Originally Posted by Lifepower

I mentioned the products I've developed with it as a proof otherwise. Delphi Explorer *can* be used for serious development.

*sigh* Yet again, I never said it couldn't be. Crippleware still can be useful; that doesn't make it "not crippleware".

Also, this is a game development forum, so the context is developing games with Delphi. For that matter, the third-party VCL components won't be of any use since in DirectX/OpenGL environment they cannot be easily used.

Not all games must be graphical in nature. There are many games which are quite sophisticated and enjoyable that can be made with the standard desktop GUI. Hell, there are still some awesome games out there which are playable on dumb terminals. Nethack, anyone?

If something I said offended you, I apologize, it was never my intention.

Well, the key litmus to determine if one is offering offense is whether or not one is attacking the argument rather than the (skill/experience of the) person making the argument. The former generally leads to more cordial (and productive) discussions. The latter, not so much. It is not "offense" to me, just an unnecessary and undesirable distraction to the core of the discussion.

However, I did found several of your arguments somewhat weak and biased, which probably indicates that you simply didn't use (or try to use) Delphi Explorer for game development (remember, *context*, we're not talking about databases, web services and stuff), therefore lack the experience on that matter.

That you don't agree with someone doesn't automatically mean they don't have experience. They may indeed have a great deal of experience, though probably significantly different than your own, and have valid reasons for formulating their assertions and opinions on a matter.

It is impossible to determine "bias" without first examining the nature and substance of the argument, and why someone in particular might hold sway on it. Thus, I believe your judgment of bias was (and still is, for the most part) premature.

I have shown you examples that this tool can be *effectively* used for developing games, 2D and 3D, without major overhead.

..and I accept that. Still, that doesn't change the veracity of my assertions or why I said them.

Again, I can be wrong, but so can you.

Despite saying that you don't intend offense, you continue to use tactics which really don't address the argument, but the person behind the argument. I'm aware of the "unskilled and unaware of it" research, and have used it in certain other subjects discussing people who really ARE in a state of denial based on their own ignorance and inability to recognize it to get out of the vicious cycle. I can only offer you my personal assurance that I am not among them on this particular issue.

There is also one possibility which you overlooked, which I would prefer to believe in an attempt to salvage something positive from this strained discourse:

That, within the context of our beliefs and experiences, we are both correct.

It isn't nearly as adversarial or confrontational, but I believe it will serve us better here in this venue.

Originally Posted by Murmandamus

Not all games must be graphical in nature.
Well, the key litmus to determine if one is offering offense is whether or not one is attacking the argument rather than the (skill/experience of the) person making the argument. The former generally leads to more cordial (and productive) discussions. The latter, not so much. It is not "offense" to me, just an unnecessary and
undesirable distraction to the core of the discussion.

This is why I mentioned the article. The skill/experience is very important in making an argument. The more knowledge and experience you have in certain topic, the more accurately you can describe it. Your opinion and the reality are two different things - when you express your opinion, you make it look like it is a reality (e.g. "Delphi Explorer is too crippled"), which sounds too much like a Reification fallacy. The games I mentioned developed in Delphi Explorer are published and available to the public - this *is* the reality (unless you don't believe they were made in Delphi Explorer, you'll have to take my word on it).

You see, I've proposed that Delphi Explorer as an alternative to buying Delphi XE Starter. You said that it's too crippled to be useful. My first guess was that you have no experience on that matter, which I mentioned (the biggest mistake I've ever made in this thread). I have given evidence that Delphi Explorer can be used for making real 2D and 3D games, you have not provided any evidence so far for your argument, just your own opinions. You said you have experience since Turbo Pascal 1. Therefore, you also build your argument on Appeal to Authority fallacy.

Originally Posted by Murmandamus

They may indeed have a great deal of experience, though probably significantly different than your own, and have valid reasons for formulating their assertions and opinions on a matter.

I'm not sure whom are you referring too (or how is this helping the argument?), but this sounds too much like, yet another, Fallacy of Mass Appeal.

Originally Posted by Murmandamus

Despite saying that you don't intend offense, you continue to use tactics which really don't address the argument, but the person behind the argument. I'm aware of the "unskilled and unaware of it" research, and have used it in certain other subjects discussing people who really ARE in a state of denial based on their own ignorance and inability to recognize it to get out of the vicious cycle. I can only offer you my personal assurance that I am not among them on this particular issue.

I have provided links to support my argument, while your answers were "dude, I already know all this" yet the way you build your arguments suggest otherwise. The discussion is about the release of Delphi XE Starter and I being highly skeptical about it, did not deviate from the topic (except where you said I was in some way attacking you). In any case I think you are taking this too personally (please don't).

