Playmaker Forum
PlayMaker News => General Discussion => Topic started by: Trarlex on July 26, 2020, 11:13:59 AM
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I wonder if its going to be an update or a new asset, please let it be the first ;-;
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Hi,
it's not decided yet as far as I know, but I would personally prefer a new departure if it means that playmaker engine is making the most out of the new unity features.
Bye,
Jean
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I'd really like a fresh start too, i guess it takes longer to make, but i guess some things are probably impossible to fix/update in playmaker 1 now.
On the other hand, supporting both versions would probably be tremendous amoount of work.
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I wonder if its going to be an update or a new asset, please let it be the first ;-;
Developers have to pay bills, too.
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Hi,
yeah, HutongGames has to think about the future and how to sustain business, the current asset store purchase system is not helping, hopefully, a subscription based system will become available to all publishers, not just a few, and that's going to be easier to maintain long term product.
I purchased my license 9 years ago! this means 50 cents a month... bargain!
Bye,
Jean
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Hi.
On the other hand, supporting both versions would probably be tremendous amoount of work.
The support for pm1 would mainly be bug fixes when needed, no new features.
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Hi,
yeah, HutongGames has to think about the future and how to sustain business, the current asset store purchase system is not helping, hopefully, a subscription based system will become available to all publishers, not just a few, and that's going to be easier to maintain long term product.
I purchased my license 9 years ago! this means 50 cents a month... bargain!
Bye,
Jean
God i hope not.
If PlayMaker is heading towards a subscription based system, i'll finally have to make the decision to switch to Unreal. At this moment the only thing keeping me on Unity is PlayMaker and i'm not going to pay to use any asset every month if i can get better functionality for free on another platform and don't have to spend thousands of Euros getting that platform to a point where i can actually use it in production like i had to to do with Unity.
I'll gladly pay for mayor upgrades to PlayMaker when i need them but if HutongGames is thinking of switching to subscriptions then i'm truly done with this engine. I see the appeal for the company itself, however as a user it's not something i'd personally support.
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Hi.
It probably will not happen as (like Jean said) only a few are having access to this.
BUT!
Personally i would favor this as well.
But it also depends on how much the subscription would cost.
As it will definitely help supporting and updating the asset.
As the author would be able to hire people to help developing the asset.
Meaning :
- Better support for integration with other assets.
- Faster updates for newer unity versions
- Even better Forum support
- Better Discord / Slacker support
- More up to date tutorials
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I don’t think a subscription model would work. Playmaker seems aimed more at beginners and casual developers, who don’t develop all the time. Developing something can take years, plus it needs support for even longer. I’m almost certain that I would not go into that, unless there is a significant benefit.
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I just won't use Playmaker 2 at all if it has any subscription tbh. No matter what the upsides are. That's just my take.
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Subscriptions models suck for me. I'm not doing this for a living, there's no guarantee whatsoever that the support/updates will get better with subscription model, i have to make sure i have the funds on the account for renewal every month and so on.
All in all, a big drag. Just price it whatever you like, even if it's 100+ bucks, let us buy it and get done with it.
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I really like working with Playmaker but to be honest, with Bolt now free, I'll be ok to purchase Playmaker 2.0 but with many more features included (saving system, pooling system, dictionnary variables, advanced navmesh agent system...).
Concerning, subscription system, when working on a game project, it takes many years so in my point of view, it's not a good idea.
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Look I really really second that a subscription would SUCK. Another comment said even if it's $100 one off, that's fine. I say even $200 one off is fine. Maybe more, since it's a decision you can calculate all in one go and know what you are in for. But to be never finished paying for something is too much to swallow! I don't even need support on discord... I mean maybe my advise isn't always the greatest... but I'm literally one of the people on there helping people every day! (for free mind you). So what would I personally be paying for? I would be paying other people to learn in the support channels... while still likely giving that actual support to them myself?
