It's been quite silent here, what's up Mark? :)
Monkey Archive Forums/Monkey Discussion/It's been quite silent here, what's up Mark? :)
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| Hi there, it's been quite silent here lately. I just wonder, after this "depressing update" in your blog Mark, do you have a fulltime job now? How are your plans for Monkey? Do you still have Monkey v2 in mind or not? Please don't hesitate to communicate a bit more. ;) Cheers - Xaron |
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| Which update are you referring to? The "slightly depressing" update I read on Mark's Blog was Sep 2012 - am I missing something? |
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| I mean that one: http://marksibly.blogspot.de/2014/04/slightly-depressing-update.html It's from april this year. |
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| Hopefully he will answer. |
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| I mean that one: http://marksibly.blogspot.de/2014/04/slightly-depressing-update.html It's from april this year. Oh sorry, I was looking at the date for an older post. I'm a Windows user, so no idea how good the other 3rd Party IDEs are, but I'd suggest not worrying about updating the standard IDE too much, if at all. It gets the job done, and if you want something better there are options available. The Jungle IDE is fantastic, I'd never go back to the default IDE after using Jungle. The docs are an issue, especially for dummies like me. Perhaps this does put people off? I'm patient enough to wait a couple of hours to get a response on the forums. Monkey 2 for me isn't a priority - I'm still busy enough not making the most of Monkey as it is at the moment :) I can fully understand what Mark is saying though, and at the end of the day he needs to make a living. Personally speaking, the cost price for Monkey is far too low IMO, but in this age where so many development tools are cheaper or free it's probably not feasible to charge what Monkey is probably worth. I haven't released anything.... yet, but I'd like to hope that if I did manage to make some serious money that I'd donate/buy additional licences just for the hell of it as a thank you. Hopefully guys who are making some good money from released Apps can support Mark if they want to see Monkey 2 become a reality. |
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| I really enjoy monkey I find myself often writing code in both blitzmax and monkey. I usually stay with blitzmax because of functionality and the ability to have pointers and things which allow me to use c or c++ externals without having to hack apart monkey to point to were the variable is aka make external classes to pointer. Other than that monkey does seem to very effective at what it does as far as mobile platforms, but for desktop platforms it doesn't give us enough power (or I'm doing something wrong). I have watch multiple reviews of monkey on YouTube where they at comparing it game maker or unity, and I will tell u its a tough draw for most because each language has its draw backs, but most people do give monkey a b+. I look at monkey as new sports car it has alot going on for it, but when you have to go and fill up the gas tank and u have think about what it cost fill it up, u still think that old reliable is the best thing aka blitzmax in my case. |
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| I think he's busy playing with the DK2 :). |
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| Time to move on i guess. |
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| Where? |
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| I see myself in a different role than you, being more a support dev than an actual game dev. So i dunno what's the best for you. There are some tools i would look into and switch if i would be in your shoes. Unity3d, GamermakerStudio or AGK. But i will concentrate on my art skills at the moment and see what happens. |
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| Well I'm pretty good in Unity and really like it, even though as a programmer Monkey just "feels" better. Will take a closer look at AGK. |
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| I don't see anything wrong with Monkey - specially since it's all open source anyway. Unless there is some serious breaking code that nobody can solve, you can always take the translated source and compile it with the default toolchain for every device out there. If the worst come to pass, I'm creating my own HTML5 engine anyway, so I can always go HTML5+wrappers on mobile. Direct-X/OpenGL were never a problem for me (and neither code in Java/C#/C++) - the only place where I would have difficulties would be on iOS, thanks to that nasty thing called Objective-C. Otherwise, replicating Monkey functions on other platforms wouldn't be so hard... but getting everything stable as Monkey is (If your game is crashing most of the time is because something you or a 3rd party library did, not monkey itself) that is the difficult part! |
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| Well I will stick with Monkey for sure as long as it works. What makes me just feel uncomfortable is the fact that cross platform languages like Monkey need a lot more support to keep it working as for instance BlitzMax. I don't expect weekly updates but I expect some kind of COMMUNICATION. Just a monthly blog update or roadmap update can't be too much to ask for! |
