How to save Monkey?
Monkey Archive Forums/Monkey Discussion/How to save Monkey?
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| Hi all, Should monkey set a deadline to raise the price? Paying USD 100 once is a steal to maintain an excellent language and websites for increasing platforms and features. This is very hard to live. Do you ever write any software for only USD 100 and then no extra fee for maintenance? NO ONE!!! It does not show any respect to Mark at all. Each major updates should be charged, especially for 1 developer.(Unity has 1.x,2.x..,4.x and platform module, and GameMaker has 8.x and studio) Unity or Unreal has over 200 employers. GameMaker is going to have 50. Monkey has 1 only to maintain different platforms. No respect for 1 person fighting with large companies with many employees??? Why? With more budget, Mark don't need to care about other things and concentrate on future development. Why not consider KickStarter to raise funding? I saw some guys just propose their visions. They don't have the physical products at all and still get good funding. Just show what you have done to the world. Monkey is already a practical product and run daily. Many games are created with it. Why not draft a proposal for Monkey 2 features? Some supporters are quite rich and are willing to support good projects. How about greenlight on steam? Even very bad games or softwares can be put to sell on Steam, why not Monkey? Besides, why Monkey users are shy to mention that the games are "powered by Monkey-X", so that many people know this name on internet? If budget is allowed, why there is no monkey-x asset store to sell monkey stuffs, like Unity asset store? Why there is no Monkey-X T-shirt, hat or cup, etc.? Although one vs. many, Monkey (USD 100) run faster than Unity (USD 1500+1500 = 3000 for android platform). Pay more, Get less.??? Quote from unity user "Xaron": I've used 2000 sprites which move randomly over the screen. Results are: Unity 4.5 APK size: 8,404,358 bytes FPS: ~20 Monkey v79c APK size: 67,331 bytes FPS: ~33 See here! Besides, with Mark's long-term software experience (> 30 years), he could make some live workshops (with fee) or live discussion (may be youtube live) to teach people how to program, compiler design and optimization techniques. "mark sibly" is a brand name. Others can benefit from the workshops and Mark gets funding. Win-Win situation. example: subscription of "cgcookie" to provide tutorials for blender and special fee for blender workshops.. How about Monkey-X workshop??? Open-source cannot save Monkey.It would only leave it to the current state. No one know all key elements of Monkey design, except Mark. (Mark may train some guys to continue Monkey) Why not there is a "Donate" button here or in Monkey-X forum, if someone want to support Monkey-X future development? How about listing the donor name too? Just my 2 cents. Please comment. Thank you for your attention. |
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| It does not show any respect to Mark at all. I agree, but after all we didn't make the price. The price for the commercial version is what Mark Sibly himself wants for it, or what he thinks what it's worth it. It is his decision, and we need to respect it. http://www.blitzbasic.com/Products/_index_.php Blitz3D $59 USD (Windows only) BlitzMax $79 USD (Windows + Linux + Mac OS X) Monkey X $99 USD (Win+Linux+Mac+Android+iOS+Win8Apps+WindowsPhone7/8+XNA+HTML5+Flash+Ouya+PlayStationVita/PlayStationTV+UserTargets (Amiga etc..) All 3 products are cheap, and always come with free updates. He never charged for major updates, instead he makes new products. |
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| Stopping of V2 and the need of extra income proves that Mark can't survive with this price tag and he is not used to raise price, even the price of everything (Clothes, Food, living, Traffic, webhosting fees, etc) raises . |
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| I agree, but after all we didn't make the price. If he does not want to make a "Donate" button available (maybe he would be ashamed), and as long as he does not charge for upgrades, or make it subscription-based (yearly fee), we can do nothing about it. Mark should be old enough to know what he does. All we (as customers) can do, is spread the word. |
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| I agree with you too, Danilo. :) |
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| All we can do is just buy more Monkey licenses which is a fair way of giving some of success to Mark. |
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| All we can do is just buy more Monkey licenses which is a fair way of giving some of success to Mark. It does not show if it helped any way. You could buy 5 licenses just to support the guy, the forum or the software does not get changed, and you don't get any response if it was useful or helpful. Wrong way, in my opinion. Because of missing feedback. |
