Guest Forum Posts

When Garret posted the other day he pointed out that he had to buy Bmax so as to ask a question about it. And Im sure lots of people who didnt own it posted questions on codersworksops forums, wether because they were still using the demo or for other reasons.

Now I dont want the whole BRL forum pages to become "Open", but when all said and done codersworkshop was providing a service for people who either only had the demo, or were shopping around for a language.

If you look at the enquiry questions about Bmax they are obviuosly all from people who have B3d, and the same for enquiries about B3d. (I dont have B3d, but I read their threads, and have posted questions on them)

So little Jonny is sitting there and he wants to ask that earth shatteringly important question that will let him know if Bmax is the product for him. But he cannot because he needs to buy it first.

Now I have said in the past that this just makes little Jonny learn to use the search function of the boards, which is a skill sorly lacking in some places. (Go watch TGC FPSCs board for an example). However I do think that there should be some way for these people to post their questions.

After thinking about it for oh two or three moments, I was wondering if there could be an "Email" thread board. That is one that people could Email questions to. That way guests could still post, and yet could still be banned.

A little search of the subject info of the email, and if it had RE at the beggining putit into that thead (ie RE: Guest Forum Posts) and if not it would make a new thread. This way we, (we haha hark at me), could keep the main boards private yet still allow questions to be asked by potential cutomers.

This probably won't happen.

There used to be a forum open to everyone, so potential customers could ask questions. It's gone now, more trouble than it was worth I guess.

As you have noted, just about every important question has been asked many times. So the information is available to anyone who bothers to look. And there is always the demo.

A lot of people only bought blitz after discussing it on blitzcoder/codersworkshop for a long time. That can't really happen anymore :/

As far as I can work out, Garret is a special case in that his emails to whoever he was trying to contact really did go missing for some reason!

The trouble with an 'open' forum is that it generally devolves into an open slather/warez for all sort of scene.

I found the recent link to the DBPro forum re: Cobra quite revealing - especially the fact that ALL the posters were mods bitching about Cobra. I guess that's one solution - turn all your users into mods!

Whatever, I like the current state of the BRL forums. Sure people (me included) are disappointed you can't just post about anything, but in the end that seems to keep the general quality of discussion quite high.

Unfortunately, not having an open forum means we *will* miss people having technical problems trying to contact us. But I feel that outweighs the number of people that split because BRL has become a bad scene.

...or were using illegal copies.... or free copies that were given away on magazine covers without BRL's agreement...

It'll never happen. Such a system would be wide open to abuse. Its better the way it is.

In this day and age? People want instant gratification. They don't want to go hunting for obscure forum posts.

Except for Linux.

Haha, yes I remember guest posting caused madness last time, with it being probably the same user making fights amongst himself.

Any serious potential customer interested in a language should be able to easily make a decision based on the demo alone, in my opinion.

One thing to note on support for demo users: There are quite a few demo users, that did NOT understand the reason for a demo.
Demos are to test a product and see if it fits your needs so you buy or delete it. But I know many users that are using BM and B3D demo for a very long time and don't plan to buy it because they think its too expensive. And I'm happy that those type of user is not able to post (as well there were many wrong bug posts by demo users as they did not understand that they are not up to date and can't use everything) ... Its enough that they are able to post everywhere outside here.

@marksibly
May i ask who favors this system then as if i remember right also James was for more general posts if i remember right.

Secondly if you really want posts about everything why don't you just open a gossip/freestyle/whatever forum?

You only have to look at CW to see and how these forums use to be to see what an Off-Topic forum can do to a site.

CodersWorkshop was ruined by posters doing everything else accept programming.

There were more warez users on CW than you could find on all the P2P networks. :)

Well, strange then as it works on some sites and doesn't on others. Users/sites are very different, aren't they?!

Actually I don't expect much of a warezfeast on an offtopic section right here.. only the occasional relax/blahblah/lookatthis/w000t talk. And if a topic goes bad (namecalling etc.), then all you have to do is lock it and warn the flamers they're close to a ban of a week..

> But I know many users that are using BM and B3D
> demo for a very long time and don't plan to
> buy it because they think its too expensive.

I personally think the demo lets you do too much especially considering how procrastinatory people can be, the fact that the demo lets you do almost everything, it gives people plenty of time to experience everything and thus have a VERY value added demo. In original BB you couldn't make exe files and one or two other things, all else was unlocked.

I predict that probably 1% of all programmers actually finish a product and for the people testing the demo, they are having their fun and games, messing around with programming in it for free. Sure you don't get everything, but who uses EVERYTHING in Blitz anyway? What's their incentive to buy it.

In 2001 I used the demo version of Blitzbasic for about 3-4 months and never needed to use the forums because the documentation included was so fantastic, as I couldn't create exe files I bought the full version as my game was nearing completion (I was going to buy it in the end anyway, just needed to get around too it)
But had I have not finished my game, who knows I might never have bought it, but yet I had a good time using it for free for so long.

Personally I think the demo versions give away too much.
You certainly wouldn't release a 20 level demo of say your 100 level game, cos anyone who didn't get to level 20 wouldn't even need to buy the full version cos they're still playing trying to get there. In hindsight Blitz demos seem to offer nearly 90% of the full product.

At least if Guest posting does not come back, then those who haven't bought anything Blitz related have one other thing they have no rights to use.

IMO, letting a demo compile executables isn't wise at all. Friend of mine who
owns Visual DialogScript was going to put out a free version that allowed the user
to compile exe's. I jumped all over him to pull that sucker from his site and go
back to the previous version which did not allow the user to compile exe's.

You give people an inch(or cm) and they will take a mile(or km).

BlitzMax is I believe the first system I've ever encountered where the demo
allowed you to compile exe's.

And as with my friend noted above, I'd suggest yanking that ability out of the
demo. That would cut back on a whole hell of a lot of headaches. After that
you'd only have to deal with the smaller warez issues, and not the smaller
warez issues with the larger demo abuse issues.

Another first for me is that BlitzMax doesn't have a demo for linux, and I've
been told that there is no plan to offer a demo for linux. I should have asked
why, but I understand they are busy on b3d, so I'd rather not bug them with
minor things like that. All the other commercial systems I've been checking
into offer a demo version for Linux.

Now that I see more of the picture here, I can understand why H&K took a
bit of a hostile reaction to my post regarding BlitzMax in the General section
of the forums. Had I been aware of these issues prior, I could have worded
my post differently, so as to not give the wrong impression of my intent at
that time.

If anyone has personal contact with those who make these decisions for Blitz
Research, suggest to them that they discontinue offering a demo that allows
the user to create exectuables. That's like giving a free bag of crack to an
addict. And of course, instead of attracting new paying customers, you end
up attracting more crack addicts.

-Garrett

> BlitzMax is I believe the first system
> I've ever encountered where the demo
> allowed you to compile exe's.

Woah really? That's.....stunning!

That was pretty much my incentive for buyin B3d, the ability to compile, 'course I did spend a good 5 some months learnin the ropes of beginner coding (never touched a programming language before B2d), over at BlitzCoder.com using the unlimited-use B3d demo, but it all eventually led up to a B3d sale for BRL.

Now BMax demo is time-limited to 30 days right? How much funcitionalty does it really give besides the fact it wont be the latest version? Considering that it doesn't take a genious to crack a day-trial thing (not speaking from experiance), it would just do them harm allowing it to create .exe's....
(and considering the mod servers appear to be updated often for bug fixes and what not, warezing a copy isn't in ones best interest)

I could live with a really raw blitzcoder site that allowed swearing.

I'm not good at detecting jokes, so was that one?

Swearing is naughty.