Yes its very quite at the forums and in the world of Reloaded generally speaking.
That is not likely to change as there's no product and no real sign of a stable or smooth progressed forward movement development being achieved for whatever reasons that have existed to date. Its a matter of waiting perhaps for a very long time before current user/pledgers will know how the product will pan out and what they may be able to do with it. Its a limbo kind of long wait perhaps for years if one wants to know what the final product (no such thing perhaps) may be potentially possible of delivering in game making terms proper to anyone who has pledged or any potential pledgers. At current and past time development scales to date it may well be many years before Reloaded can be said to be stable and capable and provide all of the features that indie game makers look towards. Its being judged I guess as said many times on what it is at any stage in time which is fair enough as no one can say what it will be until and if it gets there. That has to be proven. At the moment Reloaded is not in a condition to encourage end pledgers users or new potential pledegrs to do a great deal with or about it other than sit and wait and maybe invest time in creating media, learning lua and so on, though many will just sit on the fence waiting to see what happens and maybe even just disappear and come back next year to see if there's any progress.
The hard core supporters we see here are few and far between relatively speaking
and that may not change until as some have said serious and genuine core feature progress is made so that forward development can proceed in a stable, smooth and steady manner so that the vision for the product and aspirations of indie game makers can be seen to be at least more than a very long wait for an unknown quantity. i.e. some achievable goals need to be completed so that the vision (and hype) can be seen as being something more than a non reality.
Most hard core supporters will have already pledged I guess though not all I am sure. Both existing pledger supporters and potential pledger users need to see concrete product milestone achievements being passed and put to bed so that Reloaded can be seen to actually deliver at least some stability within the core and feature set of a quality that is good enough to actually help end users successfully make and deploy a game.
Clearly to date and particularly with regard to recent versions there has been little of that real achievement but a recycling of what has been from the start of the first beta release by and large. We are still at that stage until the next Beta but we have yet to wait and see if that makes any real difference in the areas that matter which we all have some concern for.
Swings and roundabouts may be here to stay and a lot of waiting yet to become the norm - who knows.
All kind of waste of space commenting by me but there you have it. Not much of value one can say is there as its just words. What we need is a product and in the meantime we can post something or nothing and let the forums get even quieter.
Next Beta is said by some to be much better which I have to say is always said every time perhaps in good faith but the users will need to confirm that at some stage so hopefully you wont have too long to wait for it.
It is said that there's a new sauce to pour on the Reloaded meal. Lets hope its not another item that detracts from the real issues that users look to see improved and we know what they are. The last thing we need constantly is new things that do nothing to help with improving those core features and issues we all look to seeing being improved dramatically. We don't need anything more to detract at all from the seriousness of the core development. Enough of that already.
There will be plenty of time as we know yet to come to add unnecessary items when the core issues of quality, stability and performance are back on track.
We don't need any more detracting fancy eye candy or features until that is done. Memory, Object Limits, Performance, Stability and Quality. Seems like that's enough of a problem to get to a usable condition so users will actually be able to make (even work with any level of stability) and deploy a real game with or without the eye candy.
Anyway when Lee is back next week perhaps you will get some more info about the next Beta and whether its brown or red sauce to pour over the Reloaded meal.
Hopefully the meal itself will be of edible quality or the sauce just is not going to disguise or hide the bitter taste.
At least I expect I may get a few comments to cheer you all up and get a few more posts around here.
Likely the forums themselves are not really going to be a hive of real game making activity as that's just not possible at the moment and perhaps for a long time to come. Looks like it will be mostly posts about where's the next Beta or feedback, experiments and deliberations about anything anyone can find to pass their time away related to what they are doing if anything with Reloaded and any development version issues or comments they have about it at any point in time.
You wont see it become a real game making forum for quite a while possibly until it becomes something of a more mature and stable product that users can seriously work with.
A lot more active users are needed to be partaking in the forums though how you quite get them here I am not sure. As we are such a tolerant, lovely and affable lot here as users it is nothing to do with us is it?
Apparently to date this is not being achieved and I guess as has been said many times that's just a relative to the product thing. The better the product the more users one will see here I would think so all hangs on the Reloaded product itself and TGC. It's entirely in their hands.