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| Try: 1. Donation 2. Buying multiple licenses 3. Greenlight on Steam (similar effects of Blitz Research Affiliate Program - to let more gamers know the existence of Monkey-X) 4. Professional programming training courses by Mark (> 30 years experience on basic, c++, asm, blitz products, monkey, etc.) 5. KickStarter Monkey-X v2 |
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| (double-post) |
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| The people who seem to think that charging for an annual licence would solve all marks problems sorry but your wrong, Monkeys big issue is it's lack of spread throughout the internet and it's shockingly poor discovery, I personally blame the name partly for this and lets face it an out of date website.. At the moment the best immediate option is to buy an extra licence, but if you do chose this for the love of god do not just hold onto the key, hand it out to some one who might use it, better to have your extra keys being used by people who can add life to the forum and community than sitting on your shelf doing nothing. In the long term if there even is one now, I think mark pushing monkey onto steam would be a really good idea, Mark has never been good at marketing and has in the past relied on his existing users to migrate over to his newest language, sadly this time either because of the time between or the differences in the targets a lot of the Max community did not migrate over and opted to stick with what they are using now, this I suspect resulted in far fewer sales than mark may have predicted. the single biggest thing monkey needs right now is some really good PR and some good press, this can only come from developers who make a hit who then talk about and acknowledge monkey, sadly as some one else pointed out there is this stigma attached to anything that's not native and I think deep down to a lot of people monkey is like the ugly little friend that people secretly like but don't want anyone to know it. It's a real shame, there have been more than a handful of games now that have really done amazingly well and were in perfect positions to spread the word and they I think all, FAILED!!. shame on you!. |
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| Well, alot ppl (me dont) seems to dislike the Basic like syntax, so the Trans compiler should just get another kind of "input" language, just make some c# or something like looking stuff as example. Same function names and params, all same, just another syntax style, so ppl can use both, also it should be possible to intermix both (with a note at top of the file, where strict is, or another file ending (.monkeyc) or whatever) so modules written in bot styles can work togheter since they all dont care about how the others are written when they translated. im pretty sure alot ppl will give monkey rather a chance then, since they all want stick to the bla:void(){...} stuff. .net does it kinda similar with C# and VisualBasic, so why not monkey to? just an idea, wont save monkey at all, but maybe more ppl then have a look, and dont say "eew basic, this is the beginner language that, when i learn it, this wont help me anywhere later in my live and career as developer" or "im to pro for basic, i use clike only!" (infact this is not true i learned object oriented programming with blitzmax and feel very well on java, c# and co. but ppl just think like this, thats what i saw on forums when ppl talked about blitzmax/monkey VS any other language) |
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| Ave Mark and seemingly kind and devoted ones. Congrats on thy great product, the finest language i have seen until now. People are to help on each others' needs, so we are here to help Mark and his fine product survive and later perhaps dominate for the pleasure of all :). This finely syntaxed language with portable code should be really saved. suggestions::: -------------- --------new brand name ? change Monkey-X name to a less "ridiculous" but more meaningful, relevant one would have been nice perhaps. (an animal like Python, but that has not so derogating associations with it - and also that is Monty's) But: already a book appeared about Monkey programming: Monkey game development, Michael H., so maybe renaming is not viable, reasonable. Perhaps it can be circumvented with fame rising. --------- Segmentation: higher aims with higher fees To recruit new Monkey coders, the freely available option for some limited platforms/features should remain. For a broader target audience, more detailed segmentation should apply. e.g. - PC platforms: free (or rather some extra/more professional features / latest updates cost some USDs) -mobiles kit: 30 usd a year or per update (don't know how frequent they are) -console kit: the same ..etc.. ------- only One version of Monkey yet Remember Commodore's bankruptcy? Suggest Rather be unrivalled and famous in one strict field, eg. König of 2d Game Creator softwares for the most platforms. Then will external modules be created and coming of masses. It is not like the situation of Construct, made by apprentices, done with mistakes, thus forced to create Construct 2! --------- Marketing -Developed titles should have a