3 Wiz's For Sale

[xteraco]

I've decided to give up on the whole open hand-held scene. I bought them because I thought they would encourage me to code more, when in fact they have actually discouraged me. The turnaround time on the feedback that I thought I would get from the Pandora Angst compo has been a nightmare. For all I know only 2 or 3 people have seen my game, and not one of them gave me any criticism. It just hasn't been rewarding.

The second thing is the community. The blind love for a console that doesn't exist is holding some back from making the WiZ better. And frankly hearing about it all of the time is annoying. All I hear is "If its slow on the WiZ, the Pandora must be the answer." which is a load of bull. Nobody seems genuinely passionate about the WiZ. Its just a stop gap until the Pandora comes out.

Third. I don't think ports are all that cool. I also don't think emulators are very cool. I was hoping to see tons of real games. Original games. Not openBOR remixed 1,000,000,000 times. Not Doom, or Quake, or the game you made for the gp2x a million years ago. Something fresh. There are some examples of this, but not as many as I thought there would be.

So anyway, 2 of them have only been started once, to make sure they weren't DOA , and the other was used to test a few games, and to develop UDS. The two new ones come in their original box. $110.00 each, or $300 for the lot. Send me a money order and I'll send the consoles. If you're worried about my trustworthiness check my ebay profile and you will see nothing but good ratings.

PM me and I will give you my address and any other details.

-xteraco

 

[zaephen]

I've decided to give up on the whole open hand-held scene. I bought them because I thought they would encourage me to code more, when in fact they have actually discouraged me. The turnaround time on the feedback that I thought I would get from the Pandora Angst compo has been a nightmare. For all I know only 2 or 3 people have seen my game, and not one of them gave me any criticism. It just hasn't been rewarding.

The second thing is the community. The blind love for a console that doesn't exist is holding some back from making the WiZ better. And frankly hearing about it all of the time is annoying. All I hear is "If its slow on the WiZ, the Pandora must be the answer." which is a load of bull. Nobody seems genuinely passionate about the WiZ. Its just a stop gap until the Pandora comes out.

Third. I don't think ports are all that cool. I also don't think emulators are very cool. I was hoping to see tons of real games. Original games. Not openBOR remixed 1,000,000,000 times. Not Doom, or Quake, or the game you made for the gp2x a million years ago. Something fresh. There are some examples of this, but not as many as I thought there would be.

Sorry to hear you're getting rid of your Wizzes. I do however, agree with every word .
I feel the Wiz is a great little handheld and a true handheld gaming device. To me, the Pandora is something else. It can play games but it's not really a handheld gaming device in the same vein as the Wiz or a DS or PSP for that matter.
I too hate the way developers see bigger better hardware as the answer to coding problems. That's the biggest reason I left PC gaming years and years ago. On consoles, you have a target and the developers code for that target and make things work. They have no choice. On the PC, if they are having problems they just up the system requirements .

I've decided today to get a DS again. I'm keeping my Wiz even though I have some issues with support/community. I think it's a wonderful little handheld with an awesome screen and great controls.
I love most of the emulators (although I'd like to see PocketSNES run just a bit faster). I'd prefer to see more great original games and less emulated stuff though.
Ruckage's Ruck-Man, Animatch and Snakes on Dope are examples of how great homebrew games can be .

 

[torpor]

A: The Pandora hasn't even been released yet - why would you get feedback from the Pandora Angst competition yet, if nobody has played it yet, on their Pandoras?

B: Sell two Wiz's, keep one, and keep programming. If you build more games, you'll get far more feedback.

 

[Alex.]

I think I gave you useful feedback. Add a compass to the truck to make the game less chaotic. Polish up the upgrade interface. Fix the bug where a non-existing menu item is highlighted when you first start the game. Not many people bother to leave as much as a little thank you note though, which seems like a downgrade from the GP2X days only a year or two back.

As for lack of new stuff, I don't know about others, but I'm personally done with small 2-bit puzzle-type games. I'm working on larger projects, and those take a lot more time to get running, and they're done when they're done, no pressure.

Anyway, I think you should code for yourself and for the fun of it in the first place. Usually when you do, people will eventually notice your work, just keep building on what you have.

 

[gruso]

A: The Pandora hasn't even been released yet - why would you get feedback from the Pandora Angst competition yet, if nobody has played it yet, on their Pandoras?

The comp was open to GP32, GP2X, Wiz and Dingoo - not Pandora. It was intended as a distraction from the "Pandora Angst". Granted the results are taking their time to come in, but hey, things can happen slowly when they're being done for a bit of fun on the side by people with busy lives. I think it's all being taken a little too seriously, but then again, I've never coded something and then put it out there to be judged so I can't claim to know how any of the entrants feel about it.

