Since my first development "war train", started in 2001, I saw, that a huge Acknex fellowship was reduced continuously. Beside a couple of never released projects (of course with high end pro advertisement on endless homepages) it was a fact, that there was a highly motivated community seen here in the forum.
What could be the reasons, that there are less and less people?

other much better hobby engines

too complex c-light language

fckn manual

not much tutorials

High end games on the market are
better to play and not reachable to
develop...

I think this stuff is wrong since the manual is much better than the unity script reference.

High end games are of course impossible with low-end engines which are affordable for indie-devs ^^

And compared to unity i like A7 a lot more because Unity is a lot more like a sandbox compared to A7

[X] we're all getting older, many of us have jobs now and thus only limited time

i for myself just dont find that much time that i had in the past. and the fact that i had so many sytem crashes added a bit resignation.. my vista computer crashes as soon as i start the engine while the same script is running with no problem on my xp notebook. that is something which sucks my motivation

anyhow, i have still some projects going on

you people really wonder about that stuff? wow...

its like this:
there are a truckload of awesome engiens out there. most people change engines. some people fail even on new engines. some stay with otehr engines. some fail with 3dgs. some fail alltogether. some people just dont have the bite to go the full distance. some people are just working for others because they realized theyre better in working for others than having their own project.
and some people simply hae no time anymore because of theri real life.
there is no question in there, really...

i wont hide, crappy sight layout and lack of marketing, the sight could be updated to a more modern interface, nothing seems appealing on the homepage, the first thing that should greet new members is an ingame shot/video, it could be redone and the gallery isnt very interesting, if old members are getting more occupied, then obviously we need new members, i doubt we'll catch them by saying, hey download lite-c, sure its good but the majority wont play with it much
and the car level demo is a joke, its 2009
the one interesting video is from what? 2005?

I am older then 2001, I have a full time job, I have family, I have friends and fellows but I never would give up my passion to make shit like zombie games, porno games or to draw stupid comics.

it's what darkinferno says. homepage looks so 2001. It should get a new web 2.0 design and should be more dynamic. Also the level editor look soo 99-2000. These things get catched by the eye, even if the engine features and lite-c is good, what people see first is the homepage and editor interfaces.

there could be an open contest with MONEY prize (like $1000 but not the pro version). That could also draw some attention, and more people at least try the engine.

As for manual, it's one of the best documentations out there.

well 3d page needs a new layout no doubt.
The forum needs new skin, new functions, like archives, let you upload the pic from the pc... ( in more forum sectors)
there is much more to doo.
Also the akcnex engine it self should move to anew skin, new organization. etc.. its getting there with GED BUT.. THERE is still much more to do.

i have failed my projects because of this:

When i wanted to use a feature like MMOG , there was no such feature.
Bugs, Lack of features...
Var limitation in precisions.
Animating jobs like, animating sprites, is difficult, and done by script.

I think i dont remember anymore, because i just dump it.

Now im doing iapplications, with 3d on it. Because for a game engine, like cryengine this is very very far from it.

there are things a do love on a1 though... the acessibility... and easy script.

[x] other much better hobby engines



The playing field has changed. Now there are packages like Unity which are better in most regards. Gamestudio development has become incredibly slow and it will be hard to catch up with competitor teams of 30+ people. I find their current MMO project a bit risky as well. JCL himself said that only 1 out of 4 MMO projects succeed and if it fails it won't be that great for Gamestudio's already weak reputation.