The only thing that would need paying for is new work done on updates. So in that regard, it would be better to buy version brackets. I own X version to Y version. Anything after that, I need to buy that. I'm fine with that. Because the day I don't want to pay, I keep what I'm happy with and already paid for, and the asset is not robbed from me, along with all my open projects. Sure maybe it would stop working with a later Unity version or what not, but that would be a real reason for me to pay for something I'm actually benefiting from.
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Hi,
Interesting discussion indeed!
It's important to realize that in the absence of a subscription model, many great publishers went under because they could not sustain support, it just is not viable as it is and only a handful of publishers can afford living on new purchases as proper income, and that's not a good business model, regardless of the field nor the perception of the end user.
Which is why mobile phone and other tech company implement programmed obsolescence in their software, so that you end up being forced to purchase the latest hardware or software, which in end becomes a forced subscription. I'd rather play a fair game where every one is aware of the costs of maintenance.
Publishers assets are not like games or off the shelves product, it's never "out", it's a constant effort to work with the latest unity, the latest platforms updates, not even mentioning support. It's an on going process.
PlayMaker is literally the oldest and the most successful asset of all times, free or paid.
https://assetstore.unity.com/?rating=5&orderBy=5&rows=96
Let's see how Bolt is going to perform and affect PlayMaker now that it is free. Let's hope both can coexists.
Bye,
Jean
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The other option might be to pay for add-on packages. Want navmesh, TMP or other options, then pay a small fee. That way, some costs of updates may be re-cooped.
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The other option might be to pay for add-on packages. Want navmesh, TMP or other options, then pay a small fee. That way, some costs of updates may be re-cooped.
The problem with that is a large portion of those things are actually made by the community already. Literally your two examples are ones that third party people in the community made and shared on the ecosystem for free.
But it's sort of what I meant by buying a version bracket. You buy something and it can do stated things, and work with a stated Unity version. The only free updates on that are to fix bugs with existing features. Anything that needs to be updated for compatibility, or added as new features, sell that as a new version. Have like a upgrade from last version fee and a purchase whole asset fee (needed if you don't have the very last version released).
I understand though if a business is under pressure to be viable that different models of payment may be required. It would really be a trade off though. I can only assume, but I really think you would lose a HUGE chunk of new sales if people can't own it without paying forever on for it. So sure you would get more money from the ones who do sign up, but that will need to compensate for the other lost sales before it can be additional profit. This would also mean that pretty much only people dedicated to and confident about releasing paid games will choose to commit to paying indefinitely to use it and have access to their own projects.
One thing I will say again though; at the very least, Playmaker is being sold way too cheap. Again, I don't know how much it will cost sales volume to put it up, but for it's worth it's being massively under priced.
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Navmesh was added by Hutong games directly. Text mesh pro was added by me :)
However, they may need to be re-made/ adjusted for version 2.
Yes, I think it's not reasonable to expect a free update from Version 1 to Version 2.
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Hi,
HutongGames is investing in its community aggressively, what is "Free" and available via the ecosystem and wiki is 90% done via HutongGames hiring us to provide this work. I personally started by contributing for free to the community and then got hired by HutongGames to do that properly.
Bye,
Jean
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OK I didn't realise that, but now it makes a lot more sense.
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It's very time consuming to maintain an asset on the Asset Store. If you have a strong brand and a moderate level of success then you also have to factor in many other more complex things - consider:
- Community : Video tutorials
- Community : Written tutorials
- Community : Wiki
- Community : Documentation
- Community : Marketing
- Community : Support ticket review
- Community : Bug report review
- Maintenance : Unity new feature integration
- Maintenance : Unity API changes
- Maintenance : Unity Legacy feature support
- Maintenance : 3rd party integrations
- Core development : New features
- Core development : Bug fixes
- Recurring costs : Online hosting services
- Recurring costs : Development licenses
Consider this in addition to other factors like
- Rampant piracy of your asset
- Source Code plagiarism
- Strong Asset Store Competitors
- Community support
- Community engagement
- Industry pivoting which affects your product roadmap
- Users submitting bug reports for issues not related to your product
- Unity introducing bugs which affect your product, and in turn your users, who in turn point at you
There have been discussions about how the Asset Store can change to help with making publishing a product more feasible because as it stands it is extremely difficult to make a single product which never charges upgrade fees. Inevitably sales will slow down once you have saturated your target demographic which leaves you in a position where income is now minimal and unsustainable and offering no capital for you to pursue maintenance.
