Freedom Engine

If they hadn't lost me at HTML5 (the next big hype joke) they lost me at web based IDE.

Its scripted in basic, i have a feeling that it was one of those ugly languages which look like winapi. Not sure though...

I wouldnt like the feeling of having all my code and tools possibly disappear because their server caught fire.

If they hadn't lost me at HTML5 (the next big hype joke) they lost me at web based IDE.

Frankly, we could use some good HTML5 game engines. Making a game on HTML5 is a nightmare right now, with all the different hacks needed to make sure it works on all browsers and platforms at a semi-decent speed (at least until the next android/ios upgrade). Having a single engine/framework to wrap it all away would be nice.

There are a few rudimentary out there already, but still too early to be viable IMHO.

EDIT: looked at the samples and eh.. basic? really?

[s]It seems quite fishy, why are they offering all this stuff for free.[/s] Nevermind, theres ads on the IDE.

I don't know if BASIC is a mickey-mouse language, but otherwise, I don't frown upon this concept at all.

[s]It seems quite fishy, why are they offering all this stuff for free.[/s] Nevermind, theres ads on the IDE.

Wait, so their business plan is to embed advertisements in the IDE, targetted at developers? Holy niche market, batman!

Yeah.... that's a really bad business plan. When the Freedom Engine team figures that out, I suspect they'll have to drop their development efforts and support for the product. As a developer, would you want to work on a platform which may have an expiration date? Sounds a bit risky to me... But, maybe I just misunderstand what they're doing...

No wait I found more. For $5 a month, you get a whooping 250mb storage.
You can just save all your project files to your 5 GB Google Drive account, in spirit of their "developing games on the cloud" concept.

If they hadn't lost me at HTML5 (the next big hype joke)[/quote]
hype joke how?
html5 is/will be huge

If Bob were an avid programmer, he'd know he could just host his repository on Github, Bitbucket, or Google Code. He'd also have a development environment he's comfortable with, and he'd make use of a lot of free tools out there.

Unless Bob is horrible masochist who crams everything inside of 10 megabytes and probably keeps a bunch of weird spears and swords and whips and chains in the shed in his backyard where two people went missing last week.

(edit: Removed a comment about writing on a smart phone because it didn't really make sense.)

If they hadn't lost me at HTML5 (the next big hype joke)

hype joke how?
html5 is/will be huge
[/quote]
It theoretically has the potential. In practise it's a patchwork of lots of different parts that are at most randomly implemented in different browsers. Browser forks are a highly required feature, which should not be required at all.

They should've seriously done away with HTML alltogether (it isn't used at all as it was intended initially, just content that is displayed somehow) and created something new from scratch for all the designopaths. In the end we'll arrive at Flash again, only 5 years later with the performance of 10 years ago. That's huge?

(edit: Removed a comment about writing on a smart phone because it didn't really make sense.)

What did you mean it didn't really make sense? Are you forgotten PocketC, PocketBasic, and numerous other write pocketpc apps on pocketpc itself of the yesteryear? Or was you talking about something else...?

If Bob were an avid programmer, he'd know he could just host his repository on Github, Bitbucket, or Google Code. He'd also have a development environment he's comfortable with, and he'd make use of a lot of free tools out there.

I don't think they aim substitute Version Control systems. I was seeing this as a new way of distributing your game/software.

No wait I found more. For $5 a month, you get a whooping 250mb storage.
You can just save all your project files to your 5 GB Google Drive account, in spirit of their "developing games on the cloud" concept.

Yes, their profit relies on people buying more space storage.
Even if you have your project on Google Drive, if you are going to distribute it using their service, you will have to make it available on their servers.

I think that this engine is more about being a Virtual Machine on the Cloud. I think that it will get your code, compile it on their servers, send to the user's platform the package ready to be executed.

P.S.: I will not enter this HTML5 vs Flash discussion. I wasn't expecting this kind of discussion here =/

The first thing I heard when listening to the video was, "And Freedom Engine is FREE with no [color=#ff0000]upfront costs..." [size=2][link]
So there are non-upfront costs? After you code the game, which is saved on their servers, when ready to publish suddenly you find out that there are fees or that they take x percent of the revenue? Do they own anything written using their site? Better check the EULA. [size=2][/paranoid]

The second thing I noticed, which others have already mentioned, is you only get 10mb for free. Does that include art assets?
I was just mentioning in another thread, how DropBox gives 2GB for free, and you can easily get another 6GB for free.

This looks looks like Python had a train wreck with Jcode ... the language is simplistic enough, but what is the final output when you run the game / app ? Flash ? Some version of HTML5 ? C# ? All of them?
It's very nice to know the compatibility of your final product, with your target audience.

The 10 MB of storage does seem like a gimmick, to force folks to buy more space to produce, however there have been MANY great games produced on Newgrounds that were under 10 MB ...

They are using Basic because they want to capitalize on their user base who now outgrow Dark Basic Pro.

Hobbyist have now changed from "want to create the next doom or quake" to "want to create the next angry bird or temple run".

You can say that these are the cloud version of their AppGameKit.

Talk about size, I really wish ipad user was given cloud backup space as large as their ipad size, eg: people who buy 32 gb version will get 32 gb online space, etc. this will make their user very happy, specially at the price they are selling. but i guess they want to monitize back-up.

back to this engine, they have to monitize this one way or the other. and as one poster mentioned, there is a lot of fun games around 10 mb, they really need to set around that size before making money :-)

That's huge?[/quote]I saw a survey from a year ago
Of the top100 websites ~1/3 were using html5, todays its prolly >half
in a year or two >90%

Now *thats* huge, it will be inescapable

That's huge?

I saw a survey from a year ago
Of the top100 websites ~1/3 were using html5, todays its prolly >half
in a year or two >90%
[/quote]
It's not a finished standard yet. That's probably the largest argument against it atm. Given that and the amount of alternatives, I'm holding off on html5 en masse. Could be the future, may not be. As I have no ideas requiring html5 atm, I'll wait it out and bet on my horse after the race is over.

It's not a finished standard yet. That's probably the largest argument against it atm. Given that and the amount of alternatives[/quote]
languages are revised all the time, theres a lot of language alternatives eg C++/C#/java etc so does this make any of those less valid?
I notice the first tag on this webpage is a HTML5 tag! true they prolly didnt need to use html5 to make this site but they do, this is what I mean html5 is prolly more ubiquitous than you realize eg one of the best things of html5 is the client side storage but its not in your face like say fancy video/sound.

languages are revised all the time, theres a lot of language alternatives eg C++/C#/java etc so does this make any of those less valid?

C++/C#/Java all have approved standards. C++ doesn't really need a standard from a deployment pov as it's compiled, but I'd make a similar argument for non-standardized versions of C#/Java.

I was saying theres a lot of various programming languages (C++/java etc) which I assume you believe is good,
as you were implying we dont need html5 since there are alternatives (not many, flash perhaps? what else), so why should this be any different.