Recent Posts

176

Living Room / Re: You Selfish E-books! (Contains the F word)

« Last post by vlastimil on September 21, 2011, 07:55 AM »

Maybe I am stuck in the previous century, but I am still buying physical books. I own no e-books. I love seeing them in a bookcase, holding them in a hand when reading them, being able to easily lend them to someone and not needing to recharge them.

Maybe it is not just about reading books, but also about collecting them. You cannot do that with e-books.

All e-books should be donationware  .

177

Living Room / Re: it's not Star Trek, it's Cosmic Journey

« Last post by vlastimil on September 20, 2011, 05:15 AM »

I have forwarded your suggestions regarding the controls and now you can also use W, S, A, D for movement, CTRL, SPACE, ALT for firing and SHIFT for shield overload.

He'll eventually do something with the hard help. In ideal case a tutorial mission with hints and link to the help page.

178

Living Room / Re: it's not Star Trek, it's Cosmic Journey

« Last post by vlastimil on September 20, 2011, 02:03 AM »

Uh, ok here is a tip, these ones you have to shoot from behind - their mining instrument is indestructible. The circulating power-up is handy against them.

179

Living Room / Re: it's not Star Trek, it's Cosmic Journey

« Last post by vlastimil on September 20, 2011, 01:34 AM »

Thanks for the kind comments and the tips.

The sound effects were actually recorded by making the sounds with his mouth. Your guess was correct. Amateur art

Right above the game is a small help link with basic instructions. The game is really hard, but there are those little trick that can help - sometimes it is better to let the enemy collide with asteroids rather than destroying them, some parts of enemies are indestructible and you have to fire elsewhere, etc.

I'll tell him to add support for WSAD controls for the left handed people.

I already suggested a Galaga-like level to him, but he said the enemy movement is too complex. I hope he finds time to implement it though.

180

Living Room / it's not Star Trek, it's Cosmic Journey

« Last post by vlastimil on September 19, 2011, 04:47 PM »

Hi all,

so, here is a html5 game made (mostly) by my brother: http://www.rw-design...r.com/cosmic-journey

If you liked the space shooter arcade games from the '80 and '90, you might like this. Be warned: it is hard.

Firefox or Chrome required (Opera kind of works, but CTRL+arrow switches tabs, so make sure you have only one tab open). IE probably won't work, IE10 might.

Enjoy.

181

General Software Discussion / Re: Fairware: an interesting experiment in getting paid for Open Source

« Last post by vlastimil on September 13, 2011, 01:55 PM »

Hm, why I am making freeware and what I expect? My goals and reasons differ:

The smaller tools: I make them available for free, because I do not think seeking compensation for few days of my time is worth the effort. I usually place a donate button somewhere and it is a rare but pleasant surprise when someone uses it.

The I have 2 bigger free tools, a general purpose image editor and a cursor editor. They already consumed many months of my time.

Cursor editor: Despite consuming a lot of resources, I made my cursor editor free, because I did not think there was a market for it. I get 100-150 USD per year in donations (= nothing). I think it is the best cursor editor on the planet and I intend to keep it that way even if it means working for free. I just want it this way, I like people using my software, the more the better. I also like to believe it brings indirect benefits.

Image editor: Me developing this was probably a bad idea, but now it is too late. I just have to continue working on it. I keep it free, because there are so many similar programs, many of them free. (I do not remember when I got the last donation, it was many months ago.) If it were paid, it would have much less users and I would get less feedback. I need that. I think I have competitive features under the hood, but I know, the user interface is too "ordinary". If I ever manage to figure out the user interface and convince myself it is worth paying for, I may start charging for commercial use or implement a nag screen. Until then, it stays free and I do not expect the donations to cover even 1% of my time spent on it.

182

General Software Discussion / Re: Fairware: an interesting experiment in getting paid for Open Source

« Last post by vlastimil on September 11, 2011, 09:08 AM »

Nag screens... ok, here are my experiences:
My nag screen has a button named "I do not want to help". If the user clicks it, he or she is never bothered again.
It also has a button with "I want to help" with instructions how to send a Paypal donation.
It does not work very well - tens of thousands of downloads, lot of exposure, < 20 donations.

Maybe there is something more important than nag screens: the typical user. My typical user is a kid or a teenager. They do not care about donations or they do not have the means to send them (I have lots of "I will donate when I am older" messages). I doubt this would change if I showed the users the amount I got vs. the amount of work invested.

BTW, hsoft, congrats to the LH daily download. A software must be very useful or unique, not just free to get that.