non-distrurbin tag/info, what developing tool was used, eg. after program is closed appearing for 1 second. -Active Monkey Coders or helpful community members should upload finished titles to video sharing portals, write/or have a signature about Monkey-X at Gamedev like sites. - Steam: possibly good idea - i dont know much about it. ----------- Volunteer/ community work in all kinds of tasks would be favorable. We cannot talk about PR when 1 person has been doing everything. Make a team. All seeing eyes must we be with, with other tasks like SWOT analysis and all the non-code works, or can it be shared, too? -------- Mark, hopefully you read us, and will share thy thougts on our comments, or what help you need. Anyway thanks for everything, and all the best. -------- OFF / intro on me: Presented my 1st (and perhaps last post here - not being a net society member) as heard much appreciation about BlitzBasic in Amiga times, happy to find its latest materialization to try. Not being a professional coder any more - have had some years international DB programming, wrote some Python & Pygame tiny games, and a Pascal to C translator long ago -, and have 2 BScs, & 1 Msc in some fields. |
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| In this last months is changed something? We already did this discussion about product, strategy prices, modular segmentation, open source solutions, donate buttons, marketing, increasing team members, changing the name (again?!?) and so on. Nothing happened (except the affiliation program... I would love to know how many participants and results...) And I don't think we need a monkey 2... We don't know even what it is or will be. Something similar to monkey I presume... So a new potential internal competitor. |
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| Kryzon on blitz. forum said it would give a bad image on a company if there is a donate button. Then let's forget about "Donate" button... |
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| Kryzon on blitz. forum said it would give a bad image on a company if there is a donate button. Then let's forget about "Donate" button... It works for other small companies. Companies even use KickStarter today to get capital, successfully to make the Final product. Placing a Donate button on the GitHub page and near the "Monkey X is OpenSource" or "Monkey X is free" part of the website is probably the best idea. In response you get a nice e-Mail with a personal message like "Thank you for the support". |
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| From a hobbyist point of view, I have already purchased Monkey and I have purchased JungleIDE. I have also purchased Blitz3D, DarkBasic, DarkBasic-Pro and App Game Kit. I use the software listed above just because I get a kick out of coding, I haven't made any commercial gain. If you (monkey4sammy) want to donate or buy extra licenses then go right ahead, like eff you see kay am I paying more on top for what I already purchased. If Mark ever develops another and it has a decent IDE however then I may shell out for that if it is similarily priced as Monkey/Blitz3D etc... |
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| Donate buttons dont actually bring in anything worthwhile. The best thing to do is charge an annual fee or some sort of update fee, officially discontinue any older software like blitzmax and try to undercut unity, by far Monkeys biggest competitor. |
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| ...and try to undercut unity, by far Monkeys biggest competitor. Monkey is not competing with Unity, Monkey is an alternative to Unity but most new developers seem to prefer Unity and similar for their development. Which means that Mark's real competition is all the other old school development tools like GLBasic, etc who are competing for the same minority segment of the developer community. So that's where the focus for Monkey's future development should be. Going to war without having correctly identified your enemy can only lead to disaster. |
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| Monkey is an alternative to Unity but most new developers seem to prefer Unity and similar for their development. Most of Unity users are trying to use unreal engine 4 because of its low subscription (USD 19 / month, you can still run program even you stop subscription) and constant improved features of unreal. Unity is only used by those invested much of time and money in the past. Monkey-x win Unity in 2d performance. |
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| How to save Monkey? Go vote for Monkey |
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| Monkeys big issue is it's lack of spread throughout the internet and it's shockingly poor discovery That's the truth. I spoke to A LOT of people in Casual Connect, and *none* of them ever heard about Monkey. |
