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I checked out Director recently. I really disliked it.

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I agree Director sucks the big wally. Thats why I think a 3DGS MAC version could easily steal alot of MAC Director customers.

I have been watching Real Basic also. I does not do real time 3D very well.

Ken

Ken wrote:

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Educational games is very open for Indie developers.

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Ken,

Would you mind sharing some of your thoughts? I've been throwing around some ideas myself. I've been looking into using a Windows only game engine for my next project. What percentage of sales do you think I'll lose if I'm building an educational game?

CBuilder

Ken wrote:

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I have been watching Real Basic also. I does not do real time 3D very well.

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Ken,

I didn't think Realbasic was ready for real time 3D yet either. From what I have seen, it is pretty solid for 2D games.

CBuilder

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Would you mind sharing some of your thoughts? I've been throwing around some ideas myself. I've been looking into using a Windows only game engine for my next project. What percentage of sales do you think I'll lose if I'm building an educational game?

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Educational software games and products are fertile ground for indies. With the big boys dying out or leaving the market, educational software is wide open for indies to sell into.

Here in Minnesota Mac's are used pretty heavily in the schools. It may be different other parts of the country. But Mac's are significant enough to warrent MAC versions.

I created Super Print and Teacher Print for Scholastic, a New York company, we had to deliver a MAC and PC version for national sales. So based on Scholastic's own sales info MAC's are important.

My guess you may lose 30 to 40 percent of your sales in the educational market if you are not able to run on a MAC.

My current educational client requires MAC, so I am looking for the right answer. My first choice would be 3DGS, alas no MAC port is in view. I have found some guys that have offered to convert Cipher over for a reasonable price, Rik the owner of Cipher is willing to throw some money at the effort also. I am uncomfortable about offering the community ported Cipher MAC code as an option to a professional client. My MAC coding is Circa late 1990's, I am sure things have changed since then, I would be hard pressed to support MAC based Cipher code.

Torque seems like over kill, but is an option worth trying. I am personally not very speedy with Torque, which is a factor in the bids, time and resource.

Virtools looks like a good option, it is expensive but they are willing to work with you on price if you are selling into schools.

Ken

One thing to keep in mind with a lot of educational software (software targeting schools more so than software targeting parents at home) is that a good portion of the computers have minimal 3D capabilities. A lot are also running with minimal RAM as well. One of the reasons that Macs are so popular with the schools is that they get new Macs from the various bailouts by the Fed (can't have Apple go under, otherwise Windows will have a very real monopoly...so every few years the government spends a few hundred million dollars on new Apple computers). However when it comes to PCs a lot of them are second hand from other government agencies (DoD, IRS...), so by the time the schools get them the hardware is already 4 or 5 years old. Point being, the best bet for most broad reaching educational software is no 3D or a very efficient software renderer.

A project I did a couple years back for a study group in Texas came acrossed that problem. Their original contractor had problems and one of them was meeting hardware requirements. We ended up using plain old flash animation and actionscript. We were able to run on almost any computer, and the actionscript allowed us to connect through the network to a central PC. The main executable was Windows only, but since the flash clients did not need to be a specific OS - the schools only needed one Windows box for each cluster. Also, with a bit of help from a handful of flash experts - we were able to effectively simulate 3D movement and interaction, collision detection and even some simple physics behavior...all using the action script (which is really quite simple).

Anywho - depending on what you are looking to create support for Mac might be nice...or you might loose a contract altogether. However having a 3D accelerated engine that will run on Macs may not help much if the Windows PCs can't run them to begin with. I think that would be a better path in the long run to pursue as opposed to support for Mac...support for piss poor old hardware. Lack of either might cause you to loose a contract.

You might find outside America schools are using PCs built in their own country. All the schools I've worked at in Japan use NEC, and all reasonably new as well. Except for in the staff rooms; they usually get the old ones (even saw a few running Windows 3.1). Still, it's the American market that everyone is after.

