The end of my first annual subscription as a Source Licensee is fast approaching, and I'm asking myself the question "Was it worth it?"
On the whole, I would answer "Yes!", purely for the reason that, as a Source Licensee, I was able to (partly) understand how the software for this magnificent engine fitted together, and, without it as a source of reference for unexplained topics in the documentation I would now be 80% floundering, instead of my present 50%! However, that 30% difference which has penetrated, makes me want to hang in there. The complexity of the source software surprised me completely, and made me realize how naive I was to think that I could add and compile my own custom classes to the engine.

As has perhaps become obvious from many of my posts, I am of the opinion that not enough has been done for a user, like myself, who has had experience with other engines and is a middle-of-the-road hobbyist programmer. What is missing is one easily accessible document of clear, easy-to-read explanations and detailed examples of how all aspects of the engine fit together as a whole. Fortunately, I am a person who does not give up easily when faced with a problem, and because of this trait I am still here now writing my thoughts. I fear that many potential Esenthel users, with less patience than me, may have been lost to the competition.

Something else which has irked me during my year here is the never-diminishing RoadMap. All those exciting features helped entice me to Esenthel, now a year later, those same exciting features are still there, with no timeline or priority of their implementation. I should imagine that this indecision would be extremely troublesome for those customers with fixed work plans and deadlines!

So, my next year... to be or not to be?
I've decided to end my annual Source License subscription, and go with an annual Binary License subscription. Well, that's my long speech for this year, may be some more again this time next year!

I too believe that better documentation would advance sales of this engine. The API calls themselves are generally well documented but a conceptual overview of how the whole system fits together (as you suggest) would be of huge advantage to new users and potential buyers.

(06-21-2015 03:58 PM)3DRaddict Wrote:  Something else which has irked me during my year here is the never-diminishing RoadMap. All those exciting features helped entice me to Esenthel, now a year later, those same exciting features are still there, with no timeline or priority of their implementation. I should imagine that this indecision would be extremely troublesome for those customers with fixed work plans and deadlines!

I completely agree with this statement and it is one of the reasons I have not continued my subscription. When I bought EE v2.0 I knew exactly what I was getting and, so long as it was supported, I was happy to accept that functionality and design my game around it. Some of the features on the Road Map would have been very useful and I would have been happy to buy a later version which had those features implemented.

However ... now we have moved to a subscription model, and in over two years since I first licensed the engine none of the key Road Map items I was primarily interested in have been implemented, I was not prepared to continue licencing based on a subscription basis where frankly I have no idea how the engine will be advanced or any idea on the time-scales.

Whilst I accept that Greg has every right to market the product as he sees fit I do believe this stance on future development of the engine leaves some developers nervous of buying into something that is undefined in terms of its future direction.

Despite these observations, its still my engine of choice and I continue development exclusively using Esenthel

well said, thats why i stayed to EE2.0 Roadmap and Contibutions. How many month is "Hardware Instancing" listed and freezed?

listed 2013 http://www.esenthel.com/community/showth...instancing

as I can certainly see 3DRaddict's and Pixel Perfect's points, and I agree with most of them, as with any engine you choose(3DRaddict's choice to drop EE source license) source access might be way overkill or be a huge undertaking by itself to browse through even with 'amazing' documentation(in which some cases EE is lacking at points), look at the bright side, you still have your current source code of EE which you can look through at anytime.

However the one point which I wouldn't agree on is licensing an engine based on it having a *Insert do want awesome feature here* on the roadmap.

kevindekever
well with probably only 30% of the people voting actually contributing anything at all, and about 10% of the ones voting for HWI actually contributing towards HWI, me being the main contributor at about 1300~ of it, there is no wonder it seems like its freezed, as I can only contribute it when I can afford it, which sadly isn't every month and suddenly some months I've got more so it spikes, like the last two months it has jumped 400usd from me.

even with all the other engines out there, I choose to use Esenthel because I've still yet to see an engine as cleanly written as this one(Sadly because our showcases might be low standard shader wise, which account for almost everything for these so called "next generation" games due to having a clunky custom shader approach in my opinion, this of couse I noticed even better when playing with Triton Ocean and Silverlining SDKs from Sundog Software(which were really cool in allowing me to show the screenshots of my test implementations).

The uncertainty about development priority of features we who use Esenthel has to live with is of course a good point to mention, but also expected of a one man developer(and I think few can say they've met a developer who cradles his work as a baby as much as Greg) , source licensees can of course submit proposed changes or improvements(that's a plus), in some cases it might need to be rewritten to fit the engines code style to keep it neat and similar or a high level quality(worst part about many engines is that it is rather obvious that there are many people with different styles even if they have programming guidelines).

and also as a direct reply to 3DRaddict.
Great balanced topic I enjoyed reading it.
God knows how much this engine and its development has infuriated me at times, I still have difficulties finding any engine written as well as this one, maybe not the most performant, but it certainly is the most stable one in my experience.
I would of course hope you choose to stay.

(06-23-2015 05:23 PM)Zervox Wrote:  kevindekever
well with probably only 30% of the people voting actually contributing anything at all, and about 10% of the ones voting for HWI actually contributing towards HWI, me being the main contributor at about 1300~ of it, there is no wonder it seems like its freezed, as I can only contribute it when I can afford it, which sadly isn't every month and suddenly some months I've got more so it spikes, like the last two months it has jumped 400usd from me.

Yeah, but listed items will developed after reaching max. So features you want, you have to pay. It is listed on roadmap too http://www.esenthel.com/community/showth...?tid=1507. But it will only developed, if greg feels good or reached max.
Your hardly payments have no effects until maxed. HWI was only an example for ETA.

Personally I have the full source licensing. I could do what I need to do with the binary only. However I find that having the full source is a nice way to support Esenthel if nothing else