I think it's sad to see some very finished games in here that only have a couple replies… especially those that had effort put into the level editor. But I also see that most people in here are devs who are busy finishing their own games (at least me when I even find the time for that :) ). Sometimes people don't even notice their game keeps people busy, e.g. the last days, people in #gosu kept discussing and enjoying Ostatni Bastion.

People also worry about Gosu's decline in commits lately, but I think what's much more important than the last 10% of bugfixes is doing some marketing for Gosu games to get some fame and feedback. (Not even considering money for a moment :) )

I didn't finish and try to publish a game since 2001. What have you people tried? Did anyone find out how hard it is to get into the IndieGamer community? They sometimes publish blog posts about LD entries. What about the Ruby community (if it's Ruby)? Do magazines in some place of the earth still contain DVDs full of freeware? Can Gosu games get some OSS fans, even though Gosu still doesn't have a Debian package?

My current plan is obviously to target the App Store, which probably will give me more YouTube-style comments than usable feedback, but without any idea how to publish my stuff, I'd probably be pretty disappointed.

If several games would be finished at the same time, I also wonder if it would make sense to exchange detailed feedback or levels one-to-one… usable critique takes a lot of time, maybe that'd make it easier to commit that time? Just another idea.

(Of course, having a web-enabled Gosu port would be the easiest solution to get casual players, but I don't have the time for that :()

I have to say on a personal level, I've been reading all the posts but often dont have time to reply wife/daughter/work and uni take up all time, and Left 4 Dead get any remaining time atm (sadly thats not much). But read all the forum I do.

When you say AppStore are you refering to the iPhone AppStore, this would be cool, I'd really consider trying to put up a freeware game up there, even if it was pong. Am I right in saying that there would be no accelerometer support? can personally live with out both. moving the screen while using is always seemed stupid. Multitouch?

I have to say I've been slack with finishing things, partly due to how busy I am. I do infact plan on doing stuff over xmas (anything to avoid that insanity over a religious holiday I care naught for). I still want to get this working in C#.

I dont think I've seen a DVD on a cover of a mag for years... wait I haven't bought a mag for years.

web-enabled Gosu port? what like a plugin? or a like download portal? the latter hmmmmm, tick tick

I'll make a promise I'll finish this game :D

I haven't tried marketing any of my small games (though I've put http://ippa.se/gaming in the title of my last LD entry :p) ...I feel I haven't done anything worth marketing much yet :) .. though I feel it's very possible to do so.

We could get more exposure on rubyblogs, like http://www.rubyinside.com/gosu-a-cross-platform-2d-game-development-library-for-ruby-and-c-579.html  :) writing games in ruby still seems like the wild west, not very common.. so there's some "news" in that. But still, it would probably help if it's a good production :P ... in my experience a team effort where you nag on eachother gets things done.. + is fun :).

I can also imagine if we place a ruby game high on next LD, it could be "news". Damn, actually we did pretty well last LD .. but now that's long gone. If we do as well this time, I'll personally mail rubyinside and other simular rubyblogs about it... + say something about it on my own ruby aggregator http://rubylicio.us/

I guess if we make something really good one could contact the many indiebloggers out there... I personally like to read http://www.indiegames.com/blog/. But it's a lot of work polishing a game to the state I would feel comfortable mailing such sites.

About the declining commits to Gosu .. I wouldn't complain about it.. but if you could push out color and fullscreen stuff before next LD it would be extra motivation to pour my heart into that contest :) .. Representin' :p .. Especially easy fullscreen which doesn't fuck up ppls desktops (changing rez) I think could add to the mood of a game.

@Basic: your sig url doesn't work.

> Am I right in saying that there would be no accelerometer support? … Multitouch?

Well, so far it's just C++, meaning that if you need Accelerometer support, you can just compile your file as Objective C++ and grab those events yourself. (Mac)Ruby on iPhone is still just a theoretical solution, unfortunately.

> web-enabled Gosu port? what like a plugin?

Java and Flash exist, now if JRuby or HotRuby would be stable and useful and had Gosu …

>and Left 4 Dead get any remaining time atm

Basic++

>or a like download portal?

Steam would be awesome, specially Steamworks, but since this is serious business I believe it's impossible to do that with OpenSource (except the developer has an own "Hah my Steam"-Branch and keeps merging trunk into that and releases it this way...)