Sales Information for iTGB

#21 first time that's ever happened as far as i know.
probably because marc's rant could be considered "bad for business", but what do i know?

EDIT: oh i get it. this forum recently became open to the public, so if people who haven't bought a license sees marc's rant, they would NOT buy a license. makes sense.

#22 But given that people who haven't bought a license, like me for instance, don't have a way to know the good and bad points about iTGB and have to rely on GG personnel (who so far have simply said, "It's good, trust us!"), this could also be considered a lack of transparency. Especially since the only GG employee that I've talked to yet has been Mich.

If iTGB didn't look like the best candidate for what I have in mind, I would have walked away by now. This just isn't what I'd expect of a professional organization :(

#23 well, to be honest, i think the *official* iTGB forums are going to be biased. i try to be moderate/netural when it comes to talking about the pros and cons of iTGB (and marc too, obviously.) but yeah, the censorship is a bit distressing.

garagegames isnt a very big company (they used to be dynamix of tribes fame), so their staff is given forum assignments. it just so happens that mich has been put to task on iTGB updates, which is why he haunts these parts mostly.

#24 Ronald, (and Marc) thank you for your insight and input. That does help, knowing that there are people who're willing to help and who aren't polarized in one direction or another :)

I'm still on the fence and still talking to Mich. I'm slightly disappointed with iPhone development in general at the moment. Apple's review process is finally getting to me - I have five games in the review queue and one has been there so long that I'm beginning to think that it'll never see the light of day :(

I was hoping that getting into game development might help boost my flagging enthusiasm in iPhone development but so far, the process of getting any real information has been like pulling teeth. So, not feeling very optimistic at the moment.

#25 Off topic, but:

@Ronald - I like that term: "haunting the forums"

On topic:

Yes, the thread has been hidden but not locked. Fahim and I are still in an e-mail discussion.

#26 @ mich -- yes, i selected that word especially for you, haha :)

@ fahim -- just remember to always be optimistic in all situations. it's true there are a lot of garbage apps out there, maybe because they didn't have a great engine to back up their ideas-- which is why we're here. we can use iTGB to help transition our ideas into reality faster and more effectively, rather than having to fool around with half-assed engines, or (*gasp*) making one from scratch. iTGB gives us the opportunity to focus on the most important part of developing games-- the DESIGN. i'm never going to get tired of saying that. DESIGN, DESIGN, DESIGN.

#27 Mich, sent you an e-mail earlier today. If you didn't get it, do let me know.

#28 Mich, I've sent you two e-mails but no responses. I do appreciate the fact that you might be busy and that you're trying to help me but at this rate of communication I'll never really get anything done for weeks. I do want to move on to some other engine if we can't get something sorted out.

As a business, this reflects very badly on GarageGames. GG appears to be charging professional prices but running the business like it's out of somebody's garage. The whole argument - not made by me, BTW - that Unity has better support because they have more support people and not enough customers doesn't fly at all here. GG charges more and should have some sort of support in place. But you guys appear to fall back on "We give you the source code, so you can do anything." as an answer to everything.

At this stage, I'm really disappointed because I've spent a week talking to you and yet nothing has been resolved and I won't get a straight yes or no from you. I do like the promise of iTGB but at this stage, it's only a "promise" and it looks as if support is something I can not even dream of with GG. If iTGB does what I want, then I'd still probably take it on provided I can test it out first. I've said this before but if I don't hear something back from somebody at GarageGames, I'm going to say to heck with it and go look at another engine where they actually respond to your e-mails promptly - at least till the sale is done.

#29 I have an incident in with Unity that has been untouched and unanswered since Feb. I even confirmed that it was not working with the newest release. Their sales staff may answer quickly, but they have no semblance of support in my experience; and the experience of a number of developers I have talked to. I like UT. They're a great group with a great community; but they never seem to check their FogBugz reporting solution.

I answered your e-mails to the support queue, but you must not have gotten them. Check your spam folder; not that it matters now since Mich has already answered them as well in the topic.

#30 David, I do check my spam folder regularly and your e-mail from today/yesterday was the first one I've ever received from you. But I did receive that one. So have no clue what's going on. Thank you for your e-mail (and that from Mich) and I'll respond to those via e-mail.

