A lot of the posts hear are stating very legitimate and valid concerns from a maths point of view and the eventual affect on the successful progress of the Product.
Most are stating the obvious for its not difficult for users to be able to see this. Reloaded is not efficient enough at the base core to allow users to develop professional looking games with content of a professional quality. At the moment its swapping slightly better fps for less stability and at the penalty of loss of quality which to get a decent speed for many is wholly below the quality acceptable for any game deployment at any time past or future.
Performance enhancements here are not engine burdened where the engine is returning major performance enhancement by its core efficiency improvements - but user/game player burden. i.e. Remove quality to a level thats way below acceptable if you want to be able to play the game level at all at acceptable game play speeds.
Most of the new settings do help but at the expense of that reasoning at the swapping of one benefit for loss of another is not what is needed. We don't need loss of quality but do need speed and performance enhancement. Or at least we don't need loss of quality to the extent allowed and catered for here which is unacceptable that a given number of users/players may be forced to consider choosing so they can boost game play speeds or even being able to play at all with enough fps to make it viable.
The lower qualities now provided are as someone said well a generation backward. I don't think TGC will want to display many screen shots with those low settings in the Gallery here at the forums so that in and of itself is a fine indicator of where that leaves the product.
Would anyone display my screen shots using the provided low end settings in the Gallery or in any promotion of Reloaded as a modern, professional Game engine. I don't think so TGC. You would say the quality is totally unacceptable for the Gallery or public display of Reloaded promotional items and so it is.
I am not complaining - just talking common sense which every user can appreciate. No one wants to use the low quality settings as it is an answer to nothing other than a user personally gaining some more speed internally. You would not want to make a game and deploy it and or show it to anyone at those qualities would you. The new settings, sliders and controls are no doubt a boon to many - like me even so I can enhance my development with a walk around acceptable speed while making a game, so they are very welcome from that aspect.
To be fair its not quite that bad - yet - I can still walk around in a sparsely populated level, but as users are and have said previously its all low budget now - what happens when the vast array of features to come have to be accommodated and users actually try and make full games that is if the engine will hold up and let them do that.
We don't have AI, dynamic entities, physics or anything much in place that will yet put the engine to a real test. Advanced AI - that may take some accommodating if it ever becomes a reality. Think you might have to give that a miss as it may be daydreaming. You will need it if you want a pro engine but I am not sure anything will quite make that esteemed place in history.
I think aspirations for pro-type quality features and status were always asking a bit much.
Problem here is that someone - users or TGC are going to run out of steam waiting on performance improvements as that's a base core thing that should be well in place early on with the core features settled in and tested ready to accept the forward development. A year on it many pledger/users are wanting to just fill up with features and get game making. TGC too. Its a hard limbo to get stuck in for many at this stage.
That seems to be the way it is.
Can't have both I hear - Performance and Quality? well you can't have a pro-engine then can you. Accepted then.
Of course it depends perhaps on where you set the bar for users and game players. I guess you can plumb to require user and game player system requirements to only those with the top range hardware which is really what we have now to work or play at high/pro quality so for those with lesser budgets and system hardware the quality game/gameplay is a no no.
If that's the only way then again Accepted. If you then rule out many users/players then so be it.
Theres obviously a long way to go before Reloaded is - bad word - complete so to speak. it could be years away. This time next year we may have a different animal - who knows. You can only say where you are when you are there. You can however use some commons sense, guesswork and imagination.
I must thank everyone for their support and hard work. Users, pledgers and TGC and anyone else I forgot.
Everyone is trying very hard. Reloaded is a great product to date as far as it goes. I love it despite any short fall currently. The great thing about it is the product empowers people in a way no other product does and that is just something worth supporting. It gives a lot of people a creative ability in a way no other product does.
I thank Lee, Rick and TGC for all the hard work this past year and look forward to some more updates, improvements and ongoing development.
I am waiting for Christmas 2014 when I can get the next milestone assessment
Happy 2014 Reloaded Game Making everyone!
Lastly I too have had the similar glitch issues shown by others here but they have dissapeared after Rolfys code fix usage which has to be placed in every .fpe entity file or something or other will eventually go haywire.
p.s. I am waiting for that Character Creator.