Edit:

Originally Posted by Murmandamus

Not all games must be graphical in nature. There are many games which are quite sophisticated and enjoyable that can be made with the standard desktop GUI. Hell, there are still some awesome games out there which are playable on dumb terminals. Nethack, anyone?

Again, falling for fallacy of Ignoratio Elenchi. The GUI-based games and console games are a special case. Nevertheless, console games can be made with Delphi Explorer without any problems (thus it also applies to the fallacy). As for GUI-based games, can you please provide examples? (this does not mean I accept your premise, but for personal interest) Do you mean games based on GDI? Indeed, there are games that are GUI-intensive (Alpha Centauri, Civilization), but AFAIK they are not made in Delphi.

Originally Posted by Murmandamus

Well, I think the issue is more a matter of need, at least in my eyes. If the "Starter Edition" does everything I need it to do, and I have no need for the Professional or higher editions; what's the value add? Am I just paying another $400 (upgrade price for Professional, the next lowest priced version) for shelfware?

That's a good point. The extra cost of your hard earned money should indeed count for something a bit more tangible (as much as it can be considering it's software ) than having an extra box with "Professional" on it. Unfortunately I don't know enough about the Professional edition to know what is supposed to be extra. But, yes there should be a bit more value than simply the relaxed license restrictions for the upgrade.

I'll have to take another look at Professional and see what the differences are other than licensing.

Originally Posted by Murmandamus

I suppose it could be argued that they are trying out the "royalty" model, in a similar but not same way as Unity 3D or Torque's model. Pay a little now, and if you make it big, then we get a cut. Granted that $400 isn't going to break anyone that is actually going to be making more money in the future, but it's just the initial "taste" it leaves on the palette knowing that there's a sword of Damocles hanging over my head.

Outside of that, yeah, the $149 price tag is pretty affordable.

lol That's a funny way of putting it. To each one's own as the saying goes. The funny thing however is that this is probably the very dynamic of the indie game development community. Most never make a dime and those that do probably don't make that much, this is at least a step in the right direction. This offer might be exactly what everyone wanted, but if nothing else it shows that Embarcadero is moving towards a more indie friendly, tool developer company.

Myself, I would buy this version if a Mac OS X version of Delphi were available in Starter Edition. I would need the time to develop and finish any of my games anyhow and Delphi, at the very least, would offer the kind of stability that I need that my other exiting tool options (Lazarus or Free Pascal + Xcode) currently do not.

Oh and I'm raising the 'off-topic' flag.

By all means start a new thread if you want to continue your seemingly healthy debate. Though I think you guys have gotten to the point of where you are in semi-similar agreement with only the semantics remaining to argue about.

Originally Posted by WILL

Oh and I'm raising the 'off-topic' flag.

My apologies. I didn't intend to take it so far off-topic; it's a bad habit borne of dealing too much with Intarwebz belligerence, intentional or not.

By all means start a new thread if you want to continue your seemingly healthy debate. Though I think you guys have gotten to the point of where you are in semi-similar agreement with only the semantics remaining to argue about.

No, no more is necessary. You're right that we're basically just down to semantics and meta-debate at this point; I basically offered the same as a sincere attempt at positive closure, but it obviously was deficient. Anyway, moving on..

I think Delphi XE Starter should either be free and have $1000 budget limitation, or be $200-paid version which has no budget limitations; having both limitations makes it entertainment-only version that can be used only for developing freeware (or for that matter, shareware which will have minimal sales, not making it worth of being shareware).

Completely agree with you. The whole $1000 is completely unenforceable anyway so why put that it in? And with so many free development environments out there why would anyone choose Delphi? If Embarcadero want to grow the use of Delphi they should have made the Delphi lite version available for free.

8 years ago I attended a Delphi conference in a very large hall with a few hundred developers. Last year I attended the same conference and it was held in a room for 25 people. It was pathetic to see. I love using Delphi and I am in a position where it unlikely that we would ditch Delphi in the next 5-8 years but if the market share continues to drop then it will die as a viable option for creating windows applications.

Originally Posted by czar

Completely agree with you. The whole $1000 is completely unenforceable anyway so why put that it in? And with so many free development environments out there why would anyone choose Delphi? If Embarcadero want to grow the use of Delphi they should have made the Delphi lite version available for free.

The argument that Delphi should be free software doesn't work in reality. Truth is Embarcadero is probably one of the last big true software development tool companies. What is unique about Embarcadero is that unlike Microsoft and Apple, their only product is Development tools. Apple and Microsoft can give their tools away for free, they make enough on software and hardware as it is. However, dispite the fact that yes Xcode and Visual Studio Express are free, they don't compare to Delphi as a development platform. Delphi is better because of the extra time and effort that goes into it. Embarcadero has to make Delphi (and it's other tools) a better product otherwise they have nothing left to sell.