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| I have stopped developing my game while Monkey is on its deathbed. This may be a pessimistic attitude but from my point of view its a realistic one. Investing months of work and thousands of pounds around a product that has no future has given me nothing but sleepless nights TBH. I feel sorry for the guys like Mike, at least I can take my game assets and design then reuse them, they don't have that option at all. No one is expecting the developer to work for nothing but replying to posts aimed directly to him by his paid registered users on his products forums costs nothing. |
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| The post is 2 days old, it's possible Mark is on vacation. Besides I don't remember him responding to touchy-feely posts asking about how he is doing as a person before, and the more negative the thread gets the less likely he will respond. It is true BRL->community engagement has always been lacking but let's not make every thread about Monkey-X derail into discussing where people should go take their code. |
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| Yes, you are right. I edited my post. No need to make anyone upset. I will take a break. That's all. |
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| Its happening with GLBasic too unfortunately - although in his case, its probably due to work getting in the way. Unfortunately fewer updates are noticeable, At the moment I'm starting to somewhat move over to SDL2 (already have a processing system up and running), and may get Basic4Android if I feel like developing for that |
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| Well it was not my intention to throw a cat among the pigeons but just wanted to provoke a small "Hello I'm still alive". Didn't work out too well up to now... |
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| I think its getting to a stage where 1 person cant really sustain a development system. There does need to be someone to be able to handle the public face of things now. It could also be down to a mixture of people no longer wanting to code or people using free development systems. |
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| We're still using Monkey and will continue to use it unless a really attractive alternative comes for cross platform 2D game dev. I really like Monkey though so even if it "dies" I've decided I will make a private fork and maintain it on my own for what I need. I think Mark will still add features and targets which interest him. And there are still people like us in the community who have an interest to support and fund Monkey projects. https://github.com/blitz-research/monkey/commits/develop |
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| Here is my take on it. There was a time when I programmed one computer for a year or two, but never finished a game, because when the game was finished the C64 was replaced by the Amiga. Then I started a game on the Amiga, but then the PC took over and I had to scrap all my code. Then when the PC came I really thought that I could program forever, then came mobile, html, then a better language like metal, swift, mantle or whatever. What monkey brings us is another layer of indirection, so we are future proof. Especially because everything is opensource. The source code is also written in a very direct cowboy style that I like, no enterprise class hierarchies with thousands of classes here. Want to implement a new target, just read 2-3 files with a few hundred lines of code, it's very straight forward. I mean compare the compiler for monkey (\src\transcc\transcc.monkey) with something like https://roslyn.codeplex.com I have released one mobile game ( http://www.ninjanewton.com ), written my own code editor, my own 2d engine and editor for that, and is now working on a 3d engine aimed at procedural worlds. (I think it's a mistake to try to copy unreal engine or unity, not only because it's a lot of code, but because you need an army of artists to do something with those kind of engines.) So monkey is still the best choice for me, and I think I will continue using it for a long time, no matter what Mark does with it. If I could wish for something it would be to drop the flash target, make a real DirectX target, perhaps based on sharpdx and C#, make GC optional with a .Free. But I can do these things myself if I really have a need for them. And you can always get around the GC problems by just using arrays or databuffers. |
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| @Erik, why do you need the Flash target to be dropped. If you don't use it just ignore it. Some of us do use it, in fact it's the only target I really care about, and I would demand a refund from Mark if he did drop it. |
