The Roadmap

Photics

I'm thinking that Gendai Games is a little too secretive about the future. I understand that they don't want to disappoint people by not meeting expectations, but it's hard to design games without knowing which features will be supported.

The heads-up for the iPad was wonderful. I knew to scramble for the release date. But now, with so many new features planned for the iPhone OS, I don't know if GameSalad is going to support it. That's why I think Gendai Games should give a general road map of future features and a general idea of when those features will be implemented. The future is always uncertain, but I think it's better for Gendai Games to keep in communication with developers.

Here are some features I think Gendai Games should give developers a heads-up about...

iAds... at launch / soon after launch / a while after launch / never
GameCenter... at launch / soon after launch / a while after launch / never
Android... this year, next year, never
Better browser support (including PC / Internet Explorer)... Q3 2010, Q4 2010, First half 2011, much later than that.

Also, which features will be reserved for pro?
...and in general... what's up with Pro? It seems to be popular consensus that the price charged exceeds the features offered.

It was great to see GameSalad support the iPad at launch, but what about the future? I'm hitting a lot of walls because GameSalad doesn't perform as well as it should. Not knowing if a feature is going to be supported is also causing problems.

Photics

Heh... no replies?

Other GameSalad developers have no interest in a "head-up" of what's planned for the future?

quantumsheep

I'm certainly interested in what's coming up next, and knowing info about the stuff you've listed would be useful for sure.

They're just not very forthcoming with info. The latest 'We're just adding stability' post by Yoda is a step in the right direction. At least we know what their focus is for the next build!

QS

quantumsheep

tshirtbooth said:
Will QS ever get his preserve scene back??

This is why I love you so

Though I think you should re-word it to 'WHEN will QS get his preserve scene back???'

Not having it back is NOT an option!

QS

Chunkypixels

I'd actually go as far as saying that the lack of information that comes from Gendai is probably one of the biggest issues holding GameSalad back from being adopted on a much wider basis by developers.

The almost complete lack of information that comes from Gendai, along with the poor documentation definately puts developers off, as they simply cant plan ahead when they have no idea what bugs are scheduled to be fixed, and what features are in the pipeline to be implemented.

My only assumption is that Gendai simply dont plan their development schedule very well, or more likely, just dont feel comfortable commiting to specific schedules or tasklists, and so dont say anything. That way they dont have to worry about customer feedback when/if they dont deliver what theyve promised.

I think this, and the appearance that GameSalad doesnt appear to have any commitment to a delivery date for coming out of "beta" ,gives the product a bit of a shaky reputation, compared to other development tools that announce feature dates, patches and roadmap details.

If its in Beta, with bugs, memory leaks and sorely missing features, people really need some firm commitments from Gendai as to when these issues are to be addressed. Especially when people are paying for the product, whether it be Express or Pro. Its just not very good customer relations otherwise.

I think GameSalad is a superb tool. I would just like to see more information and documentation coming from Gendai, so that we can plan our future projects better.

quantumsheep

I was a senior designer on an MMO a few moons ago, and while in BETA the following would happen:

We hired an entertaining community manager, who was excellent. He would scour the forums and every Monday would give us a list of issues that the community was asking for. Each week we'd sit and discuss them.

Sometimes, management would have a different set of priorities to those of the community. Sometimes months would go by without much needed features being implemented.

Sometimes money issues would dictate which features took priority. Notice that we're all paying for BETA software.

Sometimes marketing would promise a certain feature, then come and ask us to do it. It'd be a new feature, not in the schedule, that would take man hours away from what we *were* working on. We had words with marketing when it happened once too often

Sometimes new features that were working ok would suddenly show up as really badly bug-ridden, right at the last minute, and an update would have to be postponed.

Sometimes a relatively simple request for an added feature would be reliant on other more complicated systems that haven't been implemented yet.

Sometimes I'd get personal emails from our community. Quite a lot in fact. I always took the time to answer them, usually in my spare time. Sometimes I could give a straight answer, other times I had to be really bloody careful. To be fair, the GS guys have always been pretty good in this regard (from personal experience).

Sometimes a user would bring up an issue time and time again, and the dev team would get tired of hearing it and ignore it. Me harping on about 'Pause' is one such example.

Implementing new stuff takes time. New features have to be designed, implemented and tested. There's a reason we usually don't get huge updates.

Sometimes there just aren't enough hours in the day, especially with a small team.

We would NEVER flat out promise that a feature was going to be in the next update unless it was clearly in the bag. And even then we'd say we were 'hoping' to have that feature in the next update. Just to cover our backs!

I honestly believe my experience is similar to what Gendai is doing right now. When I left, the game I was working on was not in good shape. From what I can tell, it's still going, but I have no idea of how many people play it and what kind of financial situation the company's in. I want GS to be more successful than that.

So, what I would say to Gendai Games is please listen to the community as much as possible. I know it's not always realistic to do so, and some fixes or additions are a lot more complex than us guys think it should be.

But we use the software more than you do. It might sound cheeky but I bet we've logged more hours using GS than the dev team combined!

We give our feedback to you for free. An acknowledgement of the issues, and perhaps an explanation as to why things are the way they are, and what you'd *hope* to bring to the table in future updates would go a long way to plan ahead and help us use this awesome bit of software you've made.

Finally - give me back my preserve previous scene behaviour, dammit!!!

Cheers,

QS

Photics

quantumsheep said:
I was a senior designer on an MMO a few moons ago

Interesting!

Notice that we're all paying for BETA software.

Maybe that should make me grumpy, but it doesn't. The money that I can make with GameSalad is real.

I think the big difference here is not so much to tell them what to work on. It's more about knowing what they're working on. Are they going to support Android? Are they going to support iAds and Apple's Game Center?

Right now, I'm wondering if I should focus my attention on other projects and/or look for other game development tools. Little communication with the community suggests that I probably should.