Embarcadero still has a ways to rekindle that trust in Delphi users, but I believe this is a good first step and I'm sure that there will be more of these in the future.

Originally Posted by WILL

The argument that Delphi should be free software doesn't work in reality. Truth is Embarcadero is probably one of the last big true software development tool companies. What is unique about Embarcadero is that unlike Microsoft and Apple, their only product is Development tools. Apple and Microsoft can give their tools away for free, they make enough on software and hardware as it is. However, dispite the fact that yes Xcode and Visual Studio Express are free, they don't compare to Delphi as a development platform. Delphi is better because of the extra time and effort that goes into it. Embarcadero has to make Delphi (and it's other tools) a better product otherwise they have nothing left to sell.

Embarcadero still has a ways to rekindle that trust in Delphi users, but I believe this is a good first step and I'm sure that there will be more of these in the future.

That argument may sound solid but I don't buy it. Take a look at Unity for instance. There basic product is free to use. You can even sell your games. There is a 2500$ profit limit IIRC but if you upgrade you get so many more features that it is worth the upgrade. Unity Technologies changed there business strategy and the result was that the community grew exponential for some time.

Other game development tools have done the same. Epic released Unreal Engine for free as UDK. Torque products can be bought for 100$ with full source code. If you want new users you have to make the product available for the users. I don't think Delphi XE is a good enough offer to attract new developers. And especially not potential game developers that can get much better tools for free. (If you know anything comparable to Unreal Engine made in Pascal I would like to know)

Embacardero is going in the right direction but I just don't think Delphi XE SE is a good enough offer.

Originally Posted by WILL

...

Not everyone can purchase Delphi. In order for a certain developer to be interested in Delphi and even purchase it, he/she needs to learn it first. When I was in the university (1999-2004) in the software engineering department not a single course used Delphi/Pascal as learning language, instead they used C++/Java. In the last year I saw C#-based courses though.

Therefore, to establish enough market so people can actually get to buy Delphi products, Embarcadero need to make people learn Delphi first. In this case, I think, free version of Delphi is a must as it is very unlikely someone who is not familiar with Delphi and Pascal will be wiling to pay $200 for a tool just to learn, especially considering that there are other development tools that are: 1) Free and 2) Cross-platform.

This is why I think Embarcadero with the launch of Delphi XE Starter does not want to expand their market rather than suck in whatever they can from the remainder of what once was a large community of developers.

So, if you’re an individual you may use Starter Edition to create apps for your own use and apps that you can sell until your revenues reach $1,000 per year.

Seems they are looking for idiots...

Originally Posted by Andru

Seems they are looking for idiots...

That seems a little bit uncalled for and not very constructive.

Embarcadero is a company which is picking up the pieces of Borland's previous target market. They have been used to dealing with Delphi in a specific way for some time so transition is not going to happen over night. Hate the $1000 limit, love it, to each one's own. Hopefully in time Embacadero's new initiatives with Delphi will serve the indie community as the older versions once have.

There may be free solutions out there, but there is some benefit to a paid solution which is what the company can only provide. Should this be to your advantage then go grab it, the new low cost Delphi is a great deal for a lot of the users who haven't really made a dime with it anyhow.

Co-incidentally, if your interest is commercial game development then the cost of "Upgrading" from Lazarus to Delphi XE Starter Edition to Professional Edition would seemingly still be less than a fresh new copy of a New license of Delphi Professional.

I'd prefer to take something positive from this good news rather than make out something negative about it. We asked for it, we got it.

As for attracting new users, that is a whole other ball of wax. I doubt that this can be put directly on Embarcadero's shoulders. Though I know that they do want to help with it somehow. The idea of an educational edition was made mention in some of the conversations when I talked with David I. for example. Then there is luckily projects like PPS (Pascal Programming for Schools) where actual teachers are trying to push and promote the use of Pascal and Object Pascal languages in Computer Science classes for high school students. This I believe is in-part something that could be a piece of the equation that will help improve the state of Pascal usage for future programming.

I think the overall Delphi's developer community is aging (that is, the average age is getting bigger) because there are few young developers learning this tool. It should be a long-term priority for Embarcadero to make sure there are new people learning Delphi who will eventually want to buy it.

This is probably why Microsoft is giving VS for free to maximize the number of developers working with it and learning it, because this way they will eventually start more serious projects and therefore may be wiling to purchase more complete set of tools.

