it is indeed less active, see the thing is, and this goes for even games, you attract ppl with your visuals and they stay for the gameplay, what i mean is, if the site/demos/forum was more appealing and advertised, there would indeed be alot more members, i have no problems with the engine, not perfect but theres always a way, the manual is ok but i think it should have more stuff, theres alot more to the engine than whats in the manual...

creating a game isnt that much about the engine, its about planning and staying on target no matter what, its more powerful than the quake 2 engine and yet, we see no games that get finished, developers work with their tools and dont complain but thats not the point here, the point is, the ENTIRE site/engine needs a facelift if its gonna pull in customers, a more pleasant and clear design and what the hell is with the quake quality models/levels, its a joke,...

some will say but hey, why not just show videos of things done with GS, like the cool ocean scene and shade-c and all that but the truth is, cant market the engine with that because if i bought it, i'd expect those features to be easy to use, not go download some dll, then make that tga file then create alpha channel and all that... also, i am rather disgusted sometimes, i saw a TEST level a few days back with nothing more than a box level and some decent weapon coding and the framerate was 30-40, am hoping he was an horrible coder or had an horrible pc

completely agree with H.F.Pohl.
It is also the other way around, if you give unrealengine3 to any of the people that says a7 is slow/buggy/shitty manual/cant do anything/etc and they wont be able to create Bioshock or Gears Of War, nothing close, actaully it's a great achievemnt if they could create a simple shooter with couple of weapons.You see, i used the cryengine3 for a week and saw some people that doesn't find it "that good" and thinks documentation is bad, saw artists thinking workflow is not good(while every single thing is realtime). First off, there was no real detailed documentation,but there was a complete overview, second there were FOUR instructors specialized in diffrent areas, that you could ask questions ANYTIME YOU WANT(and they knew every answer, that peope would need at that level), and still there were people talking about same stuff they say about a7 or other engines being bad/lacking something. Indeed there are things that A7 lacks,like workflow may not be the best, editor may not be the greatest.. etc -but they works, and they are sufficent enough-. nvm, people saying that unity/a7/<some game engine> is "BAD"... only thing lacking here is attitude and knowledge of (self)limits. To make a game with any engine you need the attidute of Ichiro Lambe,Christian Betenberg,David Lancaster,alpha_strike,crew51,darkinferno, many others that doesnt stuck to "engine lacking something in some spot" but thinks how could they do something from what they have in their hands and created nice games with a7 and other engines.(I adore nearly all people who creates and showcases games, if i list the names, you could get bored reading so...)
As for the manual it is one of the greatest and most complete manuals i saw to date, not only in game engines but also in other stuff.Altough it has everyting you need, it doesnt have everything the engine has.

The initial question was "Why community is not getting fresh-blood as did in the past?", there is one single thing, it's not the engine being buggy/slow has bad workflow/etc. It is only the presentation. The look, how outsiders see the engine. Only thing needed is a new suit, a new look to sites, and maybe editors. that's all. I talk too much

sorry for the amount of typos, and possible misunderstandings, i am high on caffeine atm.

edit: 3 posts before i posted this, quoting darkinferno:

that's what i was basically talking about.

neil young had this song, into the black i believe. curt cobain cited it in his suicide letter..
its better to burn out than to fade away...

anyway, what we have ehre is a very clean "no idea" standpoint..
let me tell you something...

if you use good models and know the engine, you can get good results. not crysis but definately better than what you usually see around here.
thing is, this stuff is expensive as hell, or, if you use dexsoft, often used.
id use dexsoft only if i had the money but thats not the point.
the point is, yes, the website is old, so is the interface but its not conitecs job to produce high quality models.
conitecs job is it to make an engine that works, has a good workflow and has enough power to pruduce good things and thats where the enine goes down. the workflow sucks and the engine works in a way thats very 2001...

one can produce games with graphics that level the XBOx or the Wii but nothing more. no matter how good your artists are.
i know this. i use the engine for years and i know wahts possible. given the right recources, i can make you a game that, at least visually, rivals the best looking Wii games. But thats expensive and time conuming.
But who cares? The custoemr doesnt. he either wants fat graphics or aweosme gameplay, depening on who you serve.
A7 cant deliver that.

if you ask me, conitec should chagne their advertising strategy. they should advertise it not as the tool to create your games now, they should advertise it as tool to do small and casual games, maybe kids games because thats what the engine can do.

your mum doesnt care about big fucking graphics. neither does your little sister.
but your cousin does. so does your brother...

in the end, this thread went wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy off topic...

it doesnt matter, torque boasts alot of graphics in their marketing and most of the game released so far can be done with a7, developers here just seem to lazy or take up projects that need wayy too many resources...

