What happen to "our first party games"

Just wondering what this email refers to as I didn't see any party games in the Video?
email is below
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Hi,

After many months of hard work from a truly amazing team, we’re finally ready to show off Buildbox 2.0.

We’ll be doing so this Thursday on a special event:

Buildbox 2.0 Special Event
Thursday, December 10th, 2015
5:00PM PST (8:00PM EST)
http://event.buildbox.com

On this event you’ll see every aspect of Buildbox 2 including our first party games we’ve created with the software. Mark your calendars and we’ll see you then!

Team Buildbox
Buildbox.com

 

yup... no sign of multiplayer!

 

Had my hopes up

 

First party means that they were created by the Buildbox team. Super Mario Bros. is a Nintendo first party game.

 

First party means that they were created by the Buildbox team. Super Mario Bros. is a Nintendo first party game.

 

with party we understood as playable by a party...

 

Too funny! I totally was not reading it that way. thank you

 

That would be a multiplayer game.

 

mmm... this however opens up another interesting question about "programming party":

- how did they work on the same project? Is there a way to import scenes / worlds into a project? Because otherwise people could be working on the same project but unable to integrate each others work without re-doing from scratch...

 

Not always https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_party_video_games

 

Yeah I can see that. But a Third party game is a game that is made by an independent developer. "Call of Duty" is a third party game.

 

I don't think multiple peope worked on the game. First party just means it was created in-house by the Buildbox team AND published under Buildbox publishing.

 

I understand that. But we need to let Buildbox "grow" and step out of the single-user mode. If a team wants to works on a single project at the current state it's almost impossible - at least in a concurrent way.

It's not very practical either to "ping-pong" files between developers (files lost, damaged, corrupted, etc...)

So a limitation that I currently see - to step into the realm of a tool used also by teams - is this one. Until we are independent developers or with limited team effort, this won't affect us, obviously.

 

To my knowledge, Multiplayer functionality requires back-end server-side programs running to enable multiple devices to participate in the same state of a game. Right now, Buildbox only exports code that runs natively on client-side platforms (devices). To support multiplayer functionality, Buildbox would need to add a new product compatible with Buildbox that exports server-side code and provide instructions for how to set this up on a server (and setting up a server for this would cost money). I don't know how feasible that really is... It'd be a great accessory product that I would purchase, but is it viable? If it is, I would not expect it from Buildbox for a little while. If it is viable, it would still need to be updated each time Buildbox or Buildbox 2 is updated in order to support the multiplayer version of the new gameplay features.
Regarding the collaboration feature discussed above: Not a big worry for me right now. If I work with a team, I think the current feature set can still work. Games are more complicated that something like a Prezi presentation or Google Doc that does allow for immediate collaboration, and game scenes, unlike one page of a Google Doc or one slide of a Prezi, each need to somehow be different. So, it is ok if my team member produces a new kind of scene. All they then have to do is save their bbdoc and then share it with me through something like dropbox.com. Then I can open it and copy and paste scenes from one bbdoc to another. There's not a lot of room for loss of files, as all of the media files stay within the respective bbdoc... It just becomes a matter of simple project management for making sure your team member sends their updated bbdoc. This can work right now for Buildbox 1.
For Buildbox 2, the new menu and game skeleton structures particular to a bbdoc file may complicate these matters. Once Buildbox 2 releases, as early release of official release, it would be nice to get insight from @TreySmith @Andy and Team Buildbox about collaborating using Buildbox 2.

 

There are various type of multi-players.

There is the one you mentioned that involves a server script (like in Doodle Jump Race) and yes, I believe that if a developer wants to explore that type of development has also to be aware that there are costs involved.

If many developers are interested, to avoid going back to the "coding" kind of business it could be an idea (that @TreySmith might want to explore) to offer it as a value-added service where is Buildbox provides hosting for those applications maybe like Parse currently does (volume based).

Another option is an on-device multiplayer (split screen). A one-on-one of sort like Tower Madness HD. (the first version) - Obviously that type of application would require a lot of screen space and therefore you would consider playing on a tablet.

Another option could be using a local wi-fi / bluetooth connection so that even without a server a game could play a one-on-one or real multi-player. All things highlighted in Apple Documentation

https://developer.apple.com/library...al/GameKit_Guide/Matchmaking/Matchmaking.html

There is always more than 1 way to skin a cat...

 

How do you copy a scene from a bbdoc to another? I opened 2 Buildbox sessions and I can't find the cut and paste feature... And no "import" feature either...

 

I may have misspoken about it being a literal copy and paste procedure. I recall from one of Trey's original training videos that he click-and-drags a scene tab from one project to another and says how to do it. Hopefully I am not simply imagining this... hehe

 

I can't figure out how...

 

...I can't even get two bbdoc.s open at the same time. I guess I was imagining things -- perhaps it was wishful thinking that took me over as I was watching the training video for scene duplications. Yes, if we cannot open two bbdocs at once, and there is no way to move scenes from one bbdoc to another, then that limits collaboration to only one bbdoc. It would be great to be able to open multiple bbdocs at once and move scenes from one to another, as this would enhance collaboration in an important synchronous way.

 

On Windows all you need to do is to run BB twice...