Using beta patches in gamma?

I’m surprised I can’t find this question having been asked before, but how does one use beta patches in gamma? I’m starting to fear this is not an option as the info to do so is proving difficult to find.

I have fifteen years of extensive beta patches, a highly integrated interaction framework that has been thoroughly proven and is 24/7/365 reliable (literally had live public systems run over a year without rebooting). Rewriting all that in gamma, besides being a massive amount of work, would also no doubt lead to many new bugs. If this is not an option, and if I cannot build upon my beta codebase and gradually transition patches over, then I would rather migrate to something like Unreal where I can actually easily hire talent here in the US to help with it.

Gamma does look cool, and I’d love to try it out, so puh-leez tell me this can be done!

Nope, can’t be done.
If you need help migrating patches check out vvvv Specialists Available for Hire or ask the devvvvs directly.

hey mediadog, sorry to hear this is apparently catching you off-guard. i thought we’ve been quite vocal about how we envisioned the transition, kinda the other way around than you’re asking for now: VL was integrated in vvvv since beta 35. the idea was that you’d gradually transition your works to VL while still working with beta. the main patch would still have been beta but any non-rendering stuff could since a long time already have been built in or transitioned to VL. then you’d just have to wait until gamma had all the features you were using in beta and then make the final transition. a lot of work, but stretched over many years and you’d always had a running system.

while you could still take that same path now, it probably doesn’t make much sense anymore, for one reason: the version of VL embeded in beta 42 is by now rather old. so by todays standards it would probably cause too much unnecessary headaches.

if a larger number of talents for unreal is an argument for you and especially if your output is a AAA-graphics-style game, i’d say definitely go for unreal. i’d hope what would speak for vvvv gamma as an alternative is that it is much more focused on and tailored towards the type of applications that i assume you’re talking about. so, obviously totally depending on what your “highly integrated interaction framework” comprises of, the vvvv community, while much smaller, is probably equally able to help you.

plus you have direct access to us developers. you’d not be the first one we’re helping to succeed with gamma. in fact we’d be happy to jump on a call with you to make sure you can make an informed decision for your next step. please get in touch via devvvvs@vvvv.org if you’re interested.

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Hey bjeorn and joreg, thanks for the prompt replies! Make no mistake, I hold all you devvvvs and this supportive community in the highest regard! I was delighted what is now 15 years ago to have found vvvv in my evaluation of various frameworks for interactive work, for after 30+ years of professional coding, it made it wild fun again. That is not something I consider moving away from lightly.

Yeah, I’ve been aware of the VL integration, and dabbled in it slightly, but with my time being consumed by clients (some of them even paying!) who want stuff yesterday, my focus has been and remains getting stuff out the door as quickly as possible, and just never had the time to really delve into it. I did a quick survey of my code base, and my base library is 600+ .v4p files (not counting plugins), and my applications that I am still supporting are over 2000 patches.

Believe me, I would love to delve into gamma, as it does look to address some of the structural issues of beta and adds a whole lot of new stuff. I know already it would be WAY more fun than delving into Unreal, which I have been dabbling with over the years (Unity too) as some of my installations were done with Unreal developers and our programs interworking via sockets and spout - it is plagued by a LOT of legacy inconsistency.

I mean a big reason I am here with this problem, with actual clients and cool installations in my portfolio, is the kind of stuff vvvv made possible. And continues to - just this last week I had the VP of marketing of a huge corporation standing in front of an installation suggesting tweaks which I was able to do live from across the continent without a stop/compile/restart cycle for each tweak. That kind of responsiveness buys a lot of cred, and I do not lightly consider losing that capability.

So yeah, here I am wrestling with a Very Big Decision. For on the other side, here in Rochester, New York, RIT is one of the top game development and 3D graphics schools in the US, with a number of freelance game developers and game studios; so Unreal and Unity talent is all over the place. I have interested a number of folks here in vvvv, and gotten positive feedback about it, but they are still just dabblers.

That being said, I am weighing using the same techniques I used to inter-operate with Unreal to have my main beta stuff interoperate with new gamma stuff, enabling a gradual transition. We’ll see - thanks folks!

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just a thought.

With last week’s meetup fresh in mind where @Bilwerk showed their framework for making interactive exhibitions, I am thinking that maybe it would somehow be possible to collaborate with other companies in the community who have already created frameworks that are a lot of the way to where you need to be, at least if my assumptions are correct.

good luck with it.

https://www.youtube.com/live/uRVZlBzfHjU?si=f3OQ6Js78sRJ2w2M