Nov 21 2009, 1:08 pm
In response to Ham Doctor
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Jeff8500
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You're costing them bandwidth and space by uploading to the marketplace. Also, if you think the games are trash when people have to pay a $100 yearly fee, then I would love to see how much worse they would be if it was free :)
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XNA definitely beats building a game from scratch with C# and DirectX. XNA is easy and powerful.
The only roadblock you face with XNA really is learning C# and .NET. C# is very easy to get started with like Java, but is hard to master, like most languages are. .NET does all of the gritty low-level implementation for you, but if you don't know what that stuff is or why it's in there, you can't properly utilize the .NET framework and you end up making terrible code. I learned that the hard way and had to abandon my C# projects. For example, when you first start using C# you will have no choice but to throw around threads, delegates, generics, collections, iterators, hash tables, dictionaries, queues, volatiles, virtuals, abstracts, sealeds, reflections, and a whole host of other terminologies that have been created to solve the problems of the past. If you don't know what all of these are for and why they're there, your C# code will be inefficient and most likely become unmaintainable. Once you learn C#, though, XNA is a piece of cake. DirectX is fairly easy to learn as well, but DirectX is generic for graphics while XNA is focused on gaming and is closer to what you're used to with BYOND. | |
I've seen the indie games that have come out as a result of "cheap" developer programs. Most of them are trash. Some of these "trash" games make more than commercial games, mainly because commercial games often cost so much that they can't break even. $99 per year is nothing. I spend way more than that on decent web hosting. | |
If your a college student and your school is listed on Dream Spark, you can get a free 12-Month Student Trial Subscription to the XNA Creators Club which allows you to deploy to the x-box 360.
However, you won't get access to premium content or services on the Creators Club website. https://www.dreamspark.com/default.aspx | |
Yeah because Microsoft doesn't make ANY money on sales from the XBL marketplace. They are simply hosting those files free of charge out of the goodness of their hearts.
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Glad to hear you can afford to spend that kind of money. Maybe now you can afford to pay me back the money I sunk in Dungeon Diver, like you promised to do like 4 years ago.
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I know man! Microsoft makes money selling Windows, so why the hell should they be allowed to make money selling Microsoft Office? It's absurd!
I just absolutely love how you've decided to go on a crusade against something for no other reason than it not being free. Take a deep breath, step back, and ask yourself, "Why am I ranting about this? Do I actually have any reasonable point or did I simply make my conclusion on faulty data and am now simply attempting to rationalize that initial conclusion?" | |
My best guess would be no, unless they receive money for every sale. However, even then, it's still justified, because you're using their developer tools that they had to spend many hours working on.
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Ham Doctor wrote:
Glad to hear you can afford to spend that kind of money. Maybe now you can afford to pay me back the money I sunk in Dungeon Diver, like you promised to do like 4 years ago. wow, you really need to settle down not only is he not obligated to pay you back for any reason whatsoever (he did what you asked, he got paid for it, the end), but haven't you previously stated that you're ok with how everything has turned out? | |
Yeah because several hundred dollars on a unfinished product that is now defunct is always perfectly acceptable performance. And that is why people on BYOND should never involve any sort of money in projects here.
He actually did agree to pay me back part of it, if that desktop game from that thing a long while back ever proved to be anything profitable. But that was a conversation he and I had. I never bothered with asking him about it because I assumed he was dirt broke poor. I only brought it up because he brought up how he spends much more on hosting. | |
Ham Doctor wrote:
Yeah because several hundred dollars on a unfinished product that is now defunct is always perfectly acceptable performance. And that is why people on BYOND should never involve any sort of money in projects here. No contract, no dice. Welcome to the real world. | |
Technically speaking, a verbal contract can be just as good as a written contract. Especially if you have proof of intent. E-mail, text messages, voice mail, these are actually all valid forms of proof.
When talking about verbal contracts though, there is a much smaller time window in which you could ever attempt to take action on such a thing. It is generally within a time line of a single year, after that, don't even bother. I know this because I took a few business and laws classes, and recently my girlfriend had to sue her Ex's Mother because she took out a loan for her. The mother verbally agreed to pay back the loan. She had several text messages, voice mails and e-mails in which she agreed to pay back the sum, until she decided she just simply wasn't going to. The court decided this was well more then enough evidence to prove her intent and my girlfriend was awarded the full amount. This all took place within about a 6 month time frame. Speaking for myself, it's been way too long to ever attempt to try and collect a past debt such as this, especially of this nature. Ignoring the fact that I actually have e-mails and conversation logs with Kunark, the amount is so minuscule it wouldn't be worth the time and effort to try and collect upon it. That being said, it is a prime example for other users here at BYOND to be extra careful with who they deal with and how, especially if it involves any sort of monetary value. And without it ever being said, it also speaks for Kunark's character, he was highly unreliable, was often slow and never attempted once to ever repay the agreed upon debt. He should have never taken upon a project and taken money from someone if he could have not had finished it to begin with. | |
I just read our little e-mails.
Jeremy: "Sorry to hear you're having problems." * I was dirt broke, and needed to get an actual full-time job so I could move out of the house as I was done with school, instead of spending that time making a game for Jeremy for pennies. Cory: "I'll give you some kind of refund since I didn't finish it." * Just looked in my paypal account and I see that I refunded him $50. This isn't the full amount of course, but this is what he told me he wanted at the time, and was about all I could afford anyways. That game would have taken at least another year to complete, and I would have been paid nothing for that extra year if I stayed in the contract. I couldn't afford to do that, I wasn't 13 years old anymore. I was stupid to have entered in the contract, but luckily he was nice enough at the time to let me out of it. "...and never attempted once to ever repay the agreed upon debt." Get your facts straight before blowing your top. $50 is what you told me you wanted, you could have asked for more but you didn't. Regardless of what you should have been refunded or not, you're complaining about a decision you made. Honestly, seeing you like this, I don't care anymore. Heck, I might have given you a full refund with how much I make now (which I've told the community about numerous times), but you really don't deserve a penny back. | |
Ham Doctor wrote:
That being said, it is a prime example for other users here at BYOND to be extra careful with who they deal with and how, especially if it involves any sort of monetary value. And without it ever being said, it also speaks for Kunark's character, he was highly unreliable, was often slow and never attempted once to ever repay the agreed upon debt. He should have never taken upon a project and taken money from someone if he could have not had finished it to begin with. seriously? you're resorting to slander? why has your position on the issue changed so much? you say "he was highly unreliable, was often slow" yet before that you stated "I didn't commission you for speed Kunark, rome wasn't built in a day, I commissioned you because of your ability with byond and your ability to work with both the code and graphical side of it." you also fail to mention that the reason he was being slow is because he was going through a very rough time mentally and physically; things which affected him and his family. in addition, before you decided to make the project open-source, Kunark gave you everything he had and you attempted to sell it so it's not as if he tried to run off with your money or otherwise be irresponsible. | |
To elaborate on what I was depressed about, I had just been dumped and lost my job and nobody else would hire me. At that point the game wasn't anything near a playable stage, I had worked on it for many months after that. So I hope he doesn't turn that post into "OH SEE HE WAS LAZY!"; I did a ton of work after that and sped up quite a bit the next month.
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