Thing is, I'd love to give some feedback on the entries (there are some absolute gems in there) but because I was a judge I don't feel it's appropriate to comment until the final results are out.

 

[iprice]

A: The Pandora hasn't even been released yet - why would you get feedback from the Pandora Angst competition yet, if nobody has played it yet, on their Pandoras?

B: Sell two Wiz's, keep one, and keep programming. If you build more games, you'll get far more feedback.

A: The games weren't developed for Pandora. The Pandora Angst comp was arranged to suply games for Wiz, GP2X, DINGUU and GP32 BEFORE the Pandora arrives - it was a way to kill time waitng, productively.

B: I wish this was true. Lack of feedback is a real issue (I had this discussion with you before Torpor ) Homebrew never gets the praise or thanks that emulation does and that's a real shame.



xteraco: Maybe recognition for your efforts will arive once the judges results come in - who knows when that will be though.

I totally understand where you are coming from (I've developed loads for the Wiz and GP2X and know that lack of feedback is a very real and demotivating issue), but I agree with Torpor's second point - sell two Wiz's and still keep developing for the remaining one. The Wiz scene will continue after the Pandora arrives and there will always be a need for new apps for it. Don't give up just yet. I've got a Pandora on order, but I'll continue devving for Wiz and GP2X. Someone's got to

[EDIT AFTER READING GRUSO'S POST]

Granted the results are taking their time to come in, but hey, things can happen slowly when they're being done for a bit of fun on the side by people with busy lives.

And of course the developers had six weeks of their lives to spare for the comp in the first place...

 

[crow_riot]

i think you should release your game on your own: upload it to the archives, make a news post within the wiz news forum. then you probably will get more feedback. not everybody is reading every single entry of the forum, so there might be some people who have missed the 'the entry page is online' thread ... and not everyone who has got a wiz is registered here, but almost every webpage that deals with the wiz in a way has included the openhandhelds.org rss feed ...

i'd also say keep one wiz. mostly it's fun to program on it...

tbh if you give up that fast you won't get very far. if you want to learn, keep coding. if you didn't get what you desire with this entry, just make another game, without the stress of a coding competition in mind...

 

[Sphinxter]

A lot of people jump in developing games with the goal of global adulation and praise fully expecting the world to roll over and kiss their ass for the effort. Rarely works out that way. It's a pretty thankless hobby in reality receiving a lot more grief than gratitude. To be happy at it you have to do it purely for the love of the game and enjoyment of seeing your ideas become reality. Forget the applause and hardware, fans are fickle and platforms come and go. GPH made their bed and shat in it and can't blame anybody else for whatever loss of a community they could not have given a shit less about in the first place.

 

[xteraco]

A lot of people jump in developing games with the goal of global adulation and praise fully expecting the world to roll over and kiss their ass for the effort. Rarely works out that way. It's a pretty thankless hobby in reality receiving a lot more grief than gratitude. To be happy at it you have to do it purely for the love of the game and enjoyment of seeing your ideas become reality. Forget the applause and hardware, fans are fickle and platforms come and go. GPH made their bed and shat in it and can't blame anybody else for whatever loss of a community they could not have given a shit less about in the first place.

Wow, someone's coming off a bit rude. I'm not looking for "adulation" or praise or people to kiss my ass. I've been programming for 6 years (one of which was pro) so I'm not new either. Maybe you should go back and actually READ what I said. I'm looking for FEEDBACK not praise.

I'd kill for a pier review/code review. Or to work in a team. I'm just looking for some positive constructive interaction. By positive I don't mean "oh this is the greatest, but can you add xyz". It could be "this game sucks, its all crap, and its because the physics blow" and I would consider that as positive and constructive because, although they don't like it they are telling me how it could be better.

As for what everyone else had to say. Yes maybe I am giving up too quickly. I don't know really. It is EXTREMELY fun to write games for. I was grinning ear to ear when I finally had the game up and running. To see it running on a hand-held was very neat and rewarding. But the joy of it all quickly died when I uploaded it to the web and didn't hear anything about it for quite some time. If I spent the same amount of time building up the engine on my scooter, I could still go out and enjoy it. And in fact, I do have a scooter that is built up quite a bit, and almost every day I take it out, people actually talk to me about it.

Maybe I should hang on to my WiZ (at least one) and see if I can find something to code that I can appreciate more, and that isn't written for some compo. But that still might not get me the interaction I'm looking for. *sigh* I just don't know. Maybe I'm just crazy! :rolleyes:

 

[ledow]

Decent user communities that feedback to their authors are rare. Look at most of the projects on Sourceforge or Freshmeat - they barely get any user interaction at all, even in they are in the thousands of downloads (and even the big projects - have a look at how many interactions per download they get).

