KickStarter Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption - adventure-RPG from the creators of Quest for Glory

[Boleskine]

http://hero-u.com/halloween-tricks-and-treats/

From the comments:

Lori Cole Says:

The current status is Alpha next spring for a fall release. The project finish dates keep slipping, but the work continues steadily.

Bring on Kickstarter #3.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I waited for Age of Decadence, and Thursday finally came. I can wait for this.

 

[Andhaira]

http://hero-u.com/halloween-tricks-and-treats/

From the comments:
ori Cole Says:

The current status is Alpha next spring for a fall release. The project finish dates keep slipping, but the work continues steadily.

Bring on Kickstarter #3.

That's at least 1 year more; given their previous attempts at calculating release dates it could be much more.

How could these experienced developers, who basically wrote the book on this type of game fuck up so bad? All they had to do was use AGE, which is available for free, slap some art and writing on it and cash out. Though the Mage's Initiation guys have been taking centuries as well. I never imagined this type of game could be so super complex.

And didn't they claim they took a loan against their mortgage or whatnot? The interest will keep accumulating on that...

 

[Name]

they are no longer experienced developers, as a lot of so called experience in these fields quickly become outdated. They are totally out-of-loop of the genre development by playing WOW for entertainment, and he went on working on financial software for companies for past decade.

 

[Mustawd]

The Coles seem like nice people. But to me the entire development of this game seems like a mess. What makes you guys feel confident they can pull it off even with another kickstarter?

 

[DeepOcean]

The Coles seem like nice people. But to me the entire development of this game seems like a mess. What makes you guys feel confident they can pull it off even with another kickstarter?

Nothing but with the awful state the adventure games genre is, I can wait for vapourware.

 

[Name]

Nobody tells Coles about walking simulators and "Clementine will remember that"!

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

It doesn't help that they keep scrapping all their art/ui/etc and starting over again.

 

[Infinitron]

Making zombie pirates: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transolargames/hero-u-rogue-to-redemption/posts/1409558

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transolargames/hero-u-rogue-to-redemption/posts/1449584

Happy Holidays from Hero-U

The Hero-U team wishes all of our backers, friends, and fans a very merry Christmas, a happy new year, and a fabulous Winter.

We hope you’re all having a wonderful holiday season leading into a fantastic 2016. Lori and I always have fun this time of year trimming the tree, singing carols, welcoming guests, feasting, and even doing a little shopping.

One of our stretch goals in this year’s Kickstarter was “more and improved music and sound effects”. As our Holiday gift for all of you, here is a video of the Budapest Scoring Orchestra doing a live performance of the Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption theme (composed and arranged for orchestra by Ryan Grogan). We’re very excited to have live orchestral music in the game.



More Presents Underneath the Internet Tree
We’ve made great progress in resolving unanswered BackerKit surveys. I spent most of last week going from 800 unanswered surveys to fewer than 100. As a result, we will soon start uploading digital backer rewards to your personal BackerKit pages. These will include:

• Hero-U screensaver / wallpaper for all backers
• Fantasy travel posters for backers who ordered them
• Hero-U Concept Art for backers who ordered them

You can find your BackerKit page and rewards at https://hero-u-adventure-role-playing-game.backerkit.com/.

Fulfilling Quest for Glory keys on gog.com is proving challenging because the way we set up our BackerKit does not distinguish between new orders and the ones we’ve already fulfilled. Chris and I are working to resolve this and email the new keys as soon as we can.

As for those last 100 backers, please respond quickly if you get an email from Chris Fong, Hero-U Support, or myself so that we can make sure you get the rewards you want. If you have any questions or problems, you can use the BackerKit help button or send email to us at support (at) hero-u (dot) com. Chris and I both read support requests and handle them as quickly as possible.

If you’re looking for last-minute presents, Lori has designed some Hero-U Christmas ornaments and other fun gifts that you can order on our Cafe Press page -http://www.cafepress.com/herouniversitystore. If you’re like us and keep the house decorated half the year, there’s still plenty of time to order something nice!

Team Changes and Challenges
Of course, as Ebenezer Scrooge pointed out, the Christmas season also tends to be a bad time for productivity. We’ve had distractions ranging from helping my mother recover from knee surgery to catching the obligatory Thanksgiving colds to doing Christmas things. In fact, life has been so busy, we haven’t seen The Force Awakens yet, potentially causing serious damage to our nerd cred.

Last week we had the pleasure of entertaining super-backer Katherine Owen. She was in a bad car accident several years ago that led to her becoming active in our How to Be a Hero and School for Heroes web sites. We’re happy to say that after many very rough years, Katherine is doing much better. She enjoyed visiting our rustic “lived in” home and watching me start a fire in the fireplace to take off some of the mountain chill.

