Million Tile Engine Beta Release

Million Tile Engine
#1041

Yay it finally destroys the freaken pot!! :slight_smile: Thanks a ton!

mte.removeSprite(potObject, false) physics.removeBody( potObject ) --potObject = nil ----------------------------------- mte.removeSprite(potObject, false) physics.removeBody( potObject ) potObject = nil

The above remove part works, but if I try to potObject = nil to totally get rid of it I get an error MTE.lua:1243 attempt to index local ‘sprite’ a nil value, also if I ever try mte.removeSprite(potObject, true) *true part* even when I don’t nil it out  I also get a seperate error mte.lua:1262: attempt to call method ‘removeSelf’ a nil value, but will always work for false.

This has been happening for my other parts of my game too when trying to remove stuff and I been doing mte.removeSprite(event, false) everywhere, but I don’t know why the true part will always give back an error.

#1042

@dyson122 Where can I buy MTE? The gumroad link says “this product is not currently for sale” and I can’t find any other links to buy this. Is this discontinued?

#1043

chillfok, I get the purchase screen for MTE just fine – although I do see the “not available” message for a second before it changes to a buy screen. Try switching to a different browser to see if that helps.

 Jay

#1044

That’s very strange. I tried with 5 different browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Safari on my iPhone and iPad) to no avail. I even connected through a proxy just in case my Boston IP was somehow banned and I get the exact same page. Where are you connecting from physically?

#1045

Continuing to support and develop MTE no longer makes financial sense. I can’t in good conscious charge for something I do not intend to support. I’m evaluating my options. Refunds for some of the most recent purchases might be in order, and MTE might become another free but unsupported tile solution. I’m not sure yet. I do know that this has been a long time coming. I’d hoped to split my attention between a job and MTE, but merely handling customer support (which itself generates no direct income) has often taken as many hours as a job itself, not to mention the time needed to actually continue development. 

At any rate, my active participation in the indie scene and in the Corona SDK community is probably at an end for the foreseeable future.

Any input pertaining to the future of MTE is appreciated.

#1046

dyson122, so sorry to hear that. Let me suggest a few options.

  1. Open source it and let the strongest “fork” win.

  2. Sell it to the Corona SDK people.

  3. Make it donation-ware.

  4. Implement a model where the actual product is free but support is not (see MySQL or Redhat).

So for folks like me who even after reading your disclaimer are willing to pay for the software even though you explicitly mentioned that you will not be supporting it anymore… Could we still get our hands on it? 

#1047

That’s a tough one. 

  1. You could sell it as unsupported; using the Corona community to fill that gap. 

  2. You could talk to Jay or Corona Labs about options there.

  3. You could open it up on github so that others can maintain it.

As somebody actively building a game using MTE I hope to see an option where it is maintained by somebody, long term. I think to a certain extent I can do that myself; I don’t really know the codebase anymore but adapting to Corona is usually not too bad. But like you said, it can be tough to find someone who has the time to maintain *and* support it.

I suppose in an ideal world I’d like to see it supported as either a CL option or Jay’s stuff, just because I think the current version is fundamentally so sound that I’m not really interested in seeing much in the way of improvements. It works. It’s a fundamentally important aspect of making real 2D games. I’d hope someone is out there with the time/money on their hands to keep it going.

#1048

Sad to hear that :frowning: We know that you don’t get any money out of helping us in customer support, and we do GREATLY appreciate it. You have helped a lot of us greatly and made some of our games come to life and not just rust in a corner… I would gladly donate more to help this project live longer. I understand that continuing this project doesn’t make finance sense, so thank you for delivering an amazing product to us and good luck in the future! And thanks for helping me out in the past (hopefully I can show you what I created using MTE very soon)!

#1049

What horrible news, but I can’t fault you for making that decision. Game dev is a subset of programming, Corona dev is a subset of game dev, and tile-based games are a subset of Corona dev, so making a living in this market is hard. Or even impossible in many cases. :frowning:

MTE is a great tool and I’d hate to see it go completely away. Good luck with whatever you decide.

 Jay

#1050

Hey Dyson,

Take a break, let it alone for a bit, but don’t give it up!  You already have the best tile engine in existence.  

But here’s some good advice from a book called ‘Reworked’… Make half a product, not a half-assed product :)   Which means finish the core functionality and leave it at that.  when a few dozen people ask for a feature, maybe do it but not until then.  You will find your support effort goes down a whole bunch and quality jumps.

I know this from experience, with my fitness software I bolted everything I could onto it, everything people asked for until I could no longer maintain it or grow it.   It became zero sum.

So strip out what mte doesn’t need, keep it solid and let it live!

And a BIG thanks to you because without you and MTE, I couldn’t have gotten Stellar Trek out the door!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gbeegames.stellartrek

#1051

Hey Dyson, 

Just want to say best of luck and success to you in whatever endeavor you choose next. MTE is an amazing library and I think a lot can be achieved with it in its current form with no other improvement. As long as Corona SDK changes don’t break it along the way, I think you can simply stop improving MTE and do what you need to do in order to put food on the table.

Keep well and don’t be a stranger please. Regards,

Kerem

#1052

Hi Dyson,

I have Two sprites moving opposite to each other . I would like to find the collision between them , when they reach a distance of one tile. How can i do it ?

Thanks,

Kumar KS. 