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| "Mark Sibly lately released the source code to some of his products, making it Open Source Software. He did it when he gave up, to give up responsbility." Open sourcing tools is a good thing. Being an eternal slave to a tool or to users is not. If you are going to move on then do it. Stop with toxic statements like this. "The rest of the world is just laughing at 'Blitz Research' and namely Mark Sibly, wondering what they are doing." Very unprofessional, and says much about your character. I'm thankful Mark has made the products he has. Many people have made vast sums of money using the tools he made in the form they exist. My take from your post is that you really wanted BlitzMax and Monkey to support 3d. When I purchased BlitzMax and Monkey I had no expectation of them being anything more than 2d tools. I have majority interest in only making 2d projects so they work very well for me. If I were making a 3d thing I'd use Unity or Unreal Engine 4. There still is no other 2d tool which is as appealing to me as Monkey, and BlitzMax was the most appealing to me before Monkey appeared. If it is missing potential or not it is still the best for the kinds of projects I am making. You should list everything you wish Monkey had which would make it better. I am interested to hear what you think would make it meet its potential. |
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| - (Double post) |
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| I really doubt that Mark's reputation (or BRL's) is so negative. He created 3 different languages still used - I think this should show at the world the quality of the products. I dont' think there's nobody laughing... Releasing part of the products as OSS is a choice to avoid 'abandonment': in the worst case someone can revitalize the product, continuing the support and so on. The main lack of Mark is not about the product, but in the marketing/business model. He abandoned the '3d module' just because the world is/was full on 3d engine ready-to-use... I really wish to change his idea about this. I hope he will take in consideration the idea to 'upgrade' his products (MonkeyX/BlitzMax) than creating (again!) a newer language... |
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| If I buy a new product, I want it to live for at least some years. Blitz3d was releases in 2001... BlitzMax was releases in 2004... MonkeyX was releases in 2011... So all of these have been around "for at least some years" |
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| Pretty nasty post, Danilo. |
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| QFT: "When I purchased BlitzMax and Monkey I had no expectation of them being anything more than 2d tools. I have majority interest in only making 2d projects so they work very well for me. If I were making a 3d thing I'd use Unity or Unreal Engine 4. There still is no other 2d tool which is as appealing to me as Monkey, and BlitzMax was the most appealing to me before Monkey appeared. If it is missing potential or not it is still the best for the kinds of projects I am making." Neither Blitzmax or Monkey were supposed to be a replacement for Blitz3D "3D engine"; but a replacement for the language, and IMHO, both were/are a success at that. The only lacking part on bmax and monkey are the IDEs but that's not a big deal. |
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| My brain exploded under the influence of alcohol, ending up in this brain fart. I am sorry, and I guess there is no excuse for this behavior. Shame on me! |
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| Ha ha, now that's something I truly understand... can't argue with that! (Last time I asked Mark -- only a few weeks ago -- he hadn't yet 'given up' to take a new job, so he's still on it as far as I know.) |
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| Perhaps any finished games made in Monkey could go here: http://www.spilgames.com/ make abit of dosh and get the Monkey name out there ;) |
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| On the time I worked at spilgames I tried hard to push monkey-x for development of cross-platform games. Sadly at that time monkey-x's out of the box html5 wasn't really what they were looking for. Monkey's HTML5 right now is only focused on desktop. |
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| DruggedBunny wrote: (Last time I asked Mark -- only a few weeks ago -- he hadn't yet 'given up' to take a new job, so he's still on it as far as I know.) I think ANY blog update about the current situation would be fine. I understand he is not answering the postings here, because it can get personal sometimes (because of frightened customers that don't like the commercial product to be abandoned). ANY message would be fine. Something like "hello, I'm fine and found a job to live from", or (worst case) "I am still unemployed and Monkey X does not give me at least 20 sales a month". Without any news update, all you see (as an external customer without direct connection to Mark Sibly himself) is the forums, and if you see that bug reports are not answered for some days/weeks, you believe the product is dead. I've seen this happening to many other products before, like NuclearGlory for example. |
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| @ilovepixel What was your experience dealing with Spilgames? I feel HTML5 is a great platform and needs special attention, perhaps Monkey-X could work well with Cordova? concentrate on HTML5 cross platform apps. |
