Community Ensure the Warriors of Diversity will live on in Eternity

[villain of the story]

Too much stupidity. If you were trolling, then it was

 

[Vault Dweller]

Proven engine? Proven where? Up-to-date vs. outdated angle is related to the fact that hardware moves on and standards change. Though I have no idea what the average configuration of the backers or PE is, I doubt any substantial amount of them still use W98/XP running Pentiums or the early dual-cores after Pentium -whatever they were called- so the point that an engine is up-to-date is about hardware compatibility, optimum performance and hardware bound bugs, not whether it "looks" "outdated" by some arbitrary graphical standards.
You can't run IE games on Vista, W7 or W8 platforms without problems or without use of third party tools therefore Infinity Engine is outdated.

Weren't we talking about the Steam engine? Arcanum and ToEE?
http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/100640-arcanum-now-compatible-with-windows-7-on-gog.html

So, if they are choosing Unity despite these, I trust it's for reasons that is far more favourable to Onyx....

Didn't they say openly that it's because it supports both Linux and Mac?

"Unity also supports a wide range of target platforms. We knew that a likely request from the community was going to be support for Mac and Linux versions of the game, and we wanted to make sure we were in the best position to do that. While we could have ported Onyx, our internal engine technology, to those platforms, the time and effort required to do so would reduce the budget we have to make the game and result in less of the awesome gameplay and content our fans desire. Mac and Linux will still require time and effort from us to test, maintain and support but Unity gets us most of the way there."

 

[villain of the story]

Oh, I wasn't aware both Arcanum and TOEE used the Steam Engine. Good job, then, I guess. Too bad they never ported either of Arcanum or TOEE, or Onyx, to Linux or Mac. Speaking of which, I doubt GOG got access to Arcanum's source code to make it run on modern W7. Or TOEE. Ie. "third party tools". Engine hacking.

Then again, just how many people are we talking about using Mac or Linux? Is it really a significant amount of people capable of creating a financial momentum to push the game to be bigger and better? Is it worth abandoning your in-house game engine or some decade old game engine collecting dust?

 

[Vault Dweller]

Oh, I wasn't aware both Arcanum and TOEE used the Steam Engine. Good job, then, I guess. Too bad they never ported either of Arcanum or TOEE, or Onyx, to Linux or Mac. Speaking of which, I doubt GOG got access to Arcanum's source code to make it run on modern W7. Or TOEE. Ie. "third party tools". Engine hacking.

If third-party tools can do it, then Obsidian programmers can do it too, especially since they have (or should have) the source code.

Then again, just how many people are we talking about using Mac or Linux? Is it really a significant amount of people capable of creating a financial momentum to push the game to be bigger and better? Is it worth abandoning your in-house game engine or some decade old game engine collecting dust?

I'm wondering that myself. Seems like a KS bandwagon that every developer wants to jump on.

 

[skuphundaku]

Then again, just how many people are we talking about using Mac or Linux? Is it really a significant amount of people capable of creating a financial momentum to push the game to be bigger and better? Is it worth abandoning your in-house game engine or some decade old game engine collecting dust?

I'm wondering that myself. Seems like a KS bandwagon that every developer wants to jump on.

It's something that is required by the donors. If you and VotS don't need it, it means just that you don't need it, it doesn't mean that nobody needs it.

 

[Dexter]

Obsidian has a track record that is simply terrible. They ought to be ashamed and we ought to be ashamed for giving them money without seeing reviews and a demo to indicate that they finally produced a well designed product with an acceptable level of bugs.

Fargo's track record under the inXile label is also bad, but his pitch video showed some understanding of this fact and a desire to return to his previous form. And while he did produce bad games under the inXile label, they were marketed at consoletards, not at us. We shouldn't have touched them anyway, so no harm done. It's very different from Obsidian that has continually failed and ripped off this very market.

Black Isle

1997 - Fallout (well, kinda most of the team transferred to become Black Isle)
1998 - Fallout 2
1999 - Planescape: Torment
2000 - Icewind Dale
2001 - Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter / Trials of the Luremaster
2002 - Icewind Dale II
2004 - Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II (most people transferred over to Obsidian at this point)

Obsidian

2004 - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords
2006 - Neverwinter Nights 2
2007 - Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer
2008 - Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir
2010 - Alpha Protocol
2010 - Fallout: New Vegas
2011 - Dungeon Siege III
2013 - South Park: The Stick of Truth

inXile Entertainment

2004 - The Bard's Tale
2008 - Line Rider
2009 - Super Stacker
2009 - Super Stacker 2
2009 - Shape Shape
2010 - Super Stacker Party
2011 - Hunted: The Demon's Forge
2012 - Choplifter HD

You can guess as to which I'd believe can do a better job at this, Fargo is simply better at Marketing/Bullshitting that's all xD And fuck all y'all, the Infinity Engine games were some of the best in encounter design, storyfaggotry and world/dungeon building.

