[savoy11]

And there we go - the typical HN oh no, it costs money ($99 for an engine, mind you, that may save you hundreds of hours development time). How much do you charge per hour? Can this library save you hundreds of hours? Do the math.

I am not surpirsed at all that the average tech startup is a failure, with more than half of the people failing to get the "charge money for product/service" model everyone else in the world is using.

Oh no, it costs money. So what exactly are you trying to start that succeeds without having a price tag on it? Man, I get tired of this, really. For every spot-on comment on HN, I read 5 that make me dumber each day.

[chipsy]

For the game market right now, no, it's not worth $99, because:

1. HTML5, and more specifically Canvas, isn't ready to deliver on its gaming promises yet. Too many slow/incomplete implementations to be fully cross-browser/cross-platform.

2. You will get an almost identical engine with a strong community ecosystem if you use Flixel and a map editor(e.g. Flan, DAME, Wasabi M). And that resulting game will be tailored for the Flash portal market. Here is a perfectly great game made for Ludum Dare 19 in 48 hours in Flixel: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-19/?action=preview... And here is a different LD19 entry that was done with no engine at all, just raw haXe: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-19/?action=preview...

3. In a year it is likely to be obsoleted by engines based around other HTML5 technologies(CSS and SVG make for stronger "general 2D scenegraph" technologies, and WebGL is faster). It's a feature-poor engine - the highlights are the collision system and map editor - and the existing free ones are similar.

If you do buy this engine, it's probably because of ignorance, which in itself is a bad sign. There's reams of game code lying around the internet, and the most important thing isn't having the code but having an understanding of how it works. You are better served by buying a book on engine creation, reading that, and reading open source engine code, than to buy one set of documented engine code and only read that.

The only time this equation differs is when we're talking about features that are not dime-a-dozen and are truly a pain to integrate properly. I would be more impressed if it had one or more of:

* A tightly integrated full-physics engine(in addition to the basic platforming collision)

* Scene serialization/in-game editing

* More of a story for UI code - menus, settings, user profiles, keybind configuration, etc.

* Networking features

* Features for AI design(for example a state machine editor).

[monos]

1. agreed.

2. flash = javascript + super vector libs + sweet IDE. it has been around for a decade+ so yes: it is better.

3.a. 3D (webgl) does not make 2D obsolete. I'm not sure you imply that?

3.b. not everyone wants a scene graph for doing games. SVG + CSS is superior if you want a scene graph but plenty (and i would argue: the best) libraries for opengl, sdl, you name it are non scene graph driven.

[Tichy]

Is there even a demo I can try for free? Sorry, but chances are just as high that the library costs me time - time I invest to understand it, only to eventually find that it probably won't do what I need, and I can't easily fix it or extend it. (Playing devil's advocate here).

Even if it does what I need now, who knows if it does what I need in two years? If it were open source, somebody could pick it up and keep developing it. Now if the commercial dev just abandons it, my investment in learning "impact" was wasted.

[mainguy]

This is my problem, I'd be willing to pay much more if I could try it out and kick the tires. Abandonware is a problem in the gaming engine community... even a success story is only going to be around a few years.

A big problem is that by the time you fully understand any game engine (I've looked into) it might just be obsolete. The cost of learning the engine dwarfs the cost of licensing... Assuming your time is worth anything.

[bullseye]

>> And there we go - the typical HN oh no, it costs money...

Why do you think this is unique to HN?

In my experience, this is a common mindset. If anything, I think you have a higher ratio of people willing to adopt commercial libraries here than many other development communities.

[julian37]

Indeed, just read the comments below the very article!

[marcusbooster]

If I had a penny for every time I've read an open-source vs. proprietary software thread in the past 2 decades I might have enough to buy this framework. But then I wouldn't benefit from the contributions of other users and the freedom to modify the source code to fit my own needs.

And there are plenty of pricing options beyond the actual code.

[catshirt]

What do you mean by "the typical HN oh no"? Not for nothing, but I see literally only 3 comments that could be considered "negative", and they're all pretty mild.

That out of the way, I can't help but think you're missing something else. Who exactly are you assuming is the likely purchaser of this product?

[lukeschlather]

>For every spot-on comment on HN, I read 5 that make me dumber each day.

Please re-read the HN guidelines.

>Can this library save you hundreds of hours? Do the math.

I doubt it. I imagine it would cost me time I didn't even know I had, when someone who could have been extending and patching the platform is instead extending and patching a FOSS platform. Closed toolkits only work at large scales where you've got a dedicated team responding to every issue. Even then, they're sub-optimal.

[exogen]

It's much easier to dedicate all your time and respond to every issue when it's what's paying the bills. FOSS support and longevity are terrible, and this is from someone who maintains a dozen such projects.

[lukeschlather]

Software support and longevity are terrible, and this is from someone who uses hundreds of such products. I go in expecting bad support, and as such it's only natural that I don't like paying.