Kickstarter Live for 3 Step Studio!

#21 @Ron,

No worries, I get what you mean. I just view it as that's the general outlook towards design these days. It's hard to come up with anything totally original. I understand why as you stated about CoD being like Doom. Or even more noticeable, Halo changed to match the play style of CoD taking away it's controls and some play style.

I think this is just taking the concept of what's good or liked these days in a FPS and putting it into your game. But there are too many things coming out that do more then just take an element away from a fan favorite. They take the whole concept in general. For example; to me I don't like some of these side knock off movies that come out. Aliens vs Predator came out and before it was released a knock off called Alien vs Hunter came out.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. The same is seen in Iphone games like Angry Birds. Several others come out not just taking an element, but the whole game concept in general and change the graphics. To me that's not creativity but electronic plagiarism. In the video itself one of the employees even says "to be able to make custom versions of the games that they play."

I just feel like it's too focused on a concept what someone else has developed instead of giving the power to really be creative. I would prefer to see this give not just pre-made designs, but a set of tools to truly inspire design.

But these are just my thoughts on it. Also, I don't view indie development as just 'broke' or 'struggle'. I viewed it as 'little guys doing what the big guys can with less'. Which in my book makes us more talented.

:)-)--<

#22 Foestar,

I agree with what you say. Trust me, I get where you are coming from. I think this is probably not the proper area to debate this, but I do get it.

Yep, people will clone stuff, but in the end it will be like 'alien vs hunter', it will not be nearly as successful as the material that they 'borrowed'. In the end, true development, creative storytelling and solid design will prevail. I think you will be pleasantly surprised by other people's ability to 'want more'. Just look at your last post, you are not the only one to comment on Halo's changes. If you saw it, I know others have as well.

3 Step potentially would allow someone that thinks they have an original idea to try it out. We can not deny them the chance to try. If we did, then we become the 'establishment' that as indies, we have always felt denied by. Yes, we will get clones. I believe though, that we will also get good ideas. In the end, that is what indie development is all about. Good ideas. If you want to discuss this further we can start a new thread, because this is a design issue, and this is not the right place to discuss it.

Ron

#23 @Mich Thanks. Will be interesting to see them side by side.

#24 Is there a plan B if you don't raise the funds?

#25 @Scott - The primary revenue earner for GarageGames right now is service contracts. Contracts are how we were able to make Torque 3D & 2D (coming soon) open source and thats also how we funded development of 3SS to date.

There are several directions we could go but it all depends on the reaction of the people. Not making our target doesn't necessarily imply that we won't continue. If we don't make any type of mark before the campaign ends, we will need to discuss the market demand for this type of product.

#26 Thanks Eric, fingers crossed.

#27 When and if the technology comes so no game developer ever again will need to program and instead just point and click in order to make a game then I foresee the future of the game industry to be what the music industry currently is. Talented people will have a hard time make a living due to all the noise out there(too many bad games polluting the search engines' results).

May the day never arrive where a game developer do not need to hack the source codes, do some scripting and use math and logic in order to develop a game.

Also even with Torque 3D, Unity and Ogre out there, we still need to program and script. Game maker can not replace that need. Even ITorque was used by Bioware to develop a Iphone Mass Effect 2D game and NOT Game Maker :o)

3 Step Studio will just be another great useful tool in the huge crowd of game maker tools but it will for sure NEVER replace the need to program or the need to change an engine's source code when needed :o)

#28 I agree Dwarf.

It's not going to replace it, but it will be the best entry level tool around. At some point, the interface will either evolve to a level where it is too complex to call it a neophyte tool or the user will feel constrained by it's simplified usability.

The good news is that when/if they are ready to move to the next level, we have a product that supports them. In fact, it uses the same core code base.

Our many years of experience at the next level of development is a strategic advantage that sets us apart from other game maker tool developers.

#29 I do not get why this kick starter hasn't taken off, except for proper PR???...

There are not many (well honestly I can think of 3) 2D mobile game creators...

Stencyl, GameSalad, Game Creator that export real (read non html 5 apps).

Stencyl.. well it's ok I suppose seems very limited, 3.0 is suppose to be much better but its behind schedule

Game Creator, seriously have you seen their pricing and the engine I despise

Game Salad, well no real way to make money unless you sell games, I like free ad supported model...

Then you have the LUA bunch for mobile (requires programing skills), which is not what 3 step is targeting....

Corona (wouldn't touch it, questionable business practices in my opinion)

Gideros - my top pick of the lua bunch

MOAI - lack of documentation makes programming this framework a PITA

Why did I list all these just to show there is really no real competition to 3 Steps concept, something anyone can use to make mobile games. Garage Games makes money off of support, content packs and the users get exactly what they want. Advanced designers get the project code to hack in extra features ie Admob / iAds etc


I a so sick of all the HTML 5 engines (construct 2 is the best of the bunch) that do not make real playable mobile games.

