I’m leaning towards making Coronastien a seperate engine.
Aside from the inefficiency of loading the same map twice, achieving what you describe would be easiest with two seperate engine files anyway. Isometric maps use isometric tile images, which would look truly bizarre as Coronastein walls. Instead you would have an isometric map and an orthographic map for the isometric view and the 3D view respectively, loaded into MTE and Coronastein respectively. Then you would simply fade one to reveal the other and vice versa.
Of course, this does not account for the new possibilities afforded by Graphics 2.0 for Corona Pro users. I joined the early access program at the worse possible time- between releases- so I have yet to look at it. I’ve been occupied working on isometric map support for MTE lately, but I hope to get some more work done on Coronastein this weekend and sometime next week.
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? haha!
Hope that helps - I know that these types of things must be tough to make decisions on.
MTE only at same price - this would allow people only interested in tiled games to continue as today.
Coronastein only same price as MTE - same concept as above but for people only interested in first person stuff.
MTE + Coronastein at $34.99 - Makes sense and I would have bought it.
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!!!
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.
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.
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!
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.
I don’t mean that I want you to spill the guts of your top-secret engine
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.
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
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!
haha!