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| @TeaBoy I worked in the internal game developer team at their HQ. They were open to new technologies which would allow them to make good (polished) games fast and cross-platform. At the time I was there they were making flash games in unity and they wanted to focus on web mobile and javascript gave them what they needed. The problem with JS + html5 is that sometimes it doesn't package very nice native apps. So I proposed monkey. But they saw that the html5 target wasn't deliverying a very mobile friendly app so they just left it. |
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| damn, that's a real shame! I hope Mr Sibly is reading this and thinking that maybe this could be a great marketing opportunity for his product! I think HTML5 shouldn't be ignored, JS + HTML5 + CSS is a great way to build mobile apps |
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| What were the main issues with regard to mobile unfriendliness with HTML5? |
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| I think what they mean is that it wasn't as perfectly optimized as other solutions for mobile HTML5. "Mobile" HTML5 in the less but still significant past was more bare bones so that it ran well on the devices which didn't yet support HTML5 proper well. Monkey HTML5 games run pretty well on modern mobile operating systems now with for example iOS 8 (just tested a game and it runs pretty well but still no audio by default), but in the not so distant past they were more slow or did not (or may still not) support many features Monkey HTML5 games rely on, such as the notoriously bad support for audio on many devices and mobile operating systems. We will soon get into the land of "it doesn't really matter" with new devices supporting everything really well. There will always be room for optimization though which is important to pay attention to. CPU intensive operations can still cause slowdowns on mobile devices where on desktop they run fine. If you care about cross platform it is a really good idea to test things along the way on a recent generation mobile device with the latest system updates it supports. There were/are other game frameworks which focused purely on optimizing for older devices, but in time they will be less relevant, and of course they did not give all of the runtime targets Monkey does. |
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| >I think HTML5 shouldn't be ignored, JS + HTML5 + CSS is a great way to build mobile apps I am making a hybrid gui application using Intel XDK/Cordova + Framework7 (imho the best html5 framework) now. It's a little hell! |
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| Talking about Spil Games and HTML5, One of my Monkey games got sponsored (non-exclusive license for $500) by Spil Games back in January 2014. At that time the standard HTML5 target was not good enough to efficiently run Mobile HTML5 games. So I modded the target to increase the performance, added WebAudio if the browser supports it and slightly had to adapt how I programmed the game (e.g. All text are Images instead of using a font). In the end, it passed Spil Games' QA. Here is the game on their A10 website: A10 - Go Fishing! In my opinion, Monkey is incredibly powerful while staying simple. However, Monkey always feels pretty raw. You can compile to all platforms but it is not always 100% what you want (e.g. you have to account for different screen sizes yourself, manually change the app name in XCode etc.). I don't know if this is the same for GameMaker or Unity though. For me, Monkey is great for my needs as I am not interested in 3d games. I just love it for the fact that it essentially translates your code to java, objective-c, flash etc. I have been thinking about making tutorials on how to make a simple game in Monkey. Then have it published on iOS, Android, WP8, Flash, HTML5 all with advertisements and also making sure that it works correctly on all devices. I hope that will help people to choose Monkey as their game development platform. |
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| "e.g. you have to account for different screen sizes yourself ... I don't know if this is the same for GameMaker or Unity though." From my point of view, looking at the history of Blitmax and Monkey, it's more a job for the frameworks (diddy, ignition, etc.) because it's very specific and Monkey is mainly providing low level features. Unity3D was, as well, low level, and you have to deal with the screen sizes yourself (wish is a mess!). However, with the introduction of their new GUI engine introducing anchors, it's changing... http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/live-training-archive/the-new-ui I'm not sure for GameMaker... It seems to be a job for the programmer too, despite the "view" feature providing some help: http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=565614 A tool like Corona SDK is more high level, and is dealing with the screen sizes from the beginning, providing dynamic scaling, lot of API to know how the things are displayed, etc. With the HTML5 support coming, it will be a strong competitor. |
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| So this non-reaction tells me something... :/ |