Janet Weddle has joined us as project manager to help us keep development on track. She has helped us set up Kanbanchi boards to track tasks and took over our most recent programming meeting (allowing me to cough freely without blowing out everyone’s headsets). I’ve been stretched very thin between management, bookkeeping, writing, and dealing with Kickstarter rewards, so Janet will be a valuable addition to the team.

Sadly, key team programmer Cidney was also caught in a serious car accident a few weeks ago. She has had two surgeries and is doing well, but we’re much more concerned about her recovery than in shackling her down to the counting room - er, programming - desk just yet. However, Cidney assures us that she wants to get back to work on Hero-U as soon as she is able.

Finally, it wouldn’t be Christmas without a Christmas Card, so here’s one JP Selwood created for all of you:

Happy Holidays from www.hero-u.com

 

[Crooked Bee]

Sadly, key team programmer Cidney was also caught in a serious car accident a few weeks ago.

This project is cursed.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Sadly, key team programmer Cidney was also caught in a serious car accident a few weeks ago.

This project is cursed.

[MARX]With a name like that, she's been cursed for some time[/MARX]
Kidney damage, apparently.

I'll be here all night.

SRSLY, get well soon.

 

[J1M]

Cidney damage you say?

 

[Morkar Left]

Accident is unfortunate. Hope it turns out nothing too serious and get well soon.

Orchestra soundtrack is awesome!

 

[Blackthorne]

Man, the live Orchestra is cool. The composer for QFI and I looked into how much it would cost to rent/record with one, but man - it was way out of our budget. I'd still love to record a soundtrack with an orchestra someday.


Bt

 

[MRY]

Man, the live Orchestra is cool. The composer for QFI and I looked into how much it would cost to rent/record with one, but man - it was way out of our budget. I'd still love to record a soundtrack with an orchestra someday.Bt

You totally should've mortgaged your house. Or sold a kidney.

 

[Mustawd]

Man, the live Orchestra is cool. The composer for QFI and I looked into how much it would cost to rent/record with one, but man - it was way out of our budget. I'd still love to record a soundtrack with an orchestra someday.Bt

You totally should've mortgaged your house. Or sold a kidney.

You can sell an egg for like $5,000. Need to get ovaries first. Damn biology keeping me away from the monies.

 

[Blackthorne]

Hahah, don't get me wrong - we used the EastWest Symphonic libraries and they sound great - but I'm a musician too, and the sound of a real orchestra would have just been a bonus for me.

As for the selling a kidney joke, MRV is joking because he knows I've had two kidney transplants in my lifetime!!! Me selling a kidney is like someone selling you this nifty bridge they got over there in Brooklyn.


Bt

 

[LESS T_T]

New Year Commitment for 2016

2015 was a great year for us. We added new people to the team. We developed an improved version of the original Break-in House demo to show off the new art style. We made a combat demo to show off and test our combat system. We held a new Kickstarter to reach out to all of you and improve our cash flow by reducing debt.

The Kickstarter gave us more than just money – it gave us feedback on the features you players really wanted to emphasize in the game. Because of this, we have even more work to do. People loved the Sea Caves, so we’re expanding them and making them better. People wanted better animation, so we hired a full-time animator. We’ve improved and expanded the gardens in the game to give Shawn a chance to get away from the doom, gloom, and stress of classrooms and dungeons.

We keep working hard to make this game amazing. That means re-doing a lot of the artwork and re-coding rooms to improve what was done before while at the same time working on all the newer areas and building the structure of the game.

The entire castle has been rebuilt in Maya rather than put together piecemeal like Legos in Unity. This means it looks much better and more polished than it did a year ago. The dungeon and the Catacombs are completely constructed now. Joshua is setting up the ghosts and ghouls that roam those regions.

And the Sea Caves will be as amazing as the concept painting that inspired them.

Considering that this is all being done with people all around the world who’ve never met each other outside of a computer screen, this is quite an accomplishment.

There’s a huge amount of work that still needs to be done on the game. Hero-U has as many areas to explore as the largest of our Quest for Glory games. The dialogue and character interactions are much more complex than in any other game we’ve worked on. We keep refining and redefining the way a game is experienced. Hero-U will be different from any other game you’ve played.

Hero-U is a labor of love from everyone who works on this game. We all strive to do our best to make Hero-U the best game ever.

And it’s all thanks to you. Without your support and encouragement, Hero-U wouldn’t exist.

