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Refocusing on the PC


Josh

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blog-0970343001396381999.jpgBack when Leadwerks 2 was first launched, it was just a BlitzMax programming SDK, intended to be a modern replacement for Blitz3D. It turned out Blitz users generally did not want it, and instead the audience it attracted was C++ programmers who like graphics. A visual editor was introduced and it was made as good as possible for a product that started with the intention of just being a programming SDK.

 

Leadwerks 3.0 was launched with a strong emphasis on the tools that Leadwerks 2 lacked, and mobile. It was pretty clear that the main target was mobile. Once again though, the intended audience and the audience that came to me were two different things. There's still a lot of C++ programmers on Windows, but the appeal has broadened to include a lot of modders, artists, and beginners who want an easy to use editor, and of course Linux users. My favorite aspect of Leadwerks 3 is that it serves both advanced programmers and total beginners, with no compromises in the design. (Big win!)

Leadwerks for Mobile

My mobile offering, on the other hand, has not done well. There are two problems:

 

I estimate that mobile has accounted for around 80% of the time I spent debugging things in Leadwerks 3.0, yet it accounts for less than 10% of revenue. (It wasn't 80% of the problems, but because the whole process of developing on mobile is painfully slow, it takes more time to do simple things.) Sending an application from the computer to a device can take several minutes, the debuggers are slow, and the whole process is much less transparent than PC development. It's not terribly challenging in an intellectual sense, but it eats a lot of time. For example, it took about two weeks to implement our terrain system, but it took an extra week after that just to get it working on iOS and Android. That week could have been spent adding a different feature, but instead I was messing around with various tablets just trying to make them work.

 

The other problem is that there's a big disparity between mobile and PC graphics. I saw a huge upswing in interest when I started showing shots of the OpenGL 4.0 renderer. Although we have moved beyond just being a graphics engine, and I know the renderer is a big part of the appeal of Leadwerks. On mobile, the hardware is comparatively limited, so it's much harder for me to do anything that makes Leadwerks mobile stand out.

 

If I could just hire one engineer dedicated to mobile support, the first problem would be solved, because it wouldn't cut into my time. However, mobile has accounted for less than 10% of revenue in the last year. I didn't even break even on my development costs. PC sales have been consistently strong, but mobile doesn't even make enough to pay for its own maintenance. So what's been happening is the PC side of the business is subsidizing the mobile side.

 

I expect the second problem will be solved within a couple of years. Nvidia's Tegra 4 chips can supposedly run regular OpenGL 4 (not ES). When those become the norm, it could give us total convergence of graphics between the PC and mobile. At that point, I might actually have a mobile product that stands out and provides something different.

Leadwerks Tomorrow

Now, as I am shipping the Kickstarter rewards and about to launch 3.1 proper, I have to think about where I want Leadwerks to be in 6 months, and in 12 months. There are three main areas I want to move forward in:

 

Leadwerks Editor

  • Adding new tools to make life easier.
  • Refining the workflow to eliminate any remaining"sticky" points.
  • Bug fixes, to make it a super slick and polished experience.

 

The Engine

  • New features in graphics, physics, networking, etc.
  • Performance optimization.
  • Improved compatibility across all OpenGL 4 hardware.

 

Third-Party Technologies

  • Blender, SteamOS, Steam Workshop, virtual reality, etc.

 

Leadwerks on the PC is in a very good position today. Virtually every computer being sold today will run Leadwerks. We came into desktop Linux at just the right time, and I am very optimistic about that space. SteamOS is opening up the living room for the first time to us lowly indies. Think about where we are now, and where this community can be a year from now...there's a ton of opportunity for all of us, but I need to focus on where we're winning. If I continue to subsidize our mobile efforts, it's going to slow down development and result in a buggier product with fewer features. So I think it's pretty clear mobile should be discontinued as of version 3.1, in favor of a stronger PC-centric product.

 

It sucks because I lost a lot of money on mobile, and the people most willing to take a chance on a new venture also lost out. But at the same time, if I had just stayed still on Windows and continued along the Leadwerks 2 path, none of the great things we have going for us now would have happened. It may make sense to pick mobile up again, when the hardware can provide enough power, and when there is more interest from the community. So far the response has been pretty much what I expected; a handful of (understandably) disappointed people, but most of our community was never really into mobile, and the new growth is coming from other parts of the PC ecosystem, not mobile.

 

Support for the OUYA was added rather thoughtlessly as a stretch goal for the Kickstarter campaign. Given the OUYA's failure, it should obviously be scrapped and replaced with SteamOS support. Since Android was a part of that, I am giving Kickstarter backers the ability to opt out of the campaign instead of receiving the final rewards. Kickstarter was an overall good experience, but I probably won't ever do another one, unless the project is really well-defined and doesn't have a lot of unknown parts.

 

Desktop Linux, VR, and SteamOS are on the upswing, and all of these play to the strengths of Leadwerks. If 2013 was the year of finding our place, I think 2014 is going to be a year of reaching out to the gaming world and making some really astonishing developments.

