Hello,

it has been a while since the last release of a Wave update. Well this time we'll make a very big one. We developed a complete new version from scratch, which is not only faster than the previous version, but it's also way more secure and a lot faster than the version before.

I am working alone on this project since approx. 3 months now and developed both, the back-end system on our server as well as the client and the api. Additionally developers will have access to a development system called "Wave Development Environment", which contains all necessary functions to make your application compatible with Wave.

But what is Wave? It is a so called Content Distribution System. The most popular one is probably Steam by Valve. Though, Wave is not a Steam clone, but the next logical step of the unified communication revolution, indi-development and free or low price products.

Once you have created a Wave Account, with which you will be able to access the system (this account is required to store personal information, such as location, ip address, etc.) and websites in our partner network.

In the first line Wave is a platform for developers to sell and promote their products, but it is also more. It connects you with your friends and relatives. You can add friends to your friends list and see what they are playing, join their games, even if you don't have the game by downloading a limited trial version.

Wave is optimized for indi-developers and low budget companies. Although Wave must be licensed (to ensure the product is finished and serious and meets at least a medium level of quality, several casual games here fulfill this criteria already.), the costs are low. As an indi-developer you'll have to pay less than 150€ per title, though this price may be higher if you wish to rather pay a lower price with a higher "tax" on sold copies. Of every copy of the game or software product, which is sold via Wave, a small amount of money goes to us to pay for the server(s) and other costs which appear. If you don't want to pay a high licensing fee you can increase the amount of money of each product that goes to us. It's a fair offer I think. You can also host screenshots and demo files on our server for free*.

Some screenshots of the Wave Client and the Wave Development Environment can be found here. The screenshot of the main window is a bit old, we'll replace it with a newer one, once the new main window is finished.

Features of the Wave Client (Customer):

• Download exclusive product demos/trials
  
• Get access to the latest screenshots and videos
  
• Buy and download games and other software products easily
  
• See what your friends are playing and join the server they are playing on (if its a multiplayer game)
  
• Once you buy a product, you can download it as often as you'd like to, you might want to download it after a system change for example (Often changes of the IP will be noticed, though).
  

Features of the Wave Client (Developer):

• Sell your product fast and cheap without spending ages to search for a publisher
  
• Promote your game with goodies like screenshots, videos and demos
  
• Secure your product against illegal use (Wave has a nice system for that)
  

Features of the Wave Development Environment:

• Build Setups for Wave (the installer has many features, such as compression, changes of the registry, creation of links, setup of protocols, custom scripts, etc.)
  
• Edit Wave Xml Documents (used for styles, and the configuration)
  
• Create entire C# applications in a Visual Studio like environment
  
• More to come, we first want to finish these features before we add more.
  

A demo of WDE's setup tool will be available shortly.

If you want to contact us for further details post here or contact us at wavedevelopment@originsc.com. This email address is also used for licensing.
You can also visit my blog frequencly, maybe I'll find time to post the newest Wave features there: My Blog

I also want to use this chance to dedicate this piece of software to an good old friend of mine, the day comes after the night.

Best Regards
Michael Friedrich
Chief Software Architect @ Origin Software Ltd.

* If your demo files take a lot of space you will have to pay for the traffic your demo files produce.

Since you posted this on the business forum, I thought I'd throw out some business questions and comments:

Until your service reaches "critical mass", it sounds like I could get the same functionality from a personal website. Demos, screenshots, and eCommerce sites are trivial now a days, so what benefits does your service offer in this area over a personal site?

And if it's like Steam, why would a person go with your service as opposed to theirs? I suspect it might be harder and more expensive to get on Steam but then you are reaching thousands upon thousands of potential customers as opposed to maybe 10's or 100's on your service?

BTW: The multiplayer functionality is a lost cause on the 3DGS community since AFAIK no one but "Glider" has any kind of MP functionality currently enabled in their game.

Looks like a nice program, shows a great touch of windows development. Btw, if you are still interested in a C# programmer, i have about 1,5 years of experience in C#. feel free to send an e-mail to bas[dot]tuijnman[at]gmail[dot]com

fastlane: Besides that this application is not designed for 3dgs, but for games and other software products of indi-developers in general, it is designed to offer one platform for these developers to offer their products. The success of one indi-product makes others more popular, too and thus it pushes the entire indi-market. Of course the success of this product is not "hardcoded", tell one product which has a guaranty on success, there is a chance that it will succeed, since there exists no similiar product in this price class.

You say, that a personal website might be better for this, but many people don't know it and won't find your products. But if you gain popularity from other indi-products, this is a good reason to sell your product via Wave, isn't it?

bstudio: Thanks, we are indeed still searching for another C# programmer, I'll send you an email soon.

Michael

I personally don't think that this is a good idea as a business. By virtue of your (AFAIK) non-exsistant clout with the game development community and (AFAIK) the lack of several known games on your service, I think this will be a good exercise in several areas (like business management, software development, etc) but it's not something I would recommend anyone pay into.

Valve can do what it does because it has extablished games which are known to be successful driving the less popular games. You will have less popular games driving even less popular games and that is just going to be a bitch to do. Just because you are trying to tap the niche market of Indie Game developers doesn't mean that you can be a "Indie Steam"... it's going to take A LOT of work to get this up and running successfully... a lot more work than I think you imagine: The whole "If we make it, they will come" philosophy just doesn't work I'm afraid.

Again, I wish you luck and I hope you prove me wrong by being a glorious success!

Steam had a very very slow start too, especially since at it's start it only had Half-life and Counter Strike...

I had a beta version of one of the older Wave versions and it worked great. I'd really like this thing to become popular and use it and since it's not 3dgs-only there's actually a big market he can already try to reach. The games that can be found on just about every indie game portal are the ones he should add to his program and arrange a deal with those developers.

As for 3dgs games, people here tend to try to make very ambitious projects and most fail after having spend a lot of time. Perhaps some more people should invest time in making solid casual and smaller games. There's a hand full that's doing this and actually finish their projects, that's at the moment the best 3dgs developers have to offer, so it's a wise decision to focus on all indie developers instead...

As for MP functionality, perhaps having online highscores would be something?

Cheers

What I'd do is contact some indie games that are already a popular sub culture game that everyone knows about by word of mouth, one game that comes to mind is pocket tanks.. 5 years ago this game did what i consider to be amazing, it was just so fun the everybody told everybody else about it... My whole school pretty much got into it, yet it had almost no advertising, if you could find a couple of games like this and contact the creators, let them on for free, and then start searching for people like us I think that it would be a great start.

Thanks for the ideas