183

General Software Discussion / Re: Fairware: an interesting experiment in getting paid for Open Source

« Last post by vlastimil on September 11, 2011, 01:54 AM »

After reading all the posts, I am still not convinced that adopting the fairware approach is the best way for someone, who wants to start a self-sustainable software project.

hsoft, you said, the dupeGuru was a successful product before you switched to the fairware approach. I think this is a very rare thing, usually people switch from free/donationware to commercial if they feel like the second alternative would be to quit or fade away.

When you were switching to fairware model, you were in this unique position and you knew there were many people ready to pay for dupeGuru. You already had a proven and established product that paid for itself and all you needed from the donors was paying for the additional work. When someone starts a new freeware project, the situation is very different. Almost no one knows about the software, it does almost nothing and they have no money for marketing. Many people also implicitly consider freeware inferior when there is a paid alternative. To summarize, you had the right community of people when you started, because you built the core of it while your product was commercial.

Maybe the path you took was more important than the final destination. Maybe successful commercial applications can be turned into successful fairware. (And it is a wonderful thing, don't get me wrong. I am just doubting the fairware approach itself is the silver bullet.)

184

General Software Discussion / Re: Fairware: an interesting experiment in getting paid for Open Source

« Last post by vlastimil on September 10, 2011, 03:10 AM »

I did not try the software, but from the description it does not seem an attractive model to me, because:
* The software needs connection to the internet to check, whether the project is fully paid for or if there still are unpaid hours to show or not show the nag screen.
* As a donator, even if you paid a large amount, you still experience the nag screen if the project is not fully paid or if the developer throws in additional hours. Maybe I am wrong here and there is a mechanism in place that checks if you have paid enough to not show you the nag screen, but how much is enough (sounds like a fixed price)? Someone likely ends up repeatedly paying for almost all of the work, because they cannot stand the nag screen. Paid software at least tries to equalize the cost for all users (btw if someone managed to find an even more fair way - paying according the benefits the software brings - and keep the system simple and scalable, they would make a fortune).
* Some groups of users do not care how many hours were invested in the past, or do not care about donating at all.
* Creating the tracking system and entering every task into it is an additional work most freeware developers do not enjoy (I hate reporting).

Also, I agree with almost everything, 40hz said. Freeware cannot survive indefinitely without a way for the developer to break even.

Mouser and many others here do it right by creating lots of small single-purpose utilities for the right kind of audience. They are not so big investments and over the years, the donations have a chance to cover the expenses.

For larger projects, only few managed to bring in millions (like Firefox via google ads on its home page). Yet another way is to let someone with business interests sponsor your project. Is is really "freeware" in that case?

For other projects (mid-size without a sponsor), I fear there are only 2 ways: slowly die due to lost interest or become a paid software. Not sure, which one is worse.

185

Living Room / Re: 10 Steps To Make A Sale

« Last post by vlastimil on September 08, 2011, 02:10 PM »

It looks like good advice.

I wonder how to adapt it to software sales, where the customer interacts just with the expressionless computer.

I guess sticking some of my photos on the web or inside the application could help, I have been thinking about it for some time. Though, I look pretty stupid on most photos  Oh, well.

186

Living Room / Re: Looking for beta-testers

« Last post by vlastimil on September 06, 2011, 06:52 AM »

There should be a blue scissors button (the third one in the toolbar right above the canvas). If it is not there, it is a bug.

Thanks for the feedback! There clearly is a need for a page that would explain where to look for tools, filters, scripts, etc.

187

Living Room / Re: Looking for beta-testers

« Last post by vlastimil on September 06, 2011, 03:22 AM »

Thanks to everyone!

The codec system was re-done, so that is the most critical part. Import and export of Photoshop, GIMP and Paint.net files is new and I expect compatibility issues and I'd like to know about problematic images. Animation and command line are also new, here I am also interested in any usability issues and especially in cases, when the application confuses you (does something you did not expect).

188

Living Room / Looking for beta-testers

« Last post by vlastimil on September 05, 2011, 09:56 AM »

Hi all,

I'll be releasing a major update to my freeware image editor (now also simple animation editor) and I could use some help with testing.

More info here: http://www.rw-designer.com/entry/300
Serious, feedback-sending people only, please!

What's in it for you? Nothing! The software is free so I cannot give you a free-er license. Freeware sucks.

Thanks.

189

Developer's Corner / Re: Can anyone tell me how to lift my open-source project off the ground?

« Last post by vlastimil on September 05, 2011, 08:49 AM »

If you decide to go the CMS route, here are a two points that could help you differentiate:
* integrated analytics - webmasters and content contributors love feedback. If you can quickly tell which of your articles attracted the most interest, what kind of users liked them, where they came from, if the users became regular visitors, that is very valuable.
* zero-maintenance categorization and interlinking - wikipedia makes it easy to link to another article with [[]]. That's good, but it is still a manual action and as the site grows, the internal linking becomes harder and harder to manage. If you could design a system that would take care of internal linking and categorization, people would love your CMS. It should update links in older articles, when new article is added; it should find popular related content taking the data from the integrated analytics into account.

