OT: Xpadder Still Being Developed

[iano]

I thought for a while that Xpadder development had stopped but i got an email from Jonathan about a 'special' version being developed.

http://www.xpadder.com/

[bkenobi]

Interesting. Thanks for the heads up!

[iano]

Hope Jonathan doesn't mind me copy/pasting this here:

Why did Xpadder get cancelled in October 2008?

Long story. I was approached by a small US company in September last year who wanted to use Xpadder in a secret project. They flew me over there from the UK. During the meeting I was told that NASA would be involved. They needed a controller file for the new Mars Rover so they could use Xpadder to control its exploration of Mars. Unfortunately, they weren't very good at profile-creating and had set the forward thumbstick to toggle and rumble. The control stick broke off and so the rover raced forwards, vibrating as it went. Once it had gone over the horizon it was no longer connected to Xpadder. The image of the NASA rover control panel dropped down in the Xpadder window to signal a disconnection. They gave up, moved Xpadder to one of their laptops and sent me home (the last thing I saw was 4 men in white coats playing Xpadder multiplayer Super Bomberman on a SNES emulator). If you look at Mars on a clear night you can see the faint blur of a small

machine endlessly rattling and rolling around the circumference of the red planet... Question answered?... No?! Ok, the truth is I got a bit swamped and burnt-out and had too much going on elsewhere. Something had to give. At the time I couldn't see anyway to keep the project going. I put the Xpadder project (all 3 gigabytes of it!) into a 7zip ark and sent a flood of cancellation over the whole thing. Turns out that it was necessary for Xpadder development to continue!

What did you do for the last 5 months?

R-E-L-A-X-E-D

Once I had moved to free hosting and closed the site content-wise, the bills stopped coming and the constant site maintenance just vanished. While there was some interest in the site from some companies they couldn't afford the price-tag. Based on numerous evaluations I had requested a good price but smaller companies who needed the site couldn't afford it - big companies who could afford it didn't need it! So I figured why not stick up a Google Ad to keep things active and just keep waiting. Still no sale but the ad did very well! So I figured that I can't sell the site, too good to give away or expire - it's making money with me doing nothing at all so I'd be crazy to not just keep it forever. No guesses for what idea I had next...

Idea?

I see now that the old site was just dominating the project and the actual program was taking a back-seat. Bills, bandwidth-limits, forum admin, too much going on everywhere except the one place I wanted to do things - on the program! Also, the freeware model meant way too much feedback and feature-requests. I was drowning in Xpadder's success! So seeing as I decided to keep the site why not see if there is a way to get everyone out there to do the content while I just concentrate on the thing I like doing most and what brought you all to Xpadder in the first place? I also started thinking of making a commercial version but retaining a delayed freeware release structure so it's still freeware in a sense. This would also stem the flow of requests.

So what is the Special/VIP/Elite/Ultimate/Pro version?

A version released as commercial software first and freeware much later. Imagine XP becoming freeware when Vista was released and Vista becoming freeware when Seven is released (yeah right!) It means the whole development is staggered feedback-wise and easier to handle too.

Will the nice site return - the new one is a bit dead?

No plans on bringing back an all-singing all-dancing site. See above for the reason! It would be nice to have one but it just won't work out. Even if it's out of my hands I'm still responsible somehow and my brain works best on one thing at a time. Besides, check out xpadderwave.com! The content is still out there on sites that will be managed and designed much better than mine was but without impacting the development of the program. Back in the day, the BitTorrent site was very simple because the programmer was busy coding. The content was all unofficial and off-site and that's where everyone went to get torrents. This was the concept I was thinking of and it seems to be working. Two other Xpadder fansites are already being created!

Forum?

No plans. Blackhole is great and easily does the job. Even simply participating in a forum divides my time so while I sometimes visit and check it out I'm not a regular lurker or a member.

Email only then?

Email seems to be the easiest form of communication at the moment. Mailing list you all via BCC and handle replies personally. For anyone wondering my official address is jonathan AT xpadder DOT com if you want to save it. The yahoo address is the account I send and read messages from but it's not the official address and may even change in the future so the official address above is the best to keep.

Lightwave?

Still an idea but put to one side for now.

Donations?

The Buy links are really just donation links. I manage the actual sending of the zip file to prevent problems. Some of you have asked about donating again - just use the relevant Buy link and it will go through as the old donations did.

So Xpadder is back?

It looks like it might be back for good! Development might be a little slower and steadier and there may even be breaks in it but seeing as the site is now paying for itself and needs no management I see no reason to ever stop development. It's now back to being the fun coding project I do when I want and can.

When will v5.4 Beta 1 be ready?

When it's ready! It's coming along very well though. There'll be no more progress updates - it will just appear in your inbox one day! While my inbox is always open for general comments please hold off any suggestions or bug reports until later - I'm busy programming

Jonathan