And then there was silence...

**Sascha Willems** · 22-10-2005, 05:04 PM

I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one wondering what's happening here or on the pascal/delphi game developer scene in general. You usually have that summer time where many coders spend more time outside than in front of their boxes, but like with the birds flying south they usually come back around this time of the year, when it get's cold and rainy again.

But this year it is looking like most of them didn't come back. It's very quite on the Pascal/Delphi scene (not only game developement or 3D stuff, I mean in general) and finding any news related to that is very very hard.

A ''good'' example is the forums of PGD. Just look at the numbers of posts or the people that were recently online. Both are very low and it's getting worse and worse, but that's not only the case for PGD, other Pascal/Delphi pages and forums also suffer from this

This is something sad to watch, and so I thought why not bring up this issue. Maybe a vital discussion would bring some ideas on how to get the wheel rolling again.

LP · 22-10-2005, 07:34 PM

Well, you could've posted few words about unofficial Asphyre we released, but I thought you didn't care...

ops:

Also, you could post some news about JawBreaker and Tanker games that were posted on our forums (www.afterwarp.com).

Finally, there're few impressive game projects posted on Delphi Sanctuary (www.delphisanctuary.com), but it remains unmentioned also.

Oh my bad... perhaps you don't like Delphi here... :cry:

**savage** · 22-10-2005, 09:01 PM

Delphi has nothing to do with it, we post news about GLScene, which is written on Delphi and just happens to work with FreePascal. Lifepower, if you notice any Delphi related games news, please let me know. If I have failed to post something it is usually because I have forgotten about it, and for that I appologise, but it had nothing to do with Delphi. We do care about Delphi, so please let me, WILL or Sascha know about any news that we miss, I repeat, we do care.

I have added Asphyre, www.delphisanctuary.com & www.afterwarp.com to my watchlist on www.changesnotes.com to keep track of changes on these sites.

The fact is, we are not all seeing and all knowing, so unless someone sends us an email about a news item, we may not know about it. Sure changesnotes.com helps, but it only helps if we add it to the list of sites to keep an eye on.

LP · 22-10-2005, 10:45 PM

Thanks for the clarification

Actually, Asphyre Pro 1.1.2 may not be worthy for a news, but since Sascha posted about "silence", I thought to mention it (http://pascalgamedevelopment.com/vie...?p=16687#16687 topic was posted 3 days ago).

My main concern is that Delphi community with the release of D2005 is having its bad days and lack of Delphi-related news is not helping it

**marmin** · 23-10-2005, 06:47 AM

That A board isn't very crowded doesn't mean that no one is programming with Pascal/Delphi etc. I am very busy but I do not come a lot to the board, simply because I know a lot of stuff

and just don't need to visit a lot to seek information.

And there's always the fact that Pascal is not widely known for game development so people do not trust :twisted: a pascal game site, maybe.

For me,the more I read c++ code the more I hate that and love Pascal even more and I really want to see it grow to a living game dev language, but how? Programmers will go for what is best known, even if it's an ugly language. They're scared, they go for what is safe!

**savage** · 23-10-2005, 07:56 AM

I've updated the main news post with the more information from the http://pascalgamedevelopment.com/vie...?p=16687#16687 thread.

Thanks for pointing it out. I actually missed that whole thread.

Originally Posted by Lifepower

Thanks for the clarification

Actually, Asphyre Pro 1.1.2 may not be worthy for a news, but since Sascha posted about "silence", I thought to mention it (http://pascalgamedevelopment.com/vie...?p=16687#16687 topic was posted 3 days ago).

My main concern is that Delphi community with the release of D2005 is having its bad days and lack of Delphi-related news is not helping it

**Traveler** · 23-10-2005, 11:08 AM

WILL has seen it coming. I have seen it coming. To say, 'see, I told you' would be a bit unfair. But its coming real close.
Perhaps it is still that time of year sascha is talking about. (Fall doesn't seem to be coming either (here in Holland in any case)) but things are slower, more quiet than ever before. Lets hope it wont come to a full stop.

Lifepower, the Afterwarp forums are only open to members. I as a guest, can't see images nor download the games people have posted. By changing that level of access, people might be inclined to visit more.

edit: Just realized that with these 'sub' forums around, (Afterwarp, omega, delphigamedev.com) I can understand that people do not visit PGD.

LP · 23-10-2005, 02:30 PM

Lifepower, the Afterwarp forums are only open to members. I as a guest, can't see images nor download the games people have posted. By changing that level of access, people might be inclined to visit more.

Traveler, as I mentioned in the other topic, someone was exploiting the anonymous access to resources by opening many connections. The access is unrestricted now so you can see all resources again.

edit: Just realized that with these 'sub' forums around, (Afterwarp, omega, delphigamedev.com) I can understand that people do not visit PGD.

Actually, there only two reasons why we're running our own forums on Afterwarp:

1) PGD forums have lack of features such as attachments so it's not possible to post files, source code, etc. The visual style is not helping either (few days ago links, for instance, were yellow and invisible).

2) Back in DGDev days, BlueCat made me a moderator in Asphyre forum, but that's gone now. No announcements possible. It seems wrong somehow to refer to external forum (from Afterwarp) where you're just a reader yourself.

**Traveler** · 23-10-2005, 03:43 PM

I understand your points perfectly. I probably would have done the same if I had a product of my own.

**Paulius** · 23-10-2005, 04:40 PM

For PGD thing are the same way they always were. Of the regulars here some are happy with where they are now, others work on more advanced stuff which falls out of interest or ability of other regulars, or dependence on the language for that matter, which turns them from potential posters into potential repliers. We want newbies with their questions to stay, but they come and go or sometimes turn into quiet regulars and drift away latter. I?¢_Tm sure everyone here is working on something, maybe some projects are not ready to be revealed or had a posted before and did not attract much attention.