Moho Forum

The last entry under this heading was 18 months ago! If this software was a person, they'd be switching off the life support system round about now...

Oooh, harsh...

To be fair, though, isn't that more Smith Micro's fault than Mike Clifton's? i.e. it's a marketing failure rather than a development failure.

jahnocli wrote:The last entry under this heading was 18 months ago! If this software was a person, they'd be switching off the life support system round about now...

I was gonna say "nuff said" but more needs to be said. There's an app called Game Maker, used for developing games, that was a one-man effort until it became very popular. Subsequently, a company was formed (Yoyo Games) to take this promising app to the next level, and the Game Maker user community is rest assured that a dedicated team of engineers is hard at work to produce future updates.

Now, comparing Anime Studio to Game Maker, It too started out as a one-man project, but I have yet to see any announcements regarding a team of engineers assembled to take Anime Studio to the next level, so that the Anime Studio user community can be rest assured the app has solid financial backing and there is a team of people who wake up every morning to devote their time to producing future updates (with a release recycle of about 18 months?). All we know to date, is that Anime Studio is being marketed and published by Smith Micro, but is still pretty much the property of Lost Marble. The Lost Marble website is pretty much dormant too. The News page has not been updated since 2006! (Yoyo Games have a blog where regular postings on matters pertaining to Game Maker is made, several times per week.)

So, is Anime Studio still being developed by a lone engineer (who has done very well on his own, to provide us with this promising app), or is there a team now in place, working feverishly to make Anime Studio the undisputed popular choice for 2d cartoon animators?

Above all things, this is the announcement that I am waiting for!

Well, if you go to http://my.smithmicro.com/win/index.html website, you'll notice they are mainly a reseller of many software programs. Any updates made to these programs are made by the original creators. So I don't see any future updates happening to Anime Studio unless Mike steps in. Again, I think Smith Micro is mainly a reseller. That's my guess anyway.

Mike won't just "step in" he IS the developer. Any updates will be done by him. Keep in mind why he decided to get "outside help", he has a "day job", he has a... fairly new kid in the family. He needed a break.

AS is fine for me as well just the way it is. I am always coming up with solutions for problems by scripting them (currently working on an AS "asset consolidation" script that is going to be very cool. Collect all assets into a new organized folder structure. All the coding elements exist and already work. Just a matter of piecing it together.)

Of course new features will be welcomed. If AS development stops anytime soon... there is still a ton of potential development that can be done via scripting that I haven't even pursued yet that I won't need to switch to something new for quite a while.

AS is a "small" program. It doesn't have a huge team behind it. Because of that the development cycle is much slower.

-vern

heyvern wrote:Mike won't just "step in" he IS the developer. Any updates will be done by him.

Sorry, I may have used the wrong words. I was addressing him as the developer and that Smith Micro most likely won't have anything to do with the updates.
And sure, there are a few things I would like to see but I'm very satisfied with it as it is now.

Sorry J. Baker, didn't intend to come across so intense. Wasn't correcting you or anything like that at all. A lot of people think there is a "team" working on AS.

-vern

heyvern wrote:...A lot of people think there is a "team" working on AS.

Perhaps there should be?
There are bugs that have been present for years and there's a lot of feature requests which would make the software a lot better.
Part from bug fixes and very few new features there haven't been a proper update in years...

There was a thread some while ago arguing that AS should go open source. Perhaps that is not such a bad idea. If Lost Marble doesn't have the time required to maintain the software I think there is enough of a community to take over.
It would be sad if this software fades away because the maintainer doesn't have time for it anymore. It's such a great app.

I really think if the developer doesn't have the time to get this application anywhere (I still recall how quickly it used to advance just about a few years ago...) he should consider making it Open Source.

BTW there's already Open Source competition, at least on Linux:
Synfig

heyvern wrote:Sorry J. Baker, didn't intend to come across so intense. Wasn't correcting you or anything like that at all. A lot of people think there is a "team" working on AS.

-vern

No need. I was just making sure I was understood. I tend to not use the right words sometimes.