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| Besides, why Monkey users are shy to mention that the games are "powered by Monkey-X" I'm just going to comment on that one point, because lots of other points relate to my answer anyway.There are two big problems with Monkey. The first is the name, the second is the amount of faff required. I've always thought that Monkey was a silly name, and to this day I cannot understand how it ever got called that. The Blitz name has been synonymous with game development for the best part of 20 years (if not more?), so it boggles the mind why BRL would abandon it just like that, especially in favour of such an apparently random word which means nothing to anybody - you can't even google it without getting thousands of sites about actual monkeys. The other problem - the faff. Speaking as someone who hasn't really used Monkey a lot in the last couple of years - there wasn't even a debugger of any kind at the time which made the whole development process a living hell. But that aside, you've got all the manual configuration stuff to attend to. Download this, install that, find and edit config files so Monkey knows where it is, oh but wait that's the wrong version and Monkey doesn't like it, repeat ad nauseam. Then the small matter of publishing anything on iOS (haven't done Android so can't comment) - it spits out an XCode project, and that should be the end of it, but it isn't - far from it. I now need a crash course in ruddy XCode to finish off my game and put right all the stuff Monkey *doesn't* do for me. And the best part is, if for any reason I need to delete the build folder as is oft-recommended, I have to do it ALL AGAIN. Why the hell is it like that? It doesn't make sense. A lot of things about Monkey are great, but there's a hell of a lot that wrecks the whole experience and takes away a lot of the pleasure that can be had from game development. Even the IDE is so basic it's next to useless - doesn't even have intellisense. A case-sensitive OO language, with no intellisense. Really?! If not for Jungle then I'd suggest that the Monkey user-base would be a fraction of it's size because its own IDE just isn't up to the job for serious development work. Even with all that in mind I'm considering moving TO Monkey from Blitzmax so I can target other platforms. It's quirks aren't insurmountable - it's just that there's so damn many of them. You can say the same about Blitzmax I guess, to a point, and that was worth getting to grips with - mine's paid for itself many times over. I guess Monkey will/would too. But I fear that anybody from outside of the Blitz camp, wouldn't quite see it that way. Oh and just to add, as this does sound like a right old battering now I've re-read it - I have massive respect and gratitude for BRL. If it wasn't for them doing what they do, I'd be stuck in some shitty dead-end 9-5 with no hope of doing something amazing, and no future. |
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| I haven't been around as much as I wanted and not released anything for a while either, but I have been keeping up with Monkey and Blitz and got a few things in the pipeline. I do have to agree with GfK on every point, dropping Blitz from the name, the faff. Projects that were working in the past need a lot of fettling to get running the next time, but I have Blitz3D and BlitzMax projects that just run after 10years. |
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| How about "BlitzMonkey-X"? |
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| BlitzX sounds good enough, no need to stick with the monkey. As for the topic, I really love BRL products, but truth is proprietary languages are not what they used to be nowadays... And this is not mark's fault. Sure, there are a lot of things that can be addressed, but the thing is... right now the huge amount of already-done things in mainstream languages make up for their complexity. Codebases for things like Javascript, C#, C++ are HUGE and there are a lot of things that are free and have good quality. Unity is not forcing developers to learn/write code in a new language and they can also benefit from those huge code bases. You want to do some out of the box thing in monkey? Chances are you will have to write it yourself. You're doing the same in Javascript, or C++? It's almost granted that someone already did that. Landscape is not what it was 10 years ago. |
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| BlitzX sounds good enough It's pronounced Blitz Sex, though, which is even worse. |
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| X-Blitz pronounced Cross-Blitz |
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| LOL, GfK, you're totally right... :/ Since spanish is my mother tongue I never actually read it thinking in english. Just Blitz then (: |
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| How to promote Monkey? Where can I download logos and other media assets (splash screen video etc.)? |
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| I've asked for the same several times before |
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| Just did a small part to promote Monkey ;) |
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| Similarly, Here's my 55 attempts to promote Monkey.... |
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