Does anyone have any ideas what changes could be made to 3dgs that could take it to the next level?

I mean... A lot of users are complaining that "3dgs is dying" or "GameStudio is getting lost" or "They hate WED"...
Well, lets try to make this a Positive Rant about:
"What can 3dgs do to assist even "Newbies" to create "Beautiful" projects without having to learn "EVERYTHING"...

3DGS has come a long long way since its release...
There are a number of new engines out there that a lot of people are raving about...
So...
"What can be done to make 3DGS get back on the top of the pile?"

SUCH THINGS AS:
Templates, Mocap Data, Phone Apps, Consoles, Website... the list goes on and on...

So...
"What can be improved on and how can this be done?"
Let’s give constructive criticism...

Here's what I said in the "I hate WED" thread...
////////////////////////////////////////////////

I'll tell you guys what's really worth ranting about...
The lack of a good starting template!
A6 came with a decent template for the times...

What do we get now?
The car template with PhysX is much stronger but it's a crying shame that there are files in it that are locked. What the heck is that all about?
And, the crowed template doesn’t even have a wed/wmb file... How useless is that? Why even bother? Maybe that's just to aggravate us...

A lot of people are complaining that the newest final projects these days are no better than years ago and I agree.
What 3dgs really needs is a fantastic template included that has darn near everything included.
Then, even newbie’s could create a good looking project without having to learn everything and the gallery would once again match the times.
I know that JCL keeps promising and promising but I think he's got his hands pretty full.

Maybe one of these days he will get us a great template so we can just do a "save as" and we can switch out objects and graphics and boom there's another great looking project. That's when the gallery will take a leap forward in time...

Really, I think what could take 3dgs into the next century would be including 3 great templates. One for a 2D game. One for a first person shooter. And, an awesome 3rd person template. On top of that, how cool would it be if we could publish our projects for consoles and as phone applications. Then, even better yet, if there was a real easy way to link motion capture (Mocap) data to our avatars - How flippin' awesome would that be... All that, would take us even past Unity...

Yea... I do think he's got his hands mighty full trying to please us all...

Well I don't agree on this. In my opinion 3DGS should rather stop wanting to be a full development suite and instead be more of an engine. What has computing mocap data and attaching it to a model to do with an engine? Next to nothing. Today there are so many good and even free tools for modelling, animation and so on out there like never before. 3DGS already suffers from the little number of people working on it - don't make it worse by wanting it to do more and more as it won't work out. It should just make sure that it handles the import of certain files right so you can just plug-in the model / animation from your favorite piece of software rather than learning a crude and not really effective tool like MED that has to be maintained and improved all the time while still being a below average kind of tool...

And for this and the other things taking 3DGS past Unity...
No - not gonna happen. At least not for anyone wanting something beyond clicking premade stuff together. I also think that good templates in general are a good idea. Apart from the extremely basic FPS-Creator there's nothing like it on the market. On the other hand it doesn't really work well with the recent concept behind 3DGS. While I always had the feeling 3DGS tried to target newbies I think the development started to run into another way at some point. Having templates for newbies would be great but you'd also need sort of a next step for them in order to lure them into creating their own game logics. For that you'd need an easy to learn language like Lua, Javascript or something like that and not a nearly full blown language like Lite-C. The templates still would be nice to have but you won't really be able to make many newbies that came for the click&play features into writing their own stuff (because the step from clicking things together to a quite complex programming language is too steep)...

In order to get back to your Unity comment: Besides people looking for such a template based system I don't see 3DGS ever getting even close to Unity. They've just got too much manpower and too much technology they bought for their software. There still might be some bald spots in Unity in terms of features and 3DGS actually delivers some of them but they don't pay off in the big picture and Unity doesn't stand still (like the recently announced support for Sony's gamer phone shows yet again)...

As I wrote for a couple of times (and I won't repeat all the arguments for it yet again) 3DGS needs to focus on a niche. It just doesn't stand a chance anymore as fullblown development suite on today's market and catching up the handicap most certainly won't happen due to the lack of manpower. JCL might be good at what he does but he can't do more then simply work...

That's also why I don't think 3DGS should move on to other platforms. Maintaining those ports would eat up much of the progress of the engine itself making it fall behind even more than it already has...

Toast,
What an awesome response....
I agree with you on a lot of points but I do believe that 3dgs can still wax Unity like bigtime...
I've checked out Unity too and although I don't know it like I do 3dgs, I feel that 3dgs has still a way more powerful engine.
Yes, Unity is on it's way to the top as far as a similarly priced alternative but I still feel that with the help of 3dgs users like yourself, 3dgs can continue to evolve and strike away from the "Still" pose...
Lets try to continue with wayyyy positive critisizim...

Remember, we are all not great engineers or great modelers or great texture artists or great script writers, or great sound artists... or...or...
Thanks Toast!