I agree with WILL that Embarcadero or whatever owner of Delphi product line has slightly different situation than other companies, but since Delphi developers "suffered" quite a bit after the disappointments of Delphi 8, Delphi 2005 (I myself spent more than $1000 on this one), company splitting and so on, a new impulse is needed both for short-term and long-term Delphi survival. Delphi needs to be attractive to new developers. For instance, right now, should I start from scratch, I would definitely go for VS and C#.

There are many ways to make Delphi attractive. For instance, releasing 64-bit version IMHO would make it very attractive as there aren't many compilers and especially RAD tools that can create native 64-bit code. Another way to make it attractive would be another Turbo/Explorer version, perhaps with less limitations than Delphi Explorer 2006, but similar to how VS Express works.

Education and teaching Object Pascal are of course top priority, most should agree. Embarcadero is soon to release 64-bit Delphi (listen to the latest Delphi.org Podcasts with Allen Bauer!) and soon after that, for Mac OS X. I don't want to steal Allen or Jim's thunder, but there have been talks of weeks and months in some of the talks I've been listening to.

A good way to help Pascal to get into schools would also be to offer assistance to such programs as PP4S (Pascal Programming for Schools) which is a great project to build a teaching resource website for educators who want to bring Pascal back to high schools for the sole purpose of teaching computer science.

Baby steps and we can get there...

Originally Posted by WILL

Baby steps and we can get there...

I don't think I want to get there, not with giving them money until they get there. I have not personally used Delphi, though at first I wanted. When I got back to Pascal programming in 2006 Delphi was not really an option due to price and I did not want to get limited with a version of a product which later got discontinued (Turbo Delphi). So I choose FPC and Lazarus and it works great, and had much more functionality than Turbo Delphi (e.g. 64-bit compatibility). I don't need all the RAD and database functionality, which Lazarus covers nicely.

Personally, 199€ (not $) is too much to give for a limiting product. If it were not for that stupid limitation of 1000$ revenue, I might even consider XE, but no thanks. I mean, 1000$ yearly is not enough to cover any kind of costs to make investment into XE worthwhile. Why not go straight for a more powerful edition of Delphi. Sure, I could switch to a more powerful edition of Delphi later, but that means dishing out more money. And again, I won't get any new features when a later edition of Delphi comes out without paying for a later edition.

And they offer too little too late. Much of functionality that they are planning to cover (Mac, 64-bit) comes years after Lazarus/FPC has already covered. And I'm not sure if they are even considering supporting Linux.

While Andru did make a inappropriate comment, I do share his belief.

WILL
I understand how hard Embarcadero, but this proposal is ridiculous. $1000(per year!) is "not a money" for commercial projects, so I don't understand this license. Although upgrading is interesting idea, but why so many complications?

Originally Posted by WILL

the new low cost Delphi is a great deal for a lot of the users who haven't really made a dime with it anyhow.

I think this "new low cost" for those people is too high, but maybe you are right - everybody can pay over $200 for playing with new serious toy

Originally Posted by WILL

Embarcadero is soon to release 64-bit Delphi (listen to the latest Delphi.org Podcasts with Allen Bauer!) and soon after that, for Mac OS X.

That's right! Why pay for Delphi XE *now*? You will have to pay another $1000 for new 64-bit version which will support the features we need *today* or $500 for the inconvenient upgrade, forcing you to install the product twice?

It's better to use other tools right now and when 64-bit Delphi and Mac OS X versions are out, *only then* purchase. However, even so, these versions will most likely be notoriously unstable, and you will have, yet again, to pay $1000 for the next version which will fix these issues, or, again, $500 for even more inconvenient upgrade.

Sorry, but this seems like a lot of cash going for a waste.

Originally Posted by WILL

I'd prefer to take something positive from this good news rather than make out something negative about it. We asked for it, we got it.

Well, yes and no. We DID ask for an entry-level version of Delphi for various reasons, and Embarcadero asked us what we would like to have in it. However, they DID NOT say anything about a "revenue limit", we weren't asked about it, and we didn't ask for it.

I think that should have been one of the questions asked as part of their market research, given what appears to be a fairly significant groundswell of opposition to it from just this small sector of their potential market alone.

Hopefully, they will hear it now and listen, though.

Oh I do get it guys. Really, I do. I have aspirations of making shareware or full out commercial games for sale myself. However the reality is that I've not made a rusty penny to this day. So being the realist that I am, the $1000 limit is just funny to me. Should I upgrade there will be more features such as the new Cloud server accounts and other bundled components and a whole bunch of other things. I have gone to the sight to see that there is a difference. Why don't you guys go check it out yourselves? http://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi Look for the Feature Matrix sheet. Should they be useful to me or not, that's a different matter of course and for each person to judge for themselves.