That circumstance leads to either A) Annual version upgrades or B) Subscriptions. The general publisher community favors option A which means they try to publish a major update every year and will stop adding new features to older versions. This makes the old versions stable, but doesn't include new features. It's essentially passive subscription if you are a vested user.
In the end, users are oblivious to all the intricacies of publishing a product, handling devops and managing a brand -- which is fair --because they're really not supposed to be concerned with that anyway.
I hope this sheds a little bit more light on the subject.
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I'd like to highlight the big picture here.
A subscription model would be a death nail to Playmaker.
So you guys need money for ongoing support - that is ok.
I'm developing my first game on zero budget so I rely on Playmaker on being one-time payment only to be able to start and continue developing the project. If suddenly this becomes a subscription, I will be unable to continue and my project will die. This applies to Unity too.
If I can continue working on the game without being threatened by a subscription model, then I will eventually release my game, promote playmaker and actually have some money.
In turn, I will attract more customers towards Hutong Games and if you had a patreon where I could give you monthly money for simply you to continue to work on improving Playmaker and other related project. The important thing is that you'd *post the information publicly without locks/paywalls on your progress, no matter how small, slow or minor*.
This would be enough for me to happily give money to you even though I've already purchased Playmaker. There are a lot project on patreon that thrive on this model.
Please consider other options of securing funding to playmaker besides subscriptions and one-time payments. There are more and better options than these two outdated models.
You also need to communicate your needs for funding more louder and honest to us, so we know that you need the support and that we have a clear avenue to help you.
For those of us that can help now, we will.
For those of us that can't at the moment, will know how we might be able to once our situation changes.
If you go for a subscription model, we'll be fucked and it'll be widening the wealth inequality gap once again for those less fortunate of us.
If you need help, please see https://marketingforhippies.com/
You can get tons of info for free without actually buying anything from this guy (he will appreciate if you do tho) on his youtube channel:
Please, reconsider.
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I'd like to highlight the big picture here.
A subscription model would be a death nail to Playmaker.
So you guys need money for ongoing support - that is ok.
I'm developing my first game on zero budget so I rely on Playmaker on being one-time payment only to be able to start and continue developing the project. If suddenly this becomes a subscription, I will be unable to continue and my project will die. This applies to Unity too.
If I can continue working on the game without being threatened by a subscription model, then I will eventually release my game, promote playmaker and actually have some money.
In turn, I will attract more customers towards Hutong Games and if you had a patreon where I could give you monthly money for simply you to continue to work on improving Playmaker and other related project. The important thing is that you'd *post the information publicly without locks/paywalls on your progress, no matter how small, slow or minor*.
This would be enough for me to happily give money to you even though I've already purchased Playmaker. There are a lot project on patreon that thrive on this model.
Please consider other options of securing funding to playmaker besides subscriptions and one-time payments. There are more and better options than these two outdated models.
You also need to communicate your needs for funding more louder and honest to us, so we know that you need the support and that we have a clear avenue to help you.
For those of us that can help now, we will.
For those of us that can't at the moment, will know how we might be able to once our situation changes.
If you go for a subscription model, we'll be fucked and it'll be widening the wealth inequality gap once again for those less fortunate of us.
If you need help, please see https://marketingforhippies.com/
You can get tons of info for free without actually buying anything from this guy (he will appreciate if you do tho) on his youtube channel:
Please, reconsider.
