On 7/15/10, Philip Bennefall <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Thomas, > > Right, this means that our situations are pretty much the same, I don't hire > sound designers, but I will definitely buy code snippets and sometimes > larger code libraries from programmers more experienced in a particular > field than I am, and the same goes for music. > > having said that, if you wanted to buy the BGT engine at some point I would > definitely charge you the regular lite/pro prices. > > An open source game engine is certainly a good idea, and I wish you the best > of luck with that project. > > Kind regards, > > Philip Bennefall > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Thomas Ward" <[email protected]> > To: "Gamers Discussion list" <[email protected]> > Sent: Friday, July 16, 2010 1:36 AM > Subject: Re: [Audyssey] BGT - new pricing structure and > pre-orderingavailable! > > > Hi Philip, > Yes, that is the case. USA Games is a business, but is privately owned > by me and I am owner, developer, and treasurer all in one. My partner, > if you want to call her that is my wife, which will occasionally > answer sales questions, send product keys, whatever but her income > and my income from the games is the same, but there is no question > that the business is really mine. Also, like you, I higher people to > do certain aspects of the software development like a composer for the > music, a sound company to create/produce game sounds, maybe a voice > actor for voice work, etc. They don’t work for USA games directly, but > are hired on for a specific job or aspect of development like what you > have done for Streemway etc. > As for cross-platform support I completely understand as I have the > same conclusions as far as supporting Mac or Linux commercially goes. > However, as you might have seen from my post earlier after I’m done > with Mysteries of the Ancients I’d like to create an open source > version of my Genesis Engine, Open G3D, that the community can use to > produce games for Mac, Linux, Windows, whatever. I’m not sure on the > licensing details, but this version of the engine would basically be > intended for freeware and shareware games and wouldn’t be intended for > big commercial projects the way BGT or Genesis 3D would be. USA > Games is here to make commercial games so Linux and Mac would be an > extra expense in producing, and I’m not looking at commercial games > for those platforms either. Still it would be nice to have something > available for those platforms as there are some VI users for Mac and > Linux that would certainly appreciate some games including myself. > However, I’ve done some game development on the Linux side and it is a > decent game development platform if you use things like OpenGL, > OpenAL, etc. However, there are still some game features like force > feedback controllers that aren’t yet supported by SDL and that is a > bit of a drawback. The other thing is that on Linux the default voice > is ESpeak and that is no better than Microsoft Sam. I can’t stand the > voice, and to get decent TTS support you have to buy and support > something like AT&T Natural Voices, Dectalk, or the Cepstral Swift > engine which all have their own individual APIs. Speech-Dispatcher > doesn’t yet support commercial TTS engines which means a game > developer would have to write his or her own wrapper library for the > various commercial engines, and own the development kits for each to > do it properly. That is without a doubt a serious drawback to creating > a commercial engine for Linux.I personally have a copy of Cepstral > Callie and the Dectalk software for Linux and I could give such a > project a start, but I don’t have the AT&T SDK nor the Eloquence SDK > so obviously my Sapi-like wrapper library would be incomplete. It > would cost more time and money than it is worth for me to invest in > all the various development kits to support the commercial engines > which is why Speech-Dispatcher doesn’t support something like > Eloquence for Linux. I think the Eloquence SDK is $300 or something > like that which is almost the price of BGT Pro, and I doubt I could > get my investment back selling to the small community of VI Linux > users at this time. So the answer is to create a free and open source > engine that wraps the open source game APIs, perhaps ESpeak for TTS if > desired, and allows a developer to create games for Mac or Linux > without the developer such as myself spending a lot of money trying to > create and market a commercial engine. > > Smile. > > > > On 7/15/10, Philip Bennefall <[email protected]> wrote: >> Hi Thomas, >> >> I'm glad to hear that you like the new pricing structure. I decided to >> make >> it Windows only for now, because my impression is that the majority of >> blind >> gamers are using Windows. Thus, porting to Mac or Unix at this point would >> probably be just an expense rather than a profit. In a few years, we'll >> see, >> but I will be sticking with Windows for the time being. >> >> As for the company license, I haven't quite defined that part yet. >> Blastbay >> Studios is a registered business but it's still run by a single >> individual, >> much the same as with USA Games if I'm not mistaken. Thus, it wouldn't >> make >> sense for me to charge you for a full site license if you do decide to >> order >> BGT. I'll have to leave this question open for the time being, but if you >> wish to order it you'd be paying the same price as everyone else. If you >> had >> a larger business with several staff members, that'd be different. >> >> Kind regards, >> >> Philip Bennefall > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to > [email protected]. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to [email protected]. > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > Internal Virus Database is out of date. > Checked by AVG - www.avg.com > Version: 8.5.432 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/2662 - Release Date: 02/01/10 > 12:37:00 > > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to > [email protected]. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to [email protected]. >
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