Angmon Updater looking for beta teams!

[shylor]

Hello fellow developers,

I am looking for development teams to help my team beta test our new updater. It was built with eclipse games in mind. Our team decided to build our own updater and later to offer it online when our search for the right updater fell short.

Here is our splash page for the updater.

[Angmon Updater](http://angmon.com/updater/)

On the page we are showing off a simple Team Fortress theme I made this morning. However it will work perfectly with eclipse.

It runs like the other updater's around. The big difference is that it is written in VB.NET 2010 with the .NET 4 Framework. All updated windows computers should be able to run the updater without needing to register files or install files in the system32 folder.

Here is some other features.

* Large Web Screen (The entire upper half is a website)
* Customize the theme to fit your game.
* Dual updating bars to see small patch progress and overall progress.
* Tool updater allows for updates to the updater! (If we release an update to the updater it is no headache)
* Package your updates in .rar archives and upload them to your webserver.

Planned features
* Removing files system, delete old out of date files.
* Repair system, the player can click repair and wipe out the game and install it without heading back to the site.

If your interested in seeing how big the web area is on the updater here is the one from the image.
[updater web area](http://jayden.angmon.com/updater/)
As you can see on the main image the website and the updater images are seamless. You cannot tell where the website ends and the updater image starts.

If you or your team is interested in helping us beta test the Angmon Updater email me at [email protected]!

[Robin]

So it's pretty much exactly the same as my updater except it requires a completely different set of libraries to the game itself.

How in God's name does it take an _entire_ team to make one of these things? It's a few dozen lines of code.

[shylor]

Retracted

[Robin]

@shylor:

> The worst thing about the eclipse updater and the crystalshire updater is when you show the game to a friend and you get a big error… the solution explain how to register a file to a non-techie person. I can not deploy an updater that many of the users that use it will run into a show stopper error.

The solution to every single Crystalshire error is running the 'INSTALL.EXE' file. Any other errors can easily have handlers added in for them. Re-programming it in a different language doesn't bypass any of these things. You still need to have proper error handlers and you still need to have the library files installed.

@shylor:

> If the game does not work you can update it, if the updater does not work your screwed.

I have yet to receive a single report of my updater not working other than people not installing the library files. Again, something which isn't solved by switching to a different language.

@shylor:

> This is a complete rewrite on an updated language. VB6 was released in 1998… that is 13 years old.

FORTAN is 55 years old, C is 42 years old and C++ is 32 years old. What's your point?

My original question is still unanswered, however. Why in God's name do you need an entire team of developers to plonk an IE control on a form?

[shylor]

Retracted

[Robin]

I'm sorry. It's obvious that your date of registration has a huge amount of impact on my reservations about your project.

Ignore everything I've said so far. Myself, a user since 2002, obviously knows nothing about the state of my own engine. I'm sorry for causing you any inconvenience and I hope your efforts to push your project out in to as many different languages as possible comes to fruition.

[shylor]

Retracted

[Robin]

@shylor:

> Some of these people you offend are kids just getting their feet wet in the game development industry.

Good. The more idiots I put off the less saturation we have. It seems everyone and their Grandma thinks throwing a couple of resources in to a pre-made game engine and setting up 5 levels of grind constitutes a good game. If people are asking questions which have been answered in the FAQ and the tutorials then they obviously have no intention of learning or doing any sort of research. In that case I'm also glad I've put them off from wasting even more of my time asking questions which already have answers.

@shylor:

> My god… has anyone ever told you off... I am really tired of your cocky I'm to good for you attitude.

Plenty of people. Then I tell them to put themselves in to my position and by the end of the week they're eating their words. Feel free to start answering the calls for support yourself. I'd love to see you handling it better than I do.

@shylor:

> I was at first very impressed with your work with the community and the engine. I just can not believe how straight up rude you are to some of these people asking for simple help.

As much as I love rebutting idealogical notions with my realistic approach this really has nothing to do with this discussion. You say you made this updater because there is nothing on offer which appeals to you. My original question still stands; How does adding a 50mB library dependency fix any of the problems you listed?

[shylor]

Retracted

[shylor]

If people don't want my service to help them make a better more enjoyable game for their players then so be it.

[master5006]

@Robin:

> How in God's name does it take an _entire_ team to make one of these things? It's a few dozen lines of code.

Okay, I am the programmer of this updater, and you call 500+ lines of code only a couple dozen? This updater can do things yours can only dream of.

[GKO]

I know robin will saying something like "Stop sucking up". But robin is right.
*flinch*

[Robin]

@master5006:

> Okay, I am the programmer of this updater, and you call 500+ lines of code only a couple dozen? This updater can do things yours can only dream of.


[Bloodmorphed]

Rofl. Why would you code a 500+ line updater anyways? Its supposed to be SIMPLE. Good heavens.