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| +1 Saw your post on the TGC forum. Did you try it out? |
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| Not yet... |
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| I have now and I'm not that impressed up to now... |
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| Did you got the trial version first? |
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| No that V2 Alpha 7.1 |
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| So you got it without checking into it at first? :-))) Now I can understand you comment ("not impressed"). It is totally different from Monkey. |
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| Well I knew before that it is more "Basic". ;) From a language point I like Monkey much more. |
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| Hey Xaron and MikeHart, after searching on google, I understood you're talking about AGK (http://www.appgamekit.com/), this looks nice! Sad, the IDE is not supporting Mac until the V2 and I did not pledge at the time :). No WebGL/HTML5 support as well. But still promising and looks solid. |
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| Yes but language wise it sucks hard compared with Monkey. But having a debugger and a good IDE is a nice thing. I haven't looked at V1, only at V2 which looks promising. I still prefer Monkey and will continue using it as long as it gets bug fixes. |
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| I own V1 of AGK and I can say that Monkey beats it hands down language wise. I haven't looked at V2 yet, but the problem with AGK V1 is that the development tools are very Windows orientated and the last time I looked you have no option but to use Tier2 on OS X. If Mark had implemented some of the things that AGK supports out of the box, then Monkey would have had no equal. |
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| Just looked at AGK website... I saw 'less' target than MonkeyX but built-in support for 3d & sharders. Compilation process for Native seems (reading the webpage) really complicated compared to MonkeyX. And for BASIC fanatics there is still GOTO command! Do you believe AGK is a valid alternative to MonkeyX? In what's is stronger than MonkeyX? |
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| I am testing AGK2 Tier1 extensively. What is stronger? * IDE (runs on OSX now natively) * Build in stuff (collisions, physics, shaders, 3d, a 2nd ads provider) * if you prefer that, the functional coding approach contrary to the OOP approach in Monkey X * Live testing via the Player concept * Good network support * Good app building support via a dialog * Particles * Memblocks * Render to texture * Video * Support for Spine * Tweening Language wise Monkey wins definetly. But feature wise AGK2 wins. With Monkey you need to create your own framework. With AGK2 a lot has been done for you. I still use Monkey and just yesterday added another developer to the fantomEngine team. So I will still use Monkey. But AGK2 is definitely something I will with. Now that YYG announced that a native OSX IDE for GM:S is still far ahead, there are not many alternatives in the native OSX market. |
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| I agree on that list Mike. Plus it supports in app purchases (like Monkey does), just to make your list complete. ;) What bugs me is the missing WP8 support and the apk size of 7MB for an empty project. |
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| AGK2 is not for everyone, that's for sure. And so is Monkey. |
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| Since this is no longer about Mark and now about AGK vs Monkey I'll chime in. :) I was a DBPro fan for 10 years. While I was always jealous of the language features of BlitzMax and lurked on BRL forums for a long time (I witnessed the Max3D drama), I was still dedicated to my 15k line project in DBPro and was trying to finish it out. After getting big-project burnout I knew mobile and smaller-scope games was the future for me so in 2012 I evaluated both AGK and Monkey-X. In the end it was the language that did it for me. I think Monkey-X is beautiful and I'm a "language guy" that wants to work in OOP. |
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| @Mike That list pretty much nails it. The reasons I come back to Monkey are 3: 1. WAY nicer to work with language. I realize this may be an opinion, but my opinion says Monkey is hands-down better. 2. HTML / javascript + Flash targets. This is pretty huge and becoming bigger as we go. Especially important if you are making smaller, simpler games. 3. "Extensibility". Ain't nothing stopping you from adding what you want to Monkey. Theoretically. The one thing that bugs me about Monkey though, and I'm not that interested in trying to figure it out myself (though I've hacked a bit...) is lack of render targets + shaders. Other than that, Monkey is honestly perfect to me, despite some of the bells and whistles that come out of the box in something like AGK. Monkey could be even awesomer with just a few additions!!! |
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| What bugs me is the missing WP8 support and the apk size of 7MB for an empty project. *cough* Unity |
