MTE + Coronastein3D + Price Increase?

Million Tile Engine
#1

Developing MTE is my day job and takes up most of my coding time, but for a while now I’ve had a second engine simmering on the back burner: Coronastein3D, a high-speed 2.5D raycaster in the same vein as Wolfenstein3D. Some of you may have heard me mention it before. 

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRiAOISuz6s[/media]

Coronastein is slowly reaching the point where it would be useful to people. The question now is just what to do with it; how exactly to sell it. I can see two options:

  1. Add Coronastein3D to MTE and increase the price of MTE to $34.99

  2. Sell Coronastein3D separately for $24.99

Coronastein is a modification of MTE 0.728 and a such it uses all the standard MTE camera and sprite movement functions you’re used to. Recombining the two would be trivial. I’m sure current MTE users would love to play around with it at no cost, but please think of this question from the perspective of a prospective buyer. Would you have bought MTE for 34.99? What if you were only interested in Tiled games? What if you were only interested in First Person games? 

This question is open to non-customer as well. If you were on the fence about buying MTE, what would push you forward or pull you back?

#2

This is a very tough decision and I can only give my opinion on the price having already purchased MTE. I would have paid $34.99 originally if it also included Coronastein3D but I’m not too sure that I would have purchased Coronastein3D separately for an additional $34.99. It is tough because I might have - but I haven’t had a lot of time to play around with MTE just yet so I might not have.

Being your full-time gig makes it even tougher but from my viewpoint, combining the two and selling them for a lower price together makes more sense. Is it a possibility to have all 3 options available for purchase? MTE only, Coronastein3D, MTE + Coronastein3D and price those appropriately?

Perhaps an early adopter freebie Coronastein3D? :slight_smile: haha!

Hope that helps - I know that these types of things must be tough to make decisions on.

Good luck though!

#3

I think you could consider

  1. MTE only at same price - this would allow people only interested in tiled games to continue as today.

  2. Coronastein only same price as MTE - same concept as above but for people only interested in first person stuff.

  3. MTE + Coronastein at $34.99 - Makes sense and I would have bought it. 

  4. Upgrade option for those who bought either MTE or Coronastein on its own to get the other piece - $10. 

Not sure if this makes it overly complicated for you from a code management sense. 

Best of luck with your endevours and thanks for all your hard work.

Edit - Just watched the video. It looks awesome!!! I want to get Coronastein as soon as you’re ready to offer it. There is so much we can do with this!!!

#4

I think ksan has got it spot on.   I was a little uncertain about buying at first so a smaller upfront cost would be more attractive, plus I’m currently not interested in 3D - but that may change eventually.

#5

I think MTE may be underpriced as is. Other similar software systems that we bought and looked at started at 99 USD. We settled on MTE because it was much better than your competition.

As for a business perspective, it has been mentioned before to offer three different options. There are pros and cons to this way. (Lower cost of entry for clients, possibility of multiple code sets to maintain could be difficult)

From our company perspective, we set out to develop snes/genesis type games for the ipad/iphone. However, that does not mean we would ignore Coronastein, we would buy a license and tinker with it.

As for the price, you are still way below your completion and you have the better product.

 

#6

You could bump them each to $34.95 with a package price for $49.95 and you’d sell them all day long.

If you leave them as separate products that gives you options that you don’t have if you combine them. 

 Jay

PS - I’ll buy Coronastein3D just about as soon as it’s available.

#7

I would have brought both for $34.95 but would not buy Coronastein3D on its own as I am really not wanting to create anything 3D’ish. Looks great however, good job Dyson!

#8

As several people have already said - a definite YES from me. I’m blown away by what you’ve achieved with MTE, and seriously think it’s underpriced for what it offers, truly the most impressive bit of code I’ve seen on Corona in the last two years.

#9

I’ve been swamped with non-MTE project stuff lately, so let me just say I agree with Jay…

#10

I’ve been following the forum for MTE for a few months now waiting until I have more time to develop my game, before I buy it.

First of all let me say it’s amazing and I agree with others that say it’s underpriced.  I really like the either/or/both sales model as follows.

MTE: $34.95

Coronastein3D: $34.95

Both purchased together: $49.95

Upgrade from either single purchase $20.00 (that way it’s a bit more expensive than buying them at the same time).

I’ll be buying both.

#11

I agree with the posts above in that for the quality and complexity of product I also think currently you are underpriced. 

#12

Do you mind if I ask how Coronastein3D works?

I don’t mean that I want you to spill the guts of your top-secret engine :slight_smile:

I mean does it use your own skewing solution, Corona’s graphics 2.0, or…?

And another thing…

In what kind of games would this be useful? I mean, Corona doesn’t support 3D (or even 2.5D, yet), so you’d have your 3D-looking walls and such, but flat characters. How would you make 3D players/NPC’s/objects? Is this also possible with Coronastein3D?

I don’t mean to be a troll - that video looks awesome, even better knowing it’s Corona doing this! - but I can’t see the use of this at the present time where Corona is now.

  • C
#13

I imagine Dyson is using the same Raycasting techniques that powered games like Wolfenstein 3D and similar early-90’s engines. I could be completely wrong, either way it’s mightily impressive and a shedload of work.

That said I have no idea how Dyson is actually extending what appears to be texture-mapped objects from the 2D into the 3D. It has to be lots of individual strips associated with each individual ray casted and intersecting with an object (wall).

There’s more info here for a similar engine in a browser - but like I said, a shedload of work :slight_smile:

http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/creating-pseudo-3d-games-with-html-5-can-1/

#14

What would that technique be? :slight_smile:

I agree, though - it looks amazing.

  • C
#15

Yeah definitely something I didn’t expect to see being made with Corona. Amazing.

#16

The thing that is most impressive - he’s running that demo on a 3GS!!!

#17

Anyhow, looks great.

Still would like to know, though, how objects are handled and how the clash between 2D/3D is done for non-wall things…

  • C
#18

I appreciate the feedback thus far, everyone! You’ve given me a lot to think about.

Caleb P, I chose the name of this engine for a reason. I’m sure the folks behind Wolfenstein and Doom would have loved to have 3D models as well, but alas that wasn’t possible. There are other SDK’s out there with powerful 3D engines, but not everyone wants to leave Corona to learn something new and complicated.

The build in the video does not use Graphics 2.0. The advantage of this is that it will work for Corona Starter users, who will not have access to G2.0’s new 2.5D manipulation capabilities. I have recently gained access to G2.0 and will look into extending in that direction as time allows, but the plan is still to support both Starter and Pro users. And Enterprise users too, one way or another.

As for how this would be useful, well, you’ll just have to use your imagination!

#19

Thanks for the info - either way, this looks really cool.

  • C
#20

Hey Dyson - quick question. Is CoronaStein3D a separate engine to MTE? Was just wandering whether it could facilitate switching between the two, in a similar concept to Bullfrog’s Dungeon Keeper - i.e having an isometric view of the game world and being able to switch to a first-person view from a character’s viewpoint?