I feel like you are saying with a subscription if your game doesn't release it'll be the death of playmaker which definitely won't be the case. Correct me if I'm wrong. Playmaker you've already bought and can continue using if they do a sub. model for playmaker 1(that you've already paid for) then a lot would be angry which they won't do at all. Doing a sub-model for playmaker 2 makes sense.
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Hi.
A subscription model would be a death nail to Playmaker.
I totally disagree with that.
Actually for some people it would be more affordable to pay for example $2-3 a month instead of paying $50-60 in 1 time.
Also people that would just wanna try out making a game and use Playmaker would spend less.
Many people start with developing and stop after a few months for different reasons.
Current Playmaker would not suddenly change to a subscription.
IF that would happen, it would be for PM2.
Just so you know, these are speculations.
Nothing is confirmed or denied by the author himself and might even not know that we are discussing about this.
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Since the Asset Store doesn't even support a subscription system at this point is unlikely that PM2 - if it's even a separate product - would go with a subscription method since it would have to be entirely off-store and that really just doesn't make sense. Some publishers have done that, but it's not a great approach unless you have a bunch of enterprise customers or something.
In terms of subscription vs one-time-fee licensing, most asset store users that have been surveyed expressed that they prefer the latter but there were a non-trivial number that prefer subscription. Sometimes we don't realize it but the Subscription model is basically industry standard at this point. Autodesk, Adobe, Microsoft, Unity, Substance, etc are all doing subscription models. Almost everything else is subscription based too, everything from streaming music, movies, shopping, grocery store memberships - all subscription model.
Basically the point is that there's no support on the asset store for regular assets doing subscriptions, but there is interest in adding it at scale in the future. Whether it is a new asset or an update is up to Alex and whether or not there are any technical issues with making it an update versus a new product.
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I prefer, We can use Playmaker 1.x forever since we paid One-time fee. I am okey with recurring & affordable* pricing for Playmaker 2.0
Coz we spent $1k+ on a one of the worst so-called No code Game engine couple of years ago. That s**t is nothing in-front of playmaker. They later , reduced the prices. Check their lowered price and features ;D
https://signup.buildbox.com/plans
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I prefer, We can use Playmaker 1.x forever since we paid One-time fee. I am okey with recurring & affordable* pricing for Playmaker 2.0
Coz we spent $1k+ on a one of the worst so-called No code Game engine couple of years ago. That s**t is nothing in-front of playmaker. They later , reduced the prices. Check their lowered price and features ;D
https://signup.buildbox.com/plans
Ah, this engine has a history. Not surprised tbh. Sells prob were dwindling or they had to do it for some reason. What were some problems you have with buildbox? Just curious
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I prefer, We can use Playmaker 1.x forever since we paid One-time fee. I am okey with recurring & affordable* pricing for Playmaker 2.0
Coz we spent $1k+ on a one of the worst so-called No code Game engine couple of years ago. That s**t is nothing in-front of playmaker. They later , reduced the prices. Check their lowered price and features ;D
https://signup.buildbox.com/plans
Ah, this engine has a history. Not surprised tbh. Sells prob were dwindling or they had to do it for some reason. What were some problems you have with buildbox? Just curious
I didn't used that for long time. Reason for why i left is, I found Playmaker is much better.
1. buildbox is expensive. you have to pay more to have more scenes and integrate Facebook sdk
2. Very very limited
3. Bugs
4. We have thousands of actions to make the better games. they now very less. even below 200. Not sure
5. my aim is to get a Hyper casual game get published by a publisher like voodoo. There is 0 buildbox games published by big publishers so far. ketchapp did few years ago. They stopped later
:)
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Hi,
I also think there is a cultural difference between say Europe and US market. I have been involved in some fairly big software production and you have to consider that in US people are often ok with subscription ( subscribe and forget type of attitude), while in Europe, we prefer paying for a product like it's off the shelve.
I am not sure about the Asian and other market though.
