Question - IDE Source Control Timeline?

Is there any word on when source control will be available in GMS2?

I noticed the help file's instructions show options to set it up that don't currently exist in the IDE. I also noticed one of my favorite (read: least favorite) lines in the helpfile:

I'll also say, this language is kind of confusing to me. On the licenses page of my account, it says nothing about a "trial" license. To me, a trial communicates a temporary and typically free version of a program, not an early access license.

Am I missing something here? Or is that an error in the helpfile?

(I've also noticed shaders use similar language in the helpfile, and I've had trouble getting them work. But that is likely my own error, since I don't know much about shaders yet)

Thanks.

 

I'll let YYG Staffers speak to what their intent is with regard to features and pricing, but it looks to me like they're trying to do the same thing that they tried to do with GMS1.

Some history:

For a long time, GM (pre-Studio) was very inexpensive, with a very useful Free edition, and then a Paid version that unlocked some additional features.

When YYG bought GM, they raised the price by about double what it was (IIRC it went from something like $25 to $40; users howled). $40 is still very inexpensive, unless you don't have a job or something.

When GM:S was released, the price went up even higher, to $200. $200 is no longer a very inexpensive price point. Users howled. They had a "free" version but it was extremely limited. I never tried it, but I think you couldn't make a project with more than 1 room and 3 objects. It was nearly useless, and it seemed like it was intended to be something that you could try out as a demo to see if you liked it, but if you liked it enough to use it at all, YYG was expecting you to shell out $200 for it, at a minimum.

YYG padded this painful increase by offering upgrade pricing for people who had purchased GM8, and on occasionally they had sales. Eventually they lowered their prices a bit, while increasing the price of Master Collection. They got rid of the "crippled" free edition of GMS and made a Standard edition which was once again free.

In short, over the years, they've tried a few different pricing experiments with the product, with varying success. It seems as though they're trying once again to go with a very limited, not very useful Free option that they consider a trial demo. I don't know that the market will like this any more than it did the last time. So they may or may not change. It does seem like having a more useful free edition of the tool would benefit them as long as it has a decent conversion rate to users paying for a higher edition. I'd assume that if the conversion rate with the less-useful trial edition is inferior to the conversion rate of Standard, they may relent.

Still, I think the features you get, combined with GMS's ease of use and gentle learning curve, make it worth paying for. If you want something more powerful and free, there are free engines out there that you can find with a google search.

 

Having GMS2 generating resource names as random GUID, source control is rather unusable, cause when two developers add an objects on their side, the project with not only doesn't merge automatically, but even using merge tool it's hard (for example JSON doesn't accept comma on last element), since too many metadata is kept in main project file.

So, when two developers works, you will get conflicts several times a day, and loose lot of resources, because of GIT conflicts. I would like to back to XML or switch to YAML.

 

Ah, so I did understand the help file correctly.
I own the desktop license for GMS2, yet source control options seem to be missing in my IDE:


The helpfile shows to go to "Preferences - Plugins - Source Control (Git)" to set up source control
In my IDE, Preferences doesn't have a "Plugins" category.

 

It should be in "Main options" (previously Global Game Settings) of project, under "Steam ID" but looks like is missing in latest version. It's replaced by "Allow to send anonymous statistics"

 

It's because we're still in beta, and that feature isn't ready yet. But you can still manage your files outside of gms2

 

nah, its mentioned above

 

Yes, the license entitles you to the feature, which hasn't been released yet. People who are paying for the desktop license are still in beta. Read the release notes.

 

I've browsed the release notes both for the IDE and the Runtime. I can't find anything about source control support not being implemented yet. This is the most complete list of "missing features" I could find:

(via http://gms.yoyogames.com/release-notes-runtime.html)

 

It's here: http://gms.yoyogames.com/ReleaseNotes.html

 

That's what happens if you have internal early versions available

 

We expect source control to be available soon. That, like extensions had issues we didn't want to release with, but with lots of developers really wanting to access the desktop version to remove the limits, we removed these and give everyone want they wanted.

Really? What are your numbers or proof to back this up?

 

I don't have any, but it's easy to figure a few things out through some reasonable deduction.

It stands to reason that almost no one buys the paid version sight unseen, right? So nearly every paid license sold must have been a conversion from someone who was at one time a free user. We can round "nearly" and "almost" to "all" pretty reasonably, here.

How many paid licenses have you sold?
How many downloads of the free version have you had?
And of those, how many are still actively in use (eg, they weren't downloaded and forgotten, but downloaded AND installed, and you're getting telemetry data suggesting that they're used at least semi-regularly)?

You should be able to do a back of the envelope calculation based on that, fairly easily. I don't have access to your data, or I would do it.

 

Ahhhh...pure guess work..... well, can't comment on specific numbers obviously, but none of GMs usage is what you think

 

That's why I'd love to see numbers!

But yeah, you're doing enough in sales to sustain a business, aren't you? (I realize you probably cannot comment on that, especially if the answer is no... but you ARE hiring so I assume you're not doing terrible.)

 

can't comment....aaaaaaand....can't comment

Thanks for playing

 

Thanks for clearing that up! I completely skimmed past that line in the release notes.