#31 @Fahim, I am curious as to what your decision ended up being. I see that you purchased iTGB, and am wondering your thoughts on it, as I have had nothing but bad experience with it. I am also knee deep in Unity's iPhone trial which I find to be spectacular compared to iTGB. Everything just 'works' right out of the box, and to say that 3D performs way better than the crappy 2D stuff of iTGB is an understatement. Even the fact that they let you trial it before you buy it speaks volumes, regardless of whether you get the source code or not, though I understand why GG doesnt to that respect. But had I known that it was this bad, I wouldnt have bought it, pure and simple. I feel totally 'duped' into buying it and feel that is all GG cares about, the paycheck, and not releasing a quality product that has been tested. The things I run into everyday would have been pretty easy to see had it been tested before it was released. I've been a member of this community for a long time, and fully support GG, but this so called product has been nothing but a big waste of my time, as it doesnt work as they say it does, and to me, thats false advertising.

I would expect GG to still want to compete in the iPhone space with their engine, so I am wondering why they released such a mess and expect people to just deal with its short comings. I have no problem digging into the source to fix something that isnt working the way I want, however, isnt the purpose of getting an engine supposed to help the process of developing a game, and not hinder it?

Besides the fact that if there is something that Unity doesnt do for you, then why not just write your own and use their plugin feature? Of course you only get that in the pro version, and dont have it available for the iphone yet, but that is one of the things that is listed in their 1.1 roadmap, among other things. That to me is almost as good as having the source code.

I have a lot of other things to say, but feel that they wouldnt be appropriate for this medium, as likely they would delete it as they seem to like to do when someone points out their short comings.

#32 I would like to add to my previous post and say that when comparing Unity3D to GG's other engines, like T3D or even TGEA, there is no comparison, I'd go torque all the way, but for the iPhone, Unity has iTGB beat, and very badly in my opinion, so when I read the posts on here about comparing apples to cucumbers, I just laugh. Try comparing apples to apples once and see what happens. Unity3D for iPhone is light years ahead of iTGB in all respects except one: you dont get the source code. I'll admit, that is a major drawback to me, but I think its worth it to have a product that works as advertised, and supports the device like it should and how Apple designed it.

#33 @Syntactic Studios, I didn't buy iTGB - I was given an evaluation version after long discussions about evaluations (I posted something else originally but have edited this - just saying for the sake of transparency ...). My conclusions are pretty similar to yours - iTGB is just not a finished product. If somebody buys it thinking that they're going to get something which works right out of the box, then they're going to find themselves sadly disillusioned.

And the fact is, all of GG marketing appears to be aimed at telling people that iTGB simply works. And I find this very deceptive. I've offered to help GG make better pre-sales materials so that a potential buyer can better evaluate iTGB, or at least get an understanding as to its capabilities but so far, I don't see anybody from GG being too eager to take me up on my offer :)

So I'm actually planning to write a series of blog posts detailing my experience with iTGB so far as well as what happens as I continue to evaluate it. Hopefully, that'll help some of the other poor souls who buy iTGB based simply on the hype.

Mind you, I'm not saying that iTGB is a crap product. For what I want done, it'll still work better than Unity. Plus, it suits my level of game development experience better :) But boy do you have to do a lot of tweaking and hunting and fixing and testing to get anything to work - especially when it comes to deploying to the iPhone!

#34 I would definitely be interested in learning about your experiences with iTGB, and maybe adding my own trials and tribulations. Perhaps we could take our discussion off line as not to clutter the forums. By no means was my post meant to be some kind of endorsement of Unity, and I appologize if it came out that way. In fact, I am still using iTGB for my project today, and now that I have fixed a lot of the problems and bugs, things seem to be working better. However, deploying to the device is still an issue which takes more time than it should I think, so that will be the next thing I am going to be looking at among others.

For what its worth, I've gotten pretty good results with things so far. I've been able to squeeze an average of 30 to 40-ish FPS from the Shooter demo that ships with the engine, considering that in stock form it was giving me about 8 to 10! Please keep in mind that I am using very minimal scripting, as I think it has major problems and is more trouble than its worth, but is needed in some cases. But, I think that it has potential definitely, however I think GG needs to step up to the plate and provide the community with some much needed answers about how and when things are going to get better with it. I dont expect to have to pay additional hard earned money for an update for things that shouldnt have been an issue or problem to begin with.

#35 I totally agree with all that you've said :) I love the product but believe it has major issues which are going to put off people jumping in based purely on a few screenshots and a product description. I'm still too early in my own game development efforts to comment personally on the framerates but I believe what you've said tallies with what others have been saying. iTGB definitely needs a lot of love and care if you want it to be productive but once you do, the results are great!

My only hope is that GG does pay attention to what people are saying and provides a lot more information in an easily accessible manner. Most of what you need is there in one forum thread or another but you do have to do some hunting :)

If you'd like to continue the discussion offline, my e-mail address is fahimf at gmail dot com. Do feel free to contact me directly. I'm sure I'll enjoy the chat :)