What I like is it´s stability.
When it behaves unstable, it´s most likely the script, not the engine.
Also I like Lite-C quite much.
Pointers may be annoying, but on the other hand they are very useful and mighty.

Also it´s really flexible. I´ve done simulations (games and serious one´s), applications, procedural stuff, ego-shooters, strategy games, 3d-galleries, screensavers, jadda jadda...

My customers love stability and flexibility.

When you´re used to it, Gamestudio is like a premium swiss knife.

Often simulations are blamed here - but when you imagine on how much little time Gamestudio has spawned games that sell like hell - well, you don´t have to love it, but it should get at least a tiny weeny respect.

Fogman...
Nice post...
I love the "Premium Swiss Knife" analogy
"BUT":
The questions are...
What can be done to make 3dgs better?
And, What would you do?
And, How do you think you'd do it?
(I think you've given our beloved software more than a "Tiny weeny" bit of respect...

Well there isn't really much we can do. This is not an open source project and thus the real engine work is done by Conitec alone. As it always has been there most certainly will pop up things like shaders or even editors done by users and things like that but that's it...

Although ok if you really want to help you could donate some magnitudes of money so they can hire additional personnel - that would be an option for helping...

It's not that Acknex is bad.

When looking at its past, and I am not talking about A6... more like A3 (raycaster engine) it is impressive where the engine has gone.
I have the highest respect for guys like jcl, who work full time on this, still answer the forums after 14 years(!), have their hobbies like writing books, and also have the time to read into new technology.
And people like me are not even capable of staying motivated for a small game project.

For us, it looks like the engine does not progress, but narrowing it done to the few people working on it, I think this is pretty impressive.


I know I've been complaining quite a bit in the last time, and I don't know whether this was ok or whether I was way too critical / cynical, but I have watched the development of the Acknex system for more than a decade now - and I think I have quite some idea of how jcl and whoever else works on the engine understand the postings here.
Criticism is allowed, competition is allowed, and it happens again and again that features requested maybe in some hidden thread you might not expect Conitec to read, suddenly are listed as new beta features just one day later.
That's pretty cool, if you ask me.

Also check the Wiki, look at the article "Conitec time" or "JCL quotes" which of course are not written with 100% seriousness, but contain some truth to a certain degree... Conitec does not delete those, they leave it there, so we have something to laugh at, when we run into a situation just as written down there.
This is what I love, and it IS for sure a reason why I'm staying here since 1998 (actually since 1997, but I didn't have Internet back then).

Still, here are many people thinking differently - more serious - which is absolutely okay since they payed for their license just as I did, so...

...what I ask from Conitec, is:

- give us an idea, in which direction the whole thing is going
- tell us that the current forecast page is not the end. Tell us you're going to update it soon, with serious features, not just blah to keep us waiting
- tell us whether we need to change to another engine concerning mobile development - even if you don't want to tell us because you don't have the answer we want to hear.
- I know Conitec and/or jcl are reading threads carefully and way more than we might expect. I perfectly understand not everything can be commented (unless the engine is finished, which it hopefully isn't), but sometimes it would be just cool to give us some signal "okay, we understood that there is need for change, we understand your concerns"
- there have been engine discussions and they are part of the culture in this forum. It is cool that we are allowed to discuss what competitors have to offer. It also is tradition to summarize that 3dgs just has to die comparing the features with the competitor. It never did, and we hope it won't do so soon. But if there are several complaints rising to a certain topic, there for sure IS a reason. It's not just a whine of a single person. Then... please give some feedback. As a short note in the corresponding thread, as a forecast update whatever. Just don't let us think the discussions remain unread. Between all those rants which we need to vent, there are so many useful ideas or suggestions. It would be a shame if they are lost.

Good post, Firoball! Similar to my thoughts...

Also concerning your last part of questions to Conitec I'm feeling with you (grew up with A3 ^^), but you already said it: "... even if you don't want to tell us because you don't have the answer we want to hear."
Even if jcl plans to stop next year working on 3dGS he surely would never tell us. We only can hope he doesn't want and stays motivated to continue his (digital) life project (-> even if he is not movitated at the moment he couldn't or at least probably wouldn't tell us).

And you ignore that jcl gave us a good reason for the stagnation: Dagobert

I guess developing a game with 3dGS is a really really good indicator for that jcl/conitec is standing behind 3dGS.

...but yeah, I would enjoy hearing these direct words out of jcl's mouth, as well

Toast...
Yer bringin' me down dude....
What the heck....
So it's not open source and... So, I'm not in the position to donate "Magnitudes" of cash "BUT" there's always something we can do...
I mean, even simply helping a brand new "Newbie" helps the cause...
Heck, even I try when I can...
Sometimes I make a mistake but thankgoodness for guys like Quadraxas.
He's always willing to point out my blunders...
Even though it ususally hurts, I still appreciate his determination... Thanks Quad!