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MikeDX
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DIV needs YOUR help!
As some of you may be aware, DIV Development has been mostly done by myself over the past 6 months, taking the old DIV DOS source and bringing it to
all the modern platforms we all know and (almost) love.
We have reached a point however where there isn't much more I can do to generate more interest in DIV. I've exhausted all of my experience in terms of
posting to news sites, posting regular updates on twitter, creating youtube videos, entering competitions and even updating the DIV ports as often as
possible.
if things are to go forward now, I need as many of you as possible to start spreading the word, be that on twitter, facebook, gamedev forums, reddit,
anything you can think of.
Without your support, we're fighting a losing battle. The forum gets less and less hits every day, and the overall page views have dropped
significantly the past couple of weeks.
So, who's with me? Can you help make this community great again?
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Dazzy
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Posts: 6
Registered: 29-3-2016
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I've been out of the games scene for so long not sure if I could be of any help. One of the biggest problems I see is there is simply way more choice
today when it comes to game creators than there was in 2000.
Is there even a market for DIV in its current state? I don't know what does everyone else think? I know from experience low page views can be
demotivating. It's hard to know what to say, what was your initial motivation for beginning to work on DIV after so many years? Maybe if I could
understand the reasoning behind it maybe then I could think of ways to help. But like I said I've been out of the scene for so long, not really a big
social network user either.
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MikeDX
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My plan was to port div to modern platforms and then once the port was finished, push the boundaries and go 32bit and improved IDE. neither of those
things will help DIV's place in the world, in fact anything I do now will have little impact until we get more users.
Retro is "in", most of the games released nowadays have < 255 colours.
Maybe DIV has had its day.
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Dazzy
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Registered: 29-3-2016
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I know I am not the right person here since my gaming over the past 10 - 12 years has consisted of tomb raider and assassins creed, xboxes have
primarily used for TV.
My mobile gaming isn't much better, age of empires and that's basically it.
Div was defiantly easier than darkbasic and blitzbasic in its day, how does it stack up these days against other systems?
What could really give you a boost is if you could convince one of the old guard who have good traction in mobile to create a game and release it on
mobile and highlight it was created with DIV but that is a long play for sure. Is there anyone currently doing that?
I don't want to seam like I am totally negative it is good to see you trying to bring it back. Hope you keep it going.
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MikeDX
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I think getting anyone to use it would be a start. I've released *loads* of games ported to modern systems, on pandora, gcwzero, windows, linux etc,
all have the "made with div" banner and links to the site. We have no shortage of content (although to be fair there is a right load of rubbish in the
wips too).
In my opinion, div is still the fastest and easiest way to make games and plenty of people have started with DIV and gone on to have successful
programming careers. Saying that, I'm probably biased.
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humildadever
DIV Junior
Posts: 40
Registered: 27-2-2016
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Hi I think is important connect all older user of div!
History of div is important... Had access of material old is important for build new projects
What all of us want? I think is a platform like div2 but for use in new Windows that can connect other platforms!
And I think that one mark for have respect need had some commercial valor!
Your 32 bits ide u can sell it! Myself bought the dvd or cd with that!
Is important a magazine!
Is important new users that don t know nothing about programming ! I want that my child can learn programming div!
Is important a project game and all us participate, like designs, history etc etc
Is important a base code
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Dazzy
Loyalty Card Holder
Posts: 6
Registered: 29-3-2016
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It's easy for me to say but I'd say keep working on it for the rest of 2016 and you'll have the more modern ide done and maybe a 3D engine added. I
can't recall but did fasttrak do much promotion back in the day of was it mostly word of mouth?
I don't know what it is with me but if I look at code and study it I can usually get a good idea of what it is doing but when it comes to coding my
mind freezes and I never can get started.
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BreadCaster
Loyalty Card Holder
Posts: 321
Registered: 2-3-2016
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I'd be happy for CyberCrisis to be released on DIVDX rather than (or as well as) Bennu once it's done, if someone else will port it from one to the
other for me :p
Would be happy to stick a MADE IN DIV banner on the title screen of it too. Unfortunately my PC is currently being repaired but it'll be back next
week and after that I'm planning to stick a few screenshots on the forum (I've been doing sprite work for it on my Macbook over the past few days).
I'll open a wordpress page and upload it to something like sendspace, and send the link around a few places - it's a fun game, at least it keeps me
entertained for hours, more than I can say for some commercial titles.
