Blog Posts

Clickteam considered harmful? (Updated)

28/2/2017

After posting my original email, Chris Carson (of Clickteam USA) reached out to me with this:

Ken,

I appreciate your frustration and apologize that your initial experience with us has been way below your expectations. I would like to offer myself up to be available to you should you choose to give it another go to help you through some of "getting started" questions.

To begin I have unlocked your forum account and reset the password to "<removed>". Please let me know what specfic questions you may have that I can help with. Again I apologize for the poor initial experience. We believe it or not pride ourselves on our community and will work double hard to show you why that is should you give us another shot.

Best regards,

Chris

Can't really say much fairer than that. I am going to give it another shot.

Thanks, Chris.

====================== Earlier blog post:

So, I was playing around with development environments the other day.

I'd bought a bundle on HumbleBundle that contained ClickTeam. An app that aims to let you build games (both desktop and mobile) without programming. Sounded good...but you may want to think twice.

I was walking through their Breakout tutorial, when I noticed something odd...the paddle didn't bounce the ball way I was used to from other versions. Instead of reflecting the ball directly up, you want it to bounce as if you had an upside down bowl on the paddle. It's a little more complex.

The documentation didn't give me any clues. Not surprising really, kind of a niche thing, and documentation is hard.

So, as is usual these days, I went to the forums. I posted a question, providing all the detail I could think of that was pertinent, and trying to explain my question clearly. The next day, I tried to go back and see the answer...and that's when the troubles began.

I couldn't log in, and had various troubles over the next hour or so. If you don't type in your password correctly for 5 times, it blocks you for 15 minutes. Since I use the 'lastpass' password manager my password was clearly being entered correctly, I was surprised when their forum software didn't recognise my password.

So, fine. I reset my password, and waited 15 minutes. When I went back to their web site, I tried to log in with the new password they sent me, but that didn't work either. I reset my password again.

This time it worked. I could login, see the answer, and from there I was able to fix the problem. I posted a detailed answer to my original question with all the nitty gritty about how to fix it.

Rather frustrated by this time, I sent the first email to technical support:

Technical support: Clickteam Fusion 2.5

From: Ken Corey
Product / Subject: Clickteam Fusion 2.5
Place : UK / Ireland

Enquiry:
Trying to log into your forums. The password mechanism is broken. A
password set up previously didn't work. I went over the quota and was
told that I couldn't login for 15 minutes. After the wait, I reset it,
logged in, and now I'm being told that I've gone over my quota and have

to wait 15 more minutes before I can log in. AGAIN. WTF!?!

I have to say, a 3 minute wait period would be just as effective and
not
waste my time.

I'm trying to post an answer. I'd asked a question, someone had
answered, and I was going to make clear the steps required to do what
I'd wanted to do…but I can't because your forums are arbitrarily
asinine.

Additionnal Informations:
OS: Windows 7
Version: 2.5
Build: R287.9
Serial Number: ??

I got this email back:

Mr Corey,

I am always happy to look at ways to improve user experience, and will look again at the lockout period. This was set in part to eliminate spammers from the forum (which it has done). I do not however appreciate your aggressive tone - it wasn't warranted and if it happens again, your right to use the forums (which we offer as a free courtesy to our users) will be revoked.

Regards,

Simon.

I was a bit taken aback. They provide the forums "as a courtesy"? Anyone in their right mind knows that for a dev environment to succeed it needs a community. A dev tool without a community is a footnote in history...not a viable product.

Understanding that Mr. Pittock is fairly precious about his software, I answered:

Uh…let me get this straight…

I spent 30 minutes of my time on a weekend trying to post my experience, with the clear intention of helping other folks on your forums. I’d like to point out that this helps your company. Admittedly, one post doesn’t make any big difference, but I was trying to contribute in a positive and constructive way. It’s reasonable to assume that would have carried on.

However, due to settings in the forums that seemed excessive to me, I got frustrated when trying to help out. Instead of just letting your team have it between the eyes, I aimed for constructive despite my frustration.

So, now you’re going to threaten me with expulsion, because I was frustrated at settings on your server that I still feel were excessive?

Fair enough. You’re king of your ever-so-small castle. You won’t have to worry about any more posts from me. Wouldn’t want to hurt anyone else’s feeling.

Best of luck to you all.

-Ken

A few minutes later, I got this email:

Your account has now been suspended.

In case you're considering building a mobile game, I can suggest an environment best to avoid.

(If you're here, do scroll to the top and read the update...)

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