It's a mistake made by a lot of programmers to think "People will do this for me" whether that's constructive feedback, documentation, new levels / content, bug-reporting, debugging, whatever. Even Open Source communities suffer from this "the users will do it" problem - rarely do you get *any* interaction at all, and when you do, it's from people who aren't your average user (and, although useful, it means that they usually have the same skills as you and are also unwilling/unable to do certain things).

One of my GP2X projects has had *thousands* of downloads. It was ported, unchanged except for one line, to the Dingoo. It's been ported to the Wiz and other systems. Guess how many comments / emails I get about it? I occasionally get an email or private message (as in literally once every six months or so). Some of the port authors didn't bother to ask me and just ported it (fair enough, they can do that but it's a bit impolite), I got a handful of serious suggestions in total for *ALL* the beta etc. versions that I put out, I asked around for volunteers for beta-testing after it was popular and got about 4, only one of whom actually loaded it up and did anything, and they didn't find anything major wrong except for a few personal bugbears of their own (yet I found several major bugs just playing the games on the train the next day). And the author of the project that it's based on gets, apparently, dozens of emails asking about the GP2X version and when will he make one etc. and he points them to my website.

Users just want to download and play. They don't want to debug, suggest, document or anything else and when they do they are rarely aware of the scale of the tasks they are asking for. If that makes programming no longer any fun for you, then don't do it. But if you go in with *zero* expectations then every comment and email puts a smile on your face. Program for yourself, not other people. When you program for other people, you end up splitting your loyalties between your vision for the project and your users and rarely do the users actually *care* about the project, and certainly rarely enough to even write a decent description of a bug / feature.

For me, the act of programming itself is fun. Users provide a tiny confirmation that it's a worthwhile project but otherwise they only provide a very, very small percentage of the ideas / bugfixes / patches etc. that the project sees. And the annoying thing is that if you change the project in ways they don't like, you start losing downloads but hardly anyone will tell you why.

Feedback is always good for a programmer, but don't expect it, don't live for it, don't rely on it. Program for yourself, get it how you like it and then move on. If public demand knocks down your door and demands a bugfix/feature/sequel, then do it if you want. But never *expect* that, especially not for homebrew projects on a niche console. If I'm honest, when I first had my GP2X, I spent months downloading games and rarely fed back to anyone about them. Since then, the enthusiasm has died down a little and I haven't downloaded anything in months and months. My download stats for my games say the same thing about other people too. I know Wiz is "newer" but still, it's a niche line and I'd never heard of the Pandora Angst thing (probably because it has the word Pandora in it, so I would have just ignored it) and I've only seen the entries on there coming up elsewhere (e.g. the front page, the archives, etc.).

Post your emails/comments/suggestions vs. downloads ratio - if it's more than 1 in 1000, I'll be impressed, but I imagine it'd be a LOT less than that for just about every project that's not hugely popular.

 

[bourbon]

Not many people bother to leave as much as a little thank you note though, which seems like a downgrade from the GP2X days only a year or two back.

A down grade..... back in the gp32 days we used to leave books of feedback.And where did the gp32 emot go :huh: --> gp32_console

Anyways you should keep one maybe people will come out of the wood work again, especially if you make your stuff cross platform(like say the pandora )

 

[u9i]

Hi xteraco, i completely agree with everything you say. Personally i have chosen not to discuss the games of the competition until judging is finished because i dont want to influence. But it is starting to take too much time and i too want my game to be seen.

I hope you hang in there. Maybe we can get a dialog going on how we improve feedback. God knows that is also what i live for. At the very least we should all make an effort to provide feedback to each other.

I would like to say, i loved the idea of the undead delivery service and i had a big smile on my face while downloading. (big racing game fan here). But you should continue working on it. Make the upgrade system. More and (if possible) bigger levels, where pickups and deliveries make sense, like "bring this package to the hospital" or something. An indicator of where you have to go would be nice, and a tiny, but probably the most important and most difficult to explain: The orientation of the car is off by half of the sprite intervals, if that makes sense. When the car is facing straight up, the car can be moving either straight up, or up and a little to one side. But it can never move to the other side, if i turn enough, the sprite changes right away. It gives a bad feel to the controls because the car feels like it is not oriented correctly... did that make sense?

Off topic: I would like to take this opportunity to thank you iprice for b'lox. It is one of my favorite games and very well made. Top notch pro quality all the way Keep up the good work!

(appologies if post difficult to read, i'm writing on iphone)

/Uni

 

[iprice]

Thanks u9i - that really does mean a lot to me

Users really do underestimate/not understand how important feedback is to devs, but the lack of it really is something we should get used to, as getting het up about lack of it is a waste of energy - and nobody cares about that.