I think we also have to make the difference between a Subscription model that is intended to be fair and one that is intended to have people pay for something they don't use and force them to pay for the whole year. I like some of the subscription model that can be cancelled and reopened on a monthly bases. I think Adobe is doing that. So as an indie, you don't need to commit to full year of subscription, you just pay for the months that you need it. I hope unity will not miss that critical feature if they decide to democratize subscriptions on the asset store.
Bye,
Jean
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Just to add my two cents, as more of a consumer user. I do agree with djaydino above.
Actually for some people it would be more affordable to pay for example $2-3 a month instead of paying $50-60 in 1 time.
Making the decision to pay around €60 was a big decision for me at that time. It was totally worth it, but still a big decision, and I probably only arrived at it because I'd used the free student version before - so I knew the price was worth it.
I generally don't like subscriptions because their total monthly cost really adds up, but if it was low enough, I'd be OK with it because I know I want to keep using Playmaker. I think my pain point would be a maximum of €5.
And I can say with certainty that if I hadn't used the student version and Playmaker had been a subscription service, I would have definitely tested it out.
Just as a suggestion (and I have no idea how realistic this is), seeing as Asset store doesn't support subscriptions, wouldn't it be possible to offer a much higher one-time purchase fee on the store in tandem with a subscription service run via your website?
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Rampant piracy of your asset
Oh, that. Do you have any figure on this? Doesn't Unity send you some data about it?
Do they have a policy to block illicit developers from publishing with pirated assets?
Source Code plagiarism
I haven't seen any copy, at least in the US/EU market.
Strong Asset Store Competitors
Well, the main one which wasn't even a lookalike got integrated into Unity and that's not going to change much.
There have been discussions about how the Asset Store can change to help with making publishing a product more feasible because as it stands it is extremely difficult to make a single product which never charges upgrade fees. Inevitably sales will slow down once you have saturated your target demographic which leaves you in a position where income is now minimal and unsustainable and offering no capital for you to pursue maintenance.
I would not find it scandalous to have a small paid upgrade for Playmaker 1.9x LTS version and a larger price for the major push of Playmaker 2.
So if you paid for PM 1, you will not have to pay unless you want to upgrade to the LTS version, so the money will cover the costs of updates to make sure it remains afloat.
PM 2 would therefore be a new product, with a new UID on the Asset Store; a new item in other words.
I don't know when PM really hit its peak market but it's somehow of a niche product, only a portion of Unity's market share and PM 1 has been out for many many years now. There is just that much money one can run with before hitting a wall.
I agree that the tool could be seen as somehow underpriced considered the time it's been supported. Yes, it is not a standalone tool and remains dependent on Unity (although I wonder if it could be made cross-tool, including OS engines like Godot), but it is a colossal tool nevertheless which, perhaps for budgetary reasons, has not been able to produce enough communication in proportion to its high technical value.
I also agree that you could consider some supplementary functions to become priced as extra items. A few ones though because it's obvious PM wouldn't work so well without the support from a few generous people from the community who did all of it for free.
That circumstance leads to either A) Annual version upgrades or B) Subscriptions. The general publisher community favors option A which means they try to publish a major update every year and will stop adding new features to older versions. This makes the old versions stable, but doesn't include new features. It's essentially passive subscription if you are a vested user.
'A' was the basic model used by all companies before they decided a subscription would be better to make more money and cover all costs, including support of some older versions if the company started to have a large catalog of old versions to maintain.
Playmaker is not there yet so 'A' seems classic and fair and the Asset Store's lack of subscription model blocks publishers anyway.
But it also forced users who would usually skip one or two yearly versions to pay every year then and the extra costs could be felt.
There was also the number creep: version 2, 3... 15, 16. But this isn't exactly bad, especially if a new version is released every 1.5-2 years. Not everybody plays Google's Chrome insane version-numbering game.
The reality is that with a subscription, one never owns anything. Some people might not like this at all.
It however obviously has the advantage mentioned above, namely the low entry fee.
