Double Fine's latest game: Spacebase DF-9

[AstroZombie]

Fuck Double Fine.

 

[J_C]

Fuck Double Fine.

 

[Hellraiser]

Talk about a dick move.

 

[Bubbles]

That news item seems fake to me:

 

[J_C]

That news item seems fake to me:

Who would pull a fake news stunt like this?

 

[Bubbles]

4chan hackers?

This isn't even mentioned on the DF twitter. This is the only news item from today:

 

[Jack Dandy]

http://www.doublefine.com/forums/viewthread/14641/#353671

Hahahaha, that post's actually for real. Saved for posterity.

gg DF

 

[Agesilaus]

The steam page indicates that it's true. so much fail, good thing I went with Rimworld which is actually awesome.

 

[Hirato]

It's also on their blog: http://spacebasedf9.com/post/97755808095/the-road-to-1-0

This game needs at least another dozen or so content updates, I was hoping it would end up like prison architect, an update each month to gradually flesh things out.

The RPS article is wrong too, they're only releasing the Lua source, not the full source code, this means that
1) We cannot improve/change the engine, and
2) We cannot fix bugs that are intrinsic to the engine itself.
3) we cannot extend the Lua API to make it capable of more and better things

 

[pakoito]

RPS are not coders, they don't know that. I was so mad with the Hack & Slash prototype when everyone was around just talking about they hacked the game by "editing text files", and I just had overlooked them because tweaking scripts was so normal for me. If you guys buy other Lua-heavy games like Don't Starve most of the scripts are unencrypted.

 

[Destroid]

DF-9 is made with Moai, chances are almost the entire game is written in Lua. It's possible they didn't write a single line of C++ themselves.

 

[pakoito]

DF-9 is made with Moai, chances are almost the entire game is written in Lua. It's possible they didn't write a single line of C++ themselves.

DF-9 is made with DF's branch of Moai. They have modified it heavily for 14 months with a 3+ seasoned dev team, added tools on top and more. That was where most of those 3.3M from KS went from, not BA. Now, if you mean the game's logic, probably, but as the other naysayers agree adding new things would be very limited without full engine access and docu. Even if you go full scripted when you're releasing a prof game there's libraries you need to bring from C++ for IO, security or networking.

 

[Blaine]

The continuing saga of funding the comfortable lifestyles of fiscally irresponsible aging hipsters, complete with families to support, situated in cities with some of the world's highest costs of living.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/246090/discussions/0/613936673464943075/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2h03zx/tim_schafer_responds_to_controversy_over_upcoming/

Tim Schafer answers common questions about v1.0
Hi everybody. I want to apologize for the delayed response from me on recent announcement of Spacebase v1.0. Most of Double Fine’s publishing staff and I are currently attending Fantastic Arcade in Austin, TX, and have been trying our best to keep up with the situation via our phones while we’re on the road. But now that I finally have time to sit down with a laptop, I’d like to answer some representative questions we’ve seen on these forums.

Here’s the first question!

“How about an ACTUAL explanation of what happened behind the scenes?”

We started Spacebase with an open ended-production plan, hoping that it would find similar success (and therefore funding) to the alpha-funded games that inspired it. Some of its early sales numbers indicated this might be the case, but slowly things changed, and it became clear that this was looking like a year and a half of production instead of five or so. With each Alpha release there was the hope that things would change, but they didn't. We put every dime we made from Spacebase back into Spacebase, and then we put in some more. Obviously, spending more money than we were making isn’t something we can afford to do forever. So, as much as we tried to put off the decision, we finally had to change gears and put Spacebase into finishing mode and plan for version 1.0.

“What happened to the devplan? What happened to the beta stage? How can ANY game go from Alpha 6 to a “finished” 1.0?”

In traditional development, “Beta” refers to a time when no new features are added but bugs are fixed. Things are different in early access where the game is in players’ hands at an earlier state, so the team has been fixing bugs all along as features are added. In the remaining dev time, there will be both bug fixes and new features so it’s true--calling it “beta” is a little inaccurate. But the amount of time fixing bugs is comparable to that of a traditionally-developed game.

“I thought you said you weren’t going to silently pull the plug?”

We are not silently pulling the plug. We are announcing our finishing features and v1.0 plan. I know it's not a lot of advance notice, but we're still here telling you our plan instead of vanishing quietly in the night.

“If you were going to end development, why didn’t you tell us sooner?”

One of the biggest lessons we have learned in this, our first early access title, is about communication. There should have been more communication to the players about the state of the game, and we apologize for that. But for us, it was never clear whether development was going to end because we always hoped that the next update would turn it around and allow us to extend development. So I suppose, ultimately, the answer was we always had hope we weren’t going to end it, until the end.

“Why put the game on sale (while internally knowing that development of the game was stopping)?”

