Open discussion: What game devs need from Delphi

[WILL]

But they could atract a lot of new developers by offering free versions for students similar as microsoft is offering free editions of Windows to be used by students. More newbies atracted means bigger chances for some of them to actually buy Delphi in the first place. Having 30 day trial is just not enough.

Microsoft's dev tools are shit. I know, I use the damn thing every day much to my begrudgery. I miss the days I coded intently in the Lazarus IDE, but it doesn't do what I need it to, so life goes on.

Free is not a viable option and I don't want a free version. I like tools that I can make games to sell. And I like software that has dedicated developers not volunteers that slowly make their way to a new version on their free time. It's that nice guarantee that tells me that I'm getting something of quality that will pay me back later for my hard earned cash.

That said, if I threw some free candy at a crowd of people you always have someone running after it. Doesn't mean there is a lot of value in cheap dollar store candy.

Another problem is lack of third party components and packages for Delphi. There are more and more excelent third party components developed for FPC/Lazarus but most of them doesn't support Delphi. Why? Becouse if someone wants to make their components Delphi compatible they need to purchase latest version of Delphi as trial edition time is just to short to be usefull.

Game developers don't need components. This is a concept for old Windows GUI applications so that any shmoe can make one with little to no code. Game programmers need to know how to program.