Like you said, it offers free games, together with paid ones, misc game tools and a forum. I will not even mention Steam, because it is already well know.
I also disagree with the idea of having an executable only for this BGE store, I already found annoying I had one executable from Mac Games Store and another from Steam, and note they are quite popular.
Thought I want to share my thoughts about this:
How I envision such a system, would be which a tiny percentage of the game profits would go to blender foundation, so then they learn to truly start showing the BGE ‘some love’, and I see it more as a way to show more games made with the BGE(raising its status) while an user buys your game or donate to it. I plan to make a ‘Buy It’/‘Donate to!’ button on my game site which link to my store’s game page, where the person can conduct the business in the most painless possible way.
I also thought about it, and I would not use 3 BGE games hosting services, I think only one should be made; thought if that does not happen I will have to choose only one. If I decide to charge for my base game itself instead of it’s expansions or something, I will also try to sell it at more popular digital store services preferably.
Depending how you plan to attract a lot of people to the site, making it fun and useful to the visitors(not just for buying); the site may start to receive people on its own, instead of receiving redirected people; making it reaching new levels.
I also thought such a site should have a link in the blender.org site.
Well. I was thinking about adding an option that allows the developer to tell people their game costs money.
So the ‘Download’ button would change into a ‘Buy’ button.
I don’t really want bGame to be an actual store.
I will make sure to keep your suggestions in mind though.
AD-Edge was kind enough to add his game to bGame.
The game profiles still look boring but the screenshots and ‘Download’ link are working.
(small font caused by me zooming out in the browser)
I’ve already added support to the database for people wishing to display a video.
I just have to implement the feature on the game profile and the control panel.
Rating games works. Users have to be signed in to rate and when they try to rate a game multiple times the rating is simply updated instead of there being another rating entry in the database. So spamming the rate button won’t get you anywhere.
Very good site so far, but i tried to set up a developer account and i screwed up. Can you please remove the “Alan R” Developer so I can create a new account, thank you
Maybe a more unique name can me thought of? It would be important for search engine positioning, to distinguish from the crowd and to attract public attention.
I’m surprised you found the public version of the site already. XD
I removed your account as requested.
If you have any good ideas then let me know.
bGame is of course a very generic name but very fitting as well. Telling people to ‘be game’ and download some (b)lender (Game)s.
I’ve also been considering changing the theme. I was planning on keeping the look design-wise but changing the colours to a darker palette.
That way the games and developers pop out more and currently the website is a bit hard to read on certain monitors.
Small update:
Rank field added for users/developers. Will allow support for moderators later on.
Added ‘Lightbox 2’ feature which allows you to view the screenshots in full-size without leaving the page.
Here’s some more information about the video support.
Game profiles can show one video. Currently you can put in a YouTube URL (&feature=related and other stuff is ignored) or a Vimeo URL.
It’s not perfect because it doesn’t work with just video IDs yet but I hope to add support for that soon so people can put in crazy URLs and still get their video published on their profile.
Another snapshot of a game profile, featuring KYouB
Keep in mind that it isn’t up to standard yet. If you encounter any bugs or issues or if you have any feature requests. Please let me know.
Here’s something you will notice if a lot of people feel like trying it out.
Currently there is no support for pages yet. It’s on my list but I’m just pointing out that it’s not finished.
Tricky to think a good name, bgame was direct to the point, but already exists, and blender games already exists too; I will let you know if I think of something.
Nice work so far. I think that it’s far too gray - there’s not enough contrast. The Blender logo’s pretty transparent, and the buttons and text don’t really pop out at you.
EDIT: The gray text should probably be pretty close to black, I think.
I changed the colour scheme.
Problem is that I also changed the colours of the Blender logo a bit and according to blender.org that’s something you’re not allowed to do. :sadface:
Which is a shame really.
I’m aware of the errors on the main page. It has to do with the work-in-progress support for news items.
It looks like the glitch with the game not being added has to do with the news module as well. I’ll look into it now.
I hope to fix the screenshot glitch soon as well. For some reason the values are lost even though I’m reusing them according to my code.
When it comes to the usernames. For regular users it’s not a bad idea but their names will only be displayed in the comments so that doesn’t really matter. When it comes to developers they often go by other names. I get your point though and maybe just showing their username will be enough.
I don’t have enough space left on my domain to host all the content.
But maybe if this gets picked up I could get some ad revenue.
If you come across any more bugs/glitches, please let me know. I’m glad you like most of it so far.
Also let me know if there’s anything you find user-unfriendly.
My goal is to make it easier for people to find some nice Blender games to play.
Thanks for your reply.
UPDATE: Fixed the bug/glitch that broke the functions for adding new games.
I don’t know if you know it already.