Announcing Dashboard and Analytics shutdown

Announcements
#1

The Defold Dashboard was created as a simple alternative for small teams to quickly get up and running with project hosting and analytics. For most use cases it works well enough and for a time it was the only choice when getting started with Defold. We have since the public launch of Defold, based on user feedback, made several changes to project creation and hosting to make it easier to start and host new projects on other services such as GitHub. And with the release of our native extension system we have also opened up the field for very easy integration of third party analytics services such as GameAnalytics, Firebase Analytics and more.

We are pleased to see that these changes have been wholeheartedly embraced by our community. External project hosting has skyrocketed and the number of extensions created by the community has grown rapidly. When we take all these changes into account we have come to the conclusion that the Dashboard has played out its role and we have therefore decided to shut down the project hosting and analytics service. We will shut down the dashboard and analytics service in 30 days (22nd of September 2019). You must migrate any projects and analytics data from the dashboard before this date. Failure to do so will leave your projects and data permanently unavailable.

How do I migrate my projects?

If you have a project hosted on the Dashboard you can easily download a copy of all files by clicking on the Download Project icon next to your project in the project listing on the Dashboard.

You can also migrate a dashboard hosted project that is located on your local harddrive to GitHub by following these instructions. The Project Setup manual describes in detail how to create new local projects and how to add them to GitHub.

How do I migrate my analytics data?

If you wish to export your analytics data then please reach out to us at support@defold.se. Alternative analytics services with support for Defold are:

Community pages

The community pages for games and assets will be affected by the shutdown of the dashboard since they are linked to dashboard projects. The Asset pages on the Asset Portal will be replaced by a stand-alone solution without any dependency on the dashboard. We will reach out to asset creators separately and we will help them migrate their assets. The Game pages will be shut down and we recommend itch.io for game hosting going forward.

Questions and support

If you have any questions or concerns or if you need any support please reach out to us on the Forum or via Slack.

20 Likes
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#2

Hello

Sad to hear about shutdown default Defold analytics, this is quick and native feature. But okey.
Is you keep analytics-host-contact-points for the hassle-free working allready published projects? I dont what to make mass update all project wich already use Defold analytics. Thx

2 Likes
#3

Yes, in theory it’s a nice service, but it is only used by a very small fraction of our users and quite frankly we can’t justify keeping it around. Besides, there are many good (better even!) alternatives around.

The service will be taken offline. Existing games will still function but no new analytics data will be stored, and you will not be able to access any analytics data after the 22nd of September.

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#4

I’d like to clarify this a bit:

All assets in the asset portal will be migrated by the Defold team to ensure that none get lost along the way. The new system will still present assets in a nice looking Asset Portal page but the way assets are added will be much simplified and based on a single GitHub repository listing all available assets, much in the same way that the popular awesome lists work (awesome-javascript, awesome-lua etc). Adding or updating assets will be done through normal Pull Requests with the Defold team reviewing and accepting the PRs.

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#5

GameAnalytics is very easy to setup and use. It is also helpful to send script errors to it so that you can know bugs that happen that users don’t even report and have a good idea how to solve them https://github.com/GameAnalytics/GA-SDK-DEFOLD/issues/21 It also has IAP server verification if you care about that.

6 Likes
#6

With the removal of the Game pages I must say that I do think it’s very nice to have a showcase page. When I was looking for a game engine I wanted to see what games have been made with that engine. It’s nice to see what it’s “capable of” in a visual way. And of course it’s “marketing” for both the engine and the game as well.

What about renaming “Inspiration” to “Showcase” on the main menu and update the games that are currently displayed on that page? Maybe add a button where users can send new submissions?

Submissions could look like this https://www.defold.com/showcase/hammerwatch/ or like https://coronalabs.com/stories/

If this Showcase page will be taken in consideration, I think it would be nice if the Defold team also reviews new submissions for this showcase page so it would look more professional.

Anyways, that’s just my two cents.

10 Likes
#7

Yes, I agree! We will update the web and make sure the Showcase/Inspiration page becomes more dynamic and interesting.

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#8

This makes sense.

What is going to happen inside the editor with the dashboard project features? Is it going to be extended so that for example you can push, commit to github or similar services straight from it?

1 Like
#9

The Import Project option on the Welcome screen will be removed.

The Project->Sign iOS App option will be removed and eventually be replaced with an option to bundle a mobile dev app for Android and iOS.

The Changed Files+Synchronize option will be hidden for a period of time while we evaluate the Git integration. As you all know the Git integration is fairly basic and it has had its fair share of problems over the years. Hopefully we can patch it up, improve it and re-enable it later.

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#10

Ok, may i propose to exclude git client from Editor or set option to on/off it? Has you statistics about use it by users? I am use native git console clients …

1 Like
#11

Yes. We use Google Analytics to track feature/screen/view usage within the editor. The Synchronize view amounts to 0.03% of collected events. It is not surprising since few users host their projects on the dashboard nowadays. And I’m guessing that some users that still use dashboard hosted projects use external git clients instead.

3 Likes
#12

That was our case, at least. Though our non-technical team members (writers and artists), which don’t generally commit often, but do need to pull, where using the “Synchronise” panel.

The reason why I think even minimal built-in Git integration is still a good idea is because it encourages new users to use Git. People new to game dev or software development might not be aware of the fact that they need version control.

7 Likes
#13

It’s sad that the Defold Project Dashboard is going :frowning_face: It was imo a very good feature, which I had never seen before in any engine(Even unity and ue4 don’t have this). Moreover, it introduced me to the world of version control too.
But still if we see the use case, it was true that it wasn’t used often. I just used it for one project out of the 7-8 I worked in the past year and found Github better to use than the Dashboard, even though dashboard was simpler. So, deprecating a not used feature makes sense.
Now, I am excited to see the new community project page, and I bet it is going to be awesome :wink: . Good luck with it Defold Team.

Exactly. if Defold Dashboard was not there, I wouldn’t have even known about version control and stuff.

7 Likes
#14

Definitely. I was using the dashboard/built-in synchronization for a long time. If it wasn’t there, I’d never start using git.

Version control sounds underwhelming when you’re working on your own, but it’s worth it.

3 Likes
#15

I do not use the editor’s git client to do commits (using Sourcetree beta), but it is still very useful to see file changes list right there in the editor. So I agree with not disabling it entirely. Encouraging other git tools with more features other people use is still a good idea too.

8 Likes
#16

That’s the best feature - and also very quick diff viewer and revert. Though I’m using just git bash or Atom’s git feature for committing and pulling/pushing, I am still looking at the changed files always and sometimes revert some changes in Editor. Analytics was also a nice feature, the easiest I used so far and a real advantage, and though I don’t have much games, I do like the dashboard and its features. It’s a sad information :frowning:

7 Likes
#17

This is good feedback and I suppose we could keep this part. Thanks.

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#18

I’ll just chime in to what people have said above:

  • I like seeing the diffs and do make use of revert as well; and
  • My artist is quite tech averse so it was a victory to get him comfortable pushing/pulling using the editor.
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#19

This is a reminder that the Dashboard and Analytics services will be shut down in 7 days.

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#20

So what’s the scoop with migrating asset portal projects? Do we need to do anything if they’re already hosted on github?

1 Like