Selling to schools is a good bet for educational software. The schools themselves will buy a heap of licenses at a time using government money, and will effectivly make parents aware of your software for a few more potential sales.

Generally though, most schools aren't using their computers effectively. At all the schools I've worked at (I worked at quite a few as a dispatch teacher) computer time was time to play solitaire, net games, and play around with graphics programs. So you also have to find a way to market to administrators and teachers who don't have a clue.

My solution to the school win/mac dilema is to do what I'm currently doing: make a client/server educational piece of software over a "single player" version (ie the dreaded edutainment ).

The way I see it, you can make your server on any box you want (in my case, 3DGS windows ) and then make clients in whatever box you want (win or mac).

I feel this offers maximum flexibility since even if you have all macs in your school (as has been my experience at the uni level), you would only have to buy one win server box and then deploy all your clients on macs.

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Macs are so popular with the schools is that they get new Macs from the various bailouts by the Fed (can't have Apple go under, otherwise Windows will have a very real monopoly...so every few years the government spends a few hundred million dollars on new Apple computers). However when it comes to PCs a lot of them are second hand from other government agencies (DoD, IRS...), so by the time the schools get them the hardware is already 4 or 5 years old.

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This fact is indeed true. I have seen it in action. The school system where my wife teaches has at least 3 3D powerful MAC's in each classroom. The PC's are very sad in power. Apple also has a very aggressive educational initiative where schools can purchase a MAC for very cheap, much cheaper than a PC. The school system my kids are in bought 1000 MAC's for $100 per machine. These MAC's are 3D ready. To dumb ole me, all the more reason to look for a MAC 3D development solution.

I agree that when a big institution is going to buy an educational software license for $5,000. and up, it should be able to run on the widest varitey of hardware. These deals are hard to get for an indie, most of us indies lack the brick and motar of an company, that goverment buyers like to see. My thought for sales would be in the onesy twosy style. Maybe sell direct a total of 5000 units at 20 bucks a crack, this is still 100K in revenue.

You can reach teachers very cheaply with targeted advertising.

2D vs 3D, 2D is expensive in artist time. 2D animation costs more than 3D animation. I have seen very few educational games that capture the kids imagination, and the attention of an educational buyer, that was done with FLASH. The kids are exposed to Console games at home so when the kids get to school and play a flat 2D game it not as cool an experience.

Schools genrally are hurting for money, but educational software that addresses national standards is very much in demand. Teachers will share use of a 3D capable computer if the software satisfies a national education standard, Media Centers seem to have the latest hardware. Each class can schedule time in the Media center.

There are alot of ways to skin this beast. By coding for the lowest common demonatior you create extra sales. I just feel that is part of the problem, dumbing down the experience. A couple 100 million buys alot of MAC's that have very little software that runs on them. This smells like oppurtunity to me.

Now, I am trying to find a good MAC 3D development environment that is as good as 3DGS.

Ken

in the interim, visit the Blitz site and get some info on BlitzMax...

like i said above, the OSX version has already been released, the Windows version is soon to follow, and the 3D modules for these are slated to follow in the not too distant future as well...

you can look at the demo to get a feel for it and decide whether or not it's for you...


RealBasic... as far as 3D is concerned, a bit of a dissapointment... although some development can be accomplished using the default 3D plugin, any serious stuff would require you writing directly to OpenGL api... and after waiting for so many versions for them to improve the 3D aituation, i stopped licensing the updates.

the cross platform capabilities i think is questionable (using one codebase across multiple platforms), and i would choose wxWindows or one of the more matured apis like wxWin, that afford a wider scope and proven cross platform capabilities.

and if you are looking for a purely 3D cross platform game development environment (Win/OSX/Linux) you might also want to check out the well known Torque site

seriously though, Torque allows true cross platform game development with no porting issues whatsoever (my experience with win and osx only)... the same script and models need only be copied across and run...

a win version player can even log onto a mac version server, or vice versa.

i mean seeing as it has already been stated here that a MAc version is not in the immediate future, if cross platform is a must for you now, these are some options you might want to look into.


--Mike