Has anyone...

[Roland_Beat_Boxer]

...ever made a commercial software or some sort using QB64? Just curious. It seems quite capable of doing so.

Not only is it capable, QB64 works on Windows, Linux AND Mac (and Web if we're talking about qbjs!). 
Platform independence - if that's not ideal for releasing software, I don't know what is! :-D

Since we're on the topic of games... I feel there is untapped potential here as far as the gamemaker/gdevelop/godot etc crowd. There are issues with all of those that Phoenix doesn't have (I won't get into them here).

[bert22306]

RE:bert

thats interesting. I do recall basic being used for such applications quite a bit back in the day.

to clarify your first paragraph, do you mean that you use basic there because it's easy to check for stability, given the critical nature of what it's going to be doing?

Well yes, certainly for me it's easy to check for accuracy, stability, and to get everyone else involved in the project on the same page. I've done this for many different types of application, for example, things like converting navigation data between different global standards, decoding navigation messages, creating NTP servers without having an NTP reference clock, this sort of thing. Or, testing the validity of sensor data, to auto-select the best source. Whatever is not trivial, that just arm waving can explain, whatever has to be rigorously demonstrated, I use QB64 to prove how it needs to be done.

Then the software guys transcode to whatever they prefer and embed the code in the equipment. Works like a charm. We can check to make sure everyone gets the same results, before the systems are fielded.

I also use QB64 for performance modeling, to estimate ahead of time whether some new scheme will work as necessary. All of this for real work, real products, in the real world.

Truth is, I'm really not much of a game guy. Never have been. So I'm not one who uses QB64 to write games. But for work stuff, yeah, I've been using it quite a bit.

[Roland_Beat_Boxer]

Truth is, I'm really not much of a game guy. Never have been. So I'm not one who uses QB64 to write games. But for work stuff, yeah, I've been using it quite a bit.

Like many people, I got into programming as a kid to try and make games. My first attempts were on a dusty old commodore 64 I found in a shed (already ancient by then - I didn't come from a family that could afford a lot of stuff, and the world was already past 486 by then, but hey, it was a computer, and came with a programming manual). Later on I became more interested in other sorts of applications. But it's not surprising that games came up in this thread, because it's an obvious commercial use case for something like Phoenix.

[mnrvovrfc]

Since we're on the topic of games... I feel there is untapped potential here as far as the gamemaker/gdevelop/godot etc crowd.

I was starting to check out Godot but it looks very deep and I'm not a very good graphics designer. I guess I could whip out something simple but QB64(PE) has been good enough for me for making games pretty much like the original "Snake" LOL.

Also the Lua "Löve" since I have some experience coding in Lua but Godot looks more capable.

If you still have that C64 and want to do stuff with it, you might already know about this. It's a site I discovered yesterday:

https://www.syntaxbomb.com

[Roland_Beat_Boxer]

I was starting to check out Godot but it looks very deep and I'm not a very good graphics designer. I guess I could whip out something simple but QB64(PE) has been good enough for me for making games pretty much like the original "Snake" LOL.

Also the Lua "Löve" since I have some experience coding in Lua but Godot looks more capable.

If you still have that C64 and want to do stuff with it, you might already know about this. It's a site I discovered yesterday:

https://www.syntaxbomb.com

Godot is complex with a high learning curve, and it's own funky paradigm. It's very work intensive for even the simplest tasks, and you have to be very disciplined to maintain organization of a project. It's not for me (nowhere near enough time to master it), but it *is* very powerful, and seems to have a pretty dedicated community. If I were making a game, it'd be on the retro side, and Godot is like bringing an aircraft carrier to a knife fight in that case. I was learning Godot for awhile, but had to ditch it when I realized it couldn't actually do the (non-game things) that I was trying to do, at least not without using it only as a mere gui/wrapper layer.

I've used Lua within Reaper to customize a few things in that program. Pretty straightforward.

That C64 died like 20 years ago lol.

[Ultraman]

I can't say I've ever made anything with QB64 that I've sold, mainly because I don't see it being a good enough language to make anything that someone wouldn't be embarrassed to try to sell. I have used it for making applications that have been used in a production environment by multiple users for completing tasks in a warehouse such as printing barcode labels in extremely large quantities, generating printable reports from EDI documents, and handling asset management. It works great for something like that, when you might be the only person maintaining it. If you were to plan on letting someone else take over from where you left off, use an actual programming language so they're not left confused by the mess you've created. If you're making some game (which, frankly, is all people ever use QB64 for), I could see you getting some dollars out of it. If you're making "software", no. I'd be more forgiving of a game that is unoptimized and fraught with bugs that I spent $2.99 on. If I pay any money for a "software", it better work since it is doing something important. I can't say I've used anything written by someone in QB64 that I'd feel comfortable paying money for. Not even my own creations. That's why I do open-source projects.

[Sprezzo]

QB64 programs are as able to pass for "real" programs only so far as the person writing the program passes for a "real" programmer. Here we have a Turing complete language with all the modern powers that people use and misuse, understand and misunderstand, leading to the content you see people posting today. There is nothing inherent to the language itself that prevents one of its executables from being sold for money. Several of our members who have not spoken up have been in this situation before. Whether or not they wrote a good program is between they and their client.

I think a more fruitful question would be "has anyone here made money while using QB64?", which is a resounding yes. 

Or how about a year ago when the big announcement came that QB64 ITSELF was to be commercialized, whatever that meant? Nobody batted an eye when that first happened, well, maybe some of us batted an eye. Point is, this language and "commercialism" are not entirely uncoupled. This doesn't mean anyone has had an actual good idea of how to make this work for them, but the potential is sitting right there nonetheless.

