[RELEASED] Nottorus - Unlimited Visual programming plugin

Personally for me subtitles distract attention from scene. If you want to use text - insert it between scenes. There are a lot videos without voice comments. Advice - use mouse pointer visualisation and if you want to stress something in window - move pointer around it or highlight it. Don't put everything in one video - few short videos about basic functionality will be much better.

 

That's fine and it may force you to be concise. A lot of tutorials that are 'spoken' tend to drag on and on.

Now to be perfectly honest, I'm one of those that prefer 'written' tutorials (with pictures) so video isn't necessary. Tutorials succeed when they demonstrate real world application...such as game functionality. As you replied to me above, yes you do show examples but they still don't offer why you would use something. Why use delegates for example? Yes I understand a delegate references a function but why would this be something important to know and where would it be useful. Why are properties useful? Can you demonstrate an application for it?

Stuff like that. Don't think like a programmer talking to another programmer. Treat it as talking to someone who could understand conceptually, but needs to understand through application.

Check out how the Unreal4 Tutorials teach Blueprint.

Cheers

-Steven

 

As an extra suggestion, if you upload to Youtube (recommended, reach greater audience) then utilise their Subtitles button. That way, the user can decide to switch them on/off.

We could also ask someone here to do a voice over. Someone with a cool American accent for example, cough, Steve. Lmao, I'm only joking But if he's a Bears fan, force him. I'm not joking.

 

Lol if you're thinking a typical Chicago Da Bearrs accent you're out of luck!

 

wow now playmaker cost 45 usd i think it was reduced because now they have bigger competition ?

 

IMO it is why Unity should not implement its own visual scripting engine - the higher competition in store - more assets, better quality and as you can see now - lower price

 

As others here already said, tutorials are a must. Playmaker did not get where it is now if it was not for the amount of tutorials. As a bad example, look at uscript. Could of been top of the charts, but no love was givein by the creators.
I see this time and time again. Do not fall in that pit, cause once you do it does not matter how good the pluin is.
Your plugin demands tutorials and i dont mean the old debug log crap and how to rotate a cube. You have to sell your product by showing begginer to advance concepts.
Here are some ideas.
1. Make a few simple navigation tutorials about 2 to 5 minutes.
2. A couple of basic games like roll a ball, pong, space invaders, platformer, etc.
3. A nice ui workflow, basic menu, settings, etc.

Thete are services like fiver.com which could help out with the voice over for cheap.

I think i speak for most here when i say, we want you to succeed and love to see this plugin reach its full market potential, but be aware this can only happen if you make the effort and put out tutorials. The more tutorials the easier someone feel good about their investment.
Good luck

 

right in fact i have learn playmaker using their hundreds of tutorials if they dont make i would not have not progress fast and most important was the samples i learn from samples a lot their are few good playmaker assets which drive the community to show interest so make sure you put efforts on this

 

If you are cool advertising agents, advise General Motors sell Mercedes and BMW at the price of Russian Lada. What is the difference - all have the same 4 wheels.

I don`t understand why author reduction price from 350 $. To write unlimited programming system should take into account the huge number of situations and the rules of the programming language.
I think that the author wrote many lines of code. In comparison with other systems i sure that the difference is more than 5 times.

I recommend the author to make the current cost (250$) as start and testing period and 2 weeks later return to the price of $ 350.

 

How many lines of code are involved has nothing to do with what price the market will support, and thats what actually matters when setting price.

For me it makes more sense to think in the following kind of ways instead:

If I cut the price to a third of its previous amount (e.g. from $300 down to $100), will I get more than 3x as many sales? And then weigh in other factors, such as cost of supporting more users, but also greater userbase potentially creating more sales momentum going forwards, e.g. by happy and excited users posting about how great it is, writing reviews and giving ratings.

 

Does it still count as achievement nowadays?

 

Carrying on from my last post, I mean how much effort went into developing something is certainly a factor that affects how much compensation for that effort the developer is seeking. But the bottom line of that is total revenue, not simply price per unit in isolation. The relationship between the two is not always so simple, and sadly in this case I think at the moment the balance is wrong and will not lead to maximum revenue and product success because overall sales volume will be too low.

