| Author | Message | ||
| Don Rogers (Patzer42)
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I would like to give Zillions as a Christmas present to several members of my family, but an unlock code is a bit difficult to wrap. Here's hoping that the CD-ROM is unavailable only because of the imminent release of Zillions 1.4 (or 2.0!) -- ideally at least a month before Christmas. Which brings me to: When is the next version of Zillions scheduled for release? Do you (or will you) need Beta testers? Can you tell us what cool new games and/or programming features await? | ||
| David Eugene Whitcher (Dralius)
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I'm with Don on this. I would love to know what is planned for the next version and would be willing to buy a new copy for myself just to have it all on one CD. | ||
| Jeff Mallett (Jeffm)
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We're working on final testing and CD artwork for a new CD. Hopefully it will go off for duplication in a week. | ||
| Ken Franklin (Kenz)
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Only a 'single' CD? What(or where) about the 00's on-site listed games themselves? p.s. I hope the new version remains playable WITHOUT the CD! | ||
| Robert A. Kraus (Bobkraus)
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Jeff, It's nice that you are giving existing USERs a discount on the new CD. Now I think it would be even nicer to give a FREE CD to anyone who has contibuted game programs to your website! Just a thought! Bob Kraus | ||
| Zillions Development (Admin)
|
The CDs are due to be shipped out around December 18th, which should be in plenty of time for Christmas. In the next few days we intend to email a special reduced price offer to all registered Zillions users (well, the ones we have emails for). We would love to be able to give free copies to everyone....but then we would go out of business! | ||
| Robert A. Kraus (Bobkraus)
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Ha-Ha, a typical administraive non-answer! (by an unsigned "admin") I did not ask you to give free copies to "everyone" (my guess there are over 100,000 Zillions users?) but only to game implementers, of which there are only a few hundred. They put a lot of time and effort into their programs and get nothing for it. That's okay, I didn't actually expect you to do it, I just was making a suggestion. Bob Kraus | ||
| Robert A. Kraus (Bobkraus)
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Oops! Sorry for the duplicate post! How do you delete a recent post? --- Bob Kraus | ||
| David Eugene Whitcher (Dralius)
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Dear Bob If you get nothing out of it why do you do it? I get pleasure from the creative aspect of game design and i imagine many who post games also enjoy sharing this with others. It would be nice to get a free copy i admit. My philosophy is only love is free and anything else you get is gravy. I hope all game designers jump in on this post and tell us what they get out of making their games. Dralius... | ||
| Zillions Development (Admin)
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Hi Bob, I removed the duplicate posting, as you requested. If we did sell hundreds of thousands of copies of Zillions, then we would be able to give out more free copies...but sales are nowhere near that high. We think Zillions of Games is a great tool and worth a lot more than the selling price to game designers. In fact, most of the comments we get are along the lines of "I would have paid a lot more for this". We do give free copies to people who test for us, but we have to keep them limited. Just hosting this site costs around $300 a month in fees (all those huge downloads eat a ot of bandwidth!). | ||
| Robert A. Kraus (Bobkraus)
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Reply to Dralius: I never said I get nothing out of CREATING games. I certainly get pleasure from game and puzzle design and that is the only real reason I do it! But my creating has nothing to do with Zillions! I have created games and puzzles for over 50 years, long before Zillions or even computers. I do some Visual Basic programming and program my own games. Zillions just provided a nice shortcut to implement certain types of games and puzzles. I have my own website and everything there is free. I am not looking for money or even a free CD! What I was looking for is that since Zillions is charging money and benefiting from the hundreds of games that independent designers have posted on their website, Zillions should give something back to them --- not even money, just a free CD --- so they don't actually have to PAY a SECOND time to contribute more games to the Zillions website! I am not a businessman (quite the opposite - more like the starving artist! - I am chronically unemployed and those periods are when I do most of my best work!) and I don't really have any idea how many games Zillions has sold or how much money they are making or not making. And, like I said originally, I'm not just asking for myself --- I think that all of the game designers deserve this, and if Zillions were to give a free CD to all designers except me I would be more than thrilled. Bob Kraus | ||
| Patrick S. Duff (Pduff)
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When I recommend Zillions of Games to friends, I often tell them it was the best $30 (about what I paid for version 1 when it first came out) I've ever spent on a software program. And I've already placed my upgrade order for ZoG version 2. But I've also put in many, many hours developing rules files and graphics for ZoG, and I have mailed in or posted on the discussion boards around 100 bug reports and suggestions for new features over the years. So I wouldn't say no to a free upgrade to version 2! | ||
| Jens Markmann (Jensm)
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This troubles me. I understand the financial pressure, but charging for this patch will basically split the already small community apart. I am already hesitant to use even the post-v1.0 features because I got emails from people who inquired about error messages they produce. I had to direct them to the download section. Apparently many average Zillion users don't even upgrade when the upgrade is free. How many will upgrade for $35? I urgently suggest that you do *not* give up compatibility to the v1.x engine. Leave the eye-candy, add-on engines and convenience features (like the nice authoring tools) to the v2.0 package, but *do* offer free updates for the core engine, so that all ZRFs stay readable in v1.x. Otherwise I suggest that at least the authors stay compatible with v1.x. Coding around "create" and "discard cascades" is possible already through "add-copy+change-type" and separated move-blocks. I found no other ground-breaking features in v2.0 which cannot be emulated in v1.x code. Please consider that convenience and clarity in the code is just one side of the medal. The other is backwards compatibility, and unfortunately, ZRF authors now have to give this issue careful consideration. | ||