But a student version with limited functions would be nice too, again, available as another separate item. Perhaps it's about time HG deploy a full catalog of several products?
Since the Asset Store doesn't even support a subscription system at this point is unlikely that PM2 - if it's even a separate product - would go with a subscription method since it would have to be entirely off-store and that really just doesn't make sense. Some publishers have done that, but it's not a great approach unless you have a bunch of enterprise customers or something.
In terms of subscription vs one-time-fee licensing, most asset store users that have been surveyed expressed that they prefer the latter but there were a non-trivial number that prefer subscription. Sometimes we don't realize it but the Subscription model is basically industry standard at this point. Autodesk, Adobe, Microsoft, Unity, Substance, etc are all doing subscription models. Almost everything else is subscription based too, everything from streaming music, movies, shopping, grocery store memberships - all subscription model.
Basically the point is that there's no support on the asset store for regular assets doing subscriptions, but there is interest in adding it at scale in the future. Whether it is a new asset or an update is up to Alex and whether or not there are any technical issues with making it an update versus a new product.
It's pushed to appliances, to TVs, to cars.
So you never own anything. It's the end of private property which has been a staple of our civilizational model for eons. Which is therefore very surprising that it became so widely accepted in the US (as per Jean's remark, which the same could be said about pay-and-forget spirit too which I think many people are still clinging to). But it's not like Silicon Valley giants really cared and unless a political power forces companies to provide paid versions of their SaaS too, this will not change anytime soon. So you better get used to subscription.
It's also the model used by Unity. Which means that outside of non-commercial, personal or scholarly projects that can work in a totally free Unity environment, even if you owned a paid version of PM, without a Unity subscription you would not get anywhere, meaning that I wouldn't even be surprised if a full subscription system were to become enforced in 4-5 years from now.
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Rampant piracy of your asset
Oh, that. Do you have any figure on this? Doesn't Unity send you some data about it?
Do they have a policy to block illicit developers from publishing with pirated assets?
Unity doesn't, and can't, provide figures on piracy of your asset, nor do they make any attempt to deal with it outside of their platform. They're simply a distribution platform for Publishers to utilize and their policy is to adhere to law by complying with DMCA takedown notices, essentially. You can read their full EULA on the website if you're curious. They're actually quite disconnected from the community which is something we on the advisory board urged them to change.
However there are derived statistics on piracy within the publisher groups. There are many websites hosting content for free, as well as free torrents and websites that actually sell assets at a lower price after they rip them from the UAS. In terms of my own personal statistics, I had more downloads on a pirate site than I had reflected in my publisher portal, so more people actually pirated the asset than bought it - by a significant margin.
Other developers, even recently, have compared source code of new products published on the store only to find that there are significant portions of the source code that in that product actively being sold to users. The same thing occurs even more frequently with 3d models that are reskinned and sold on the store. Synty Studios and others deal with this regularly.
GitHub, even years after I deprecated the asset mentioned above, still has copies of it floating around in public repositories. I don't even bother issuing takedown notices for them anymore.
Anyway, that's just some side information for you and not really relevant to the thread. I suppose the only relevant point is that various sales models become relevant for a variety of reasons in different contexts.
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Instead of forced subscription - why not opt for an optional one?
Take a look at how some people are earning on patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/rkg
https://www.patreon.com/horion
Another important point to raise is that playmaker - and unity - are complex tools that take a lot of time to learn. In that time some people may find the need to pay a subscription as a friction too strong to get in and stay with it - especially if they're low-income and are having a rough time at the start just grasping it all.
The reason unity is so succesful is that it took away this stress to allow people to actually get the tool - fully functional, enough to build a competent game from start to finish - earn money or attract someone else that does have money. Unity then communicate clearly they need support and gave an inlet for people that can do it, to do it.