Don't hate the game, hate the players.

[Roland_Beat_Boxer]

... I don't see it being a good enough language to make anything that someone wouldn't be embarrassed to try to sell ... ... I can't say I've used anything written by someone in QB64 that I'd feel comfortable paying money for ...

I certainly get why you're saying that. But I think it *could* be used for a serious commercial application. Not to reinvent wheels or try to outdo adobe or whatever, but for some things the mainstream software cliches (where all the competing software tends to just be clones of each other with the same tedious and fiddly way of operating) aren't the *best* way to do it, but merely the standard way to do it.

Something like Phoenix (with, admittedly, some refinements in a few areas) can be a means for someone with a different sort of design concept to implement it without millions of dollars and 100's people. Obviously, in the solo dev with an idea situation, at the moment most people are using other things for programming, but I dunno, you can get plenty ambitious for certain purposes using something like Phoenix.

Of the two things I've been working on for example, one is an image editor (of sorts - it's a very novel design). It's as far from something like photoshop as can be, but radically more efficient and capable for it's intended purpose. And it's not a simple or limited type of program, either, but extremely comprehensive for it's intended purpose, and full of things that simply dont exist in the mainstream apps. I'd never have had the time to get anywhere near as far into it as I have without phoenix.

One of the keys to this sort of thing though is that first impressions count, and a polished professional ui (I'm not the best programmer by any means, but without trying to sound immodest, I have some skills in the ui department, so what I'm working on at least doesn't have the "scrappy" feel, but is rather slick and solid in feel) goes a long way in how it's perceived.

Regardless, I haven't run into any limiting factors with Phoenix in working on projects, except that I've never been able to get anything to run at a stable frame rate. even when using the built in procedures for doing so, random hiccups occur every couple of seconds or so, which does look iffy whenever any kind of visual information is scrolling.

[mnrvovrfc]

There's something that Ultraman said that applies for many people: the program should be free unless it does something special. If what the program does isn't "unique" enough then it better be the best at what it does. For as low as 3USD LOL.

Because I came from a music technology forum where there is a group of people chasing a developer that created a DAW for them, and 10 years at least have passed that developer hasn't kept up with technology as was expected. A person usually expects support "forever" for 40USD or something else considered a small amount of money to some people.

Then I have seen at least one person becoming put off very much that he/she requested something done to the QB64 IDE. He/she appeared offended when I said he/she should fork this project and come up with it in his/her own time. Otherwise this programming system could be used at no charge. Just as it is, the source code could be downloaded and then whoever knows how to program could get started modifying things to his/her taste, to try to make it better in his/her opinion. Now I'm not sure about the licensing but he/she could even offer the result for download, and maybe could even force people to pay for it, but it's not ethical.

Imagine if this programming system had to be bought since Galleon developed it. Before it hit v1, QB64 used to have an auto-update feature. If it had costed money, the moment that feature broke people would have been pecking on him LOL until it were fixed. For money this programming system might have had to cover 100% of the keywords on Linux and MacOS as well as Windows. For money, much more than a tutorial would have had to exist for GUI programming, for dot-web server or workstation correspondence, and for three-dimensional graphics programming for games and for science. For money, and how the product stands now, people would begin asking where's the debugger. "That's not a debugger LOL, I mean like in QuickBASIC, and I could even modify the line there somewhere and don't have to recompile it." Then other things like incremental compilation, just-in-time, debug net client, full portable-phone support and/or fusion with QBJS... it could get very ugly.

There's this music-creation program I really should be using more often, called Sunvox done by a Russian. He was a real music lover. He used to ask for 15USD for a ZIP file which contained Windows, MacOS, Linux, PalmOS and other editions for operating systems for portable devices. After a whole he lost heart with doing that and therefore offered the program for free except the iOS version. At the moment he set it free, he was pretty much the only developer of the program. Although fast forward to Sunvox v2 and he has received coding assistance but they're under no illusion to force people to pay again. I had the third release of the program or so after it was set free. It had a couple of serious bugs. One machine caused the program to hang after using it in the song for long enough. Another bug was a "mutex lock" when an attempt was made to use a web browser to look at the program's documentation in HTML format. People are less sympathetic if the product asked money from them, than if the product were free since first release, if the developer had been working overtime to squash the bugs.

It's OK to demand a quality product for money. But some people want to carry it to another level like a vendetta or a life lesson. Because we are surrounded by dishonesty and distrust, even free software gets debunked all the time. Heck, right now I am reinstalling another Linux distro on the slow internal HDD of my ageing laptop because one of them crapped out on me after I did the full system update, and I don't care to troubleshoot it.

Sorry this is TL;DR. I had a power outage while I was typing up this message. It's been a while LOL.

[Roland_Beat_Boxer]

VARIOUS THOUGHTS

You raise a few interesting points.

My feeling is this. If a low key developer sets limits on the scope of what they do, and doesn't bite off more than they can chew, and makes something that nobody else makes that is useful to a niche userbase that I happen to fall into, it's perfectly cool for them to get paid something for their work, and if they are keeping it simple to some extent, maintenance is not such a big deal. Time coding is time not working for money and surviving in real life, and while nobody gets rich off of such apps, a little something helps justify the work/makes it feasible. I'm not independently wealthy by any means, but there are a few specialized programs that I use that I have registered, and it was money well spent.

But the bottom line is that it has to be good. Time and again you see projects epic in scope by a solo dev, and there are often some good ideas in them, but they just can't keep up with it and fix the bugs and so on. I have some sympathy and admire the passion that made them get as far as they did, but the bottom line is that *it has to function* regardless of the market penetration of the application.

RE: the daw you alluded to: I have some guesses as to what program you're talking about specifically lol.