BB2 - do you guys think it will be worth it?

Discussion in 'Buildbox General Discussion' started by Danny Boy, Jan 23, 2016.

  1. Danny Boy

    Danny Boy Boxer

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    Firstly, this is my first post so cheers everyone!

    I've been playing around with BB1 for the past month and to be frank I have almost as much positive as negative things to say about it(stability is a HUGE issue when your project gets a little more complicated, both on Windows and Mac) but it definitely is an amazing tool for laying foundations and testing ideas(however I quickly run into serious dead ends and the various workarounds I had to employ seem to grow more and more complicated).

    So my question is this: do you guys truly believe that BB2 will significantly improve on BB1 stability? Because from what information I could find here the early access version does seem to suffer from many of the same faults BB1 has. The price the developers are asking is on par with major players but simply put I don't feel that you can put BB on the same level as for example Unity(and remember that Unity offers a free personal edition) I'm simply on the fence - on one hand I'd love to try out BB2 and hopefully find out that it fulfills all my needs, but on the other I'm wary of dropping a full price on a product that as of now seems more like a beta than a finished product in the stability department. What do you guys think? Is there gonna be a free trial version avaliable? Perhaps a free personal edition where you don't pay untill releasing something commercially?
     
  2. netkomm

    netkomm Avid Boxer

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    early access = beta

    some issues are expected (although we would prefer for it to be stable) but I think it will definitely improve in the short term.

    There will not be a "free personal edition" since you have total access to source code of your apps at any given point of time and it's not like Gamesalad (even they have moved away from the free personal edition)
     
  3. dxuuz

    dxuuz Boxer

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    Did I understand it correctly, with BB 2 I have access to the generated source code of my game? – Which language is it?
     
  4. netkomm

    netkomm Avid Boxer

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    depends on the platform. on iOS is Objective C, on Android Java
     
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  5. dxuuz

    dxuuz Boxer

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    Okay, thanks a lot for the reply.
     
  6. Kamil Kucma

    Kamil Kucma Boxer

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    Just started using BB 2.0 today, but I will immediately move back to the 1.3.5. I know it is in the early access but It crashes much too often for me and for now I can't recommend it. Once it even deleted all my graphic assets and corrupted my bbdoc file as a result ;( Strongly suggest to wait for the patched version.
     
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  7. swnam12

    swnam12 Boxer

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    I thought it was mostly Cocos2D-X, a game library written in C++?
     
  8. netkomm

    netkomm Avid Boxer

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    the library is independent from the application that Buildbox generates.
     
  9. swnam12

    swnam12 Boxer

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    My point was, because it uses the cocos library, the game files will be in C++. Native code for iOS will be in Objective-C and Java for Android, as you stated.
     
  10. trudnai

    trudnai Miniboss Boxer

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    Interesting. Could someone share me a dumb simple project's source code to see some sample it generates? This could be a make or break for me with my decision towards BB2. Thanks
     
  11. todro

    todro Avid Boxer

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    There is no big difference to BB1: the main code is packaged in cocos2d and BB's core libs, the basic rootviewcontroller and the appcontroller are objective-c, the player is still description-based.
     
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  12. trudnai

    trudnai Miniboss Boxer

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    Thanks @todro, I was just hoping that advanced ppl could add some extra functionality if there is a need for that.
     
  13. netkomm

    netkomm Avid Boxer

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    You can definitely add functionalities to the app provided you know "where you put your hands" :D

    The source code is there. This is definitely a job for a good Obj. C programmer.
     
  14. todro

    todro Avid Boxer

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    Interesting, where do you see real source code of the core player ?

    I see:
    - a simple main app calling the player as a function in a compiled object contained in a core BB library
    - a few callbacks in the appcontroller which allow function overloading and which are mainly for handling things like rotation, app switching etc.
    - header files to interface to the provided libraries
    - pre-compiled cocos2d-related functionality

    I do not see:

    - the objective-c source code of the player
    - possible entry opoints to simply hook into the core run-time player, at leat not at the moment.

    Maybe you can share some hints on how you can interface inside workflow of the player without rewriting the complete app ?
     
  15. TheViseOne

    TheViseOne Boxer

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    You can't really compare BB to anything out there since every other tool will require you to write some kind a code. Sure Unity offers a ton of amazing stuff, but you can't do anything in Unity if you do not know how to write scripts in C#

    Yes BB has bugs and stability issues, but you can't really compare product that has been in development for 1-2 years to product that has been around for 10 years(unity). Unity has bugs too as every other developer tool.
     

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