I even like the older model unity had, where the base system was free, but a few extra tools required purchase or subscription that were optional or justified, such as extra shaders and profiling tools (which you could avoid needing if you just built your app properly to begin with). I could definitely come in as a zero and have a chance to rise to success.
I find it narrow to consider piracy an issue when if those people don't have very little money to begin with - they can't afford or be a customer anyway, so its not like you're actually losing money. Its a fallacy to think that you're losing money when someone can't even pay it to begin with. With the above way, you can turn pirates into loyal customers / supporters, instead of keep on seeing them as evil criminals trying to take you down.
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Would you guys have some kind of discount for current members?
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Also will you continue support for PM1? And how soon is PM2 to coming out? Maybe I missed it in earlier messages but he’s there some kind of timeline or roadmap?
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Hi.
There is no date announced yet, also no Alpha version yet.
Also if PM2 would not be backward compatible then PM1 would get bug support for at least a year.
But again these are all speculations.
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Unity doesn't, and can't, provide figures on piracy of your asset
That is curious. I would have expected them to be in the best position to know if assets that are part of a build have a legal counterpart in their own database of developers who have acquired this and that asset. With all the data Unity collects, from devs to users, it's really odd that they cannot cross the data. Wouldn't there a file associated to the build? One that clearly lists all the assets used in the build, with such file then being somehow readable within the application after the build. Without relying on Analytics, Unity still collects a minimum of data from apps, right?
I also suppose a lot of pirated assets might not end in commercial products at all
, nor do they make any attempt to deal with it outside of their platform. They're simply a distribution platform for Publishers to utilize and their policy is to adhere to law by complying with DMCA takedown notices, essentially. You can read their full EULA on the website if you're curious. They're actually quite disconnected from the community which is something we on the advisory board urged them to change.
However there are derived statistics on piracy within the publisher groups. There are many websites hosting content for free, as well as free torrents and websites that actually sell assets at a lower price after they rip them from the UAS. In terms of my own personal statistics, I had more downloads on a pirate site than I had reflected in my publisher portal, so more people actually pirated the asset than bought it - by a significant margin.
Other developers, even recently, have compared source code of new products published on the store only to find that there are significant portions of the source code that in that product actively being sold to users. The same thing occurs even more frequently with 3d models that are reskinned and sold on the store. Synty Studios and others deal with this regularly.
GitHub, even years after I deprecated the asset mentioned above, still has copies of it floating around in public repositories. I don't even bother issuing takedown notices for them anymore.
Anyway, that's just some side information for you and not really relevant to the thread. I suppose the only relevant point is that various sales models become relevant for a variety of reasons in different contexts.
[/quote]
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Unity doesn't, and can't, provide figures on piracy of your asset
That is curious. I would have expected them to be in the best position to know if assets that are part of a build have a legal counterpart in their own database of developers who have acquired this and that asset. With all the data Unity collects, from devs to users, it's really odd that they cannot cross the data. Wouldn't there a file associated to the build? One that clearly lists all the assets used in the build, with such file then being somehow readable within the application after the build. Without relying on Analytics, Unity still collects a minimum of data from apps, right?
I also suppose a lot of pirated assets might not end in commercial products at all
You're right, they're absolutely in the best position to handle this and sure, it's entirely possible that they collect analytics on this. However even if that data is part of their opt-in data collection policy, they do not share that data with anyone. Assets published on the store have absolutely no license control except in rare cases like with PiXYZ or Mixamo. As long as the file is available, the Editor lets you import the content. This makes piracy trivial which is why it's so common for Asset Store Products.
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I honestly Wouldn’t be too worried if PM1 Would stick around or not. Im sure it will. Has years of support and development. I mean URP and HDRP still have issues. Which is why many ppl tend to stick with the standard.
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Subscription = no
Pay to upgrade = yes
Upgrade free = yes
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Subscription = yes if needed and able to be done
Pay to upgrade = no
Upgrade free = nooooo
fixed! :D
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i would be for the subscription if it were minimal and had a support to paid users needs that were more constructive..
as someone new and learning i overjoyed when i did the first few things in playmaker and see the potential in it..