Frequent sales are part of the Steam marketplace. We’ve had multiple sales throughout the game’s early access period in attempts to create a bigger audience for the game. As for the version of the game that people bought in this most recent sale, we are still working on it, fixing bugs and adding the final features to make the 1.0 version of Spacebase a fun and complete game.

I understand that the recent announcement was a disappointment. It was for you, and it was for us. We wanted to keep working on Spacebase for years. But Spacebase spends more money than it brings in, and that’s just not something we can afford to do any more. Set up against the expectation of the game being in development as long as Prison Architect or Dwarf Fortress, it’s hard not to find fault in the game by comparison. But we continued to sell the game, and will continue to sell the game, because we feel that based solely on its own merits, Spacebase DF9 is still a fun, clever, hilarious, beautiful and complete game.

It’s hard for me to see JP and his team get eviscerated on these forums, after I’ve watched them put their blood, sweat, and tears into Spacebase for the last year and a half. Telling you that they are hard-working and talented developers who toiled in good faith to create this unique work of entertainment probably isn’t going to change your minds about how you feel about this game. But I hope you might at least consider that no one is more disappointed than them that they will not be able to work on this game for years and years to come for reasons mostly out of their control.

We have stumbled awkwardly through some new territory with this game, and in terms of early access communication we fell short. But we are still proud of the game in the end, and are happy to have it on the roster of Double Fine titles. I hope you are able to reserve judgment on version 1.0 until it comes out, and then enjoy it for the unique and entertaining experience that it is.

Thanks for reading, and thank you for playing Spacebase.

-Tim

 

[evdk]

 

[Diablo169]

I seriously want their next Kickstarter to just flat out fail. It will be well deserved and an abject lesson to developers, to not fuck people over and expect to live off peoples nostalgia for games from decades ago.

 

[J_C]

expect to live off peoples nostalgia for games from decades ago.

Yeah, that is a crime. Thankfully, Inxile and Obsidian doesn't do that. Oh wait, they do.

Spoiler

Just to clarify, I'm not saying that Inxile and Obsidian fucked people over. But they rided and used the nostalgia train even stronger than DF. I agree that DF sucks at managing.

 

[Diablo169]

http://theindiestone.com/binky/2014/09/21/alpha-funding-early-access-is-not-an-alternative/

that year and a half production could easily have been five years if only the studio were based somewhere which didn’t have an average $10,000 (!!!) per person per month cost. You are basically requiring your game to be one of the most successful Early Access games ever in order to have enough money to finish it. This is, frankly, an insane and (dare I say it?) arrogant assumption.

Doublefine need to move their arses to Poland.

 

[Blaine]

Pretty much everyone has recognized the significance of Double Fine's San Francisco locale at this point, or else seen it mentioned someplace and picked up on it. It was my first thought when the Codex initially caught wind of their money troubles.

It's not as though the man should be expected to uproot his family and move to rural West Virginia, but come on:

Most or all of these people presumably live in San Francisco, for fuck's sake. I have a feeling some are spouses or what-have-you rather than employees, but those kids ain't feeding themselves, either. I don't even know how they've been making it up until now on the games Double Fine's been developing aside from Broken Age.

 

[Keshik]

Tim Schafer answers common questions about v1.0
Hi everybody. I want to apologize for the delayed response from me on recent announcement of Spacebase v1.0. Most of Double Fine’s publishing staff and I are currently attending Fantastic Arcade in Austin, TX, and have been trying our best to keep up with the situation via our phones while we’re on the road. But now that I finally have time to sit down with a laptop, I’d like to answer some representative questions we’ve seen on these forums.

Here’s the first question!

“How about an ACTUAL explanation of what happened behind the scenes?”

We started Spacebase with an open ended-production plan, hoping that it would find similar success (and therefore funding) to the alpha-funded games that inspired it. Some of its early sales numbers indicated this might be the case, but slowly things changed, and it became clear that this was looking like a year and a half of production instead of five or so. With each Alpha release there was the hope that things would change, but they didn't. We put every dime we made from Spacebase back into Spacebase, and then we put in some more. Obviously, spending more money than we were making isn’t something we can afford to do forever. So, as much as we tried to put off the decision, we finally had to change gears and put Spacebase into finishing mode and plan for version 1.0.

“What happened to the devplan? What happened to the beta stage? How can ANY game go from Alpha 6 to a “finished” 1.0?”

In traditional development, “Beta” refers to a time when no new features are added but bugs are fixed. Things are different in early access where the game is in players’ hands at an earlier state, so the team has been fixing bugs all along as features are added. In the remaining dev time, there will be both bug fixes and new features so it’s true--calling it “beta” is a little inaccurate. But the amount of time fixing bugs is comparable to that of a traditionally-developed game.

“I thought you said you weren’t going to silently pull the plug?”

We are not silently pulling the plug. We are announcing our finishing features and v1.0 plan. I know it's not a lot of advance notice, but we're still here telling you our plan instead of vanishing quietly in the night.