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A quite insightful post. I wonder if this was largely due in part to the fact that Leadwerks was Greenlit which the user base primarily consist of PC users.

 

Discontinuing mobile sounds like it's ultimately good news. You have momentum in a particular direction and now it's all about feeding that momentum.

 

If you can dominate the PC indie game dev market segment it will then be easy to bleed into other market segments, when it could become profitable to support mobile.

 

Impressive stuff Josh!

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Thank you for the linux version.

I am one of disappointed for dropping mobile. Well at least i am glad that I was able to help funding linux version. Unfortunately for my current project long term support and Mobile is a must(will help differentiate my product to the rest) and I will go back to unity and give them (unfortunately a lot of)money

Other than this I wish all the best to Leadwerks and hopefully next year linux will not be dropped due to smaller market share in gaming(~2% accordingly to steam).

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Thanks for this post!

I have a big interest for mobile (Android only), and would pay as much of the price of the PC version, but at the same time I understand your point developing mobile would need more staff and your current sales result does not show this as profitable.

 

Would version 3.0 (Android) would still be available? I just want to use it to do some little demos with it and experiment with the Android platform. And using the same "workflow" would simplify the thing. Also the mesh format for 3.0 to 3.1 should not have changed that much.

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If you want 3.0 for Android, I can make that available in some way, but I would not count on it for long-term support. I don't particularly want to sell it, but if I make it free then people who bought it will not be happy. So let me think about that.

 

I don't see Linux or SteamOS as having this problem because they pretty much work the same as Windows and Mac, so it's not hard to keep those going, and I don't really have to worry about cost/benefit like I do with mobile. Mobile development is just sooooooooo incredibly slow. Provisioning profiles, having to kill the adb.exe task, waiting for Eclipse to perform a five-minute build, waiting for devices to start up...

 

I am one of disappointed for dropping mobile.
I'm sorry. That sucks. I hate to let anyone down like that.
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I presume everyone is interested in developing for Android and/or iOS. But why pay 99$ extra if you at first only need the base SDK anyways (to get started with developing).

 

I did buy the Android extra and only tried it once with Darkness Awaits to see that it lacks performance (haven't tried it with my latest device though). Also, why not just supply an APK or publish Darkness Awaits to Google Play? People want to see what it can do before buying 99$ extra.

 

Despite above, I understand your decision. :)

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I'm disappointed about mobile but I understand, have tried the Android version and was hoping for updates.

 

As ever I will continue to support, just don't get rid of Lua rolleyes.gif

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Honestly, if you would have done a Kickstarter for mobile back when making 3.0 I think your stance would be different today because you would have had the money up front from supporters, or it would have shown the demand wasn't there if it really wasn't there. Either way, it would have been a better experience today for everyone.

 

This does show the importance on us developers side to create frameworks for our game logic that is a layer above the engine we use so we can reuse our logic code between engines because there is a void of a 1 stop game engine that doesn't cost thousands of dollars or charge royalties or is complicated as all hell.

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"This does show the importance on us developers side to create frameworks for our game logic that is a layer above the engine we use"

 

I did this very thing with RogSys, which is partly the reason why I have the engine almost fully integrated after only a month. There's still specific things to do and lots of bug testing still, but the bulk of the work is done. A layer of separation between the engine and the game code is never a bad thing--it allows you to be flexible.

 

As for Josh's stance--beyond the fact this is his baby and he can raise it as he see's fit, we all known the gaming industry is constantly in a state of flux. Not long ago the PC was "dead" (as it's been many times before), and is now on the rise again. You have to be prepared to move with the trends if you want to keep going and growing :)

 

Add to this the other reasons he mentioned and it's not hard to see why he's making the choices he is....

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I would add my voice to Christian Clavet's in expressing interest in retained access to 3.0 for mobile (assuming it works as advertised). Porting PC code to an older and unsupported version of Leadwerks has still got to be better than porting it to a completely different engine, at least to get something started. (I was one of the people foolishly deciding to wait for 3.1 and the Kickstarter to complete before buying mobile support... oops.)

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As a PRO backer myself, it would be nice if Mobile was simply parked, not discontinued.

 

In the interim, access to V3.0 for mobile would help to satisfy my curiosity.

 

Likewise, the suggestion from Ywa of publishing Darkness Awaits to Google Play (or just on our board here) would allow others to understand its performance.

 

Overall, I have no doubt that you are trying to make the decisions possible moving forward and leveraging depreciated assets on non-active development platforms seems fairly straight forward.

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Nothing is absolute. If Linux users respond well after we launch the Linux version on the Ubuntu Software Center and Steam, then we can build up the number of users there, and Android development on Linux would be an obvious niche to go after.

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Have you considered using or integrating another framework like GamePlay3D to bring mobile back? (i am not a programer so i clearly dont know what i am talking about)

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