Unfortunately right now Embarcadero's weakest product market is the old 32-bit Windows platform. Other than their high performance and stability (which I will not give Lazarus though they have made great strides since their beginning) it's just not as attractive as all the other newer or popular platforms such as 64-bit Windows and Mac OS X, not to mention all the cool iOS devices, Android, Blackberry and so on.

In my early talks with David I. we discussed all of these ideas. It was really enlightening to hear some of what he was saying really. I myself am admittedly waiting for the Mac OS X version of Delphi as I've changed my primary platform and want to do development naively on it. Something that there is not a nice solution for quite yet. Lazarus is sadly terrible on the Mac and though FPC templates can be added to Xcode, it's not the nicest interface for programming. Should Embarcadero pull through with a Mac version I'm quite sure that developers would be quite happy with such a Starter Edition on that and other platforms.

All of this however doesn't cover the main point about having Delphi in existence. Lazarus tries to be Delphi as an open source project. It does a good job of being an alternative, but it still isn't the kind of tool that Delphi is and can be with a big company behind it. Some people just don't want to pay for anything and that's fine too. Those people I'm sure will be happy with Lazarus or FPC plus another solution. However Delphi is still a good product and the $199 will still be a good deal to the majority of people that want the advantages of a commercial product that they don't plan on selling their projects from or are at least willing to invest a bit in the tools they use to make them.

Originally Posted by WILL

Baby steps and we can get there...

That was in reference to the state of Pascal usage in software development and the nuber of new people learning it not the state of Embarcadero.

Originally Posted by Murmandamus

Well, yes and no. We DID ask for an entry-level version of Delphi for various reasons, and Embarcadero asked us what we would like to have in it. However, they DID NOT say anything about a "revenue limit", we weren't asked about it, and we didn't ask for it.

I agree, this "revenue limit" is an important detail that should be taken into account for the market research.

Actually, for marketing purposes the "revenue limit" may actually hurt sales, because someone who has no immediate plans for commercial development could still purchase Starter edition in the hopes that one day he/she will make a living with it (thus, the revenue limit eliminates this "hope").

Originally Posted by WILL

All of this however doesn't cover the main point about having Delphi in existence. Lazarus tries to be Delphi as an open source project. It does a good job of being an alternative, but it still isn't the kind of tool that Delphi is and can be with a big company behind it. Some people just don't want to pay for anything and that's fine too. Those people I'm sure will be happy with Lazarus or FPC plus another solution. However Delphi is still a good product and the $199 will still be a good deal to the majority of people that want the advantages of a commercial product that they don't plan on selling their projects from or are at least willing to invest a bit in the tools they use to make them.

I agree that Delphi delivers more than other free and comparable alternatives. I myself have difficulties working in Lazarus on Mac OS, having Delphi for this platform would be fantastic!

However, I think as it is now, Delphi is too pricey and even Starter edition does not remedy this. If you charge $1000 for a product, and then want to charge another $1000 for the next version or $500 for upgrade, then in common sense you can think that both products will continue to be supported. However, this did not happen with the release of Delphi 2006 after Delphi 2005 (the last got discontinued rather quickly, leaving still unresolved stability issues). If, however, the old product gets discontinued, then the upgrade should be free, or very cheap.

Perhaps a good move would be making an upgrade price of $250 instead of $500, and for indie developers making a shortened version of Delphi (no databases, web, etc.) with a $100-license with no revenue limits, with an upgrade price of $50. This is similar to how Bass Sound System licensing works, but in their case, they don't charge for upgrades.

However, for "short" version of Delphi, Embarcadero probably takes into account that no matter how much limited Delphi can be (e.g. Delphi Explorer), there are ways to "unlimit it" by adding external libraries and such (even database stuff can be remedied by SQL-lite or MySQL). This is why, perhaps, they are not very fond of releasing another Turbo/Explorer edition.

Yeah if you watch their video they do say that Delphi is much more than a Compiler, Linker and Debugger. I think they must have taken that from someone reading our forums or something So if that's what they want their product to be, that's ok by me. I do agree that beyond the Starter edition there could be other better options for the indie. Perhaps a version more capable for specifically working on game development. Who knows...

I just don't see a free Delphi being possible at this time the way Embarcadero works. They are at least considering 'the little guy' (us) and that's a nice thing, if not quite what everyone is looking for just yet. Give em time, I'm sure we'll get some sort of solution that most of us will be happy with. This new offering, I'm sure, isn't the only thing we'll be getting in the future.