Quote: "Feel free to doubt your way on down the road...
I swear you could put a fertilizer factory out of business..."
Fanboys while a guarenteed source of money are often what hold products back from becoming great or lull a company into a false sense of security about how well their product has realistically been recieved.
From what I can tell FPSCx10 changes include, MultiCore enhancements (not for runtime, but building lightmaps and other such generation), improved AI and better graphics.
There has been no mention what so ever of the UI being changed from 3D to 2D which quite frankly often I found the original UI would slow down long long before anything I would make in it would. There quite honestly is no need for a full 3D interface, especially not the way it is presented.
The AI wouldn't really need to be internally improved if the scripting system was worthwhile, if they're keeping with the old scripting system then frankly it will just remain just as much of a pain if not more with the new functionality to support.
The UI on the whole has too little on the surface and too much below.
To me from the start FPSC looks and feels like a budget development team have worked on it with little concept of what is actually wanted for games or a sense of usability to someone who has never touch programming or scripting of any sort. Even those who have the program is a veritable nightmare to edit anything remotely complex for.
Will FPSCX10 carry on this tradition? Part of DirectX10 for Microsoft is that they're basically having a new start. Saying goodby to the runtimes of old, and older hardware. They've been fortunate enough to redevelop everything from the ground up with little impact on current games and applications being use.
TGC surely must've known about many of the underlying problems with both FPSC and DBP... why cling to the old when DirectX10 gives them a fresh start.
Only keep compatibility if you're willing to provide it COMPLETELY, not a case of "well this may or may not work".. In the end I can see backward capability going the same was as DBPs, which begs the question of "Why the hell bother at all?". Why not provide a better product rather than limiting yourself by backward compatibility you know in the end you'll just end up not supporting because you don't have the resources.
People will care more about a product that works and is simple to do what they want, rather than something that looks good and kinda works with the old product they may or may not have.
While I'm not saying don't provide something for those upgrading, there is no way FPSC was successful enough to be able to say "yes, I'm happy with our current demographic"; Hell I know for a fact that T3DGM until upto November was still outselling everything else. So it would've made more sense to orientate FPSCX10 to perhaps have features similar allowing more game types to be created.
I've not tried (believe there is a demo out) the new FPSCX10, and tbh I really don't intend to. After using the original for doing tech support I had high hopes that enevitable were dashed when I installed it and the damn thing crashed the first 3 installations.
After that it was just downhill. Honestly made me seriously question is those involved in developing it even like games, particularly FPS games. Cause it really doesn't look like it to me.
Quote: "It's the other way around, you shouldn't buy software that will crash on your computer. Companies fix bugs because they know they will lose business if they don't, and earn a bad reputation, but they are in no way morally obligated to do so."
To echo, PCs aren't like Consoles.
There isn't a single specification to work towards, sometimes hardware is compatible, sometimes it isn't. It isn't always entirely obvious when you're trying to optimise and squeeze some extra cycles out.
Hell some drivers might be compatible one month, the next cause crashes all over the place.
Patches are a necessart evil of the open specification platform. This said, I do agree that some companies rely on the fact you can patch post release to rush out something more shoddy ::coughcainandlinchcough::
(And DarkCoder I also quite like Steam, I've currently bought somewhere around 35 titles on it although I think 20 are Valve ones. I really enjoy using Steam, but as you've mentioned why have more than one product if it does the job well.
that really is my point on TGC missing the boat. Steam is now fully established as
the digital distribution system. There's no way to really capture the market they've gained without expanding out to things they might not want to, might not yet, or even may never offer.
question is though, will TGC do their usual thing of that they know best for retailing something; or will they actually admit they don't know what they're doing and atleast get some research done on the subject.
personally I reckon they don't even see the potential for such a service and will just keep it as something for their own products, perhaps some special case titles others develop.
