How Does the Community Feel About Narrowing Focus?

General (non-technical) Off-Topic
#1

Shout out to my fellow Solar2D fans. I know it’s just been a few months now since the announcement, and while I’m excited to see all of us that really did put up some cash and sponsor Vlad, I’m still a bit hesitant to kick off a new project given where offline builds are and the uncertainty around iOS Metal support and even longer reaching implications of availability on Switch.

At the risk of speaking sacrilege, I wanted to throw something out there and see what the rest of the community thought, Vlad included. Since at the end of the day, all of us are focused on the games we build, and the binaries we need to upload to the various platforms. Do our build tools really need to run on Windows and Mac? Do we really need Corona Cards at this point? What about Ubuntu support?

I’m not trying to de-value any individual’s use of the tool or reason for coming to the platform, but I’d love to see some kind of poll or something. As an example, while I personally value being able to build and distribute my games on Mac and even Kindle, if you told me today until the team size and momentum grew there would only be a focus on Android & iOS builds and that I could only build/develop on a Mac, I’d still use the tool. On the other hand if you told me we would continue to support everything the SDK does today, but, it will be 6 months before I can build on iOS with Metal support, I’d need to look elsewhere.

Hopefully what I’m saying makes sense and leads to a meaningful discussion. I’d love it if for the short term the community could come to a consensus through some sort of polling or vote as to a more narrow focus of the Solar2D software we all love, so that things could move forward faster in the near term. I’d rather it do a few things really well, than try and do all the things and lag behind on each platform.

Other thoughts?

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#2

I guess Vlad will start narrowing focus after he is done with stable offline working builds. This should be the priority now.

About polls and prioritization, I’m not entirely sure how this could be pulled. Given the open source nature of the project you can make contributions to it or even keep those changes to yourself but apart from the sponsors, I don’t see polls working on directing the ship. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be a sponsor if non-paying users are able to steer away from my priorities.

I think, best way to follow would be using advantages of MIT license at this point. Vlad will keep on doing the hard lifting and you can contribute to the project as it goes. At least that’s what I’m trying to do. If you have urgent needs like Metal or Switch support before Vlad could pull them off, it may be a good idea to evaluate your options. After all, we all need to take care of our businesses.

#3

Well, the roadmap (as far as I’ve understood it) is: getting the offline builds finalised, then adopting Apple’s Metal, followed by AndroidX (which, if I’ve understood correctly, also addresses the rounded screens and Admob plugin issues). I’m pretty sure the community at large agrees that these are the most important features to add. Maybe @vlads has an idea on the rough timeline?

I do agree that the core focus should be in ensuring that the existing platforms are kept up to date, but as already mentioned above, that’s the goal anyway. Furthering HTML5 builds or exploring Switch builds was mentioned as something that could be pursued when the crowdfunding amount goes past a certain threshold and these would (unless I’m mistaken) be handled by contractors.

Now your suggestion to simply drop platforms is a very self serving and shortsighted one. I, for instance, and maybe more than half of the userbase would instantly drop Solar2D if Windows could no longer be used for development.

Also, if Apple allows for OpenGL to run on their platforms for the next 12 months or more and as long as Solar2D supports Metal before the deadline, then what’s the issue?

I do also agree that if there is to be a poll system, then it should be tied to funding, but this poll should only be looked into after these three core features (offline builds, metal, AndroidX) have been finalised.

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#4

For me honestly I do not care if I need to do my development on Windows or Mac or even Linux. I was only suggesting that overall there might be faster movement if Vlad was only supporting which ever platform or platforms are the most popular and the rest of us migrated to that. I feel long term it may be a bumpy road for one person to try and keep so many different environments up to date. But maybe I am being short sighted or don’t fully appreciate how much of the code base is common.

#5

I understand that. The issue is just that if one wishes to build for iOS, then they need MacOS. So MacOS can’t be removed.

Linux is being handled entirely by a few community members, though I’m not sure how actively they are working on it, so there’s really nothing to cut as Vlad isn’t working on it.

The only development platform that could technically be cut is Windows, but I’d wager it is the most widely used platform, and if it is, then cutting it would hurt the userbase as well as the crowdfunding.

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#6

@XeduR made some excellent points, and I for one would not welcome the removal of Windows. I have a Mac, but I avoid using it as much as possible. My primary OS has been Windows for so long now it is very hard to adjust to the odd differences of OS X.

I think the best things we can do here to help Vlad are:

  • Answer questions in the forums when we see them (assuming one knows the answer).
  • Fund Vlad if one has the means (full disclosure, I’m not yet doing so.)
  • Grab a copy of the engine, learn how to build it, and dig into fixing issues. Then, submit your fixes for inclusion. It makes sense for Vlad to handle the core elements of Solar2D, but I see no reason why folks can’t help. (I’m going to be getting set up this week, so I’ll report back in a separate thread to say how it went.)
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