| David J Bush (Twixter)
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If many users don't upgrade when the upgrade is free, do they download ZRF packages? Those are free also. Whatever version of Zillions someone has, they have a great deal. People can still upgrade to 1.3.1 for free. That's hundreds of games. I haven't looked at the new language in depth, but I don't see an instance of backwards incompatibility. For example, several commands (pass-partial, pass-turn, etc.) have been rendered redundant by the new "options" command, but those old commands will still work. Do you have an example of ZRF code which works under 1.3.1 but not under 2.0? You want all future ZRFs to "stay readable in v1.x" How would this be possible? 2.0 has new features. 1.3.1 doesn't have them. adding an "update" to 1.3.1 so that it uses these new features is quite a task. And you want Jeff to do this- for free? And the reason he should do this is- to maintain his customer base? And the reason he should maintain his customer base is- so he will make more money in the long run? Is that the chain of reasoning you are using? You want future ZRFs to avoid any of the new features? Hah! They're convenient, they may not be indispensable, but I'm glad they're there and I'm going to use them. If you can't run my game, what have you lost? If I hadn't written it, it is unlikely you would have ever heard of it. If everything can be emulated in 1.3.1 then some other programmer is welcome to modify my code so it works. I try to add a lot of documentation to make this process easy. And of course I will mention in the package description that Z2.0 is needed. Welcome to the future! | ||
| Gene Randlyn (Gener)
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-They put a lot of time and effort into their -programs and get nothing for it. Dude, you have a strange way of looking at it. Game designers aren't writing games for the company, they're writing them to share with other people. And how much does Zillions charge to publish your game on their site so you can share it with other people? Nada. I think it's the game designers who benefit most. -Zillions is charging money..[for the]... -games that independent designers have posted It's the other way around. They are providing a wonderful service for free. They must have to pay $10 or $20 per webpage created for a game, and there's a thousand webpages. Maybe what you meant to say is that they *should* be charging! (Anyway, I'm happy they don't) | ||
| Sam Trenholme (Sam)
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I think I can do a one-up on Robert. I think the Zillions developers, out of the goodness of their hearts, should GPL Zillions and make the source code to Zillions available on Sourceforge.net. This way, poor students like me would not have to pay $25 to get Zillions (and, possibly even vaguely relevent, have to use Wine to play Zillions on Linux). Why should they do this? Because I want them to. Of course, I don't live in a world where my desires are always magically granted by a genie (or Santa Claus). Thankfully, Zillions runs just fine in Wine under Linux, so even us Linux fanatics can get our Zillions fix. - Sam | ||
| Kevin M. Crocker (Zeta1ret)
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i love da 'Z' and am more then happy to pay $30.00 every 2 years (or so) keep it up! and i have another check right here to send you in bout 14-18 months!!! you guys rock! (and answered my prayers [and sacrafices to several dieties] with this lil'prog!*) -k *mean 'lil'prg in a "cute" way and not a diminutive one!  | ||
| Derek Nalls (Omegaman)
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I realize that only one patch has been deemed necessary since the release of the 2.0 CD appr. 1-1/2 years ago. Nonetheless, there have been 2 highly-noteworthy developments since: Ed van Zon's comprehensive categorization of games for download and Ken Franklin's select-by-group user interface. The former effort is complete and well-maintained. The latter pioneering effort is incomplete. Ed van Zon's effort (which is currently only available upon the Zillions web site dedicated to "more games") could easily be adapted to the user interface as well. Then, the Zillions Of Games program would ship with at least 1000 games (and 5000 variants) already on the CD. This would stimulate CD sales [representing a far better immediate value for the buyer by NOT effectively shutting-out access to the vast majority of Zillions games for those without a high-speed internet connection], decrease the download costs associated with hosting the Zillions web site and make any game designers who are over-sensitive (and thereby feel unappreciated) improve their outlook. Of course, I have no idea how many 2.0 CD's, already manufactured, remain unsold. Since I anxiously await and strongly desire a "3.0" CD or some such, I cannot resist asking "the powers that be at Zillions" when you estimate such a thing will become available for sale. [Rest assured, your price is never a problem.] | ||
| Ken Franklin (Kenz)
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Thanks again for the kind regards concerning Select-by-Group. I feel it's true value is mainly in its joyless(?), mature-approach INTERFACE STYLE (as well, it can easily be enhanced modularly to suit personal preference). Even now, I'm still extremely uneasy about v2's overall visual design for a product realistically intended for a 12+ /adult age bracket. If treated as an all-inclusive game lister, it will always be incomplete - almost weekly. I only use it myself for adding various favourites (under 150-200 ?) for remembered selection. note: Besides storing d/l games across a multitude of themed subfolders, now I'm also looking at adding a Select-by-Group variant listing personalized copies of _By-Random.) As to adding user-community games to the sold product, I'd hate to be Zillions' worldwide royalty accountant. |