Seriously
Monkey Archive Forums/Monkey Discussion/Seriously
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| I will be painfully honest, I started showing some interest in Monkey about 1 to 2 years ago but never took the plunge as I was waiting for it to develope a bit more. Recently I returned to the monkey site and started looking around again. I do like what i read and the way monkey has grown up somewhat but that's about all. The show stopper for me is the gallery of apps made with this thing. I have to tell you I really think it hurts your business showing every pencil and paper scratch game compiled with Monkey. I for one will no longer consider this platform for anything I plan to do in the future solely based off the quality of user-made apps in the Apps section. Do yourself a favor, and your business, and stop allowing every street bum out there to post their apps on your site. Its really self-incriminating when someone like me goes through that area of the site and sees theres nothing semi-decent came out of the community. One is lead to believe the platform itself is not capable of anything more. Goodbye. |
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| Troll some more? |
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| Judging something by the looks is pretty common here, so I am not surprised (s)he made that statement. |
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| Well, he might no have chosen the nicest words to make his point but marketing wise he isn't completely wrong. |
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| I actually agree with him, not with his tone but his sentiment that the apps section is a total let down, and its not the users fault either. Few suggestions. 1. Bring back an app section you can browse and look through. 2. Group apps into genre's, fps,rts,prototype,demo etc.... that way some one clicks on the prototype section they know their looking at peoples dodgy code ideas and not something they consider done. 3. Bring back user ratings to push apps with a higher rating nearer to the top. 4. Possibly have a few forum mods curate the apps section making sure dumb shit does not get to the top of the list in ratings. 5. Have these app secution curators be able to STAR something that puts it onto the front page scroller and change the starred app's every month. It's all about putting your best foot forward, that apps section could and SHOULD have been a major draw for the site and yet its a total mess, and I mean no disrespect to community member who did the update sorry forgot your name, bottom line is mark needs to or should have hired a pro to sort all of this out and not relied on help from us. |
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| Cheaptrick is perfectly right. That's one of the big problems of Monkey and its community (given the many people who I'm sure won't understand the point). Once you discover a product like this, the first things you want to check out IMMEDIATELY are the docs, showcase and community. Those three things can tell you at a glance how healthy a product is, and let you decide whether to bet on it or not. Now, while the community aspect of Monkey can be said to be more or less a point in its favor (at least the forums are active and people reply quickly), the docs are somewhat hidden (not a main menu link) and definitely poor, most of the times without any example, and the showcase is, well... what it is. The thing is, with little it would be possible to improve things a lot. For example, placing the docs link in the main menu, and make them accessible with a friendly URL (since the docs are so poor they don't even get indicized, at least let me be able to access them easily, i.e. docs.monkey-x.com or monkey-x.com/docs). Make the docs a wiki or another form of community-editable content so that everyone can help and share the work necessary, especially with examples. Increase the number of entries shown in the showcase, this way even if there's a lot of crap, users will be able to spot the good entries from the bad by scrolling a little (instead of having to click "next" every two entries, lol). Just show me the damn things! http://screenshotsaturday.com as an (extreme) example, or something like http://www.yoyogames.com/showcase. And place only the good ones on the home (landing) page! |
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| I do recall donkeys ago I said the app section was a bit pap... I left it at that as you have to be careful about posting these things... Be more then 0.5% negative and your automatically classed as the love child of Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussian! :D But yeah, its changed since then and yeah, it's still a bit poo as it literally doesn't really showcase the potential of Monkey! Nowt to do with me though! :P Dabz |
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| Judging something by the looks is pretty common here Sadly, this is the way of the world :( but yeah, he does make a point. Maybe an idea for Monkey 2 to take more control of what is allowed to be published. |
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| I'v said it so many times it's part of the reason I'm pulling away from monkey again, the site is so out of date, out of touch with modern web design or even the accepted norm for a website of this type that it feels like I'm browsing in a time machine, and looking at a site from the 1980's, I know that sounds harsh but its true. Were a website and community for developers and yet there has been so little actual development spent on the site that its actually frighting. But regardless of how many times I or other's bring this up, given the history here I can almost say with 100% certainty that nothing will change, either mark does not have the money to pay a professional web development team to sort this site out or he lacks the motivation to do it, either way its unlikely anything will change, which is a real shame. |
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| Whatever comes form this post, I remember Blitz3D site showing higest rated screenshots of B3D to unlogged users. An approach like this one wouldn't kill us XD And showing them sorted by rating (by default) would be nice too! |
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| showing higest rated screenshots of B3D to unlogged users Great idea for starters! |
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| showing higest rated screenshots of B3D to unlogged users As i was scanning this thread, i was thinking the exact same thing. |