[GKO]

1\. Becuz its fake
2\. Becuz it gay
3\. I got to go pee

Regards,
GKO

[Jumbofile]

Looks like you took Yami's edit of the updater, changed the gui and added a bar then claim its your own.

[Rithy58]

@Neno:

> Looks like you took Yami's edit of the updater, changed the gui and added a bar then claim its your own.

It's coded in a slightly different language. So you're wrong.
Yes, Visual Basic 6.0 =! Visual Basic .Net 2010
It's not just the version, but they're really quite different. There are still similarities though.

Why can't we just let them do what they want to do. This is like telling artists not to draw/paint what they like, but what the community would want.

Sincerely,
Rithy

[GKO]

> 1\. Becuz its fake
> 2\. Becuz it gay
> 3\. I got to go pee
>
> Regards,
> GKO

I apologize for my rude remarks.

Regards,
GKO

[master5006]

@Purgatory:

> Rofl. Why would you code a 500+ line updater anyways? Its supposed to be SIMPLE. Good heavens.

It is not going to be open source. It is to make the developer not do any work to put it in, and it doesn't have any OCX or DLL problems for the user of the games to deal with.

It is very real and has more power than the simple updaters out there, VB.NET allows for more power that may be harder to implement in VB6

[Robin]

@master5006:

> It is not going to be open source. It is to make the developer not do any work to put it in, and it doesn't have any OCX or DLL problems for the user of the games to deal with.

_Neither do any of the other ones._ As I said before, you simply swap out one library dependency for another. In this case you're swapping it with a 50mB .NET framework. If you get a 'dll problem' then you set it up wrong.

@master5006:

> It is very real and has more power than the simple updaters out there, VB.NET allows for more power that may be harder to implement in VB6

Yes, because updaters really require the kind of power you can't get in VB6\. :rolleyes:

All you're doing is doubling the dependencies of your game.

[shadowdeath]

> Okay, I am the programmer of this updater, and you call 500+ lines of code only a couple dozen? This updater can do things yours can only dream of.

Really? All it looks like you did was change the theme of Yami's updater. It dosen't look great, and I probably wouldn't even use it, because it's "Not Open Source". It's a freakin' updater, not the most important program ever. 500 lines of code? Most people do it in under 100\. What's so special about it? All it seems like you're doing is ripping Yami's, adding like "400" lines of code for no reason, and then making the style different.

> It is not going to be open source. It is to make the developer not do any work to put it in, and it doesn't have any OCX or DLL problems for the user of the games to deal with.

Not Open Source. Surprising. Robin's and Yami's don't really have OCX and DLL problems.

> It is very real and has more power than the simple updaters out there, VB.NET allows for more power that may be harder to implement in VB6

How much power to you need to update an ORPG? What are we going to do, turn it into WoW? Also, who the hell cares if you're using VB.NET. Yami and Robin made theirs in VB6, and they work quite fine.

[Whackeddie99]

I have a lot to discuss on my behalf, unfortunately I don't have time to right now.

@GKO:

> 1\. Becuz its fake
> 2\. Becuz it gay
> 3\. I got to go pee

this is completely unnecessary, and rude. I understand you apologized, but come on, REALLY!

[Helladen]

@Robin:

> FORTAN is 55 years old, C is 42 years old and C++ is 32 years old. What's your point?

Visual Basic 6 is restricted to DirectX7 and DirectX8\. The IDE is hard to work with, it is hard to debug things. It crashes all the time. Shall I go on? C and C++ are lower level languages, which have no limitations. Which is why they are still favorable by a lot of programmers. The point is Visual Basic 6 is fading out and it is so behind times only a twat would be using it as old as you have.

[Jeff]

@Helladen:

> Visual Basic 6 is restricted to DirectX7 and DirectX8\. The IDE is hard to work with, it is hard to debug things. It crashes all the time. Shall I go on? C and C++ are lower level languages, which have no limitations. Which is why they are still favorable by a lot of programmers. The point is Visual Basic 6 is fading out and it is so behind times only a twat would be using it as old as you have.

then why do you use it?  I for one don't see what's wrong with it unless microsoft finally drops it.  That also doesn't affect the point that VB.net is just as limited as VB6.  It can use DX9 DX10 and DX11, but imo they seem pretty similar(except the fact that everyone says one of them is shitty… DX10 I think?)

[evilbunnie]

@asdfawefasdf:

> then why do you use it?  I for one don't see what's wrong with it unless microsoft finally drops it.  That also doesn't affect the point that VB.net is just as limited as VB6.  It can use DX9 DX10 and DX11, but imo they seem pretty similar(except the fact that everyone says one of them is shitty… DX10 I think?)

He doesn't use it, anymore.