I know I'm asking for trouble, but despite the amount of games you've released (which is really something most other members of our community should aspire to, Spike), this is wrong.

Either no one can use shaders properly, or no one can be bothered hiring shader programmers, but one of A7's strengths is the ease with which shaders can be written and tested. You can't compare an engine to a console -- hardware.

Jibb

As mentioned before: engine, included files (textures/models/etc), presentation, all looks waaaay too 1999.

darkinferno already said it:

and I agree with it, A4A7 can do a lot if you know how to do it and - not less important - have excellect artists in your team (that's what most of us are lacking I suppose)

But I just looked at the standard.wad, most of the textures look like they weren't changed since A4
(I'm tempted to get a floppy and install my old A3 copy to have a look at the included textures there even though it was a raycasting engine).
But the included textures/models/sounds etc are what new people see usually first.

With GED the Toolchain gets a fresh piece but the Unity Toolchain for example look waaay more appealing and capable of doing AAA stuff.

It's itneresting how such discussions always turn to "engine sucks" discussions.
This may be valid for eople who left for other engines, but indeed I think many people just leave because they got other interets, they got burn-out, they don't have the time anymore and development time for a project has constantly increased the last years.
Back in 1998 I was able to handle a Doom style shooter on my own. It needed quite some effort but it was possible. Nowadays it seems to be an endless big task which I cannot handle anymore.
For one thing due to the increased development time (better graphics, better levels, better...) on the other hand less time left.
Back at the time where I spent a lot of time with game development I used to have no other hobbies and only a few contacts. This has changed, and now on weekends it's often the case that I'm doing different things together with friends.
So all in all the available time is getting shorter.

And as slin has mentioned, Developia, once the biggest german portal for indie/hobby game development, is in a state of decay. You get the impression the whole Acknex community is bigger than the german game developer community.

I also talked with someone who offered me a job as programmer (I was not able to take this one, though) and he complained that the "market" is dead. It seems to be really hard to find people in this scene who are not already tied to comemrcial projects or have references which makes them itneresting for a full time job.

So my conclusion: That's a general trend and it is NOT alone the problem of this community.
Nonetheless I have the feelign this community is pretty stable. It is true that people staying here for a long time have become less active, but new people with impressive skills and knowledge have joind the community.

Oh and one more point: Do you HONESTLY think that someone who's turned off from default textures is ever going to complete a whole game? People with the right attitude will not be stopped by that, and with the wrong attitude you will fail in most cases. Because then the person itself is the source of the problem, not the engine.

yes i know ppl turned off from an interface and resources like that will probably never make a full game, i'd say 75% percent of indie "developers" never make a full game, they make test scenes and little sample projects but the idea here isnt whether they finish the product or not but what pulls them in, i am in no way saying the engine sucks just that its outer appearance doesnt seem to appeal to anyone..

I'm still interested in developing games, mainly because it is fun, i don't want to get rich or famous but my games should reach a certain level of quality comparable to current games and this is absolutely impossible!
When i play a AAA game i often see a cool scene, a nice room, a mind-bubbling effect or just a cute cut scene which i then want to reprogram with 3dgs or any other engine. I then often start searching the web for some hi-quality free textures including normal mapping and etc pp or some human models for hours and hours and my confidence that i can create something that looks as good as a current game drops to zero.

I mean its completely impossible to create the art you can see in a today 50bucks game, believe me its even impossible to find some art sets that are even near the quality. For an example, the last Lara Croft had over 30k tris, including weapons over 100 textures and thats is just for one single outfit, and lara had i don't know 8 or so different clothes, that makes 8 different models and don't forget the bone animations, my brain is still melting after rereading this. You simply can't find a model like this if don't have money. Its really depressing me, and it even ruins the fun of playing games.
To make it short: Artist ruined the fun in programming games for me. I wish the days back when programmers art was good, and software simians where gods.

ah forget it, just ignore me if i made you feel bad or angry or wushy