The truth is, the best thing we can do to get it out there is make fun little freeware games and have them as accessible across as many platforms as
possible. So that'd mean focusing primarily on iPhone and Android versions of the language, and making porting from PC as easy as possible. Does
anyone here know of the Vinesauce community? They love to stream all kinds of interesting quirky games and they're always looking for a new thing. I
might send it over to them once it's done.
~*~ Princess of Pies and Pastries ~*~
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MikeDX
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We have LOADS of games already, and every non dos (and non html, but thats a technical issue) for many platforms available from this site, each with a
splash screen build into the game when you make the release binary.
There have been android builds of games along with open source consoles, raspberry pi etc for a long time but nearly no downloads at all. There isnt
any activity about it, the only one really posting about div anywhere is me and what little news we can grab from it.
If every person posted something, to their websites, facebook, twitter, reddit, or something similar, we'd see more users, and if they did the same.
and so on, but sadly this doesnt happen.
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BreadCaster
Loyalty Card Holder
Posts: 321
Registered: 2-3-2016
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Yeah, but where are the people who made the games? They're not recent releases they're going to shout from the rooftops about, they're older games
they made that you managed to convert/get running for modern OS's. We need *new* games (additionally, I don't know if it's just on my PC and Macbook
but the HTML Div games lag a lot).
A lot of the WIPs and Game overs are also not exactly the most polished of creations, they're relics of game designers learning their craft and *some*
of them are great and quite well polished (Turkey Run, for instance)... but a lot of them aren't (nothing I created, short of possibly "Clones" or
"Upspring" - neither of which never got released here on Div-Arena - could even charitably be called a game).
Also, I don't really have any friends interested in game development or PC gaming IRL - mobile, sort of, but most of the focus is on Xbox 360/One and
PS3/PS4.
~*~ Princess of Pies and Pastries ~*~
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RKSoft
Game Making Machine!
Posts: 232
Registered: 1-3-2016
Location: Germany
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First, i'm with you and you know that, Mike!
We should not look at the older programmers, only. We need new and young peoples for DIV. And, we need a final release for compiling our own games for
the different systems. And i think, the IDE is outdated. Ie., i use Notepad++ for HTML, CSS, PHP and Pawn.
Also, we need:
- an editor for FPG- and Map-files that comes with todays features
- MP3 and OGG Support
- XInput support (Windows) for playstation and XBox controllers (most of my friends do play with one of these controllers)
- a fresh young design for DIV Arena - the current style, we love it, but it is from an aera that the web was young (the website is the window to
DIV!)
- a forum software with todays features (ie: when i do a post it will not move to the latest post)
- finally, compiling our own programms for releasing
I think these things are important than other things.
For the social networks, i'm only in Google+. So, i can share your news.
PS:
we need fine releases, so visitors takes a look what DIV can. When we have some nice releases the community will be bigger, i hope.
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BreadCaster
Loyalty Card Holder
Posts: 321
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A basic built in 3D polygonal engine is likely to be integral to attract most new developers. Something up to the Quake 3 engine sort of level of tech
is sort of a minimum I would of thought (though I'd personally love to make something on an old, blockier engine similar to Quake 1. Anyone here
played Devil Daggers? Something like that. I love retro 3D!)
~*~ Princess of Pies and Pastries ~*~
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humildadever
DIV Junior
Posts: 40
Registered: 27-2-2016
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Why not try collaborate with gemix and bennu?
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dom cook
Div Pro
Posts: 387
Registered: 4-3-2016
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For me DIV's strength is its simplicity. It's the perfect tool for retro games and as you said retro is in. I don't see any need or point in trying
to go head to head with the big boys of today. There's too much choice already. Play to your strengths. Market it as a tool for hobbyists.
Have you considered the possibility of making DIV available on the Ubuntu Software Center? That could get it some exposure.
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MikeDX
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I think the software centre may be a good place to go, I hadn't considered that. I'm going to register now and see what we can do.
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humildadever
DIV Junior
Posts: 40
Registered: 27-2-2016
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dom cook good idea
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franjaosan
DIV Newbie
Posts: 1
Registered: 17-4-2016
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Hello!!
Sorry, my english is very bad.
Please, float or real variables first!! for me is essencial, my world is not only integer.
Thanks!!
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Sandman
Loyalty Card Holder
Posts: 56
Registered: 26-2-2016
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True, real variables are of importance.
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OScoder
DIV Junior
Posts: 6
Registered: 3-4-2016
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Once you finish the first 90% of a project, you have to finish the other 90% :P
DIV has an excellent language for beginners and is great for building smaller projects really fast. It's not got 3d that can compete with current
games right now and won't for a while. What it does have is excellent 2d and it's perfect for retro-style games.
