Most of my experience has been with DBPro, I originally came across DBC in Gamepspot or store or similarly named shop from within an arcade off the high street of my local town. If not for that purchase I may never have entered the DBP world and eventually AGK. I also have FPSCX9/10, skipped GGC but do have GGM and of course I have AGKC and AGKS. I have a bunch of their other products as well.
The move from DBP to AppGameKit was simple enough, no complaints there. There is a large performance difference between the two in at least one area - iterations of memory is costly to say the least. I feel that as a hobbyist I may well never produce anything for publication, so for me at least the focus is windows platform. Therein lies an issue for me - the trade off of performance versus larger memory access and to be honest my journey is incomplete in these regards - there is still work on my part still to be done. In terms of BASIC I find AppGameKit just fine - as I did with DBC/P, however I have not found any need or reason to step outside the world of BASIC. I *think* the purpose of BASIC was to do just that - to prepare for progression onto other languages? Now I am not saying that AppGameKit or DBP are in a state whereby there is no need to progress, but simply that I have had no need. As a hobbyist it is for enjoyment/entertainment that I code, to that end AppGameKit seems fine so far(bare in mind I don't get to spend a whole bunch of time on this hobby). That all said they need to be getting their rear into gear regarding all those issues not concluded on Github. Some where fast approaching ancient from what I recall(ok slight exaggeration with ancient lol).
Quote: "Sounds like by and large, this pocket of the community is relatively happy with their product."
Um lack of response does not always mean everything is AOK. Not saying it isn't but there have been countless occasions when I would read a post, felt I really wanted to respond but then I would "um and ah" in my own head as to how to respond, eventually capitulating that to do so would take up more of my time than I would wish or have available, thusly did not respond. This would also include topics I felt strongly about. To add to that, I don't think you would get too many bad responses here - it is their own forums after all. For as long as I can remember every time somebody had something bad to say it would not go unchallenged by other members. Regardless of the fact that *maybe* in most cases the OP would be misinformed, seeing that kind of response has always made me think twice before posting on here. Ultimately it could mean genuine warranted complaints won't always be voiced. Of course you can only base your articles on what responses you do get, but I would further point out that a lack of response is not a good thing - you only have 8 opinions including my own so far - pretty sure we may be missing a lot of users lol. Folks should be posting left right and center by now if they where 100% happy - you should have had an overwhelming response really don't you think? There is one more consideration - everyone will be at different stages in their learning and may feel unqualified to post, also these products have been around a good long time now and others will have moved on happy or not. I would say it would be quite difficult to get a good measure on opinions from this single thread and so soon. That all said it has only been a few days, many may not have seen the thread yet if they don't frequent here every day. - 8 opinions is not an ideal number for a product that has sold way way more copies than that!
What annoys me a little is the lack of a good coding product for windows since DBP. AppGameKit is behind in 3D best I can tell. No x11/12 x64 and it has been years. Instead the best option is GGM/LUA which is so far away from v1 release and without some features I would want to have in v1 that I just cannot be bothered to use it. I had the exact same feeling over FPSCx10(although I have FPSCx9 it was given for free at a convention and I wanted terrain as a basic start so only ever used the levels to make indoor buildings for DBP). Overall I have been more disappointed with their game makers than I have with their BASIC products. In term of GGM I would want multi player at V1 so I can play with friends - I will have played around with GGM so much(in theory should I be ever be bothered/convinced to actually spend time on it) that I would not get much more entertainment in SP than I already had making it. I also don't expect to sell many copies - enough to pack in regular job - so I doubt I would get much entertainment knowing a few people enjoyed(or didn't!) playing something I would have spent a lot of time on unless I get to watch them all play. In essence I feel I would want to participate, unless of course Lee knows some magic and can produce some decent AI...
Anyway that is my opinion - right or wrong. cheers
Win 10 Home 64, Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-10300H, 8GB DDR4, NVidia GeForce GTX 1650 4GB GDDR6
