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Member Since 03 Mar 2006
Offline Last Active May 31 2012 04:03 PM

Posts I've Made

In Topic: Visual Studio 11 Express

31 May 2012 - 03:57 PM

Have you looked at the UDK commercial license terms?

Here, the download.

And the important quote:" Use of the UDK for noncommercial purposes is free of charge."

Something that isn't possible with Windows SDK anymore.

Despite my asking a couple of times, you have yet to give a reason WinRT or Metro will block you from making a meaningful application.

That's because you are either stupid or a shill (yes, I went there, ban me if you will).

Or maybe such behavior is reserved for moderators only.

In Topic: Visual Studio 11 Express

31 May 2012 - 03:07 PM

if VS full version only cost $25, people would be far less bothered I imagine.

It wouldn't change if it were 1 cent ir free.

It's not the price - it's the extra hurdle and restrictions put on by licensing.

Linux is growing vastly on servers because you can make 1, 2, 3 or 300 copies as needed. Or you can keep multiple disk images. Or you can put it into repository. Or put it on web for download. But you never, ever need to worry about licensing.

The moment you need to maintain a license, even if that license is free, costs go up. It immediately also excludes such software from many uses that require either budget or legal approval. Anyone who has not had to deal with these kind of environments will not understand why it's a hassle.

Requiring a license also immediately puts off majority of occasional contributors - how often did you go to a site that wanted you to create account only to close it because you didn't want to be bothered remembering and maintaining another account?

Which is why Unreal Engine is free download - do with it what you want, but one needs to pay when revenue exceeds certain amount. Same thing here - as long as Windows SDK (again, not Visual Studio - VS is UI and fluff, the important stuff are the compiler, linker and headers), development was accessible.

This single change eliminates desktop development as viable option and also changes Microsoft's strategic position. Obviously, if you're a Microsoft shop, it doesn't change anything.

Android fees: Android SDK is freely accessible - the fee is for publishing. All tools used are open as well.
Apple - it's unix, uses GCC or clang, the license is again XCode and publishing. Huge hurdle, which isn't even technical however, is requirement to run on Apple hardware only.
Microsoft - the WinAPI uses proprietary language extensions and only builds fully with Microsoft's compiler. By requiring licensing, it's effectively a no-go.

Free is not about price, but about accessibility.

Does any of this matter? This debate exists because 5 years ago Apple built iOS, the AppStore and iPhone - all using nothing but open technologies, which was so disruptive that all tech giants panicked. They could have went with better compilers (at the time their toolchain was vastly inferior to everything else, free or not), what mattered was that they weren't restricted by arbitrary legal conditions.

And yet money changes hands faster than ever. Understand it or not (yet), the change made here is drastic for Microsoft, which has, regardless of using proprietary tech, always been the most open development environment.

But yes, you'll still be able to develop free apps for Windows and you'll even get a Metro store and make a dime or two from it. <sarcasm>Because all the programming, consumer or other is about appstores and competing who can publish more fart apps than others and use social viral channels to monetize it the most. Not writing a social fart app? Go away then, you're legacy.</sarcasm> Tags added to avoid someone taking things literally.

As a side note, considering the other Diablo 3 thread - it's incredibly ironic that anyone is shocked or annoyed about what D3 is or why it's like that. People have explained exactly what D3 will be like years ago, once the details became known. But everyone said: It's Blizzard, they'll do things right... It's same thing here. Just because some change doesn't affect you right now, or it doesn't seem like a big deal, doesn't mean it actually is either of those.

So I can only hope that everyone who advocates the changes discussed here also expressed complete disagreement in other thread, namely that D3 is the best future direction of gaming and that it has delivered more than any other game this year, clearly dictating the future that everyone simply must follow or become obsolete.

In Topic: Visual Studio 11 Express

29 May 2012 - 12:05 PM

I meant the paradigm shift from a completely open software environment to a sand-boxed one paired with a single point of contact software store will result in a better quality of life for consumers and will result in more sales for us, developers. There are some UI and API problems, but on the whole the direction they are shifting in benefits all users of the platform; it's not nearly the clusterfuck it's made out to be.

My point was just that switching will be difficult, but it will result in a lot of significant gains for consumers and developers alike that more than offset the differences. I didn't mean to imply that Metro>Desktop. The amount of negativity towards Metro/winRT/VS express is disproportionate to the reality.

Does Microsoft provide you with these canned answers or do you write them on your own? Are you full-time or just an evangelist who was bought with a free phone?

Because all your talk here is vaxing poetic about "quality of life for consumers", "single point of contact", "shifting benefits" - this is by the book PR talk.

As for better revenue - numbers disagree. Unless you have an established brand, such as Angry Birds (in which case you already received a paycheck), breaking into established mobile platforms as an indie is next to impossible without serious investment. So for indies or wannabe devs, it's worse, since there is much less emphasis on internet and viral marketing.

In Topic: Diablo 3 representing the future of Anti- piracy?

29 May 2012 - 11:25 AM

The new patch has arrived:
- Game now crashes to desktop


In Topic: Visual Studio 11 Express

28 May 2012 - 03:40 PM

Show me.
Show me where someone said that.


your most recent ones have wandered off down some fictional route where Metro is The One True OS Experiance, the desk top doesn't exist and we are all living in a Metro Only World on the desktop which is about a million miles away from where we are now.


Original topic was about changes to development tools and they strongly favor Metro. All in line with MS strategy and all that, nothing new.

I did claim that barriers to desktop development were raised, quite specifically, with a price tag on Visual Studio, coupled with changes to Windows SDK. Desktop isn't dead, nor is development impossible. But changes that were made do require some reconsideration on future directions. While WinSDK 2010 remains available, it's a generally bad strategy to base future development on previous versions of tools with no clear follow up.

Microsoft's history also shows that they will eliminate technologies and full technology stacks.

Likewise, when Oracle bought Sun, same thing happened. Anyone with any reliance on Sun-related technologies had to reconsider their choice. Not just obvious Java, even for stuff like VirtualBox, which introduced changes soon thereafter.

That would hardly be called madness or stupidity, pretending none of that matters however is. We might have little say about it, but it's still how things work.

The rest of the debate seemed to be going on about viability of Metro interface vs. current functionality for specific tasks.

As per topic of the thread, changes to Visual Studio affect desktop development.

That part was not about Metro being in any way bad, but about why raising the barrier on desktop development isn't a completely understandable choice at this point.

As for future, what I do need is to consider a "worst case" scenario - namely that building for desktop will come at a higher price. Not the end of the world, just a practical consideration. Like gas prices, where one might speculate on where they will go and if it is better to switch to public transport, along with everything that brings.


I'm not sure where you're getting that, my position was that it's highly unlikely for that to ever happen.

That part of the debate started here with: "However, a lot of people are taking for granted that desktop applications shouldn't be the norm anymore in Windows 8. As painful as it will be moving to a new paradigm, it is a paradigm that will net in greater access for content creators to consumers, and more satisfied consumers because of a standardized experience across applications."
"I think time would be better spent arguing for support of necessary features in WinRT rather than arguing for further support of desktop apps."

That is where the "Metro is the One True OS" comes from - not from me.