So as 2015 fades away into history, we make our New Year’s Commitment for 2016. For us, there’s only one that really counts – get Hero-U finished. Make it something that everyone on the team is proud of. Make it something that you will love to play over and over again.

Have a Happy New Year and the promise of better things to come for everyone.

 

[Zed]

There’s a huge amount of work that still needs to be done on the game. Hero-U has as many areas to explore as the largest of our Quest for Glory games. The dialogue and character interactions are much more complex than in any other game we’ve worked on. We keep refining and redefining the way a game is experienced. Hero-U will be different from any other game you’ve played.

sounds too good to be true

 

[Infinitron]

Josh Mandel hired, Q4 release date: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transolargames/hero-u-rogue-to-redemption/posts/1502870

Three years and three months ago, Lori and I set out to make a modest computer role-playing game with some adventure-game-like story. I thought we could get it done in a year with one or two programmers and a few artists.

Thanks to changes in circumstances and team members, plus strong encouragement from our backers and maybe some masochism on our part, Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption has grown into a full-blown adventure role-playing game in the Quest for Glory vein. If you check out the game credits (http://www.mobygames.com/game-group/quest-for-glory-series) for those games, you’ll see why that’s a really ambitious goal for a crowdfunded indie game without a publisher or development studio.

Actually, the main challenge has been working with mainly part-time developers. Lori and I are full-time, but split between design, writing, and administration. Our mainstay artist, John Paul Selwood, has also worked close to full-time. Everyone else is putting in a few hours a week working around their day jobs.

Kalkulating Kwirk

I spend a lot of my time working with numbers. I actually like them and thought I’d share a few of my favorites. First, the project financials:

• Pledged income: $555,000
• Actual receipts after fees and loan payments: $460,000
• Payments to art, music, and programming contractors: $380,000
• Pledge reward and shipping costs: $80,000
• Project burn rate: $10,000/month

So we’re at break-even from the funding campaigns so far, and are now working on personal loans. The above does not include any income for Lori and me, as we won’t pay ourselves until Hero-U becomes profitable. We also owe about $50,000 to developers who have chosen to defer their contract payments until after we release the game. (Thank you!)

This is all pretty normal for game development. Developers normally have a publisher contract that doles out funds as the developer reaches milestones. The publisher in effect "goes into debt" to make the game, then hopes to make a profit after they launch the game. They lose money on many games, and make it up on a few profitable ones... or the studio goes out of business. That happens a lot to both big publishers and small indie developers.

We’ve had a total of 28 developers work on Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption so far. 12 are still actively contributing to the project. That’s smaller than the teams on our last few Sierra games, but about as many as we had on Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire. Then again, all of those worked full-time for a year. In man- (and woman-) years, we're still well under the development time of any of our Sierra games.

Hero-U By the Numbers
I love statistics, so let me share a few with you. Rogue to Redemption is huge, and more complex than any of our previous games.

• Art assets and test builds in Dropbox: 5,344 files in 617 folders for 17.7 GB
• Unity and Composer game files: 33,275 files in 1,957 folders for 4.8 GB
• Backer Paintings, Statues, Ghosts, and Wanted Posters: 40+10+20+20 = 90
• Number of game scenes: 68
• Game days with unique events: 50
• Number of characters and monster types: 74
• Number of interactable objects (“props”): 1,200
• Number of scripts written so far: 815, with about that many still to come

Why so many props and scripts? 68 scenes was about the number in a Sierra game, say Quest for Glory II or IV. But each scene in those games was 320x200 pixels covering one screen. Step out into the courtyard of Hero-U and you will get to get to explore the equivalent of 10 or 20 such screens. There might have been five such objects in a typical Quest for Glory scene vs. 20 or more in each Hero-U scene.

Then there are the character interactions. These typically change on most game days and in each location – Aeolus has different things to say at night in the dorm than in the evening in the recreation room. It is impossible to see all of the dialogue in one play-through; you’ll probably get to half of it after four or five games if you take care to say something different every time. Lori is writing a monster here with a little scripting advice from me.

Shawn Applies His Charm Skill in the Dining Hall

Naming the New Team Members
I spend most of my time wrangling team members and funds, but I’ve also been helping Lori with the game design, writing updates, and crafting game text. That took more hours than I have each week, so we reached out to Sierra veteran Josh Mandel to write many of the text interaction messages.

Josh got his start playtesting Infocom and Sierra adventure games, then got a job as a tech writer for Sierra. Ken Williams “discovered” Josh and gave him the chance of doing game writing and design. Josh wrote for Jones in the Fast Lane, The Dagger of Amon Ra, Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist, Space Quest 6: Roger Wilco in the Spinal Frontier, and lots of other games. Most recently he worked with Al Lowe on the recent Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded game.

