Small amount of money support for APPS PORTER making ports for OP - Poll

[Wrath Of Khan]

Well i think its quite acceptable to charge for a new game or app but that feature isnt in the the repo or pandora apps yet.


As regards to paying in advance for software i would have to trust the developer or see prior work they had done.


I think though that a Preorder system for a commercial game would be the way to go.It would have to be well advertised to the pandora community though.

 

[Pickle]

This is really complex thing. For example.. atari800 emulator which is developed by many people right now. Who should i support by donation. Original author [that not maintain emulator anymore] or someone else from a team, if someone else then who i should choose?.. there is a quastion: how the team will share the donation? How to slice 1$ donation on whole team

I dont think its that complex, contact the lead of the project and determine if they will accept the donation. Then leave it up to them for how to handle it.

 

[Morn]

Now a normal user might see these 2 works and have no clue what it took. All they know is fheroes2 was their favorite childhood game so they will praise and donate to the releaser and who cares what the heck lugaru is. But from a technical view one can justify that the 'port' work was more involved so it deserved the donations.


So the way the donation system works by picking winners and losers can be highly discouraging to developers.

I see your point, but that's not something porting specific. It's just how donations work. It's just a whim of the user not a cometee which would evaluate effort put in every app/port.


BTW StreaK, I promess you few bucks donation if you compile OpenLiero for Pandora. I could also offer a botle of vodka for Gliptic next time he visits Poland So the doesn't feel unappreciated.

 

[StreaK]

Now a normal user might see these 2 works and have no clue what it took. All they know is fheroes2 was their favorite childhood game so they will praise and donate to the releaser and who cares what the heck lugaru is. But from a technical view one can justify that the 'port' work was more involved so it deserved the donations.


So the way the donation system works by picking winners and losers can be highly discouraging to developers.

I see your point, but that's not something porting specific. It's just how donations work. It's just a whim of the user not a cometee which would evaluate effort put in every app/port.


BTW StreaK, I promess you few bucks donation if you compile OpenLiero for Pandora. I could also offer a botle of vodka for Gliptic next time he visits Poland So the doesn't feel unappreciated.

I love liero as well , and hey.. Morn.. we have it already ported [OpenLieroX] for OP. I think it is on repo somewhere..

 

[ZXDunny]

Once upon a time, ZodTTD announced that he had a full-speed, working port of GPSP for the GP2X. Having just lost my GBA-SP, this was wonderful news. Thing is, it was only available to people who donated - so I donated.

I NEVER said, that my ports will be released ONLY FOR PEOPLE who DONATES. Please dont make missinterpretation here. I only said that donators will get ports quicker than non-donators, which is fair from my side, since all ports will be release for free after a month..

I never said that you said that. But anyway - I'll reiterate:


I (and I suspect, a great many people here) will not donate until I've tried the app/game/emulator/whatever in question. When I try it out, I assess not only the quality of the build, but also the apparent amount of work needed to get it to the state it's in. If it runs in a window and has no need to, I won't donate. If it ignores the Pandora control set (uses ESC to exit, requires the use of ENTER to select a menu item instead of A/B/X/Y or other lazy control issues such as relying on a nub being a mouse rather than reading the nub directly), if it requires the use of Zenity scripts to set up every damned time you run it, if it writes to NAND, if it's not in a PND... you get the idea...


If those above criteria are not met then I will not donate. To test that, I need to use it before I donate. If it does meet those criteria then I certainly would donate a few quid for the games, apps and emulators that I want - no question.


After the huge amount of lazy ports ("recompiles") the Pandora has suffered, I suspect that quite a lot of the community will feel the same way - especially those that fell foul of ZodTTD.


D.

 

[lordbobjones]

I will give comment without a sermon...


For those who port games / apps / stuff I use, hell yes I would donate. Nuff said. The work is worthy of a wage.

 

[Rockthesmurf]

Hi there,


This thread has some interest to me, as I work (and co-founded) for a relatively small games development studio in Chester, Cheshire, UK at the start of this year called Paw Print Games. Our first title, KAMI RETRO has been released on iPhone, iPad, Android (phones and tablets), WebOS (again phones and tablets) and we are in talks about adding a couple of other platforms at the moment. The iPhone and iPad versions received Apple's coveted AppStore Game of the Week award, the Android version was featured by Google on the market place, HP reached out to us and made as a launch partner for the TouchPad. The game itself has taken about six months to make, with three people working full time. We put a lot in to it, and it has gained a lot of interest and critical acclaim.


My role in Paw Print Games is technical director, and I have had a long interest with indie development (GP32, Zodiac, Pandora). Even though we are a small company, we have legal issues to deal with, publishers (for some platforms), contracts regarding the game, etc. but I am keen to try and release it on Pandora. To that note, I have spent a chunk of time making a port for Pandora, with pixel perfect assets, optimizations so it runs fast, has nice visuals and so on. There are currently some input lag issues which I am trying to work out (although to be honest the issues seem to be at a lower level than I can do much about at the moment, but I digress).


I'd like to see some money come in from this project. Over the years I have enjoyed a bunch of free software for GP32/Zodiac/Pandora, I have also paid for a bunch of things (on GP32 and Zodiac, not on Pandora so far, but then again my Pandora is in repair at the moment, haven't had much time to really use it in a working state). I have not been too sure about the best way to try and monetize on the Pandora platform (wait for repo to have a pay for download system, rely on a donate button, have my own site where people can buy the game, some more exotic system?). I did wonder about having the donate button on the repo, putting out a press release for the game, and then having a publicly visible website that shows the number of downloads and the amount of revenue generated. That could then be balanced against the time and effort put into getting high quality titles onto the Pandora, so everyone can see how well donations really work, and how feasible it is for the Pandora to be targeted by slightly larger development teams.