 

Low price does not helped Shader Forge (The author promised a second version, but him total highly busy with his project) and it does not help another assets too. Unfortunately Asset Store is not ordinary market. The gaming industry is not market to sell apples. You buy plug-ins based on your needs. I think that if your project is successful - it does not matter the price for which you bought the product if it does not exceed the amount of 3 zero.

 

Don't lower the price anymore...the lower-price = more sales is a fallacy.

Good reading here

One TINY snippet:

"Lower prices, alone, don’t produce more sales. We’re clear on that idea, aren’t we?"
​

Sell me a premium product that's priced at it's value and not at the competition. @Morfeuskiev hit it on the head and he's absolutely correct. Apple doesn't need to chase the bottom at all does it? Don't get me wrong...understand your market but be strategic, not desperate. Improve the quality of this product all around with support, documentation and tutorials and sell value and power.

Every corner of your product needs to be 'On-Point' to be Premium. Sell me Premium.

Cheers

-Steven

 

It is simply not true. Check Most Popular asset list and watch how it changes after each 24 hours sale.

 

Completely agree with you.

Because it is on the first page. The same will happen if there on long time sale.


So we have to recommended author set price to 500 $ and to make a 50% discount. And write it in large letters everywhere. And of course do not forget about the 1 cent discount.

The price of 249.99 will be better

 

It appears to be worth the price set by the developer, but lacking good documentation and tutorials.

I can't afford it, but that doesn't mean the price should be lowered.

 

1. I did't say that price drop is the only factor, just assumed that other factors are equal.
2. IMHO I don't think it will work since there are quite strong competitors.

 

Great! Then you should buy one of those. There are several out there with very good reviews. I am buying one of those...because it suits my budget. This one goes above and beyond what they can do and is worth much more than the others.

 

Yes - I already bought 3 of them. If Nottorus will be somewhere around 100 Euro price - I will start to think about buying it. I just like DevTools

 

Sorry guys, but "if" Mercedes will cost less than $ 10k, I'll buy it.

 

i will wait till it have lot of tutorials and demo games to justify for the price point

 

How disappointing! As a former Chicago area resident, I would love to hear a Da Bearrs accent again. So nostalgic.

 

Interestingly enough I rarely hear it, and I'm right in the middle of the city in the Southport Corridor. Go to Bridgeport however and yea it's definitely everywhere. No doubt very fun but yea, not that common. Then again it's rare to find a 'real' Chicagoan, born and raised here (and not "Evanston")

 

Which is why I said at least one of two things, Unity support being the second. If Unity get some street smarts, they will actively promote this by getting it front & centre. Keep it front page. Continually assign it to Editor Pick or give it monthly awards. They need to realise this will actually sell Unity.

How many flocked to Unreal because of Blueprint? Now we have (arguably) the best visual scripting tool. Unity need to embrace it.

As for the price, from my own viewpoint at least, I am not saying it is overpriced. To be honest, I am saying I am anxious to make sure it gets to be leading asset. I want thousands of users continually posting on forums with questions, answers etc blah. I am afraid the price scares them off. If everyone can afford it, happy bloody days !!!

I just think the standard of costing has been set by other assets.

But like mentioned, we are looking to drive a Merc here. So I am willing to pay. I'm buying on payday, t minus 4 days. Bring. It. On.

 

I feel that Nottorus is well priced at $250. Stridemann will need funding to be able to focus on Nottorus. The wall of text that follows is just my 'one cent worth'...

Pricing and selling such a powerful product like Nottorus is complex. Stridemann has set a high standard for his product by saying "My system is not for beginners, and its a professional high-grade tool." It is not presented as a toy but, as a high-grade productivity tool for professionals. It doesn't matter to the PRICE of Nottorus how many lines were written or how hard it was to write. Hardness only protects your product from competition quickly, easily, and more cheaply offering what your product offers. Converting C# to Nottorus visual nodes and then back to C# had to be STUNNINGLY hard to do AT ALL and Stridemann seems to have done it amazingly well! I'm blown away by this but, SO WHAT? Amazing as the technology of Nottorus is, what matters to price is customer value, making potential customers aware of that value to them, and making it "safe and easy to buy".