3 Step needs to succeed here, I been working with all kinda of engines for mobile gaming and do not have a 2d one I like yet. When I use 3D I choose Unity and Shiva (sorry torque I am a long time licensee, but you never made it to mobile..)

When a company like Brash Monkey raises a small fortune for Spriter why in hell can'y GG get 3 Step on fire?

God I wish you had Android support so you could market it as a OUYA game engine (the buzz word now it seems).

I hope GG doesn't give up on this idea over any failed KickStarter (not hoping it fails by any means), there is gold in here and I am hoping you find a way to mine it!

#30 @Tony - Thanks for your support! We've gone with a professional PR firm and the first pass did OK with it's reach. But as you may have noticed, it's been picked up more by the development community (who is probably too experience for this tool). We are doing another pass to see if we can cast a wider net, but it will be hard this week with CES.

#31 Your first pass of PR only raised 0.2% of your goal. I'd hardly call that ok. You need better rewards before you start spending a lot of money on PR. See my above post for some ideas.

#32 @Bruno - OK, from a reach perspective, our first pass was OK. We got picked up by Dean Takahashi who is the pinnacle of game development coverage. From a conversion perspective, totally different story.

I'm sure Kyle will be taking the feedback of you and others and making adjustments as necessary/possible.

#33 Considering what the target audience is for this, and how much those people would be willing to spend, you would probably need at least somewhere in the arena of 10-15,000 backers to reach your goal. I think the fact that it's going to be a free product works against you (from what I've seen most of the real successful game-related Kickstarters were treated more like pre-orders by the bulk of the backers). Also the fact that T2D is already going to be free works against you.

You definitely have your work cut out for you, and there's probably not a whole lot you'll be able to do with the rewards to make a real significant difference without incurring a steep cost for the rewards.

#34 Just to confirm what Eric said, I am definitely following this thread in addition to the feedback I'm getting via Kickstarter.

We are continuing to work at this from many different angles.

Thanks for the comments!

#35 @Tony, I'm switching to MOAI from Torque - both have a scripting language, both allow you to go under the covers and roll your own.

The big sell for me is MOAI support for Android.

I'm still sticking with Torque (3SS) but intend to use if for proof of concept and quick wins.

#36 ^^ This is the big hurdle I think 3SS has to jump. Computing has come a long way since the days of creating stuff just to share it with your friends. Everyone reads all the stories on the internet and wants to go from nothing to Big Indie Developer or Big AAA Developer. Everyone wants to make tangible items and the way they want to share it with their friends is by saying "HEY LOOK, MY GAME IS ON THE APPLE APPSTORE" and so on.

I used the 3SS beta and it is super cool it will be a shame if it doesn't meet its goal.

#37 @Gerald - I kind of agree with you, perhaps if they put a $49 price tag on this and let everyone who invested $25 /$35 or above get it plus the other perks it would have made people want to "pre-order"

Nobody should expect the engine to be completely free (well the editor the engine is going MIT), but I see what GG is trying to do, be the DAZ Studio of 2d game engines, give the product away and sell the back end content etc.

Either way I do not know if you can change the Kick Starter and charge for the product at this point, but I really like to see this succeed.

You guys advertising this on gaming forums etc, ie let the gamers make the games, not so much target the dev forums.


Also do you have up a dozen or so YouTube videos showing it in action? Get me a beta I'll review it on one of our review sites ;)

#38 We need a cross-platform 2D product that will truly support PC, Mac, Android and iOS fully. Our team has searched high and low for a real engine that can compare with T2D and meet the platforms we want, we have come up with a hand full of wannabes that just don't compare. We ultimately in disgust fell to straight code.

If you ask me, you should put your heart mind body and soul into 3SS/T2D's architecture making it not only the best 2d engine available, but that keeps us from having to reach further into space for lesser quality products just to pickup another platform. GG you got a good community and alot of followers, I know I speak for our team when I say this is where we want to be.

We have two mobile games in development currently and using a different language because T2D couldn't hit the platforms we need. Often daily I find myself or a member of the team wishing for a T2D feature/capability that's taking what seems like ages to do in the current language. I think 3SS should be an entry point into eventually bringing users full circle to a AAA 2D engine. Let them get their feet wet in game design and not discourage them and as they find and develop ideas that require more power T2D will surely fit the bill. My point for us though is that in either case 3SS/T2D the main 4 platforms are essential, support those and personally I cant imagine why you would want any other engine.

#39 A bit off topic, but I completely agree with George. GG dropped the ball with T2D and didn't improve/capitalize on it when it had the chance (3+ years ago), but I guess its up to the community now. Hopefully T2D will become the engine that all of us were hoping it would 3 years ago.

#40 Keep in mind this blog is about 3 Step Studio, not T2D itself. You can track the improvements to T2D in my blogs, which show a great deal of progress. 3 Step Studio is built on top of T2D and has been a major factor in driving our 2D technology in the past year, which will benefit all T2D users. Please help support 3SS, because that is also supporting T2D.