I need a proper support system for being a newb and all as sure even others would. i would pay for a direct helpful support system.
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No Subscription Please ... :S
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I'm against subscription.
They do works for some business models like Netflix but, in my experience, not for professional softwares.
The problem is, once we subscribe, we lose leverage and the software editor lose interest in giving us powerful features. Instead, once the pro market is saturated, they try to grow their userbase by making it more accessible with features targeting hobbyists. So features we, professionals, don't need.
What I've also noticed is that the companies going for that business model have some sort of a monopoly and want to get rent on it instead of making a better product or simply don't see any way to make it evolve further.
The bottom line is, subscription is always bad news for pros.
That said, it doesn't mean it shouldn't exists. I understand hobbyists or occasional users who can't afford the full perpetual licence so for them, it make sense to have the subscription option. But that's what it should, be, an option.
My ideal business model is paying for a perpetual licence and then for upgrades. Even if it means paying more because in that scenario, the software company have to give me something useful if they want more money.
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Hi.
There is no date announced yet, also no Alpha version yet.
Also if PM2 would not be backward compatible then PM1 would get bug support for at least a year.
But again these are all speculations.
I also waiting for Alpha version.
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My ideal business model is paying for a perpetual licence and then for upgrades. Even if it means paying more because in that scenario, the software company have to give me something useful if they want more money.
I like it too. PROPERTY is something I'm actually attached to.
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Subscription = no
Pay to upgrade = yes
Upgrade free = yes
+1
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On the other hand, wanting property for a plugin that cannot exist outside of a tool that's on a subscription model might seem slightly absurd.
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I've read this blogpost (http://yankooliveira.com/index.php/2018/01/23/playmaker/) and I saw some requests in it that might be worth considering.
Fortunately, I was using Rider, and it has an incredible decompiler. It took some poking around and trial and error, but I managed to build a little wizard that would spit out FSMs based on a template, which sped up their process a lot. Obviously using private external APIs is not super safe, so my second wish for Hutong would be that they provided a public API for assembling FSMs and states via code for automation tasks – with that, we could have something that would parse a marked up text and generate the first pass on an FSM, having the best of both worlds.
Selecting a tool that will be an integral part of development is a always a bit of a leap of faith. Even though it doesn’t come without it’s problems, Playmaker has allowed me multiple times to enable designers and focus on shipping games instead of maintenance of non-game-specific code. It’s also important to notice that it is a tool that serves a specific purpose: it’s a state-machine based visual scripting editor made to be self contained, and that’s what you’ll get, so you should only use it if that’s what you need; it’s not a behaviour tree system, it’s not engineered towards working with external dependencies, there’s no API for building state machines via code.
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I've read this blogpost (http://yankooliveira.com/index.php/2018/01/23/playmaker/) and I saw some requests in it that might be worth considering.
Fortunately, I was using Rider, and it has an incredible decompiler. It took some poking around and trial and error, but I managed to build a little wizard that would spit out FSMs based on a template, which sped up their process a lot. Obviously using private external APIs is not super safe, so my second wish for Hutong would be that they provided a public API for assembling FSMs and states via code for automation tasks – with that, we could have something that would parse a marked up text and generate the first pass on an FSM, having the best of both worlds.
Selecting a tool that will be an integral part of development is a always a bit of a leap of faith. Even though it doesn’t come without it’s problems, Playmaker has allowed me multiple times to enable designers and focus on shipping games instead of maintenance of non-game-specific code. It’s also important to notice that it is a tool that serves a specific purpose: it’s a state-machine based visual scripting editor made to be self contained, and that’s what you’ll get, so you should only use it if that’s what you need; it’s not a behaviour tree system, it’s not engineered towards working with external dependencies, there’s no API for building state machines via code.
Very nice, i'd rather like it without crippling bugs and functioning global variables first :)