Some early adopters with extra cash will pay a premium price to pick up the shiniest coolest new technology. High price often ATTRACTS this small buyer group. They'll jump through hoops for bragging rights or bitching rights depending on their nature. Early adopters usually have lower expectations for new products because they often have beta version products blow up on them. They often see it as just part of 'living on the bleeding edge of technology'. The hard-won exclusivity often attracts them. They are great in that they can help fund you and help you improve your business productivity tool offering. The problem is that in business, you run out of this buyer segment pretty quickly.

Time is usually worth MORE than money to most professional customers. I am starting to see many ways that Nottorus can reliably deliver money and time savings to professional customers. The problem is that, investing money and time in your product, to see if it will SAVE them time and money... costs the professional time and money! That's why it's vital to have clear reviews and discussions from PROFESSIONAL users. You must clearly spell out some of the ways that Nottorus will reliably deliver ongoing value and time savings to professional customers. (I stress 'professional' only because Stridemann said that is his target customer. Hobbyists can be priceless early feedback groups BECAUSE they have extra time that they will happily invest in your product, they are extremely smart and curious, and they don't demand to see compelling value in the first hour of use. Most busy professionals don't have hours and hours to hunt for value and give feedback to developers. They demand that their tools reliably deliver value from hour one!)

Large numbers of professional adopters come later and are serious thinking purchasers that are looking for proof of the RESULTS reliably delivered by your product. They also tend to be willing to pay well for high-grade tools. You want to reach a massive group of customers buying Nottorus for professional business reasons. You want professional success stories to inform potential customers. Most professionals don't trust sales pitch claims nearly as much as they trust a demanding user's success story. Reading about the results of other professional Nottorus users will show new potential customers why they NEED this "professional high-grade tool".

Professional customers are already demanding. When you say your offering is a "professional high-grade tool", you set a high standard by which you will be judged. It is vital that show-stopping flaws in a professional productivity tool be fixed. As a small company, it is hard to juggle time between programming and documenting demands. For professional customers, you must build the confidence of "high-grade" and that means NOT crashing and losing hours of work or hours lost chasing a bug caused by your "high-grade tool". You must focus on quality more than new features to be considered a "professional high-grade tool".

Stridemann, you deserve to be proud of Nottorus. I haven't been this impressed with shiny new technology in a long time. I hope that Nottorus brings you compelling $$$ for all of your hard work.

Phew... Clearly, I need to take my anti-fanboy medication...

 

Bears fan? I'm a Bronco from Northern Ireland. Started following American football just as you guys traded Cutler for Kyle Orton. Nice move lol. I think the first year I had to endure 31st, but endure I did... and now we've the landmark 50th

 

I agreed strongly with most of your insight, but this paragraph made me laugh & almost not continue reading, apart from the last sentence.

Does such a group really exist? Who do they go brag to? It's not exactly like buying the new set of sneakers, or driving up in a new car that pulls da chicks lol.

I don't have much more to add to your post, other than you are sooo right that Stridemann should be extremely proud. Proud for THE first real visual scripting tool. Like for like, nodes to code. Proud for the unprecedented code to nodes. My mind was blown for the first, but it was expected sooner-or-later by the developer community. The second achievement will blow the mind of every logically minded developer across all walks of programming languages. 30,000 lines of pure genius.

Lmao, yes I'm drinking vino right now... but for the first time ever... I've become a fanboy. I'll delete this tomorrow like I normally do ahahahahahah.

And one last point. Lets remember Stridemann has to run our posts though an interpreter. We need to choose less complex ways to get our points across...

 

^Lol ooooh Rixly

...and yes we are a rather verbose bunch eh?

 

Lol, big time. Poor Stridemann took a year to write this, but will take longer to translate all of our bullshit. Cracking how passionate we all are though.

Question: Has anyone actually bought this puppy yet? Give us some first impressions, I'm in withdrawal here...

 

I'm reaching out to this dude on PM and the forum, he joins & Stridemann has a new best friend. Nuf said.

 

Small sidetrack but something I noticed was missing that would greatly benefit Nottorus...



...color coding Events, Functions, Variables, Properties, Etc. That is very readable to me, and so far out of the plethora of VS's I've used and use still, none do this effectively. FlowCanvas isn't bad, but Blueprint is just...well just look at it. *drools*

That's all...everything else so far looks great!

-Steven

 

Exist? I'm one of their leaders! I've joined the circle of corporate techs surrounding the "new chromey brain parts" like the apes in 2001 A Space Odyssey!

