Any "serious" project done with Monkey X?
Monkey Archive Forums/Monkey Discussion/Any "serious" project done with Monkey X?
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| Hi, I'm a long time coder of BlitzMax and I wanted to start prototyping my new game and I was thinking that Monkey X could be a better idea due to the fact that should be easier to bring the results on different platforms. But a rule I always used is to check what "big things" have been done before with the language to understand if the capability is already there. And while on BlitzMax we've seen things like Eschalon saga... ...here I see a worring list of basic basic flash like little games. Is there any example of "big project" done with this Monkey? Or is better to stick with BlitzMax or, think big, and move to Unity? Unity would be the safe bet but probably would take a huge investment to learn it. |
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| The biggest one I think is New Star Soccer. http://awards.bafta.org/award/2013/games/sports-fitness Considering its success, I think you can call that serious. |
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| First of all thanks Mike for the suggestion. I saw 2/3 videos on YouTube and to me looks a cool idea but not a "big game" behind it. Visually is prehistoric and looks really more something of a flash game than a big pc project. But happy to see that a cool idea can get so much attention. |
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| I know of some in the works and we did: http://playniax.com/galaxy.html (was big project) And recently a much smaller one: http://www.playniax.com/games/typoooh/ I think I can do about the same thing in Monkey as in BlitzMax but BlitzMax has more high level API's so for Monkey you will have to write more yourself or use 3rd party modules. |
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| "Crypt of the Necrodancer" was created with Monkey. That's pretty big and been pretty successful on Steam... |
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| Although its not finished yet, this is a 2 year project for us (full time) and we are a fullt ime indie company that has and does do client work, so for us it has to be a serious project or it could be the end of indie and on to a being employed:( The Secret Cove |
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| I did a facebook/ios game called Lucky Pirate, that you can find with some other commercial monkey products and some experimentation like WireFred on my website www.ludoid.fr My new company is using Monkey (with Mungo/harmony) for a big project: www.2dark.cc |
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| Cool project Leginus. Looks sharp! I hope it does well for you. :) EDIT: Oh yeah, 2Dark too of course! |
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| I don't know how "serious" this could be considered, but it is my latest project in Monkey: The video is in Portuguese (Game is both in Portuguese and English), but I think anyone can understand this is a PvZ clone, where you have to defend the last church on Earth from the forces of Hell during the Apocalypse ;) I still want to tinker with the game a little bit more, but it's basically done. |
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| Thanks @Unlikely! :) |
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| Gfk's iOS Crime Solitaire was coded in MonkeyX: http://www.monkey-x.com/Community/posts.php?topic=1819 Pirate Solitaire was also coded in MonkeyX: http://www.monkey-x.com/Apps/app.php?id=58 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.therevillsgames.piratesolitairetriPeaks&hl=en |
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| BTW: Unity is pretty easy to handle. It's just a different approach. Once you get your head around it, it's pretty awesome and has some nice concepts. |
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| So please define serious.. Or are you just comparing eye candy? |
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| I'm coding Star Rogue a project thgay will gave a galaxy as big as Elite Dangerous and will finally bring the Star Rogue idea to the masses :) |
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| Monkey can do any 2d game you want to do. Its main benefit is that it supports many more targets than BlitzMax, but that is not the only benefit, such as Monkey also having source available, meaning no matter what happens long term your projects can be supported. Unity is closed source. It costs way more to get started. If you are only doing 2d games with it then it is a complete waste of resources. If you are doing 3d games it's a good choice, another being Unreal, which has source much more accessible. |
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| Yes Soap I really like that aspect about Monkey. What I dislike is that there is only Mark behind it whom I absolutely respect, he's a compiler guru. But... One single person can't compete with large team. Sure, Unity is closed source but so what? It won't disappear anytime soon. It's a pretty healthy company. I agree that 2d stuff is a bit of overkill to do it with Unity but even that part becomes easier and easier. For 2d I still prefer Monkey but I don't start any large projects anymore with it. The learning curve of Unity is not that steep, it's just different. Actually I was surprised how easy it is. For 3d there is no way around Unity if you want to publish for mobile platforms. And it's free. |