“If you were going to end development, why didn’t you tell us sooner?”

One of the biggest lessons we have learned in this, our first early access title, is about communication. There should have been more communication to the players about the state of the game, and we apologize for that. But for us, it was never clear whether development was going to end because we always hoped that the next update would turn it around and allow us to extend development. So I suppose, ultimately, the answer was we always had hope we weren’t going to end it, until the end.

“Why put the game on sale (while internally knowing that development of the game was stopping)?”

Frequent sales are part of the Steam marketplace. We’ve had multiple sales throughout the game’s early access period in attempts to create a bigger audience for the game. As for the version of the game that people bought in this most recent sale, we are still working on it, fixing bugs and adding the final features to make the 1.0 version of Spacebase a fun and complete game.

I understand that the recent announcement was a disappointment. It was for you, and it was for us. We wanted to keep working on Spacebase for years. But Spacebase spends more money than it brings in, and that’s just not something we can afford to do any more. Set up against the expectation of the game being in development as long as Prison Architect or Dwarf Fortress, it’s hard not to find fault in the game by comparison. But we continued to sell the game, and will continue to sell the game, because we feel that based solely on its own merits, Spacebase DF9 is still a fun, clever, hilarious, beautiful and complete game.

It’s hard for me to see JP and his team get eviscerated on these forums, after I’ve watched them put their blood, sweat, and tears into Spacebase for the last year and a half. Telling you that they are hard-working and talented developers who toiled in good faith to create this unique work of entertainment probably isn’t going to change your minds about how you feel about this game. But I hope you might at least consider that no one is more disappointed than them that they will not be able to work on this game for years and years to come for reasons mostly out of their control.

We have stumbled awkwardly through some new territory with this game, and in terms of early access communication we fell short. But we are still proud of the game in the end, and are happy to have it on the roster of Double Fine titles. I hope you are able to reserve judgment on version 1.0 until it comes out, and then enjoy it for the unique and entertaining experience that it is.

Thanks for reading, and thank you for playing Spacebase.

-Tim

http://steamcommunity.com/app/246090/discussions/0/613936673464943075/

 

[Boleskine]

I seriously want their next Kickstarter to just flat out fail. It will be well deserved and an abject lesson to developers, to not fuck people over and expect to live off peoples nostalgia for games from decades ago.

I can't imagine DF being successful with another crowdfunding campaign. Broken Age mismanagement, their Indie Fund grant, numerous Humble Bundles on top of their two kickstarters, Spacebase DF-9, etc. have seemingly burned away the goodwill that Tim and DF built up until 2 years ago.

 

[Whiran]

I can't imagine DF being successful with another crowdfunding campaign. Broken Age mismanagement, their Indie Fund grant, numerous Humble Bundles on top of their two kickstarters, Spacebase DF-9, etc. have seemingly burned away the goodwill that Tim and DF built up until 2 years ago.

I can. Many fans are blind when it comes to their favorite company even if that company keeps failing to fulfill their promises.

Even now in that thread discussing DF-9 at doublefine there are a number of people who are like: GUYS!!! SUPPORT DOUBLEFINE!! BUY EVERYTHING!! THEY ARE GREAT!!!!!!

It takes an awful lot to dislodge those people. This is just another nail in the coffin but that coffin isn't buried yet. I bet Double Fine is good for another game or two more plus one or two more "chapters" of Broken Age. I suspect that each product will do linearly less well but still make them enough money. They can continue to fleece their core fans for quite awhile yet.

 

[Blaine]

It's a sign of the times.

Broken Age absolutely reeks of pretentious, sentimental, airy-fairy artsy-fartsiness with a generous dash of leftist idealism thrown in for spice. Catch that whiff of San Franciscan :incloosive:ness.

It was pretty much tailor-made for this fellow, and for the Kotaku crowd in particular:

Nothing kills humor faster than the comedian ensuring he's politically correct at all times. Does anyone know a good politically-correct comedian? Anyone? I've never known of any.

 

[pippin]

Tim has 179 hours of Broken Age but hasn't played Psychonauts yet

 

[Zewp]

Take Double Fine and ban everyone there from ever working in the videogames industry again. Fuckers. To think I almost bought this shit.

Oh, Starforge was also summarily rushed into release yesterday with tons of features missing. It was about time that the Early Access model started failing.

 

[MRY]

Does anyone know a good politically-correct comedian? Anyone? I've never known of any.

I guess it depends what you mean by "politically correct." Louis CK, George Carlin, and Patton Oswalt ("Oswalt's stand up comedy covers topics ranging from pop culture frivolity such as comic book supervillains and 1980s glam metal to deeper social issues like American excess, materialism, foreign policy and religion.") are all very socially liberal; they're also transgressive of "good taste" (esp. the first two) and mainstream American opinion, but I would consider them pretty "politically correct." And quite funny.