Is Lime ready for the public and paid beta stage?

Lime
#1

I’m really eager to get Lime in more developers hands however Im really hesitant about releasing it before I can sort out the slowness issues.

The plan was to get the performance issues sorted and some more bugs squashed and then to go into a public but paid beta much like Corona was originally. It would be selling at the $20 price listed on the site and then after a month or two when lots more feedback has come in and I have lots more documentation on it I would then release it fully as version 1.0 for $40 (is this price too much? Should it be $30?).

The price isn’t a subscription charge it is simply a one off fee, I don’t want the headache of subscriptions, and then all future updates would be for free so I was thinking people may be interested in buying Lime now at the discounted but not complete stage as they will know that when it is ready they won’t have to pay anything else.

What do you guys think? In its current state would you (either you personally or just you in general if you weren’t in on the beta) be willing to pay $20 for the use of it?

And then what price would you think people would be willing to pay for the full version? I was originally thinking $30 but then that doesn’t really give people much of a reason to buy the discounted price but if it was the difference between $20 and $40 it may sway people more.

I naturally want to make money off this so that I can afford to develop it further but I don’t want to charge so high that no-one actually buys it. [import]uid: 5833 topic_id: 4867 reply_id: 304867[/import]

#2

If you don’t think it is ready please tell me, don’t worry about offending me or anything, I am fully expectant of everyone saying it isn’t ready yet. [import]uid: 5833 topic_id: 4867 reply_id: 15643[/import]

#3

I think this post should be public, otherwise only ‘lime beta testers’ will see it.

I barely started going through your tutorial and am having very little success at accomplishing what I wanted (the video I sent you); however, this is mainly due to me not really knowing how to use tile map.

As a side note, if ‘lime’ is going to have ‘performance issues’, I wouldn’t release it (even if it’s cheap and/or a one time off fee), you’ll get a bad reputation for making something sound and look ‘cool’ just to get a quick buck…which in this case, I don’t think you’re doing (btw, I think $20 should be fine :wink:

I would love to have a video tutorial (which I think you mentioned on your site, but not available).
Especially incorporating ‘tilt’ and/or ‘joystick’ integration demoing the ‘parallax’ scrolling and the capabilities of ‘lime’.

This might get you more developers interested and more response from the forum.

Just a thought.

RD [import]uid: 7856 topic_id: 4867 reply_id: 15659[/import]

#4

Yea I agree with those points and certainly don’t want to get a bad reputation for Lime.

I also agree I need to write more documentation (as well as make video versions of all of them) so will keep doing that.

I will try to summarise everything that Lime can do right now and everything it can’t plus all the current problems etc into one post and put it out in the public to see if people would actually want to purchase it now or just wait.

Thanks for the feedback, very helpful and if you have any more please pass it on.

Also if you need any more help on your project please post in the forums or via email as I really do want to help. [import]uid: 5833 topic_id: 4867 reply_id: 15673[/import]

#5

Graham, from a functionality point of view I think Lime is ready for open beta. Do you want to start charging yet I don’t know. I think the more beta testers you have the more input you will get and hopefully get more of the issues (if any) resolved. Not charging people at this stage also keeps the complaints department clean I suppose.

Feedback on pricing for release… This is certainly my pov. I think $40 is perfectly reasonable. Lime saved me hours of learning time and as I develop my app it will save me hours of coding time. You are offering lifetime updates and you seem to be a young guy so with any luck this should mean years and years of pre-paid updates from you. I think $40 is fair. Only concern I have is the reliance on Tiled.

While I love Tiled as it is and it seems to do what it needs to do I am a little leery of tooks maintained my folks we don’t know, we can’t influence much etc. You need to be very confident in the long term outlook for Tiled or start thinking about a contingency at some point. In other words, people buy Lime and down the road Tiled goes belly up with some major issues left unfixed. What does that do to you and your product. Something to think about.

On the $20 reduced price for early birds… I think thats more than reasonable as well. Let me know when I can pay up! So far you’ve been amazing in keeping up with my constant whining and tantrums and responding to the issues in a very timely basis. I appreciate all that. Keep it up please.

All the best!!! [import]uid: 11904 topic_id: 4867 reply_id: 15685[/import]

#6

I think what I will do is try to attract more beta testers by posting in the public forums again to make sure as many people know about Lime as possible and I can get some more feedback.

For price I agree, I think $20 will be the price set for when it first goes on sale (whenever that may be) as a Beta price and then when I am satisfied with its state and performance as well as level of documentation etc I will then bring it out of public beta and into release where the price will then raise to $40.

And you are right to assume I’m young (25) and I plan to keep supporting Lime for as long as I possibly can.

I love Tiled as well and have been thinking of backup plans if something happens to it, however sadly there don’t seem to be many competant and active tile map editors around, much less any that work on Mac so my options would be to either continue development of Tiled myself in a fork (which I’m sort of tempted to anyway so that we can get all the features we want) or start developing my own editor which would naturally take longer.