Seriously, I'm actually in both camps. I must stay way ahead of my competition by finding the most powerful new technology and pounding on it until I know it is rock solid. Nottorus looks like a winner to me in that regard. At the same time, I am ULTRA conservative about ANY customer impacting software or systems that I use. That's why generating source code is so important for Nottorus to be used by corporate programmers. You can code review and security audit the output source code. DLLs don't make operations staff happy with your solutions.

There are MANY thousands of "must stay way ahead of my competition" early adopting programmers and consultants that work with big corporations. Those many thousands of smaller company programmers MUST have tools that allow them to out perform the internal IT staff of the big corporation that they work with. Also, the small company early adopting programmers and consultants MUST keep up with the other small company competition. "If those guys are using X, we need to look into it also." THOSE many thousands of early adopters could move to Nottorus quickly, if they see compelling advantages from user success stories.

Many corporate IT buyers feel even version 2.0 software from a small company is too risky and cutting edge without LOTS of success stories to back it up. There was a powerful selling phrase "No one ever got fired for buying IBM." It was used to remind corporate buyers that they 'might' get fired if buying the cheaper solution went badly. If you make a mistake in most corporations, it's very important to have documentation backing up WHY you did what you did. Many corporate buyers want lots of documentation reassuring them that an investment is a defendable good investment.

Big company or small, Nottorus will need to make it "easy for corporate customers to buy" by having some compelling success stories so programmers can say 'Looking at all these success stories, it looks like this Nottorus program is definitely worth getting.'

Oddly, a $350 purchase would need approval at several companies I've worked with, while $250 would be discretionary spending that a programmer wouldn't need to justify. Just in case something went wrong or there was an audit, the programmers would still want to be able to present success stories showing why the purchase was a great investment for the company.

And if you do not agree with my reasoning, I shall launch a wall of text at you a second time!

 

Hey Rd,

Your business acumen is streets above mine, I'm a simple programmer/analyst that wishes to remain there by design.

It is interesting the differential between what is deemed discretionary or requirement in the case of your clients, but since Nottorus now complies with the $250 someone is going to look pretty smart for suggesting such a venture. Good luck ;-)

Edit: sorry mate, I'm drinking wine & watching movies here. The above will be edited tomorrow...

 

Actually, I drunkenly disagree with you there. Nottorus IS visual C#. It doesn't need to sell its successes, you either write/node intelligent scripts, or you don't. This inherently is its beauty, it is C# without restriction. To question its implementation is to question the language. They are one in the same.

 

Rixly239, I agree with you. Nottorus will stand on it's own with PROGRAMMERS who understand its implications. My point was about programmers justifying and selling Nottorus to the BUSINESS FINANCE people, who do not understand what Nottorus will mean to their programmers or the bottom line. Finance people I've worked with rarely understand technical implications of new technology and what it means for the bottom line profits of the company. Programmers rarely have the patience to try to sell new technology implications to finance people. It's like the Gary Larson cartoon where the owner of a dog is yelling "Bad girl Ginger! Very bad girl Ginger!" and the caption reads: What the dog hears "blah blah Ginger... blah blah blah Ginger." That's what I usually see when programmers talk to finance about vital new technology. The success stories help BOTH sides see the value from THEIR OWN perspective.

Reality has made finance people very paranoid. Finance gray beards tell the new hires in accounting the legendary horror stories. Stories about world changing technology that later fizzled into an embarrassing or career limiting write-off. If you are at Intel and authorize just 10% of your programmers to get a $250 program, you just lit the fuse on a $250,000 dollar investment. You will be asked to show the return on that investment to Intel's bottom line. If you are not convinced of the value, you will likely delay that investment until you are convinced of the value.

I'm not calling finance people cowards. Finance people have good reason to fear that THEY will be held accountable for bad investments. They do vital work in a hard but VERY standardized line of work. Accounting and finance are so standardized that finance workers know they are far more replaceable than programmers when a head needs to roll or layoffs need to happen. When laying off a programmer (the politically correct term for fire), you need to be very careful to consider what IT projects will be impacted, if they have rare mission critical skills or knowledge of your custom IT systems... This is just what I've seen many times. Other companies may be very different.