I can see there's a bit of a market atm for retro-style games on PC, but I'm not sure how large? Anyway, where I think DIV will shine is mobile games
and web games! This is what will make me inspired to use it and to get others to. I've tried out the nightly build though and I can't see how
compiling to html5 is done? And I've got no easy way to test a game for different screen sizes, etc. A short tutorial on how to make DIV games work
well on the tablet/mobile would be a massive step I think in encouraging people to use it. The Games Creators have some kind of mobile game kit but
it's either basic or c++ - we can beat that!
The second area I think DIV could make headway in is the "learn to code" fad sweeping the uk right now. It's a perfect choice for beginners because,
let's face it, most coding is frickin boring! Whether it's making a c-program to ask your name and say hello or a python program to display a graph -
the low level of visual feedback makes it dull as hell. Your main competitor here is basic - which teaches terrible habits and is extremely hard to
maintain a medium-sized codebase on. I don't now the best way to get into this market but in terms of tutorials, etc DIV really isn't far off. I'll
definitely recommend it to friends with kids who want to learn to code! DIV is the perfect middle-ground between languages that are too simple to
learn useful skills and languages with a massive learning curve.
Honestly, in the medium term I think what would make DIV take off is an editor that runs directly on mobile devices. Game-dev is still seen as
something you do on a PC then port to mobile - even though lots of young people these days only have iPhones or tablets. If you could port the editor
to android and ios and make it usable - you'd have a huge number of people interested!
Anyway, that's my 2 cents. I will make an effort to recommend DIV but that will be effective when it's more polished tbh. It always takes time for
things to pick up but this community is an excellent start. Get the quality right and the quantity will follow
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MikeDX
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Thanks for your input OScoder.
We do have a div for android, in fact its a near perfect port aside from some input issues. You can easily run DIV on a tablet or phone with a
bluetooth or usb keyboard + mouse, but using the native inputs (on screen keyboard / touch) is a challenge.
You're right about the 90% thing. The first 90% takes 10% of the time, the last 10% takes 90%...
With that in mind, we will have a FULL DIV project completed in 5 years time :D
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Adherbal
Loyalty Card Holder
Posts: 10
Registered: 28-2-2016
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We've waited 15 years, what's another 5 ;-)
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BreadCaster
Loyalty Card Holder
Posts: 321
Registered: 2-3-2016
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Additionally, if you're going to focus soley on 2d (which I agree might be a good idea as Unity and Unreal 3 are both available and harder to compete
with), perhaps see if you can work out some sort of "convert from Bennu" and "convert from Fenix" free programs so if people want to get on board with
DivDX instead then they can (as DivDX offers android versions etc that are harder to make work across multiple platforms as far as I know).
I'd happily do that if there were a way to port easily but it's not worth trying to tweak >11,000 lines of code to just get it compiled in DivDX
instead! :p
~*~ Princess of Pies and Pastries ~*~
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MikeDX
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Whilst that might sound nice in theory, Bennu has forked from the DIV standard, not the other way around! There's no saying there is any level of
compatibility between the two and realistically, seasoned bennu / fenix users arent really the target, but new blood is.
Besides which, there really isnt much use in using DIV if your code already works in bennu since its the same thing really.
however... if you want to make a converter... it sounds like you're volunteering 
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MikeDX
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That's optimistic
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BreadCaster
Loyalty Card Holder
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Quote: Originally posted by MikeDX  | Whilst that might sound nice in theory, Bennu has forked from the DIV standard, not the other way around! There's no saying there is any level of
compatibility between the two and realistically, seasoned bennu / fenix users arent really the target, but new blood is.
Besides which, there really isnt much use in using DIV if your code already works in bennu since its the same thing really.
however... if you want to make a converter... it sounds like you're volunteering
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I guess I'd just like to get involved as I'm liable to be hanging around the DivDX forums for a while and releasing and posting about my Bennu game
here when it's done, and it'd be nice to be working in DivDX because I've a lot of nostalgia for it - but in reality, in DivDX's current form it's
just not justifiable. It offers nothing not already in Bennu except features that I don't want, and lacks features that Bennu has.
And in no way am I volunteering. I wouldn't know where to begin and to be honest, I've got too many other non programming related projects on to even
justify the amount I'm already doing (I'm mainly making CyberCrisis so I've something I can enjoy playing, as most video games I've played don't
scratch that itch.)
~*~ Princess of Pies and Pastries ~*~
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