The Future Of Buildbox: A Letter To The Community

Discussion in 'Official Announcements' started by Sean Buildbox, Aug 26, 2020.

  1. Sean Buildbox

    Sean Buildbox Serious Boxer

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    [​IMG]
    (Note this is cross-post of the letter from Mike posted on the blog. To see the original letter post please see here)

    Hi Buildbox Community,

    I’m nearing the end of my first month as CEO of the company, and it’s been exciting meeting the community, meeting the team here at Buildbox, and digging into our future direction. With those first few weeks behind me, I’d like to share with the community some of my early plans for the product.

    First, let me say I am really excited about the future of Buildbox. I took on this job because I love video games and I was inspired by the promise of Buildbox that enables anyone to make games. At its core, Buildbox is a great product. But, as I review where we are, there’s some changes we need to make.

    Having spoken with many of you, read your survey feedback, reviewed the comments on our forums and Discord channels, it’s inspiring to see everything you’ve created! It’s also clear there’s areas we can improve about the product. The truth is we have work to do to deliver on our vision of empowering everyone to make video games.

    I believe strongly in community, and more importantly, listening to our community; the feedback you have, the challenges you face, and how our products can be improved to better meet your needs. So, for the near term, our focus is going to be on responding to as much of your feedback as possible. To summarize those changes:

    We’re Focusing on Quality & Ease of Use
    Buildbox is an incredible product, but as many of you know, there’s some bugs and crashes that have been hanging around for a while, so UI improvements the community has asked for, and some of our tutorials and documentation need some updates. We’re going to be focusing on addressing these things immediately, so you can have confidence in the product.

    We’re Re-Releasing Buildbox 2
    Buildbox 2 is an incredible product that has powered so many hit 2D games and is loved by the community. We think it’s a shame for it to be sitting on the shelf. Buildbox 3 will continue to evolve as we further invest in making it easier to make 3D games, but if your goal is 2D, we want you to have access to this great product.

    We’ll Continue to Invest in Features
    I’ve seen so many great requests for new capabilities in the product to expand the kinds of games you can make. We’re going to be focusing on expanding the core game-making capabilities of the products to give you more options for the kinds of games you want to make.

    We Want Your Feedback
    Over the coming weeks, we’ll be building out our roadmap for the things I mentioned above. We want your input. I’m going to be hosting several events:

    [Live AMA in Discord – September 16, 11 AM PST]
    [Livestream – September 30, 10 AM PST]

    SUBMIT YOUR QUESTIONS

    We’re betting on all of you, our developers. It’s the foundation of the company and our future success. I look forward to charting our course for the product together, with you.

    Wishing you all the best,

    Mike Seavers
    CEO
     
  2. king-hamdo

    king-hamdo Boxer

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    great news to hear.... i am so excited to see a big step forward, i hope that the 2d version back with more options and collision technique instead off rectangle or circle, i hope seeing the multiplayer options and buttons for different bullet, i hope seeing option that can let the main character changes (size, form, or setting ) totally in the game like mario.
     
  3. DariusGuerrero

    DariusGuerrero Avid Boxer

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    to be fair, you can change the collision shapes in BB2. the changing of character size, form, and setting can be done by actions and advanced moves. @king-hamdo

    but yes! this is great news. most of the featured games even this year are made with BB2!
     
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  4. wayne_martell

    wayne_martell Avid Boxer

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    I find the BB2 way more easy to use, I don't have to code or get lost in complex node networks. So great news !
     
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  5. aryanveer95

    aryanveer95 Boxer

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    This is what i am expecting from you guys. Glad you addressed it.
     
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  6. HG-2018

    HG-2018 Avid Boxer

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    Good news that buildbox 2 will be further developed, but when can we expect improvements? Unfortunately in the last years a lot has been promised concerning buildbox 2 and not many ideas have been realized. Also improvements in the performance of Android were promised and these would be implemented rather poorly. I would count myself among those who know the program buildbox 2 very well and still use it. There were countless bugs listed that are still in the program for years, whenever it was addressed you should write an email to the support. These were always answered quickly, but unfortunately the bugs were rarely fixed. Promise is one thing, but when will they be implemented regularly? ;)
     
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  7. dan_counsell

    dan_counsell Avid Boxer

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    That's great to hear, looking forward to all the improvements
     
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  8. jcalle

    jcalle Miniboss Boxer

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    It is good news that BB2 continues to be updated.
    I believe that BB2 is a very simple program to make 2D games, although BB3 tries to show us that you can make 2D games, with BB2, it is 10 times easier, faster and easier.
     