Josh also contributed game text to one of our non-Sierra projects, Shannara. We’re very excited to have him back on our team, this time writing many of the “incidental” messages for Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption. The game will be much richer and funnier with his additions.

We’ve had a number of challenges on the programming side of this project. Some programmers needed higher pay than we could fit into our budget. Others left for full-time development opportunities.

We stabilized on our current all-star team of Joshua Smyth, Cidney Hamilton, and Robert Kety early last year, but they are only able to work part-time due to other jobs and health issues. We really needed to add a full-time developer to the team.

We’re now delighted to introduce Carolyn VanEseltine as our new programmer and design contributor. Carolyn plans to apply her strong design sense, interactive fiction background, and Unity 3D experience to helping make Hero-U great. Here’s a little about her background in Carolyn's words:

I started my game development career in 2002 on the Simutronics flagship game GemStone IV. Since then, I've held a wide variety of industry roles - programming, design, writing, production, and more - and I've worked on everything from Harmonix's Rock Band and Dance Central franchises to the indie game Revolution 60, as described in my resume. I'm also well-known in modern interactive fiction, both for writing award-winning IF games and for my craft and technique blog, Sibyl Moon.

Rogue Motivational Poster

We still can’t promise a specific release date, but Lori and I have committed to shipping Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption this year. Our best guess – and it is just a guess – is late October or early November. We’ve made enormous progress in the last few months, especially in the areas of art and animation. Lori continues to work hard on scripting the game dialogue and character interactions.

With the additions of Josh and Carolyn, we have all the resources we need to reach the finish line with a game that will make us proud and our backers very happy. We hope the Hero-U series will be a worthy successor to our Quest for Glory games.

Thank you, everyone, for your awesome patience and support as we fight against the mighty challenges of indie game development. This project has turned into far more than we originally hoped, and we look forward to sharing it will all of you and many other gamers.

 

[Blaine]

Yeah... uh, okay.

I'm probably quite a bit more familiar with GemStone IV and Simutronics than the average Codexer. I played GSIV and DragonRealms a fair bit back when I was into MUDs and MUSHes, although only flirtingly; in terms of grind and pay-for-perks, Simutronics games put the most shamelessly usurious Korean MMOs to shame. That's rather irrelevant, though. Let's just say that "I started my game development career in 2002 on the Simutronics flagship game GemStone IV" is a potential red flag from where I'm standing, and affords me a glance at the proverbial tea leaves. If not for that flag, I would have merely skimmed Infinitron's post, then clicked out of this thread.

Instead, I've done a little digging into Carolyn VanEseltine's website and blog, Sibyl Moon.

My guess at this point (since she never specifies; another flag) is that Carolyn was a GemStone III player up until GemStone III transitioned to GemStone IV, and, one way or another, was selected to write new room, character, and/or equipment descriptions. This is common practice in MU*es. The long and the short of it is that she's a glorified fan fiction writer with few technical skills. She then parlayed her "game development experience" into various minor positions working on relatively minor development projects, almost all of which are casual console rhythm games, you'll note.

She as much as admits her lack of technical expertise here:

http://www.sibylmoon.com/about/

Since my industry start in 2002, I’ve held positions at Harmonix, Simutronics, and Giant Spacekat. I’m a multifaceted developer specializing in narrative design, but I’ve also done gameplay scripting, production, community development, playtest coordination, QA, web support, and digital submissions. I write award-winning interactive fiction (showcased at this site!) and I participate enthusiastically in game jams such as the Global Game Jam or Ludum Dare.

Narrative design, folks, AKA: an idea guy, or gal in this case. Those are a dime a dozen. I'm led to wonder about her actual experience with Unity 3D.

Oh look, just by the way, she has Tumblr hair. This surely bodes well.

Most of her "award-winning IF" is free to play on her website, including the exciting-sounding "RAINBOWS AND DANCE PARTIES!", which I can't wait to play once I drive back home Monday morning and have more time to spare. Feel free to try and judge her work for yourself.

Why am I posting all these nasty things based partly on guesswork, you may wonder? Well, I don't particularly enjoy the idea of hacks messing with one of my beloved childhood franchises. I guess we'll see how it turns out. The Hero-U development cycle has proceeded swimmingly thus far, right?

 

[Excidium II]

It's ok since this will never come out anyway.

 

[Tramboi]

It will probably come out but they should have paid a real good programmer full time from the start. This would not have been wasted money.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Josh Mandel is one of the best writers in the industry so that's good news. But yeah, this won't end well.