At the very least it's still possible to write games with gamestudio using the SDK, so you can bypass Lite-C completely.

Considering what Gamestudio was designed to be (an easy-to-use, script-based game engine) Lite-C probably seemed like a wonderful development to many users at the time, since WDL was (for all intents and purposes) even worse. WDL was interpreted, lacking tons of features, buggy, etc. But "fixing" that by inventing Lite-C was not the way to go, and just highlighted the fundamental flaw involved with trying to make your engine script-based in the first place. It's intuitive, yes, but things produced with Lite-C simply can't compete with anything produced by a real compiler. That said, if you're using Lite-C simply because you don't understand how to write your game any way else, perhaps you're better off actually taking the time to learn C++ before you try programming any more games. Lite-C and other languages like it are not substitutes for real programming languages.

Again, the fact that you can use the Gamestudio SDK to produce games without touching Lite-C at all is a saving grace in some respects, but as you mentioned inventing Lite-C in the first place was a misstep that introduced a lot of bloat and cruft to the Gamestudio codebase, and that alone is enough to conclude that it wasn't worth implementing in the first place.


Perhaps you would be easier to remember if you had a picture under your name. People recognize pictures, not names. Which is why I inexplicably changed mine after I reappeared a week ago.

Engines are popping out everywhere nowadays and Gamestudio is out of competition recently, so, it doesn't wonder me at all. I am still not yet convinced if I should choose another engine for my next project or if I should stick with Gamestudio, but not because of the community but because of the development lifecycles and multiplatform.

First of all, I have to disagree with pretty much the most of the first paragraph above - I don't see Windows 8 conquering any devices in the future. It is afaik one of the least used OS in the mobile sector, which is entirely dominated by Android and iOS, and that won't change anytime soon, simply because these two are way to established in the market AND because Apple represents a constant, they obviously won't use another OS EVER, being the company mostly associated with the term proprietary.
Also, you say Mac and Linux weren't designed for gaming, well, while that is true to some point, it's more about the drivers and software available for them. Any software that is designed to run on Mac or Linux will, so if your engine supports them, you don't have a problem - the only reason why the Mac/Linux gaming market is so undersaturated is because Windows does have the hugest part of the OS market, and game devs know that and therefor don't invest time or money into optimizing their games for any other OS. Mostly, there's dev studios that do, but way too few.

Also, about mobile apps not reaching PC games by graphics or profit... you're right about the graphics part so far, as there's still a huge gap between desktop PC hardware and possible mobile hardware configurations, but that is also gonna change, possibly sooner that within the next 10 years... And the profit, well, that's the point, mobile games HAVE in fact already reached PC games in terms of profit. Sure, most of them don't reach the heights of a Call of Duty, but there's whole studios and publishers specialized exclusively to mobile game development, and they make nice numbers.

Now, speaking promotional AAA titles for gamestudio - the idea in itself has a point, the gamestudio didn't have a dev-created showcase project since A5 if I recall it right. However, there's some problems with that. First of all - you should rephrase that to "promotional title" without the AAA. AAA requires production values that Acknex, I'm afraid, would have a hard time to deliver. But that isn't a bad thing at all, as trying to attract AAA developers would be a lost cause anyways. AAA studios either own expensive engine licenses (for real AAA engines, be it Source, Unreal or whatever) or in-house technology, it has always been this way and always will be.
Where gamestudio should have its focus, as all packages in these price regions should, is the indie- and hobby community: Small teams and lone wolves with low to zero budget, developing small-scaled projects, nice and tightly. Because that niche hasn't been filled too well until now, with Unity being the next most accessible solution, which is the simple reason why it is in fact the most used free engine package out there.

However. This discussion is beating a dead horse, even though a nostalgic beating it is. It has been said before, the community is thinned out, the most interesting game-related posts in here aren't acknex-related lately, and the engine development... well. I guess all that has to be said has been said.
It is, in it's current form, still a very nice package for hobbyists, and with some effort, nice Indie games could be pulled off with it. However, appearently most of the members that could pull these off have wandered off to own solutions or other packages.

That's why making Acknex open source would be a possible new approach for Conitec. I don't have any numbers, but from a gut feeling, the current business model does not work very well anymore. Might be, that 3DGS is just a Cash Cow anymore, especially leveraging the cheaper versions for getting new, inexperienced users, putting not much budget into further development and market 3DGS as a simple tool for creating your own games.
This approach would make sense to me, but it takes the edge for professional use, because if you are experienced enough to build a publishable product, you can do this with basically any engine out there, and then there are better options.
I am advocating to make it open source because professional users then have
1) a basis to build upon and don't have to build an engine from scratch or buy an expensive one and
2) the possibility to specialize the engine according to their needs (and professionals should have the abilities to do so) and build in missing features and even publish this engine additions to the community and finally
3) have an engine basically for free and might only have to pay royalties.
Conitec then still has the possibility to market it as retail product to new users, but can hold the professional users as they then can have a top-notch engine and change it according to their needs. And Conitec could have additional cash flowing in from royalties from professional projects. It would shorten development cycles allowing us to have more and cutting-edge features faster.
I am not in the game engine business, but from my professional and academic point of view, this would highly make sense. Of course I cannot proof this with any numbers as I don't have any information from Conitec.

In case you misunderstood what I propose, I completely agree with this, a promo game should be aimed at indie studios.
I just say it should be done with "AAA" title (by AAA I mean a title with top-notch graphics[models and anim I mean] and very 'fluid' and smooth game-play with a very interesting story, a title worth its dev money) It should be done with an "AAA" title to attract more indie devs, not AAA studios, because Imho such a title can impress and attract more indie devs compared to some simple tech demo. AAA studios can make their own engies they dont need 3DGS, but an indie dev can easily be more impressed with such a title, than with a tech demo or something else Unity and the other packets do or promote.

Well, yes, that's entirely true.

before it gets abandoned it better should be open sourced but:

• wed/med source is useless (quake was almost 20 years ago!)
• lite-c source!? who would work with that? a complicated incomplete c-compiler with chinese comments? there are many nice and tried languages with big open source communities out there.
• the engine source could be useful but probably doing it like justsid and slin makes more sense than adding stuff like opengl support.

i'll see you people when literally the biggest(and commercial) game ever made with gamestudio is released.

Is Gamestudio still in development anyway?
I haven't been around for a very long time and i only missed one 'major' update - so there's been no real content in years...

I have the bad feeling that when I get finally my Pro licence thanks to the contest and your votes, 3dgs development stops... but anyway, other small engines have the same forum activity, or less. there are great guys around here who helps when you need. but good game projects come out a bit rarely... probably indie devs or small studios all moved to unity and udk (etc.) as they are closer to industry standards, and casual games are better to be developed to other platforms unsupported by 3dgs... or simply when potential new users look at WED or MED after checking Unity editor, they get frightened by the stone age appearance