelop (HTML5) as at the moment GDevApp has 2 competitors (that worth to mention imo) and both can use JS code which really can be something that some people prefer.

Yup, having a JS event to manually enter code would be nice, I’ve considered adding it one day but I switched to another task and never finished it. Thanks for the link, I think I’ve stumbled upon it one day before starting GDevApp.

By the way, I’ve just released an update for GDevApp, there is now a dropdown showing the expressions available when you’re typing a parameter. (Only for math expression for now, string expression will come later).

I also consider creating a new forum for GDevApp, so that we can starting running a community around the web app. :slight_smile:

This is very useful, going to make it a lot faster to use expressions :slight_smile:

Regarding the forum, imo you should use the same forum (page) for both product, but keep separate the topics using sections similar to French and English section:

GDevelop
-Announcements (updates, releases, changes, GDevelop related news)
-General (anything about GDevelop)
-Help (ask for help)
-Showcase (show your project)
-Support (feature request, bug report)
-Development (about development of GDevelop and extension)

GDevApp
-Announcements (updates, releases, changes, GDevApp related news)
-General (anything about GDevApp)
-Help (ask for help)
-Showcase (show your project)
-Support (feature request, bug report)

Open Topic (about anything)

The reason to keep the forum like this is to keep the community together. if someone need help with GDevApp maybe a GDevelop user can still help as the two is pretty similar and only need to scroll a bit to read the forum of the other product, I’m sure both community going to read both section. So this way you can hold the community together of the two but if you going to start a completely new forum on GDevApp, you just going to separate the community imo as people not going to visit the forum of other product. Instead, to keep it tidy what you should do is to keep separated the French and English speaker community as a French speaker wont really bother with English forum and an English speaker not going to bother with the French forum imo. At least as I don’t speak French, I never visit the French forum and also from the French forum only few people come to the English forum. So really, to be not messy you should start different forums for different languages instead. Maybe we could choose language (forum) on the top or something just to not make the same section multiple times for different languages on the same page.

GDevelop (English)
GDevelop (French)
GDevApp (English)
GDevApp (French)

Imo, it just not necessary to be like this as only very few people is active on both sides but even more necessary to keep topics of both product on the same page.

Your point of view is interesting, I was considering creating a separate forum for GDevApp, but having the two forums on the same place who surely be nice so that community can participate in topics of both softwares.
The main downside I see is that it could be confusing for new users… Having a strong separation between English and French forum would be a first solution to this problem. For example, I’m a bit afraid that people registering from GDevApp would be confused when they see a “GDevelop” logo next to the “GDevApp” logo or something like that.

Yes, it could be confusing for some people who don’t make attention of that there is actually 2 software, but only at first.
If they don’t get it GDevelop and GDevApp is two different software, they can open a topic in “Open Topic” and ask the question “what is the difference?, where should I post my question?..etc” simple as that. But you can also pin topic and highlight it such as FAQ or Forum Rules or something where you can mention it, what is the difference. I would not worry about it too much.

To make sure people recognise the difference, you can also mention (advertise) both software on both sides. such as “Did you like GDevApp? Try GDevelop! Do you want to go native? Try Gdevelop!” “Did you like GDevelop? move your project to the cloud, try GDevApp!” and such.
Also as I have mentioned before, imo you should use Compilgames.net as the main site of both software from now on, not only GDevelop. So when people visit compilgames.net, both software would be advertised on the site and also share the forum between the two.