Hi Philip,
I'm not sure how I might have worded things better, but my comments in
my news letter weren't intended to be a put down or to discredit BGT.
What I was attempting to do is point out what limitations exist in BGT
and point out that Open G3D is being written to address some of those
specific limitations. That's not intended to say BGT is a bad tool,
which it is not, but that Open G3D will have some features lacking in BGT.
For example, open source verses a commercial engine.
BGT is a commercial product, and that's fine. However, because it is a
commercial product, is closed source, I can't just download the source
code for the engine and rewrite the code for input, audio, networking,
etc so BGT could be compiled on Linux. I suspect 99% of your customers
don't care about that, but it is still a limitation inherent in
commercial closed source products because the developer pays for the
software but can not modify it if and when they want to.
With Open G3D by making it open source I hope to promote the development
of more cross-platform games, and it also offers the ability for the end
user to modify the engine itself as needed. If a developer wants to
write a wrapper for FMOD Ex and use that for 3d audio instead of Pygame
Mixer he or she can do it. If a developer would rather use PySFML
instead of Pygame all they have to do is rewrite the appropriate
modules. Its not a case of it being better or worse than BGT, but taking
a more open source approach to the design and how that might benefit the
developer.
One way it benefits the developer is cost. If someone wants to write
free games with BGT they can either redistribute their *.bgt scripts for
free or pay $29.95 to compile them. Since I'm taking an open source
approach and tools like py2exe and pyinstaller are free they can bundle
their games into an executable for free. That's not saying BGT isn't
fairly priced, but why pay $29 if there is an open source product that
offers similar features?
Another way it benefits end users is everything will be available to
them. I believe BGT requires a Pro license for joystick support. Well,
when I add that to the Open G3D engine it is going to be present
regardless of free or commercial use. Maybe that doesn't matter to some
developers, but it might matter to someone else.
Cheers!
On 4/1/2012 2:31 PM, Philip Bennefall wrote:
Hi Thomas,
What you say makes sense. I realize that cross platform support is
important to you personally, I have just been getting the impression
that you have been attempting to somehow discredit the general
usefulness of the engine on this basis alone. Your last newsletter for
instance has many such remarks that, to me, were quite unnecessary in
terms of the tone. I realize that it may not have been meant that way,
but it gives me the impression that you felt it necessary to paint BGT
in a rather negative light in order to stress the importance of your
own product. Then this message came on top of that last night and so I
wanted to say something. The fact that BGT is recommended is, of
course, something that I'm personally very happy about but it should
not hinder you in any way from making a competing product with cross
platform support and then letting people decide what to use.
I will be the first to say that BGT is not suitable if you want
support for Linux, Mac or mobile devices, but the fact remains that
Windows still has the absolute majority of the blind market. What I'm
saying is, I'm sure we can develop our engines simultaneously and help
one another by recommending our respective products to users depending
on their requirements, rather than work against one another and try to
bring the other package down on whatever grounds. I for one think that
it is a great initiative that you're taking with your engine, and will
not hesitate to recommend it to people should cross platform be an
important factor for them. And this is despite the fact that we're
competing! Smile.
Kind regards,
Philip Bennefall
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