Interesting Shareware Articles

GedB · Post by **GedB** » Thu Sep 02, 2004 1:34 pm

I think most of use here dream of the day when we can be selling our own software product.

Software Marketing guru Eric Sink has written an interesting article here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/defa ... 012004.asp

He links to Steve Pavlina, who writes some interesting articles of independant games developers:
http://www.dexterity.com/articles/

Tom Warfield, author of Preety Good Solitaire, also has a Blog.
http://www.asharewarelife.com/

Just how many of you have ideas for Shareware. What's stopping you?

I have dreams of a sort of Wikified Database. However, I cannot begin work on it until I change jobs because my Employer has one of those pesky clauses about them owning anything I write in and out of work. Instead I am reading the big books on databases and OO in preparation.

PB · Post by PB » Thu Sep 02, 2004 1:39 pm

> my Employer has one of those pesky clauses about them owning anything
> I write in and out of work.

Out of work? I don't think such a clause would hold up in court. What you do
in your spare time is your own business, and I'm certain the law would agree.

Although, I guess it depends on what you're writing in your spare time... if it's
something related to your work, then that may be a bit dodgy, but if you're
writing your own apps in your own time with no work tools then they sure as
hell don't have any claim over it, no matter what their clause says. Get legal
advice though -- I'm not a lawyer, but I'm 99% certain that I'm right on this.

PB · Post by PB » Thu Sep 02, 2004 1:49 pm

> how many of you have ideas for Shareware

I wrote some Shareware utils for Quake, Quake 2 and Quake 3 in my heyday,
using Visual Basic. I was fairly new to programming back then, so the apps
lacked a lot of finesse, but they did the job. I didn't market them with much
maturity though, so I only made a handful of dollars (I still have a scan of my
first RegNet paycheck!). Still, I had a good name in the Quake community,
with my apps getting news on PlanetQuake.com and other Quake gaming
sites on a regular basis.

> What's stopping you?

While it was fun, I found it a bit of a hassle when id Software (Quake's
authors) kept releasing patches which kept breaking my apps.

So yeah,
I started losing a bit of interest in continuing to code them. Then the end
came when I found a keygen for one of my apps on AstalaVista.

After
that, I lost all motivation to code and quietly drifted out of the Quake scene.

I later discovered PureBasic and how it didn't need a runtime -- woohoo!
I then started coding general Win32 utilities but none have been ready for
mainstream release yet. I hope to capture some of the success I had with
my Quake utils, though -- fingers crossed!

Moonshine · Post by **Moonshine** » Thu Sep 02, 2004 4:05 pm

Im currently writing a 3d engine in PB so I can then make a game in PB - it seems to be coming along nicely. Im just restructuring everything into seperate source files (core procedures, mesh procedures, image etc) so that everything stays organized when the project grows. Then I'm going to use the interfacer commands and GedB's tutorials to make my procedures interfaced, making it easier to call them.

Only time restrictions I have is with college. Projects take up massive amounts of time and this seven week holiday just passed has given me time to work on some programming. A-levels get harder this year too, and Im thinking of avoiding university altogether (ive never found any appeal in it) so when I finish next year I can just get a job, work through the day, program at night.

Hopefully I can get the basic functionality of this engine going pretty soon then Im off.

GedB · Post by **GedB** » Thu Sep 02, 2004 4:46 pm

Moonshine,

I'm planning on writing some templates that allow you to express the object structure in a metalanguage that then gets converted into PB code with Interfaces.

I can't start until November (when my pg course finally finishes).

Interested?

Moonshine · Post by **Moonshine** » Thu Sep 02, 2004 8:09 pm

Sounds very interesting...

Id like to see what youve done

GedB · Post by **GedB** » Thu Sep 02, 2004 9:28 pm

Moonshine,

What I'd like to know is: what would be your perfect syntax for wrapping your libraries?

Just a snatch of pseudo code would be handy.

Moonshine · Post by **Moonshine** » Thu Sep 02, 2004 11:31 pm

Forgive me but could you provide me with some psuedo code of your own, just to give me an idea of what you're expecting? I mean when you say wraping, do you mean wrapping my procedures or syntax for your metalanguage?

GedB · Post by **GedB** » Fri Sep 03, 2004 12:22 am

Moonshine,

I posted an example here:

viewtopic.php?t=10453&start=15

Moonshine · Post by **Moonshine** » Fri Sep 03, 2004 12:42 am

Thanks for that. To be honest I quite like the way youve done it in that example - the syntax is clear and clean, not overcomplicated. I cant think of a better way to do it. Id go with that.

GedB · Post by **GedB** » Fri Oct 08, 2004 4:24 pm

Eric has posted a follow up article:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/longhorn/defa ... 012004.asp

He links to another good article:
http://www.dexterity.com/articles/share ... ionals.htm

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Interesting Shareware Articles

Interesting Shareware Articles

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