Based on what I've seen, I feel gathering some compelling success stories about Nottorus is vital for breaking into bigger business accounts. Nottorus is so impressive to programmers, they may be so enthusiastic that they lose credibility when justifying the purchase to non-programmers. I think that both groups will clearly see compelling value from user success stories. I'm not saying anyone should wait for the stories. I'm just saying pursue and gather the success stories that will result from customers using Nottorus.

 

Steven, controversial question time... would you say that Blueprint vs Nottorus is akin to C++ vs C# ?

I've looked into Blueprints a few times, spending a couple of hours each visit... I always leave thinking that the nodes are way too involved for it be fun for me. I see your diagram and I think the same. Looks like a lot of steps to learn to get something done.

Judging by your excitement for this project, will you ever start another Blueprint project after your current finish?

I'm not trying to start a pissing contest, just glad I can ask someone who knows that and will answer with unbias. I tried the same over on BP forum and constantly got flamed. I wanted to crack skulls lol.

Rix

 

I agree that we programmers are harder to fire I forget how to do half of my job because I run the scripts I created to do much of the work!!

OK I get where you are coming from RD, never had such insight before. Ultimately from your stance it is a case of time will tell. Success stories from Nottorus are likely months down the line. How long does it take big software houses to crank out triple-A titles? Add to that the time it will take for Nottorus to make a splash with such companies. 6 months to a year for an end product?

I didn't realise the catch 22 would be the internal politics you have explained, so it's most likely Indies and smaller software houses will have to carry the torch first.

 

Really it does exist, but usually among one man teams who have never made a game before and buy Unity Pro because it makes them more important even though the features are almost identical now...and those are the folks who beg (or did beg since I haven't seen it in a while) for a Pro badge in front of their name on the forums and a special forum where the rest of us were not allowed.

I have known a few. Haven't seen many of them around lately though. Some had less experience in the gaming world than I do....but they did make me smile.

Some folks care more about status than about efficiency and budgets. It is like those folks who buy expensive homes and eat off of folding tables and sit on lawn chairs because they can't afford furniture.

 

I hope my enthusiasm for Nottorus hasn't misled you or anyone else on this thread. I am only a very interested potential customer. The only contact or advice I've given Stridemann is in the few posts I've made in this thread. I won't even get a discount for Nottorus when I buy it.

As only an interested customer, I still need an answer to my question from last week. "Ahead Of Time compilation breaks many other systems that use reflection. Can nottorus compile to IOS and webgl and avoid the AOT limitations of other systems?" Even very interested customers like myself can have uncertainty that blocks a sale until satisfied. That is why I push success stories, especially when there is a language barrier between the customer and seller. Google translate may be converting my questions or my pearls of business wisdom into jibberish for Stridemann.

I've been posing into this thread because I see amazing value in what Nottorus could do. I know how hard it is to build and successfully launch a great product or service. If, as they say, you learn from your mistakes, then I am the most learned businessman you will ever meet. I know there are a LOT of hidden politics and sink holes in selling to businesses. I'm just giving Stridemann some tips to push past some problems I've run into. Tips that I wish someone had given to me decades ago. It's tough to have a great offering and not know why you aren't getting sales. Customer success stories CAN be a great way to push past the FUD factor (Fear Uncertainty Doubt) in business. I hope businesses beat a path to Stridemann's door to buy Nottorus. If he starts having problems selling to businesses, some of my tips may be very helpful.

 

@RD I can echo a lot of your concerns. One of my primary interests in this tool is so I that I can justify the replacement of VS for a front end I created and move it to full Unity WebGL. The biggest barrier to getting wider acceptance for my project is how easy will it be for the rest of the team to support my bastard project that is now in production if I am hit by a bus.

I think this tool has the potential to lower the barrier to learning code or troubleshoot code because I really like how the debugging is so visual. I might be one of the few crazy people running around using Unity for Corporate applications but I have grown more fond of Unity than Stinking Visual Studio and Microsoft's screwy frameworks.

If I could use this tool to create a C# script then compile it, and then use it completely during run time... I swear Nottorus has a ton more potential than we might be able to imagine. AOT or JIT are very nice to have when developing Runbooks and Orchestration processes that are designed to be interactive end to end.

Of course the single largest barrier for using Unity as a business application is the .Net core being so stinking old!

