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Planets³, an Open-World Voxel-Based rpg

thepicrain.com

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Re: Planets³, an Open-World Voxel-Based rpg

#41

Post by cscurmudgeon »

eropple wrote: post #22
pekk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not conflating those things. You don't have to be Richard Garriott to be credible. Why even mention the guy? The only way you can be him is if you have decades of published games, it's not useful advice for people who are relatively unknown.

You don't have to be Garriott to be credible, but he is credible. Because he has a track record. If they do have a track record of building quality projects (and they say they do), they aren't substantiating it. See the problem? I don't have a shipped-product track record, so I'm going to have a playable vertical slice--not a complete game, not narrative-based, but a demonstration that our features are already workin…

Echo this 100%. I am in the same boat. Anybody can put up pretty pictures. If the project fails, it brings disrepute to the whole indie gamedev community. Life is already too hard.

Re: Planets³, an Open-World Voxel-Based rpg

#43

Post by Tloewald »

The budget does not look realistic. It's possible they have some incredibly talented coder who can build the damn thing single-handed (a la Minecraft) but this is unlikely, and failing that I just don't see this ever shipping.

Good luck though, it looks like a good idea and I like what I see thus far.

Re: Planets³, an Open-World Voxel-Based rpg

#44

Post by cpeterso »

3rd3 wrote: post #39
droopyEyelids wrote: post #36

Ah man what a beautiful looking idea. Too bad I've been burned so many times that I'll never pay for an 'alpha' or 'beta' game again, let alone a kickstarter for one.

What are some examples for Kickstarter vaporware you donated for?

I backed "Hadean Lands: Interactive Fiction for the iPhone" [1] in 2010. The project promised a text adventure game for iOS and open-source game framework. The game would become the author's "day job" and "might take six months; might take more." Based on the cool concept and the author's ludography of interactive fiction games, the $8,000 project was funded to $31,000.

Fast-forward four years and the author posts occasional Kickstarter updates about unrelated iOS games he's published and that the promised game is now "11% complete". His explanation is that the fine print of his Kickstarter proposal included "other IF work", but reading backers' comments [2] as early as 2011, you can tell that people felt mislead.

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zarf/hadean-lands-inter...

[2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zarf/hadean-lands-inter...

Re: Planets³, an Open-World Voxel-Based rpg

#45

Post by chaostheory »

3rd3 wrote: post #39
droopyEyelids wrote: post #36

Ah man what a beautiful looking idea. Too bad I've been burned so many times that I'll never pay for an 'alpha' or 'beta' game again, let alone a kickstarter for one.

What are some examples for Kickstarter vaporware you donated for?

Here's one: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1735103142/conquest

Lots of pretty graphics from an unknown team that hasn't been tested.

From my experience, the difference between teams like this that failed and the other newcomer teams that succeeded are that the teams that eventually delivered had a working demo or prototype that was downloadable.

Re: Planets³, an Open-World Voxel-Based rpg

#46

Post by eropple »

Crito wrote: post #15
deletes wrote: post #12

This looks like a better version of Minecraft. Probably the final product won't be on the same level of polish and constant updates.

It looks like a better version of minecraft that will probably melt my computer down into slag. Hopefully they keep low system requirements in mind during development; minecraft has benefited greatly from that.

Having assisted some friends in building something similar in technical scope, I'd be pretty surprised if they managed to pare it down to run reasonably. It's a really hard problem.

Minecraft's system requirements remain low because the engine doesn't do a hell of a lot, which is good because it really...can't.

Re: Planets³, an Open-World Voxel-Based rpg

#47

Post by Impossible »

Tloewald wrote: post #43

The budget does not look realistic. It's possible they have some incredibly talented coder who can build the damn thing single-handed (a la Minecraft) but this is unlikely, and failing that I just don't see this ever shipping. Good luck though, it looks like a good idea and I like what I see thus far.

This sounds like most video game Kickstarters. Unfortunately backers often have different expectations of how much a game should cost than developers. There have been many Kickstarter projects where, if you realistically look at team size and development time you can figure out that the project doesn't have enough money to pay all team members a living wage, even if you're assuming they can live on minimum wage. I guess in those cases most of the team isn't getting paid or is working as part time contractors, and the people that are taking money are using it for subsistence. This is common with indie game projects.

Re: Planets³, an Open-World Voxel-Based rpg

#48

Post by fulafel »

Impossible wrote: post #47
Tloewald wrote: post #43

The budget does not look realistic. It's possible they have some incredibly talented coder who can build the damn thing single-handed (a la Minecraft) but this is unlikely, and failing that I just don't see this ever shipping. Good luck though, it looks like a good idea and I like what I see thus far.

This sounds like most video game Kickstarters. Unfortunately backers often have different expectations of how much a game should cost than developers. There have been many Kickstarter projects where, if you realistically look at team size and development time you can figure out that the project doesn't have enough money to pay all team members a living wage, even if you're assuming they can live on minimum wage. I gu…

In many cases Kickstarter is not the only source of funding.

Re: Planets³, an Open-World Voxel-Based rpg

#50

Post by zamalek »

Crito wrote: post #34
jws wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how they plan to handle it. In a similar game I've worked on (unpublished) gravity is handled like our universe, but with a bias toward the three orthogonal axis. This leaves you feeling like a 2d world on the faces, but as you approach to edges you begin to lean into them until you are "standing on the peak of the roof" at the edge, continuing brings you upright on the next face. A coefficient governs t…

You could probably avoid bugs at the center of planets by simply having an small cube of unmineable material surrounding them (like minecraft's bedrock).

Or a molten core: one idea I was messing around with for a boxel game I never found the time to make.
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