However we should be ok as Tiled itself is opensource and currently has 20 active contributors - http://www.ohloh.net/p/tiled-qt/contributors - with commits going into GIT as recently as the 2nd - http://gitorious.org/tiled/ - I will try to contact the main developers and show them Lime to see if we can get any proper lines of communication going with them,

[import]uid: 5833 topic_id: 4867 reply_id: 15726[/import]

#7

Good idea about approaching the Tiled developers. I’m happy to hear they are active. Looking at the downloadable versions on the public page you can’t see how active it is. Please tell them that I for one will be happy to donate to their project as long as they maintain that link with Lime. [import]uid: 11904 topic_id: 4867 reply_id: 15731[/import]

#8

Graham,

if you go to the #tiled IRC channel on irc.freenode.net you’ll find some developers that seem quite keen to add new features (i discussed the physics shapes & slopes stuff with them)…they just need a gentle push and a good spec i think

j [import]uid: 6645 topic_id: 4867 reply_id: 15760[/import]

#9

Charging for Lime before the performance issues are fixed would be development suicide! [import]uid: 13089 topic_id: 4867 reply_id: 15810[/import]

#10

@j

Thanks for the info, would be cool to have them on board.

@udesignme

After having a bit of time to think about my question I have realised how foolish it would be so I certainly agree :slight_smile:

So to change the question slightly, imagine the performance issues were sorted what other things - documentation, features, bug fixes - would be needed before going into public beta? [import]uid: 5833 topic_id: 4867 reply_id: 15827[/import]

#11

I think as soon as the performance issues are fixed, and maybe some more tutorials on how to do like parallax, etc. I think it would be ready for public beta. Great work Graham, Lime is coming along quite nicely. [import]uid: 8782 topic_id: 4867 reply_id: 15853[/import]

#12

Graham,

$40 is a fair price, I’d gladly pay it.

As to the reliance on tiled, as you say it’s open source and the cocos2d community also rely on it so I think you are safe there.

I’m not seeing performance issues, are these only on devices?

The bugs I’d what fixed before paying are the the camera issues, e.g. setPosition and slide map not working properly.

I think your documentation and forum support are good so not too sure you need to do lots more there.

Hope that helps,

Cheers!

Rob
[import]uid: 12431 topic_id: 4867 reply_id: 15857[/import]

#13

@NayGames

I’m hoping the performance issues will be getting sorted soon and yea once the parallax stuff is sorted I will be creating a tutorial for that straight away.

@technohead2000

Awesome, I think $40 seems like a fair sum.

Yea the performance issues are device only, simulator should be all fine. Having said that I haven’t tried on the XCode simulator yet, might be worth a try for curiosity.

Camera bugs are a big priority as well as documentation for them, they’re pretty much second to speed issues right now. [import]uid: 5833 topic_id: 4867 reply_id: 15865[/import]

#14

If performance issues are sorted $40 is under priced imho. The time savings with a good map library are immeasurable.

Performance on iPod touch, Archos 101 and HTC Magic are all a little sub-par currently, but I’m happy enough if you say you are confident of resolving these issues, till then I can continue to test on the simulators.

I wouldn’t stress too much about tiled, it’s been around a long time, I’m still using the older java version myself, which has more features. [import]uid: 11672 topic_id: 4867 reply_id: 16276[/import]

#15

Underpriced? I was thinking it’d be overpriced :slight_smile:

I guess I need more input from the rest of the community as a whole as well to see what they would pay. I’m not saying I want to charge the highest rate possible, it’d just be nice to get a little return on the project :slight_smile:

I am very confident that it can be fixed, and if I find out I can’t I’d just release the library for free to see if the community could fix it :slight_smile:

Interesting, does the Java version still work with Lime then? I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet and wasn’t sure if the XML format would be the same. What other features does it have? Anything I could add support for in Lime? [import]uid: 5833 topic_id: 4867 reply_id: 16277[/import]

#16

Well, comparing the price of lime to something like the corona project manager is where I would say lime is ‘under-priced’.

I’m new to lua/corona, but given my understanding that you have to provide your users with what essentially source code files, you do run the risk of over-pricing and having some people take advantage, something a compiled binary like the project manager or particle apps have to worry less about.

$40 is a good price to strike that balance, if you could provide your customers with a shared object/compiled lib you could easily make a price increase imho.

The java version of tiled has a few features that the QT version didn’t have (they may have been added since), extra features for tilesets etc. The xml export format works fine with lime.
The java version has support for writing/loading plugins for other file formats than xml also, iirc there’s support for exporting maps as lua files. But it’s been along time, so don’t quote me on that.

[import]uid: 11672 topic_id: 4867 reply_id: 16278[/import]

#17

Yea currently my code is all uncompiled Lua and not really sure how to do it any other way. And not really sure if it would be worth the effort of doing it anyway.

I will consider bumping the price to $50 to see what people think but not sure. Plus beta testers will be getting a free licence anyway :slight_smile:

I will look into the Java version when I get a second, see what the extra features are and if I can do anything with them. Thanks for the heads up. [import]uid: 5833 topic_id: 4867 reply_id: 16281[/import]

#18

Don’t do anything with the Java version, it’s depreciated; wait for the QT version to support the features. :slight_smile: [import]uid: 13089 topic_id: 4867 reply_id: 16300[/import]

#19

Ah right ok, thank you. I hope they bring over the other features then, whatever they may be :slight_smile: [import]uid: 5833 topic_id: 4867 reply_id: 16301[/import]

#20

They’re intending to eventually, development on the QT build is pretty fast. [import]uid: 13089 topic_id: 4867 reply_id: 16302[/import]