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| I said mark, that would pimp up the page for free. But he dont want it now. |
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| @Cheaptrick If your ability surpasses every user who has made a contribution to the app section, prove it! We can all talk or in this case, type trash! Impress us with your design and coding prowess, please! |
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| A separate section for top apps would be great. But there's nothing wrong with letting everyone showcase what they made in a general section IMO. |
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| I see the Apps section part of the community and not part of the marketing for Monkey. The Apps is a section to see what each other is doing and since Monkey is a small community we need to encourage each other. If you look at New Star Soccer it isnt going to score highly in the graphics department but it is a BAFTA award winning game! |
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| I agree with Cheaptrick about the apps. It has been in my mind since the first apps were submitted. The sad part is that there are good apps and games that are no even being showcase or not even mentioned in the website at all while simple uninteresting games have been at the front of the apps section. I like the way Kongregate does it. When you submit an app, the app is given 30 days(?) on the new section for rating purpose. if the app makes a rate of 3 stars or better after the 30 days then it's allowed visibility in the apps section, otherwise the only way to access it is to search for it by name or a direct link in external websites. I don't know if Mark paid for this website if he did, he was robbed. its a half-ass job from somebody that was supposed to make it better than it originally was. in which IMHO I think it was made worst. Sorry but thats how I feel. |
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| Sorry Therevills I kind of agree with you but not really. This is a business for Mark and everything about it should reflect it. if he is going to have an app section he should have a way for his product to be helped in advertising and a lot of those apps/games are counter productive. |
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I totally agree on this. The first impression is important. Maybe I can throw in some of my app screenshots but all in all I guess I finally have to upload all of them to the app section here?        |
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| I see the Apps section part of the community and not part of the marketing for Monkey A solution could be showing higest rated screenshots of B3D to unlogged users only but logged people get to see it all? |
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| I came to this site looking for monkey xxx but stayed for the popcorn. |
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| I guess you could show only the good apps with the expensive artwork. Or just the expensive art work. I like monkey because anyone can make a game with it. I always thought of the showcase as a place to share with the community and have them score and give you pointers on how to improve your game rather than a show case. The way it is shows that anyone can make a game, even those not extremely talented (like myself). You can make a flashy game with monkey-x. You can make a flashy game with just about every engine available, how flashy it is depends on how much you pay your artists and has nothing to do with the engine at all. I would say to Cheap Trick if you want to see what Monkey X is capable of download the demo and try it - or at least it will show you what you're capable of with Monkey X. |
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| Of course you can make a good looking game with any engine / framework. Or a really bad looking game with the Unreal engine. The problem is that there are many alternatives out there, many of them inferior but at the same time they know how to sell their product. Lot's of money, which could go into the development of Monkey, goes to them instead. It's like a gym membership. Lot's of people sign up and show up once a month / year / life. It's not the tiny group of bodybuilders but the large crowd which makes a business work. |
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| "I like this product, but all of your games are rubbish" Solution : Make the most awesomely awesomest game, ever, and get it slapped all over this website to bring in the punters. Mark's made the language. Now it's up to us to use it. |
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| This site, monkey and games made with it, posted on the app section or not, are not the CheapTrick here..... Don't let the door hit you on the way out. |
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| No wonder this community is shrinking when people are so rude to each other. We all know this website needs major work so lets not bash the new guy who actually comes to forum to vent a little about it, consider that the guy actually has been keeping track of monkey for a while dropping in from time to time, while he may not be actively writing code with it he's still interested enough that he's come back, this time posting about his concerns, he wasn't even all that rude with his post. So rather than showing him the door, why not offer up something constructive like suggestions on how to improve the situation rather than "Thanks, Bye now!" . I used to love this site and its community but it seems the smaller it gets the more hostile it's becoming. |
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| Are we talking about the "apps" section? I think every entry there looks great! While many of them are not AAA quality, a few of them are and that's good enough. I don't know, the whole monkey presentation (The website, forums, docs, everything) screams quality to me. |