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| I have friends who do use Unity in big projects. Their main gripes about it being closed source is that the source is simply not accessible, and that there have been major bugs which have been ignored for years. Unity may have a big team, but their platform targets are still at the discretion of their leadership. Unity is still good and it does offer real value. It may be as free as Monkey to download and use in a basic form, but it does have a large real cost when you begin to use it in production. $4,500 for one person to get Unity Pro + Android and iOS targets. We have been using Monkey for several years now on commercial projects, and for the most part all gotchas are taken care of or have workable solutions which we can put effort into solving ourselves. I am more confident knowing that we can build any target for any new devices or platform which comes on our own. We will very likely not move from Monkey any time soon with our commercial 2D projects. Simply put Monkey is SUPER GREAT for 2D projects. Doing big, commercial projects is completely possible. There are many tools which have been contributed to the community which will give anyone starting monkey a big push ahead of the competition. For people who are hobbyists the value propositions may not be weighted the same, as they may not really care about cross platform, access to source, and other things which make Monkey a really good choice, and that's okay. But let there be no doubt how good, useful, and appealing Monkey is in general. |
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| But let there be no doubt how good, useful, and appealing Monkey is in general Well put! |
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| The only downside monkey has which Unity don't is asset protection, I don't like the idea of someone having the ability to just change media and release a new game is a put off. I'm currently working on fixing this issue for Star Rogue so I can release it as a commercial project :) |
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| That may happen... but I don't even remember it ever happening except dodgy mobile sites repacking apks, and if it were to happen on a major platform you should have ways to verify it, and have legal options, plus the platform owners immediately pulling anything like that. Really fears like that should be pushed away because they limit you. Your first priority is making something good enough that unscrupulous people would want to do that!! :) Unity is not as safe in that respect as you think! http://forum.xentax.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=10085 There are still things you can do to protect your assets from the layman, but I have found that it is rarely ever worth it. Your top priorities should be to make excellent product, and optimize the product for your paying customers. |
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| Forget about protecting assets no matter which platform or engine you use. If someone wants your media, he will get it. Sure you can make it harder but for what reason? Soap I totally agree and I'm really in love with Monkey and will continue to use it for 2d stuff. To be honest, I know quite a bunch of different engines but never found any better than Monkey for 2d. It's a pity that Mark refuses to do some marketing. Look at AGK for instance. It's just awful compared to Monkey but it definitely generates much more sales. Oh and regarding "serious" projects, look at this: http://www.eiswuxe.de/app/bloo-kid-2/ Or even my apps, even though they are pretty tiny ones: http://www.leidel.net/wp/apps/ |
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| I'm old skool when assets all used to have some protection, I think its to stop lay people changing media and releasing a game as their own. |
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| Put concerns over that out of your mind. Fear over piracy is just as bad. Your real problem as an independent developer is building awareness over what you do make, and making sure what you make appeals to large enough audiences. People do something mod games, but more often they do not wiped everything and make it their own, but release mods for downloads which are auxiliary to a stand alone game, and if mod makers do interesting things that just means more potential sales for you and free marketing. |
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| Hmm, yeah mods would be nice and allow longevity of product :) |
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| I think Monkey by its nature is going to be mostly used by people who want to make small games that can be ported to everything. But as far as I know, nobody has ever run into any serious scalability problems with Monkey. It's a language, not a game creator, so unless Mojo has some quirk which would probably be easily fixable, its scalability will be equivalent to that of the target languages and APIs. |
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| Not a game, but all the "player part" of my product (a tool to create HTML5 & Flash banners) is made using Monkey (with some customization on created code) Check here: http://www.banner-effect.com/ |
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