 

From the way it's been described by Stridemann, (and also based on the simple example he posted), I don't think it generates any reflected code, unless of course you include nodes from the System.Reflect package. I've not used it yet, but you can essentially put two and two together and figure out what Nottorus does; it is a 1 to 1 VS to C# transpiler, so essentially what you see in the VS is what you get in C#.

 

Guys, why I think that there is no one can believe what he reads in the first post?

Nottorus does not have its compile engine (it have precompiler for searching errors before creating c#). It CONVERT (not Compile) its nodes DIRECTLY into C# and later this C# compile Unity compiler.

 

Ok, I just purchased, I will be playing with this thing and seeing how things go. I will try to play with it enough to get a review up today, but do not hold your breath, I will see what all I can do and learn as a mediocre C# code nerd.

 

Two things, yes I already know that Nottorus does not do the actual compiling, but the language barrier can often leave questions or uncertainty, so I only asked at first to be sure.

What I am saying is "IF" Nottorus COULD do that it would be freaking awesome!

 

Indeed.

If you talking about this: "The Mono .NET implementation for iOS is based on AOT technology, which has its limitations." http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/TroubleShootingIPhone.html
Nottorus can't circumvent these limitations) But I thing the way is making code in another way (avoid using some code (nodes) or making some fixes as described on that page).

 

F5 is being worn out on my keyboard

We don't expect a comprehensive review, just a general feel of how it's put together to whet our whistles

Only use words that rhyme with wexbellent

 

Stridemann, thanks for your reply. My concerns are where you said "This plugin use reflection system, which allows accessing all Types and their members in all assemblies that project works on, including project scripts. Based on this method the plugin will generate all available nodes (functions, accesing properties/variables etc)."

From your qoute, I understand that Nottorus uses reflection to access types and their members at the startup node making stage. My concern is that AOT limiting reflection may be used for access even after conversion, into the C# compilation stage. I don't want to string nodes together and accidentally create a program that will have problems with iOS, webgl, or AOT. That is a major concern with visual node programming for me. With text based programming, I know when I do something bad. With nodes, the system interprets my node layout to build the code for me. That can cause VERY hard to find failures in the deployment. It would be VERY nice to know Nottorus ensures no reflection is used at the final stages. I've seen Dependency Injection systems that used reflection in crazy ways to simplify super complex systems. I am worried your solution to such a hard problem as Nottorus solves, might be doing some wild things with reflection that would make iOS, webgl and AOT impossible or at least unstable.

I also understand that Nottorus won't fix existing source code that breaks iOS, webgl, or AOT. I just want to know that Nottorus won't ADD anything doing its magic that would CAUSE a good asset or source code to break only AFTER passing through Nottorus.

In the unity docs you referenced, they say "Using generic types with value types as parameters (eg, List<int>, List<SomeStruct>, List<SomeEnum>, etc) for serializable script properties."

Does Nottorus use generic types in any way that would be a problem for iOS, webgl, or AOT?

Knowing the answers to these questions is important to me because I am intending to use Nottorus as an asset integration tool for dealing with frequent asset updates. Scanning and debugging and interfacing updated assets would save me a lot of time and stress. (A great success story for Nottorus) But, I have to be sure that to do Nottorus' magic, it won't make the code I'm updating break on iOS, webgl, or AOT systems.

I don't care to know HOW it does what it does. I just want to know that the final output won't cause problems that I've mentioned. I understand we are working through a language barrier and translators don't work well with technical text. Don't spend too much time trying to detail your answer. A simple "Fear not you clearly paranoid maintainer of code. The crazy multi-dimensional meta parse trees I build will render cleanly back to C# with all references resolved so that iOS, webgl, and AOT will be happy to compile and run." That would be good enough for me and I realize this is a 1.0 release of your system. I don't expect perfection. I just want to avoid finding out later that the solution Nottorus uses could never work happily with iOS, webgl, or AOT.

Thank you in advance for taking a few minutes to directly answer my sale blocking concerns.

 

Rixly239, see how it begins... SirAstral is about to touch the 2001 A Space Odyssey obelisk. I should call that scene up on youtube so I can really get into the mood... All joking aside, this is an exciting accomplishment you have created Stridemann. May customers beat a path to your door. Without the pitchforks and torches they had that time they beat a path to MY door.

 

Hahahahah I had to go youtube it, great analogy