 

[Gruntfuggly]

I can't really speak for the Wiz community - the Wiz sort of passed me by, but GP32 and GP2X games got plenty of feedback.

As for feedback, I'm surprised Alex didn't mention SqDef (modesty I guess) - there were loads of threads dedicated to it - the game was virtually developed in response to feedback.

I guess the message is that if you've got the right game and you get enough people excited you'll get plenty of feedback.

 

[Orion4874]

Yeah, I totally agree with you xteraco, but I hope you do decide to stick around. While I do have my preorder in for a Pandora I would never just throw my Wiz in a drawer and forget about it. I love this handheld and giving up on it would be a complete waste. Now while some devs have openly said that once the Pandora is released their days with the Wiz are over, i'm hoping they are not in the majority. I mean, we did pay the better part of $200 for these things, why just toss it aside?

I did, and still do, play UDS. After some minor problems getting it going in the beginning I have thoroughly enjoyed it! Alex and u91 has some great suggestions for it though.

Well, whatever your decision turns out to be I thank you and hope to see future releases!!!

 

[Hooka]

I do agree that we don't give homebrew authors enough credit around here, and I'm sorry that you feel this way xteraco! On that note, for personal feedback, I'd say I really would've liked to see the ability to reverse (if there was I couldn't figure it out and I played for awhile). Other than that, having a little bit of drift and the ability to sideswipe the zombies without losing speed would've added to the fun immensly! Sorry I didn't drop this feedback for you sooner, I'm just busy as always, trying to get my life in order and program my own little games too

In general, people always seem to put emphasis on the emulators in this scene, and truth be told we do have some amazing emus for the power of the handhelds covered here, but everytime I get a newer better emu handheld I always go back to my old handhelds (like my GP32) and wipe all emu's and such off and replace everything with my favorite homebrew, commercial games and other strange programs (My GP32 gets the most play with Lacuna, Numo, Jump 'n Bump over RF adaptors, using it as a usb joystick cause I love the feel of that handheld, and many other non-emulated things). Some of us may get the systems for emulation originally (hence why such noise on the forums about it), but we keep them for the beautiful homebrew

As a final note, I love the homebrew scene embedded in these systems and community. I know it's not that glamorous or rewarding at times, but just shutting down because nobody is patting you on the back is like admitting that you didn't care about your game in the first place. My teachers @ game design school always told me to bend over backwards to please your intended audience, I disagree with this alot of the time! I say, make something fun, make something you like, make something new and exciting and finally make something that will push your limits and make YOU proud of it! If you make games to try and please and get feedback from others, you'll just wind up getting discouraged when everyone within a 100 mile radius doesn't pat you on the back. When I make games, I make them with the intent of making them so exhilirating and fun that I have trouble getting myself to work on them because I try and test something and then I'm playing it for the next 4 hours straight! *shrugs* but that's just me! [/rant]

 

[torpor]

Just keep one Wiz, keep developing nice games for it, and encourage your users to give you feedback by popping up a nag-screen or something every now and then, or putting a big shout-out to your users in the splash screen, or some such thing .. make it possible to get in-game upgrades by typing in some random code, and only tell that code to people who have emailed you, and so on .. the point is, get creative to solve your problem, not destructive. Your next few games might be amazing - you can't judge the scene on the basis of just a few releases with little feedback. Most Wiz users are pretty isolated, I imagine, and if there are suddenly great games out there being made by enthusiastic developers, this is the only way for that isolation to be solved ..

 

[kasi]

I also think you will get more feedback if you post it in the forum / archive.
The game-idea really looks nice.
However, I now installed it but it won't run. I have got FW 1.1.0, maybe 1.2.1 is required?
If you are interested, I can put it in a wrapper script and send you the output.

Provided, you keep the One.

cu

Kasi

 

[Mr 2X]

@kasi: Try this http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/51639-gp32gp2xwizdingoo-coding-competition/page__view__findpost__p__837727

 

[xteraco]

Thanks all for the feedback, and ideas... About how to get more feedback. lol

I've decided I'll keep the WiZ. I just need to learn how to get more feedback, all is not lost. I love the idea to put a nag in the game, and the idea about getting codes for providing feedback. Another idea I had, was to just ask. Create a "what do you think of xyz" thread. So here's what I plan to do.

1. Put UDS on the archive. If it DQ's me from the compo, boo hoo.
2. Put the source up.
3. Revamp my website, and add a spot for criticism for each project.
4. Add a nag/code system in future projects
5. Ask for feedback on the boards here instead of just calling it quits.

From this I learned that I need to be careful about what projects I start. Its got to be something that will be rewarding for me after its completed.