#1053

Hi Dyson,

I believe everyone here share a common goal: Do what they like to make life.

however sometime it just not always as easy as we thought, if there are no financial problems, we believe you will keep developing MTE in full time.

Here are some other ideas to increase revenue from MTE: 

  1. fee of update - every major update charge some dimes, the users could choose update the latest version or next one.

  2. fee of technical support ticket - charge few dimes for asking support from you except bug report.

  3. make a donation option on Gumroad - there are always someone willing to pay more to support developers

Maybe they won’t help a lot in short time, but I believe they could be at least some financial support for long term. MTE just like your baby, you spent lot of time to grow it from none and make it so powerful to help a lot of us. MTE is the best one of it’s kind.

Do what you must, and please don’t forget to do what you love to. :slight_smile:

Regards,

#1054

Hi,

I bet this has been answered before and appologies if that is the case.

But can someone tell me how I can detect touch event on a tile map ? Like what I want to do is to remove a tile if it get toched.

Regards

Rotter

#1055

Touched by what an ingame player or your finger? Player just do an onCollision test and finger just do if touch on the object call the removeTileFunction…or really just make it an object in Tiled that looks like a tile and remove it simple

#1056

Azmar,

Thanks for the quick response. It’s by touching with a finger.

I actually found a soultion shortly after posting this :smiley: by attaching the listner to getMapObj.

http://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/33119-million-tile-engine-beta-release/page-16

Thanks

#1057

Ok next stuipd question,

How can I get the tile that exist on a event.x,event.y position ? Tried to use mte.convert but it seems that was the wrong idea.

Cheers

#1058

Ok, to answer my own question again

            local pos=mte.convert(‘screenPosToLoc’, event.x, event.y)
 

Need to stop getting frustrated and start to read… :wink:

#1059

Hi dyson, I just wanted to join others by saying how sorry I am to learn this news. MTE is a fantastic product and engine: a great achievement. It would be a real shame to see all that hard work, and the engine itself, disappear. MTE is the backbone to several games I currently have in development and like many others I wouldn’t want to see it vanish or cease to exist either.

I also appreciate and understand - not to mention experience(!) - the financial pressures of the real-world and the harsh reality that all too often indie app development is an incredibly time consuming and financially unrewarding hobby rather than the additional revenue stream we would like it to be. There are far quicker and easier ways to earn a few bucks, right?

I’m hoping that we - the customer base and MTE community - can help you to find a solution to keep MTE going in a way that both rewards you for your efforts and frees up your time so you can actually go out and earn a living (not to mention have a social life too). I really like chillfok’s suggestions…

…and would add 5) Keep the existing paid license model and let the community answer API related questions and provide support. Don’t feel the need or obligation to respond to every post yourself or implement every feature request you receive. Make it clear what it is that people are actually purchasing so there is no additional expectation or demand on your time.

I think this approach would allow you to continue to receive revenue for the product you’ve spent so long developing as well as free up your time. R&D is the most expensive part and now you get to benefit from that work with a finished product and greater economies of scale through sales. It’ll be a shame to close the project now that all the hard work is done.

I do hope you reconsider and that we can help you find a viable solution that helps keep MTE alive.

All the best.

#1060

Open Source

I just wanted to add that if you did decide to open source MTE then I would be interested in contributing, as and when I could, as I’m sure many others would. In its current form MTE is mostly production ready (right?) and would probably only require the occasional patch were a Corona update (public release) to break it or a bug were to be discovered. It would certainly take the burden from you if we could contribute fixes. Also, at 17,400 lines of code MTE is a bit of a beast so would definitely benefit from being more modular if it were to be maintained by multiple developers. This would also facilitate the contribution and integration of new features by the community over time. For example, I use Jumper with MTE to provide pathfinding - https://github.com/Yonaba/Jumper - and would be happy to contribute the integration code as an MTE plugin, although I’d need to make that more modular myself first.

Modular Business Model

It might also be worth considering stripping MTE back and have a business model that’s similiar to Corona SDK itself. With more modular code, for example, you could release “MTE Starter” for $25 and this would provide the basic core features / everything you need for a 2D top-down tile game. You could then sell modular extensions, which have “MTE Starter” as a dependency. So, you could sell the platform game module for an additional $10, say, and the isometric game add-on module for a further $10. If maintaining the physics engine aspects is more time consuming and complex then separate that out and charge more for that too, say $5 extra.

So, if a new customer wanted to make a basic 2D tile game then MTE would cost them just $25. The lower price might encourage more sales. If they then wanted to make a platformer down the road it’d be an additional $10 for that add-on (the cost is now equal to MTE’s current $35 price tag). A platformer with physics? It’s an extra $5 for that module, etc.

Making MTE more modular and encapsulated would not only ease the burden of maintenance and the inclusion of new features but you could also use it to increase sales and ultimately revenue. Rather than trying to be everything to everyone, as it currently is, you give developers the option to buy just the modules they need and buy additional components (such as the recent appendMap) or full extensions (isometric gameplay) when needed. It’s definitely worth considering - if MTE were mine it’s what I would do. :slight_smile:

I think there’s a lot of future left in MTE and the potential for some great games to be developed relatively quickly with it (quicker than would be without it). It would be a real shame for everyone - you, us, and Corona Labs - if it were to disappear forever.

Please keep up the good work and best of luck in your job hunting / new job. If we can help with MTE in any way please let us know.

Best wishes.