Moving back from another product

[Maximum]

A while back I was using MMF2 to work on a prototype. Although I like MMF2, I began using another product and I liked it a lot better.

I went ahead and built my entire project the other product and everything went smoothly, that is until I had to export the .exe. Then disaster struck. Sounds in the game stopped playing and strange bugs that never existed before suddenly popped up. Turns out, they're not fixable

Now, I was able to still turn out a working prototype and it was sent to a publisher who is interested (should hear back soon), but the bottom line is that as great as the other product is, it's just too buggy right now to do anything more than a short prototype, and clearly my prototype was just a bit above that ceiling and caused problems.

My questions about MMF2 Dev are:

*How is music managed with .exe's? Can sound and music be embedded in the file somehow, or do you have to place the sounds in a folder and put it in the same directory as the game .MFA?

*How stable is the Flash export?

*Has the UI been updated since December of '09? If so, are there any examples I can see? (I can't download an MMF2 demo because my time expired some time ago).

[RickyRombo]

Music is automatically embedded, unless you choose otherwise.

Flash is stable. It's been making quite a lot of developers some extra money through mochiads and now some sponsorships.

No UI updates. There has been a recent thread proposing new ideas for the event editor, but don't get confused. It's mostly ideas for MMF3.

EDIT: By the way, glad you are back!!

[LB]

If you mean UI bugs then a few have been fixed.

And, if ever you should need help with MMF2, we would gladly help you.

[Maximum]

Thanks for the info, guys. Feels good to be back. And I must say, it's nice to see the development of things is still running smoothly here

... Now, if I could just get an XNA export...

[Atom]

I think XNA is planned for after iphone/ipad.

[Jacob]

I heard that too, but I'm not sure if it's confirmed.

[Shawn]

I heard that too, but I'm not sure if it's confirmed.

Would be pretty cool if it was. I'm not really interested in iPhone/iPad (mainly because I don't even have one :P). But XNA would be neat. If I can make something worth putting up there. lol

[Chaos]

That and you need a Mac to be able to USE the iPhone/pad exporter to compile the code MMF will create, which also means you need to pay for Apple's development platform which is yearly subscription based if I am not mistaken. Sadly, this is Apple's decision so there isn't anything CT can do to get around it.

I feel only the 'hardcore' or serious developers are going to get into iPhone development as there is a lot to invest on the frontend for potentially no payout if you don't make something profitable.

I'm just holding my breath for the Android exporter...

[Maximum]

That and you need a Mac to be able to USE the iPhone/pad exporter to compile the code MMF will create, which also means you need to pay for Apple's development platform which is yearly subscription based if I am not mistaken. Sadly, this is Apple's decision so there isn't anything CT can do to get around it. I feel only the 'hardcore' or serious developers are going to get into iPhone development as there is a lot to invest on the frontend for potentially no payout if you don't make something profitable.

There is certainly a market for this export, but like you pointed out there are a number of serious barriers that the platform imposes.

I was on a beta test group for a windows-based iphone dev tool and I thought it was the only one, but it seems like I'm hearing about other companies coming up with one all the time now. If you'll need a Mac (which most people don't own) to use CT's exporter, that's going to be a very tough sell against the Windows-based ones.

CT doing the Flash exporter made a ton of sense because the platform is so humongous. But I can't say I see the point of going the phone export routes over XNA. XNA is well established and it's going to be around for a long time into the future. It allows you to convert to 4 different platforms (PC, XBOX 360, Zune, Windows Phone) and has a much larger and more vibrant community/userbase, not to mention a larger consumer fanbase. Heck, EA uses XNA exclusively for all their content management and testing and I'd imagine that lots of majors are doing that now. And to top it off, there are no barriers because XNA is PC driven, and it's free. I dunno, it just seems like a clear winner. Perhaps there is a level of greater difficulty to creating the XNA export and that's played a factor into it not being pursued? Outside of that, I can't see any compelling reason for the phone exports over XNA at all.

There is a program that allows you to export to XNA, but I've never used it and apparently the documentation is pretty much non-existent for it, not to mention the complaints I've heard of its bugginess. Without support or documentation, I just see no immediate future in it.

[Maximum]

In regards to MMF2's user interface and event system... it's not bad at all, in fact it's very good. But I think the other less developed program's event and object management system just spoke to me more.

That said, MMF2 moves faster for me. It loads faster and saves faster, and because my projects are memory hogs that matters big time. The community is larger, support is larger, there is more documentation. MMF2 is way more stable, you can export to other platforms. MMF2 is simply more developed and is higher quality, so it's the obvious choice.