Twelve frustrated questions from an old Kliker.

[LB]

Danjo was referring to MuddyMole's post, hence the "[Re: MuddyMole]"

[BrashMonkey]

1)"Frustrated" used in the thread title..why frustrated?
2) You ask questions as though you're standing in a used car lot and are distrustful of the salesman, and criticize things that you don't yet know anything about. Why not hold off on the criticism until your questions are answered?

It's not crazy for someone to take the flavor of your post as somewhat negative, bitter, or acusatory.

[mobichan]

In regards to vector graphics, I'm not sure if you understand how much of a limited presence vector art has in the game development community or industry. Outside of Illustrator and the Flash IDE, vector art is pretty much non-existant. In all other graphical software, you deal with rasterized images, even if their source is a vector image. I think it is a nice perk to have a runtime vector renderer, but that is pretty uncommon in the games industry. A nice perk, to be sure, but not something you should assume is "standard." At the end of the day, it all gets converted to rasterized art and the sharpness of that is determined by your application's resolution.

As for your concerns, I have had those in the past as well. MMF is far from perfect, but if you just keep sitting on the sidelines waiting for it to be, you will be missing out on time that could have been spent creating something. If you want to know the minute issues of dealing with MMF or the exporters, it would be a good use of your time to sit and read through the posts in the various forums. They are the definitive source for MMF info and also one of the product's greatest strengths.

Welcome back to clicking,

Mobichan

[ChrisStreet]

OldKliker, may I ask how old you are? I'm guessing mid-20's, you're very well spoken, polite, and especially since you mentioned your parents couldn't get you MMF for Christmas when it came out

If I'm right, you're not that old really Plenty of people here who are old. At the end of the day, CT products appeal to a wide variety of ages because of their brilliant accessibility

Don't forget that Android and XNA runtimes are in the pipeline

[Konidias]

In regards to vector graphics, I'm not sure if you understand how much of a limited presence vector art has in the game development community or industry. Outside of Illustrator and the Flash IDE, vector art is pretty much non-existant. In all other graphical software, you deal with rasterized images, even if their source is a vector image. I think it is a nice perk to have a runtime vector renderer, but that is pretty uncommon in the games industry. A nice perk, to be sure, but not something you should assume is "standard." At the end of the day, it all gets converted to rasterized art and the sharpness of that is determined by your application's resolution.

As for your concerns, I have had those in the past as well. MMF is far from perfect, but if you just keep sitting on the sidelines waiting for it to be, you will be missing out on time that could have been spent creating something. If you want to know the minute issues of dealing with MMF or the exporters, it would be a good use of your time to sit and read through the posts in the various forums. They are the definitive source for MMF info and also one of the product's greatest strengths.

Welcome back to clicking,

Mobichan

+1 to this!

Definitely don't stop yourself from using the program because it isn't "perfect". There will never be a perfect game making solution... there will always be a feature missing that someone wants or needs.

I think it is the same mindset of people rejecting MMF as a legit game making tool just because it is events driven and not coded with lines of text. A brilliant artist could make a masterpiece with a rock and some concrete to scratch on. The tools help to bring your ideas to life, but it is more about your own ability than anything else.

I think MMF is capable of great things.

edit: Also wanted to mention the complaints about price and how different exporters aren't bundled into MMF...

Well for one, I think MMF is pretty reasonably priced in the first place. Two, these new features/exporters cost money to make, and not every MMF user needs them... so it only makes sense to sell them separately. If they bundled them into MMF itself, the price would probably have to go up as well.

[danjo]

MMF is cumbersome when you try it after using MMF2. simple as that really, along with all the extra features fixes, its not worth staying with 1.5.

[Stephen]

We have an awesome community, and we're glad to have you a part of it.

[gkinfinity]

Yeah, vector graphics seem kind of over hyped to me. It'd be a nice addition but raster graphics are fine as far as I'm concerned. Vector graphics are generally too lacking in detail for my taste. Alpha channels can really help to smooth out images if you're worried about them being too pixelated.

And after MM2 came out I was hesitant to switch over because the locations of some things were switched around and it didn't seem like that much was added, but after using it for a week or two it became impossible for me to want to go back. Alpha channels, being able to set angles for objects, improvements in sound capabilities, layers, the debugger, and an overall more polished interface are just a few improvements MMF2 has over MMF 1.5. When I used to use 1.5 it would crash pretty regularly too (every few hours anyway) for random and unknown reasons, but I've never had MMF2 crash even once.

[arfa]

Not being that great at art work I find vectors very useful. Any changes are easily made - especially scaling up. Exporting to png with alpha is then a breeze.

I still use quite a few bitmap plugins to 'soften' the hard edge that the clip-art look often gives.

As to MMF... and software of all kinds...
it does what it does. It seems there is commitment from clickteam to develop (ie stay in business) so the program can only get better. Love it.