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  9. ramiucef

    ramiucef Avid Boxer

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    I believe this time it's going to be different, now we will have two separate products from Buildbox each with its own price and plans, BB2 and BB3d, which will definitely make a big difference on the level of updates and software improvements.
     
  10. Kaliterimes

    Kaliterimes Boxer

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  11. volcank

    volcank Serious Boxer

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    Hi This is so great to hear and exciting. To tell the truth 2D has a special place in gaming world. If you think about it Rayman platform game is pure 2d game yes mixed with 3d but the main art is 2d mostly. So the possibilities are endless. The thing I always think and say is if Buildbox is focusing more on iOS and Apple side then an TVOS export option should be brought with proper functionality. Right now you can export to TVOS but can not map anything for Siri Remote unless you are coder and can handle that in Xcode. But then if I knew how to code I would use other Engines already. The main thing I feel is Buildbox is already too late for improving market places such as the most important one is Apple Arcade. I mean speaking of Buildbox 2 most of all it already can export to ios, Apple and TVOS without any controller settings to tell the truth. If this was possible for a long time maybe we could see many buildbox games at apple arcade already which I believe would be a huge promotion for the Buildbox engine already. Looking at Apple Arcade games right now I don't see any reason why not a single Buildbox created game shouldn't take its place there.

    Another thing I really really would want is a subscription in app purchase set up for ios app store which right now we only have in app purchases in terms of getting payments. This is a must since we can monetize our free games or apps with subscription options.
    Other than that great stuff and I have great hopes for the future of Buildbox.
     
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  12. 33Shox

    33Shox Avid Boxer

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    This is such a great decision to re-release bb2 . Kudos to the Buildbox team for that!

    String localisation
    . Please make this possible for bb2. It is the most important feature by far. Not having your app localised looks amateurish and -from my experience- it's a turn off for many publishers. You also get less Apple features because of that therefore way less downloads.

    My wet dreams :
    -Controller support
    -Switch export
    -atlases encryption
    -shaders
    -Fix that thing that on Windows the user have to install OpenAL in order to hear all sounds. It is weird to ask the user to install an obscure third party software just for your game.
     
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  13. HG-2018

    HG-2018 Avid Boxer

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    The only thing that scares me is that some hacks I use in my games or interfaces won't work anymore when there will be a new Buildbox 2 or did I misunderstand that? I use a lot of tricks in my games and I am still excited about the simplicity of the engine. I hope it is a rework of the enigne and not a new invention. ;)
     
  14. Jaro

    Jaro Avid Boxer

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    I think it will be a continuation of the existing B2. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to do updates for existing games. The owners must be aware of that.
     
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  15. Sean Buildbox

    Sean Buildbox Serious Boxer

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    Friendly reminder, T-Minus 5 minutes until the AMA with AppOnBoard CEO Mike Seavers. Hop into Discord and join!

    https://evt.mx/UBTPye5U
     
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  16. 33Shox

    33Shox Avid Boxer

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    I hope the talk was recorded?
     
  17. Hue Buildbox

    Hue Buildbox Administrator Staff Member

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    You can find it in the #community-chatroom channel on the Buildbox Discord server.
    Search for chats beginning at 2pm on 9/16/20 ;)
    Discord invite link: https://discord.gg/puBfbD8
     
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  18. 33Shox

    33Shox Avid Boxer

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    ohh. ok thanks. I thought it was a voice chat :D
     
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  19. SpoonCrysis

    SpoonCrysis Avid Boxer

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    why not just intergrate buildbox 2 with buildbox 3 and have the option of which mode you want to use? that way we don't have 2 versions of buildbox?
     
  20. ramiucef

    ramiucef Avid Boxer

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    The majority of Boxers who are using Buildbox 2 to create unique 2D games with full backward compatibility for previous projects and without any distractions.
    Integrating both software won't be a wise idea due to compatibility and the variety of requests made by users to add more options, among other factors..
    Just check previous threads about BB2 and you will get why the community wants it as a standalone games making tool.
     
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