So close to closing shop

TutorialDoctor

I’ve been using HyperPad for a number of years and have really enjoyed it. However, I’m very close to stopping all interaction with it. Largely due to very long breaks in new features (key features I would say are still missing). I see a lot of livestreams which are neat, but the engine itself needs a lot more.

So much potential, and has been for a long time, but now HyperPad feels like abandonware riding on the glory days.

The FNF craze is quite…

A suggestion I’d leave is to higher more developers to build more features or make the whole thing open source.

aPaperWeight

I agree, lets compare this to something like Roblox. There is many features lacking in hyperPad, yes it’s a great concept but more can be done. They should advertise more for more users, because it’s kinda dead. They should add currency to have in game purchases. They should have awards handed out for like best developer, best studio, best game, etc. They should update more frequently because there are a lot of bugs. Yes the team is small, but I guarantee if they tried to hire more developers they could easily get some. There is massive potential here. So I hope they improve, but right now, the platform is great, just lacking a bit.

RobinsonX

I agree to both of you! We want updates whether small or large.

We've got hyped around the new Hub coming out 3 years ago - we still do not have it yet and at this pace, I feel like it won't be coming this year. The last app update was months ago, and even worse, the hyperPad viewer app isn't up to date with the paid app so it couldn't run the newer projects. 🥲

Every now and then, I try to grow the community to give the developers more support.

Last year, I created a game called The Power of Music that blew up and attracted thousands of users.
I've created video tutorials on the hyperPad YouTube channel and am also uploading some hyperPad-related content on my channel to bring even more users to the platform.
That FNF craze you were talking about? Yep... I started that and I kinda regret it. It did bring LOTS of new users and LOTS of activity. Though, questionable at best...

But by the lack of transparency from the developers, I'm not even sure what they are doing right now.

RobinsonX

So, I decided to take matters onto my own hands.
I'm working on an open source site that can convert hyperPad projects into an HTML file that will be supported by all major browsers.

When a working prototype releases, hyperPad will blow up.

This has been a requested feature for a very long time, and I will be proud to deliver it! Currently, you guys can contribute if you guys are in the hyperPad discord server. Let me know there if you want to help!

TutorialDoctor

I don’t know if I mentioned this at any point, but I am a full stack developer. I could help, although I’d have to restrict my time (very busy)

http://tutorialdoctor.github.io/

TutorialDoctor

@RobinsonX I can’t comment on the channel. And where is the GitHub repo?

aPaperWeight

@RobinsonX This is amazing. I can not wait for you to launch this. This makes me so happy and actually gives me a reason to keep making games on hyperPad.

Murtaza

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I agree things are taking a lot longer than they should.

Our goal has been 2 major feature updates a year, with multiple bug fixes in between. Unfortunately we're not meeting that right now and we're making some internal changes on that. Some are already in place.

The new Hub is still in the works. I know its taking a lot longer than expected. It's actually the only major thing being worked on right now. The big issue is the backend of the current hub is extremely out of date so we cant move forward until thats redone, while simultaneously trying to meet some deadlines apple has in place regarded deprecated APIs and apple sdk features.

We're coming close to the hub backend rewrite and will be releasing an update soon with some smaller features and fixes.

One big mistake on our end is we have a lot of stuff done, but end up hoarding it and not releasing it until it's a bigger package. In the past this one mainly done to increate updates as we found not all users would update with frequent app updates and would cause a headache with support. But now it has gotten out of hand in the opposite direction.

As for comparing to Roblox. While there are similarities, the comparison isn't really fair. They're a multi billion dollar company that essentially have endless amounts of money.

Any ways I hear you guys, and will take steps into speeding things up!

RobinsonX

@TutorialDoctor Hello! Here is the GitHub repo: https://github.com/RXCodes/hyperPad-To-Web

Some of the code is open-source and everything is written in javascript. Even the website HTML is up for everyone to see! But good luck attempting to understand some of the code behind it if you're gonna try to edit it. :)

RobinsonX

@TutorialDoctor @aPaperWeight You guys can contribute by going to this link: https://rxcodes.github.io/hyperPad-To-Web/

Right now, only the Program Behaviors module is fully functional if you want to code behaviors in javascript. I will flesh out the other modules later on where you can participate in beta tests and peer review!

Higuybtw

Awesome! I’m only a Lua scripter so I can’t help on that part, but I’ll definitely help test!

Higuybtw

Also I’m on a different account right now but I am @aPaperWeight

aPaperWeight

@RobinsonX Question, how do you make the movement joystick into WASD for PC users or will it only be joystick.

RobinsonX

@aPaperWeight I haven't worked on that yet, but the idea is you can use Receive Message Behaviors to trigger behaviors when a key is pressed. For example, onKeyPress a will trigger when a is pressed. You could also do onKeyPress where it will handle every keyboard input instead of one single key.