Intersect - Playstore/appstore crossover?

[Space Pirate Jesus]

Greetings Earthlings,

 

So far, I've been biding my time until further development of the Intersect Engine, and it is coming so close to release now. I can almost taste it. It's sweet, much like a Pichu Berry with a sour bite.

 

I am wondering if you (the devs) are contemplating making such a feature as to bridge our games into the appstore?

 

I think it would be a great feature to have connected with the Intersect Engine & would help a lot.

Heck, I would be willing to pay for such a feature to be implemented.

 

Is this something that might be on the bucket-list at a later point?

[panda]

Unless it gets contributed into the engine, mobile compatibility will never happen in upstream Intersect.

The closest that might happen is an unofficial mobile port of the client (or a mobile port for an individual game), and I do not see this happening any time soon, at least not for free.

[jcsnider]

I won't be doing it. Intersect is a beast that is too complex for mobile.

 

Would need to strip a chuck of the engine out before having this discussion imo. 

 

That said, this doesn't stop anyone from giving it a go once we are open source. 

[SkywardRiver]

I can't speak for the developers, but I don't believe this will be featured in the base engine. Very possibly as a paid addition.

 

The reason, in my mind, would be that if Intersect were App Store compatible, you've now got dozens upon dozens of young persons (13 or under) developing hasty games and releasing them for cash in the App Store. This would reflect VERY poorly on Intersect as, for every good game ever made with it, you'd have 100 cashgrabs. Intersect's reputation would sink to levels equal to or below that of even RPGMaker. You can, of course, make great games with RPGMaker, but due to it's easy accessibility, every child and their mother has messed around with it, created a 20 minute game, and tried to sell it on Steam for $20.

 

Having this feature as a paid addition rather than stock would deter a great number of individuals from which this problem would stem from in my mind.

 

Again, I can't speak for the devs, but in my opinion it would be in Intersect's best interest to not include such a feature in any vanilla releases.

[La Última Guerra 2D]

would be a good idea but I think the same as the others, that would make many people try to make a short game and that would sink an intersetc.

[Space Pirate Jesus]

Ahoy,

 

Yeah, I can see these points. It would not be ideal for any vanilla release. Would still be nice to have the feature for personal use in an open-source version.

 

Thanks.

[Beefy Kasplant]

Please. 

 

Making this a full fledged engine that works on mobile would skyrocket this place. I am sure the devs would love to be as big as RPGmaker too. 

I'm sure you can't put Intersect made games on the app store is because it is just hard and time consuming, not because that would tarnish the reputation of this place.

 

I do agree to make it a paid option if it would ever be available. But that's only because people are willing to pay for that, not because it would stop the flood of shitty games.

[Khaikaa]

As long as a game developing engine is free and easy to use, there will always be crappy games, and nobody can change that. The point is that it doesn't matter if there are crappy games or not, the games people make don't represent the engine they used. There are a lot of crappy games made on unreal and unity and their reputation isn't bad because of that.

 

It would be great if intersect games run not just on mobile but consoles(ps4, xboxone, switch...), but.... intersect is far away to be finished, it doesn't make any sense start messing with such a troublesome issue as portability at the momment, there are only 3 people working on the project, ask for features they can actually add to improve the current version and when the final version is released then ask for portability add on.

[SkywardRiver]

I would agree if not for the fact that putting a game in the appstore versus releasing another naruto fan game are two very different things. If I release a crappy game and am wanting to sell it, odds are I'm not going to know how. If the App Store was an option, however, it's a flat fee of $100 and it's out there. That crappy game with an asking price of $10 is out there and odds are it's going to look and feel like vanilla Intersect. If you want a first hand look at what kind of devastation this can bring to a project, just take a look at some of Orake's reviews on steam. The crappy Resbak engine has made a name for itself in crappy game history. Granted it didn't help that Orake looked like Vanilla Resbak not too long ago, but the point still stands. Crappy games breed crappy feelings about the software they're made on. Just look at Unity or RPGMaker. Both are great pieces of software, but you see a decent looking game made in unity and peeps are like "Oh it's made in Unity so... we'll see if it's any good"

 

Giving the masses access to that kind of market is just bad for business in nearly every aspect. Best, for now, to leave marketing and pricing to the people making said crappy games. They'll fail and not bring bad vibes to the Intersect brand as a whole, rather than succeed in selling a bad game and the casual masses gaining a bad taste in their mouth where Intersect is involved. Best to not poison the well, as it were.

 

(of course this is all my opinion, but it IS based on some personal experience within the industry. You know how many people just didn't even install Life Forge cause they thought it was made in RPG Maker?)

[Space Pirate Jesus]

Yeah, I fully agree with you in terms of this. No doubt.

 

If by chance there was the option to have a personal client with this feature implemented, do you think it would be pricey? I've dabbled in coding in the past, though it's a bit of a headache for myself. I prefer the art side of it all. Then again, coding is an art all unto itself.

 

I actually checked out Life Forge for the first time last night. It's pretty decent, albeit a little glitchy. Nothing awful about it can be said. Only needs a final brush up & possibly even a re-release with some extra polishing and features.

[Khaikaa]

@SkywardRiver well, maybe it is a more complex issue that I though at the first time. This kind of things remind me how important is a good marketing plan. It doesn't matter so much how crappy is a product if you know how to sell it. Iknew a bit about the rpg maker, but didn't know that people may not try a game just because it's a rpg maker project. If you had that problem then all of us should think about this, most of our intersect projects look similar as a rpg maker-made project, we'll probably have to face that feeling. Time to keep working!

[Kibbelz]

Best start is to move away from cliche rpgmaker graphics assosiated with rpgmaker. Then again I'm lucky to have my graphics god @Xenogene for our projects :D.

 

As for app store releases, I know @jcsnider got an Intersect client to run in Unity, thus being able to be cross compatible with other devices. That does not mean it was a fully functional port, this was also on Intersect 1.0 so a really old version of Intersect. I know for a fact if he does decide to do this for Intersect it will not be for a long time and he will definitely be charging.