Hey bitsy community,

I love the idea of bitsy and want to create my own version of it but a bit more powerful. If bitsy had a few more powerful features would you be willing to pay around $20 USD for it (similar to pico-8)? What features does it need for you to be willing to pay $100 USD? Is this type of tool too much of a toy and should always be free?

More powerful features I'm thinking:

editor

1. import sprites of any size from external tools (aseprite, photoshop, etc) rather than being stuck with an 8x8 internal pixel editor only
2. allow for more than 2 frames of animation (at least 16 frames but maybe no limit)
3. allow sprites to have transparency in background
4. allow custom collision shape on sprites
5. import custom sfx/music rather than being stuck with a very limited internal editor
6. provide different avatar movement options instead of only tile based (smooth top down and click to move at least)
7. rooms can be any size and new camera system that follows the avatar

events/logic

1. separate the event and dialogue systems (dialogue system now only defines the text and how it looks - new "tool" window just for events)
2. ability to create/destroy instances of sprites at runtime
3. ability to set x/y position of sprite at runtime
4. sprite pathfinding
5. instance variables on sprites/inventory items (ex: so a sprite can have it's own internal health variable to create a rudimentary combat system, or spawn coins that have random money values, etc).
6. do actions when a timer expires (combined with the ones above could make a wave system, tower defense, shooting/bullet hell)
7. do actions on sprite collision and overlap

publishing

1. export an executable to publish to Steam so the game dev can make $$$

I feel the strengths of bitsy are that it is simple and accessible. Loading it with new features and placing it behind a paywall would negate both of its strengths. At that point I might as well look to something like GameMaker if I'm willing to pay, or Godot if I'm not.

If I were looking to purchase a cheap development environment in the spirit of bitsy, what I'd be looking for is probably more closely comparable to an even more streamlined RPG Maker. Features I'd be most interested in there would be something like:

• Dialogue trees with player dialogue choice cards (like the choices in RPG Maker)
• The ability to make dialogue choices appear only on variable conditions (more advanced than RPG Maker)
• The ability to change what sprites appear where, or if they do, based on variable conditions (like event pages in RPG Maker)
• The ability to lead from dialogue into a scene change
• The ability to send sprites on motion paths (like in RPG Maker) triggered by a dialogue
• Pushable sprites
• Sprites that can accept certain pushables as a key to annihilate both (to make locked doors)
• Sprites that can annihilate themselves based on player inventory or variable conditions (again, to make locked doors)
• Switch tiles that activate as long as a player or sprite is on top of it, and a condition allowing sprites to change if all of a certain type of switch are pressed.

Things like that. I'd also be more interested in something that lets me quickly make hobby games for HTML like bitsy does, since there are far more established professional tools, even free ones, if I were to look to publish on Steam.

Ah that makes sense. Thanks for your input.

I'd pay 10 bucks easily, 20 bucks somewhat uneasily, for some additional features, yes. I would never pay 100 bucks under any circumstances. For demographic purposes, I'm a working adult.

One of the features I most want is a way to import background images, especially into Bitsy Color. I started making a game ages ago and lost all the game files, but I kept screenshots. I would love to be able to just insert the game art by using the screenshots, instead of manually going in and re-making all the sprites and background art by hand. Someone did at one point make a tool for this but it didn't work for me.

I definitely do not want Bitsy to be overloaded. I want Bitsy to be something a 1st grader can learn to make a game with in just a day or two. And I love how we are all equalized with Bitsy - there is no real way to make a mind-blowingly amazing game, which reduces stress levels when messing around with it, because there is no genius level to compare yourself to.