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| All that's missing from OP's post is the shilling for a competing product~ But brutally honest, he was, and they were all valid criticisms, even if his reaction may not have been as reasonable. This is a problem with many people, though, and it takes a slick bit of shiny polish to overcome the people who pick at low-hanging fruit such as this site's presentation. LÖVE 2d has a similar target and state of maturity, as far as I can tell it's comparable to MonkeyX for indie devs -- Its forum is small, its wiki documentation isn't too different from our documentation (save for the fact it's a wiki!!), and the website is the most basic 960 sell sheet. So, what's different? Well, Lua is known to modders, for one. The main site doesn't look like it's trying to sell you something, even though it clearly is (even if you don't pay for it!). The wiki is editable, and the documentation is presented in a slightly-more readable format. Everything about the community from the source repo to the docs to the community has a bit of a fresher coat of paint all around. What might help Monkey is a shift in demographic -- this can be done in many different ways, and mx2 seems to be going for the "quality user" way. Attract high quality contributors with a new modern language. One other avenue of expanding the userbase is to increase the number of people wanting to make games in Monkey by lowering the barrier to entry. Mojo2 actually does the opposite of this at the moment compared to Mojo, but it's something that can be overcome with better documentation and more eye-popping games on showcase. There aren't enough high-quality completed projects on the showcase, particularly ones with that "fresh coat of paint" to attract a younger demo. Mark should totally try to get in touch with SlopeOak to get NecroDancer on the front page. Same for 2dark (even though that uses mungo). These projects were made more possible with MonkeyX, they demonstrate its power. Community might benefit from being spun-off from the main page, docs and main showcase. Forums could be linked to a separate site where a pre-built solution portal package can be used. App showcase could utilize a time-decayed voting system not unlike Reddit, to always have "hot" projects on the front page of the community site. Main Monkey homepage should have a hand-picked showcase. Community portal can display hot forum topics on the side, curated news (currently most of us get our news by trolling the forums here!), tutorials, and assets (free/paid products such as art, music, code). Back in the day, when I was involved in Clickteam-related products community, mini blogs were popular before the word "blog" was a thing. They were commonly called devlogs. While it's probably not the best use of resources to host these kinds of things on-site anymore, it should be relatively simple to hook in social media links to a user's profile. Being able to access a user's projects, assets, forum posts, and links to other places they can be found on the web in a pretty and straightforward way would be a boon. Projects could have a news update portion, and a way for other users to be notified on-site when such a certain project's been updated. Same for following a user's posts for assets or tutorials, or a forum thread you're watching. A unified, but concise notification inbox helps draw people in to the "happenings" in the community. I could go on more and more about this, but of course without a proper web developer (and maybe a graphics/interface designer who knows more about today's trends...), none of this is likely to happen ! |
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| Hey there. New user here. Just wanted to say I find the website fine and checking out the apps showed me Monkey X is worth considering. However, it does require a person to use some common sense. I have been developing a long time now and know that graphics can look however you want depending on the art skills of you or your artist. So all I was looking for was fundamental features: can it render graphics? Check. Can it play music and sounds? Check. Can I easily program in it? Check. The rest is up to me. I came here from Unity to assess Monkey X for development of 2D games. And I will also say you probably don't really want Monkey X to be as popular as you are all talking about. What happens is you end up attracting a mass of people who all they are focused on is getting rich quick through game development. We see that all the time over on the Unity forums. This obsession with money, money, money. In contrast, the users here remind me of the good ole days when we created games and other products just for the joy of doing so. Anyway, that is my two cents on it from an "outsiders" point of view. Is there an Introduction forum here where new users can intro themselves and why they are here? |
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| Haha, nicely written! Welcome! Out of curiosity, due you stumbled across my thread over there at the Unity forums comparing the 2d speed of Monkey vs Unity? :D |
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| No I didn't and I will search for it tonight. I wrote a fairly detailed thread over there explaining why I am checking out other dev kits for 2D games: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/do-you-find-unity-makes-game-development-faster-or-slower-easier-or-harder.343112/ |
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| @GarBenjamin: Reading you has been like very welcome fresh air. Thanks |
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| Welcome GarBenjamin! You probably don't really want Monkey X to be as popular as you are all talking about. What happens is you end up attracting a mass of people who all they are focused on is getting rich quick through game development. We see that all the time over on the Unity forums. This obsession with money, money, money. In contrast, the users here remind me of the good ole days when we created games and other products just for the joy of doing so That is a way of looking at it... Monkey can use a bit less negativity though! |
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| Xaron: Out of curiosity, due you stumbled across my thread over there at the Unity forums comparing the 2d speed of Monkey vs Unity? :D I just found your thread on the Unity forums and read through it all. Very interesting and basically seems to be the same conclusion I came to. I don't hate Unity or anything like that. I just think it is way overkill for 2D work. Personally, I find it to make development more convoluted = more time consuming. I miss things like Blitz when I could just code something up in minutes or an hour. Not set around dragging components all around the screen. ;) Playniax: Monkey can use a bit less negativity though! Reading what I wrote I guess that does come across as being negative. Well... honestly I do have a negative view of that part because I remember well people spending hours doing this stuff just for fun. So when I see tons of people reading about Minecraft and Flappy Bird and start pouring in chasing pots of gold it kind of irks me. I will get over it. :) |
