Mickey Crocker
08-14-2003, 09:18 PM
I guess I'll introduce myself...
My name is Mickey Crocker, I have yet to release software as shareware but I have released a few freeware programs. I've been spending the last few months studying as many documentations on how to take on this task of marketing. This has slowly become one of my fav resource sites.
My first impression of this site was that it seemed to be a lot more pushy and seemed to be begging me to purchase some of the products (I'm not trying to insult Steve or anything, I just thought I'd share my first impression, which has changed over time). I have been very use to other shareware sites who go about marketing in a more personal "get to know me" & "Doing this for fun" kind of way, such as Spiderweb Software. This site however was a big change from what I was use too. But after reading all of the documentations in the article section I began to swirve towards thinking better of this site and I have a lot more respect now for Dexterity Software (A lot more).
I've been working on what I hope to be my first shareware product, after months of reading on how to get started and what path I should take. I am programming my game in Visual Basic... I know I should probably choose a faster language, but for the style of games I want to create, I believe VB is just fine. I have so far completed the engine for my game and about 80% of the graphics. I also created many editors to help me design the game in less time (nothing unique here, just to show what stage in design I'm at).
One question I do have is about compression... Looking at my filesize of my program now, I'm assuming it will reach anywhere from 6MB to 10 MB by the time I am finished. I was wondering if anyone could direct me to a program that could either help me compress Gif Images by a large amount or the actual file itself. Or if anyone has any ideas in general on how I could reduce the filesize to below 6mb that would be great (Other then Winzip, just because I don't think it will compress it enough).
My name is Mickey Crocker, I have yet to release software as shareware but I have released a few freeware programs. I've been spending the last few months studying as many documentations on how to take on this task of marketing. This has slowly become one of my fav resource sites.
My first impression of this site was that it seemed to be a lot more pushy and seemed to be begging me to purchase some of the products (I'm not trying to insult Steve or anything, I just thought I'd share my first impression, which has changed over time). I have been very use to other shareware sites who go about marketing in a more personal "get to know me" & "Doing this for fun" kind of way, such as Spiderweb Software. This site however was a big change from what I was use too. But after reading all of the documentations in the article section I began to swirve towards thinking better of this site and I have a lot more respect now for Dexterity Software (A lot more).
I've been working on what I hope to be my first shareware product, after months of reading on how to get started and what path I should take. I am programming my game in Visual Basic... I know I should probably choose a faster language, but for the style of games I want to create, I believe VB is just fine. I have so far completed the engine for my game and about 80% of the graphics. I also created many editors to help me design the game in less time (nothing unique here, just to show what stage in design I'm at).
One question I do have is about compression... Looking at my filesize of my program now, I'm assuming it will reach anywhere from 6MB to 10 MB by the time I am finished. I was wondering if anyone could direct me to a program that could either help me compress Gif Images by a large amount or the actual file itself. Or if anyone has any ideas in general on how I could reduce the filesize to below 6mb that would be great (Other then Winzip, just because I don't think it will compress it enough).