"Long-time lurker customer, just going to say my piece and leave it at that..." - that never works out well, does it?
Going back to the first two posts in this thread I can only nod in approval to most everything written there.
But I would be very surprised if any of this is going to happen in a meaningful timeframe.
This is simply my interpretation of looking at the pace of development.
From my point of view laying the focus on the documention would have top priority.
And seeing how little attention the documentation gets I dare to say planetside underappreciates the value of this
to new inexperienced potential customers. Not to mention some people using the software already.
With that said: not that I think the forum represents a critical mass of TG users but, looking at the posts of new forum users over time
I for one am under the impression that the manual/wiki/documention is a top concern regarding TG coming up regularly.
It looks and feels outdated. It shows how poorly maintained it is. There is a lot of information missing.
Having a "?" on every property page in the program leading to nothing (at worst) or offering a description of a function without
giving a hint of its place in the workflow does not help (me) a lot.
And no, the search function of the forum is a poor substitute for a thorough help file or wiki.
So is asking questions in the forum and getting answers and solutions even from the developers themselves (cool!).
Be it naive, simpleminded or whatever, having a lot of paragraphs in the wiki still labeled TG2 or TG3 is just not attractive.
Wether it be valid information or not.
And I think the impact this has on potentional new users aka customers is to be taken seriously.
Is it harder to do something about the documention than coding the software?
I do not know but, I cannot imagine this to be the case. I do believe, of course, that writing a good documention is not a weekend endeavour.
I have heard it often enough when any poor manuals are criticised... But you have to start somewhere sooner or later, don`t you?
I do actually think bringing the documentation up to par would help a lot.
More than any much wanted, wished for and needed functionality.
It would buy you time - "and time spent needs money earned" (Dune).
Depending heavily on what kind of clientele should be developed in the first place, I guess.
As a non-commercial dabbler this is what I am looking for. Professional users might not need this.
Last but not least: the new pricing model has been presented when TG4 arrived.
Planetside laid out some of there thoughts leading to the decisions made.
I think it is offering a acceptable balance between being up to date and buying into or updating the application
whenever you feel it is worth it. Hopefully they do not ever take away perpetual licenses or go any other route
like some of the big players do. As non-professional customer I surely would have to give Terragen up at this point.
And money is always too tight to mention, isn`t it.
CHeers, Klaus