190

Developer's Corner / Re: Can anyone tell me how to lift my open-source project off the ground?

« Last post by vlastimil on September 04, 2011, 05:41 PM »

I am a lame php coder, I just use whatever is at hand to get things done when building my site. The result is ugly, but it is doing its job. I had a quick look on some of your components and they look professional, organized and complex. They scared me.  If I invested enough time to understand them, would that be time well spent?

The cardinal question is: what problem are you trying to solve with this project? If you can answer that and find people with the same problem, you'll have participants.

If you manage to build a full CMS that is sufficiently different from the currently available ones, it will attract attention. If you build a specialized component that simplifies a frequent task for php programmers and does not damage anything (speed, legibility) in the process, people will start to use it.

191

Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?

« Last post by vlastimil on September 02, 2011, 01:06 PM »

For record, I have swap turned off on 8GB system and I guess I'll be fine for a couple of years.

Fixed size swap: good if you are like me and constantly have all hard drives 99.9% full (I cannot help myself   ).
Unlimited swap size: if it happens that Windows needs a swap size of more than 2x your physical memory, it will be extremely sluggish, practically unusable. In my opinion, it is better when an app crashes due to unavailable memory than waiting 5 minutes until Windows swaps-in the task manager so you can kill it yourself.

192

Living Room / Re: G-Male -- Google's creepy, perfect boyfriend

« Last post by vlastimil on August 31, 2011, 12:03 PM »

here is another one http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=yXqrTfOWx60

this time, we know, who paid for it

nevertheless, it is scary

193

General Software Discussion / Re: Explorer with Ribbon

« Last post by vlastimil on August 30, 2011, 06:21 AM »

I agree that the screenshot looks scary.

Though, Microsoft is investing a lot of time and resources into UI and I bet they have done or are doing a lot of field testing. They would not make the change if the results were not conclusive. The ribbon has a potential to help newbie users, who like big, non-moving, descriptive buttons. I also see that little arrow in the upper right corner that would likely hide the panel and I can keep using context menu as before. It can still suck though - there are too many distracting colorful words.

I'll delay my final judgement until I can play with it myself for a while.

194

General Software Discussion / Re: Cnet's Download.com and the installer scam

« Last post by vlastimil on August 27, 2011, 01:50 AM »

I emailed Seth after reading his post (after getting no response to my previous email sent to [email protected] few days ago) and success! My programs are not using the installer anymore.  

My thanks go to Seth for showing that even big organizations have people, who really care; to mouser for making donationcoder the place, where good things happen; and to everyone else, who did their bit.

195

Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?

« Last post by vlastimil on August 26, 2011, 07:42 AM »

Indeed, unless you need it for a special purpose to solve a particular problem.

196

Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?

« Last post by vlastimil on August 26, 2011, 07:38 AM »

No, but have fun  Peace!

197

Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?

« Last post by vlastimil on August 26, 2011, 07:16 AM »

Page file (swap) is advantageous when you run a lot of programs at once and the sum of the memory required by the programs is bigger than available physical memory minus memory used for other purposes. I'd say if sum of the memory required the programs > 50% of your physical RAM. It does not hurt much to leave it enabled (just in case) and a reasonable size is 2x your physical RAM. But with the amount of memory people have in their systems now, I see little need for it. Swap was invented in the old times, when memory was very expensive to allow programs to use more memory than there actually was.

Ram disk is beneficial if you need a small, super-fast hard disk for a special purpose. For example when compiling a very large project, where the compiler creates and accesses a lot of temporary files. In other cases, it hurts, because it blocks Windows from using the memory you dedicate to it. It is better to simply leave the applications running.

198

Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?

« Last post by vlastimil on August 26, 2011, 06:59 AM »

No, quite the opposite. The swap causes the hard disk to be treated as extra memory. The Ram disk does the opposite. It blocks part of your memory and allows you to treat the memory as a disk.

That is why Stoic Joker was telling you "are using memory, to access memory, that's already in memory"  .

199

Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?

« Last post by vlastimil on August 26, 2011, 06:53 AM »

I would dump the ramdisk too.

And I would disable the swap if you typical memory usage on your 6GB system is less than 3GB (assuming you have 64-bit windows).

I have 8GB and swap disabled and all is perfect.

200

Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?

« Last post by vlastimil on August 26, 2011, 04:35 AM »

I have never used it and I do not see much use for it. In effect, it takes away some memory from Windows manager and dedicates it to a single purpose. It is now your task to select what to use the memory for. If you did not put anything there, I doubt it had any effect.

If your computer feels snapier, it could be due to to the disabled swap. With lots of memory, the swap is useless and it is one less thing Windows must manage.