Paw Print Games has since secured a contract for our next main title, due out in Q1 of 2012, we have a few other smaller projects that are also being worked on, and again I would love to be in a situation where I can fight my case and get a Pandora SKU of these future titles. But it is tricky, if it was something done purely in my spare time, maybe a simple thank you would be enough, but when we are running a company, paying wages, paying running costs, paying freelance workers, etc. we really do have to consider the financial implications.


So, anyway, I thought I'd just post to let people know about me/Paw Print Games and see if anyone has any strong views about this. Clearly money can be quite a touchy subject, lots of strong views etc. but I'll be interested to hear what peoples thoughts are, and whether there is a good solution for us to bring titles to Pandora.


Steve

 

[milkshake]

ah you finally anounced it there is a thread over at GP32x forums where black curtain studios also wants to release a game see that thread for current possible solutions, although ideally they would be some sort of offical payment system.

 

[Pickle]

Hi Steve,


I dont think the donation system always works for commercial type products, for instance I was involved in the group that released giana/sqrxz and they have publically said they would except donations (the games are freeware). The results were and have been pretty low. Since you intend to rely on this I dont think its good idea, unless your prepared to take the risk of no generated revenue. (That where these ideas of beta versions or special perks come in to 'motivate' the user to donate).


One alternative that seems to be taking off for indie projects is pay what you want. But like you said you would have to provide your own market site to purchase the software.


Some thoughts.

 

[milkshake]

Also I was speaking with sebt3 about possible lagg/issue on touchscreen input and he thinks its likely not the linux driver, maybe have a word with a few people in IRC when you get time.

 

[Neelix]

I've actually given some thought to how commercial software distribution could work for the pandora. The most obvious thing that comes to my mind is to mimic the existing game engine releases. Put the game engine up in the repo, sans game data or better yet with a limited but playable demo, and have a link in the description for where to purchase the full game data, which can then be dropped in the appdata folder.


The other thought that comes to mind is that as long as you have an accessible downloads/purchase page as Moxie was saying earlier, you could then link that from the wiki, which would at least give you some exposure in the community.


As long as its clearly marked as commercial software, I doubt anyone would have any problems with either method.


- Neelix

 

[moxie]

Hi Steve!


I believe that when you have (as you seem to have) a finished product, developed by you, you won't find the issue of money being an issue The strong feelings generated in this thread mostly stems from 1) Money in connection with (more or less) quick ports, i.e. wanting payment for something that is substantially someone elses work, and 2) money in advance (we as a group are slightly burned on the concept of preordering ). I would happily buy a commercial quality game for the pandora (well, as long as it is somewhat in the area of my interests in games, that is).


It is true that we need some sort of payment solution here. It depends, of course, on how secure one wants it to be and how automatic it should be. The pessimist in me says that since the pandora userbase is still fairly small, It would not need to be fully automatic - Going through the payments and mailing back a download link could be done manually once a day, say.


But it might be a runaway hit, ne? Orders flooding in. Another thought is the repo - Milkshake, how difficult would it be to make a different template for commercial releases? One where you can see all info, but in order to get at the download link, you must be 1) logged in, and 2) have pressed the paypal button? (The logged in part is of course so that the next time, the database can remember that you've already paid).


A third variant is to have a company store, kinda. The same way as W&Wuzzle battles or the humble indie bundles.


Anyways...I'd love to see it integrated in the repo somehow. But, as others already said, I don't think there is any problem with commercial games in itself.

 

[milkshake]

it could be done no problem but then other thigns would need to be discussed i.e. would there be a central pandora paypal/amazon/other system in place which would then pay the developer? or would the user pay the developer directly which would then rely on an email or some other sort of confirmation coming back to the repo/openpandora which we can then mark the app as purchased for that user in the DB.


so basically it is possible, but it needs to be discussed which is the best way around, i did mention this to ED but at the moment other things are higher on the priority list for him, but that should soon change.

 

[Caine]

I do think that it is important that we get some form of system up and running to offer a platform for such commercial sales. The team could take a small cut of that to cover hosting costs for the boards and the software instead of having to rely on donations.


More importantly, having a good platform in place for commercial distribution might attract more developers like Steve. Something which is of great importance to the Pandora in my opinion.


@Steve


That does look like a nicely polished commercial game. Sort of a touchscreen lemmings, but with a twist. Looks like it could be fun. If it is not ridiculously priced, I would gladly purchase it.

 

[Zelest]

I'd happily support developers using things like Flattr or something. To make micro-donations by paypal or creditcard is just too much micro management.

 

[Morn]

I love liero as well , and hey.. Morn.. we have it already ported [OpenLieroX] for OP. I think it is on repo somewhere..

I've seen that LieroX already, but I never got seriously into Liero X. It just doens't "feel" like original Liero. Gliptic actually disassembled original binary to make OpenLiero as close as possible.

 

[StreaK]

OpenLiero compiling with no problem, but i didnt tested it yet [no time, now.. maybe i'll try it in the evening..]

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

it could be done no problem but then other thigns would need to be discussed i.e. would there be a central pandora paypal/amazon/other system in place which would then pay the developer? or would the user pay the developer directly which would then rely on an email or some other sort of confirmation coming back to the repo/openpandora which we can then mark the app as purchased for that user in the DB.


so basically it is possible, but it needs to be discussed which is the best way around, i did mention this to ED but at the moment other things are higher on the priority list for him, but that should soon change.

Definately a good idea.We need to make it easy for people to develope commercial software for the pandora.

 

[coreyjohnson711]

I wouldn't mind putting into a dev fund for specific projects, dreamcast, wolfenstein ET, etc. Or to a specific developer if they had a sort of calender on what they wanted to work on.

 

[StreaK]

Ok. Topic can be closed. Thanks..