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| I have a license to AGK but I chose Monkey cause is way easier to code. Unfortunately the many issues I encounter almost every day will make me move along to other frameworks: Unity. Why? Because I am trying for 4 hours to make a Windows Phone 8 app and to test IAPs. Also because of this: http://www.monkey-x.com/Community/posts.php?topic=9021 (see my last post) and I can continue with that. There is not a clean and simple solution for IAPs or AdMob. You must make a lot of hacks in order to have a proper build. I don't care that Unity default empty projects has..10..20 ..50 mb. Who CARES?? There are games on the market which have 2 GB.. All the publishes (BFG, iWIN, WIld Tangent, Steam, etc.) gives you support for Unity to integrate their framework. I tried to help the community. I bought Jungle and IgnitionX (great tools, btw). Helped me a little, but is so frustrating to make a game and to hit this wall.. Right now when I am writing this, on Windows Phone emulator... the app is not starting =)))) THE FUCKING APP which is running fine on ios and android does not start.. I have 2 projects currently in dev with Monkey. I hope I will finish them.. |
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| Tbh I've ported everything to unity because I don't have the time to FAFF around with targets etc. Unity I just point it to the SDK and its sorted. |
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| I don't care that Unity default empty projects has..10..20 ..50 mb. Who CARES?? There are games on the market which have 2 GB.. All the publishes (BFG, iWIN, WIld Tangent, Steam, etc.) gives you support for Unity to integrate their framework. well if you're making casual games or anything that's not super hi-tech 3d stuff, your customer probably cares. Who wants 50mb of their 8gb phone (possibly with 1gb of userland space for apps) to be taken up by something they'll only play a few times? This is worse if the game isn't "freemium" or f2p. Ignore that section of your userbase at your own discretion (but also at your own peril)... Really it's a matter of whether the extra wrangling with Monkey is worth the customers you'd otherwise lose having a bloated game package to install. Sure, a lot of users don't care, but a lot of users also have already maxed out the space on their phone for apps and the size will make them say "pass" to a lot of apps they might've installed just to sneak a peek at. |
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| Just want to revive this old thread. Is someone using AGK2? I'm still looking for a 2d framework which (and that's the main point!) still exists and is maintained within the next 5 years. |
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| Martin, YES, I still use AGK2 and now very actively again. My dev pause seems to be over and my motivation high. Nobody can guarantee you that they are still going with it in 5 yrs, but they are very committed atm and bring out update after update in the last couple of months. Plus you can do 3D as well and shaders, plugins, etc. But hey, I though having no OOP was a no-go for you!?! |
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| Gah. OOP is overrated. ;) But as far as I've seen I can use Tier 2 with C++ anyway, right? Personally I love Basic a bit more though. :) I mean their website looks like how this one should have been done. But anyway. Still one developer on their site? I mean they're in business for decades right now. I guess I will give it another try. As you're using it, Mike: 1) Networking cross platform (HTTP + TCP) is possible? 2) Admob, IAP? 3) What about linking 3rd party stuff like Pubnub networking? Thanks! edit: Just looked at their site. WOW what an impressive active community. Awesome! Plus there is even DOCUMENTATION! Cannot believe it yet. ;) |
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| >>OOP is overrated It kinda is. I was able to convert parts of my MX framework to AGK2 and that without OOP. You just have to think differenty. >>Still one developer on their site? As a dev, I think Paul Johnson is the only one working on AGK2 code but Richard Vanners and some others are involved with the website, marketing, documentation, etc. So it isn't really a one man operation. All the points you listed I am still about to touch. Just recently someone released a php script for a Multiplayer server based on Linux. So it must be working. Ads and IAP are working on GooglePlay and IOS. Tier 2 works with Windows and Android I think. Not sure about IOS and OSX. I am touching 2D and 3D at the moment. Shaders I played with a little, others are much more better in that on the forum. Yes, the community is very active and helpful. TGC worked a lot recently to update the guides of the documentation. And Update after Update. About Pubnub, I heard from them back in the days but never looked deeply into it as it looks pricey to me. |
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| Thanks! Well Pubnub is just an example. I'd prefer Realtime.co or just do my own server stuff. Downloaded the latest release (I was a backer the days back) and will take a deeper look! |
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