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| Hi GarBenjamin. I think I have to correct some possible misunderstanding. I was not talking about you. I think you have a valid point! With the negativity I mean negativity in general! Monkey is much better than giving credit for! |
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| I dont think anyone is really slatting monkey tho its the website a lot of us have issues with, not the product itself. |
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| Monkey is much better than giving credit for! Absolutely. Monkey X is brilliant imho. I wanted to leave but always came back. Now I don't even try to leave anymore :-) I dont think anyone is really slatting monkey tho its the website a lot of us have issues with, not the product itself. Imho some people spend to much energy of thinking thoughts that BRL should do themself. How things are right now seem to work for Mark or he would change it. We should spend our time creating games and use the tool. Create the games we wanna create. Or like us support devs, create the tools for you people here. |
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| some people spend to much energy of thinking thoughts that BRL should do themself Could not have said it better myself. |
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| GarBenjamin- Your background and attitude are a perfect fit for the Monkey develosphere. I'm expecting big things from you in the future ! MikeHart- Glad you're back for good. :) |
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| tiresius: Your background and attitude are a perfect fit for the Monkey develosphere. I'm expecting big things from you in the future ! Thanks. This place definitely reminds me of the good ole days of Blitz and even back on the Amiga in some ways. Those are great things! I've just wrapped up a simple Sprite System today and posted the new demo. I also explained that at this point I have decided it is better for me to move on to the other dev tools on my list. Details are in the summary of my first week with Monkey X. |
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| Nice read, good job! Let us know how Monkey compares to the others when done! |
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| @Nobuyuki I could go on more and more about this, but of course without a proper web developer (and maybe a graphics/interface designer who knows more about today's trends...), none of this is likely to happen ! I'm a full stack web developer by day, also focused on UX. If help is needed, count me in! |
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| I'm a full stack web developer by day, also focused on UX. If help is needed, count me in! I'd also be willing to pitch in a hand if/where I'm able. I just saw something interesting today though that might make all of that separate site-building unnecessary.... Apparently, the Steam community has almost all of the features I mentioned already built into their product portal system and is already being used by at least one of MonkeyX's "competitors". Please read the thread if you guys are interested in expanding the MonkeyX community! http://www.monkey-x.com/Community/posts.php?topic=10002 |
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| Playniax: Nice read, good job! Let us know how Monkey compares to the others when done! Just thought I'd let you know I have finished my initial exploration. I actually ended up doing some developmental testing in 3 different languages in the end although I spent a lot of time digging into the docs of many others before I was able to throw them out for one reason or another. The two alternatives I will be comparing against Unity are Monkey X and HaxeFlixel: http://garsgames.com/blog/testing-2d-game-development-systems/ The nice thing about this is that in the end I'll finally know which, if any, is the fastest way for me to develop 2D games. Instead of it always being in the back of my mind wondering if I am just "swimming up stream" so to speak. Hopefully, I will get started prototyping tomorrow night. |
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| @GarBenjamin: Is the development of GLB still discontinued? Back in 2010 I try to use it too. But the attitude on that community plus its toolset compiling the same code one day fine and then the next day it refused too till I created a new project, was not convincing me. |
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| @MikeHart: As far as I know GLB is still being updated and only the HTML5 piece has not been worked on. This seems to be due to focus being placed on support for mobile and desktop. The community also releases modules and seems like a good number of mobile apps have been made with GLB. I am tempted to see what it would take to add support for HTML5 with CanvasEngine or WebAssembly although I know very little about the latter. If only I had more time I'd definitely at least get the project started in the hope some of their users would join in. To me these things Monkey X, HaxeFlixel, GLBasic are all 6 one way half a dozen the other. I like to see options. The more the better for developers. |
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| Just popping in to give a brief update. Not sure if I mentioned it or not but I decided to develop the initial version of my little test game project in GLBasic. The reason is because this allowed me to get the game design nailed and create the graphics and tile map stage design and so forth all sorted out. I spent 34 hours on this project in GLBasic. This game executable and full GLBasic source plus source for my TiledMapLoader and TileMapRender are available on my GLBasic Games Source & Binaries page. I am taking a break for a day or two and then will begin recreating the game in Unity, Monkey X and HaxeFlixel. Development of these three versions will occur simultaneously and I will be tracking the time required for each implementation. Basically I am porting the game from GLBasic. Once I complete this experiment I will release my Monkey X and HaxeFlixel source into the public domain as well. I might release the Unity3D source too although there is a lot more out there for Unity already. Alright that's it for now. |
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| Thank you for this post |
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| If there's one thing worse than forum spam... it has to be forum *necro* spam. |
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| At least it is some activity on the forum :) |
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