Then again, just how many people are we talking about using Mac or Linux? Is it really a significant amount of people capable of creating a financial momentum to push the game to be bigger and better? Is it worth abandoning your in-house game engine or some decade old game engine collecting dust?

Who cares? I don't even use Linux, but I won't be using Windows 8 at any point soon and any effort to steer away from that and where Microsoft wants to take Windows afterwards is something I can full-heartedly embrace. Same as with Valve/Steam moving to Linux and a lot of porting efforts being done: http://steamlinux.flibitijibibo.com/index.php?title=Native_Games for smaller games and the likes to be able to be natively played on that (and all the "Indie Bundles" jumping on the bandwagon).
Still not happy about Unity though xD

 

[Vault Dweller]

Then again, just how many people are we talking about using Mac or Linux? Is it really a significant amount of people capable of creating a financial momentum to push the game to be bigger and better? Is it worth abandoning your in-house game engine or some decade old game engine collecting dust?

I'm wondering that myself. Seems like a KS bandwagon that every developer wants to jump on.

It's something that is required by the donors. If you and VotS don't need it, it means just that you don't need it, it doesn't mean that nobody needs it.

Is it? PE got 1 mil in a day without promising Linux and Mac and hit 1.4 mil before the stretch goals were posted. Nothing suggests that pledges would have stopped, had that not announced the other platforms.

 

[EG]

That's just to rope in the fringe groups of 10-15% . . . Money is money.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Nothing's free.

 

[Dexter]

Nothing's free.

I think one of the most visible Stat points are all the Humble Indie Bundles: http://www.humblebundle.com/
They always ask people what platform they have donated for, and Linux seems to always be far at the top in amount donated, there's also a pie chart of Windows/Mac/Linux users percentage.
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/06/14/humble-indie-bundle-5-closes-at-over-5-1-million-most-successf/

 

[PorkaMorka]

Obsidian has a track record that is simply terrible. They ought to be ashamed and we ought to be ashamed for giving them money without seeing reviews and a demo to indicate that they finally produced a well designed product with an acceptable level of bugs.

Fargo's track record under the inXile label is also bad, but his pitch video showed some understanding of this fact and a desire to return to his previous form. And while he did produce bad games under the inXile label, they were marketed at consoletards, not at us. We shouldn't have touched them anyway, so no harm done. It's very different from Obsidian that has continually failed and ripped off this very market.

Black Isle

1997 - Fallout (well, kinda most of the team transferred to become Black Isle)
1998 - Fallout 2
1999 - Planescape: Torment
2000 - Icewind Dale
2001 - Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter / Trials of the Luremaster
2002 - Icewind Dale II
2004 - Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II (most people transferred over to Obsidian at this point)

Obsidian

2004 - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords
2006 - Neverwinter Nights 2
2007 - Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer
2008 - Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir
2010 - Alpha Protocol
2010 - Fallout: New Vegas
2011 - Dungeon Siege III
2013 - South Park: The Stick of Truth

inXile Entertainment

2004 - The Bard's Tale
2008 - Line Rider
2009 - Super Stacker
2009 - Super Stacker 2
2009 - Shape Shape
2010 - Super Stacker Party
2011 - Hunted: The Demon's Forge
2012 - Choplifter HD

You can guess as to which I'd believe can do a better job at this, Fargo is simply better at Marketing/Bullshitting that's all xD

Obsidian is not Black Isle. Obsidian has made their own CRPGs and they were bad. I'm not interested in any more games in that glorious tradition of Obsidian games.

Inxile also made bad games, but they were console games that none of us should ever have played. Fargo expressed a desire to turn over a new leaf and make a different kind of game. He is not promising more games in the glorious tradition of Choplifter HD and Super Stacker. He has expressed frustration with the type of game that he was able to do with conventional funding methods. I admit that at a personal level I appreciate this sort of self criticism and humility.

Supporting W2 is admittedly more of a risk than supporting Obsidian. Obsidian is very likely to produce a CRPG just like those other ones that they produced. It's not clear what Fargo will be able to produce. Unfortunately, I didn't much care for the other CRPGs that Obsidian produced, so there isn't much potential payoff there.

Project Eternity promises a new Dragon Age, with inferior Obsidan QA. Fargo promises some sort of awesome Fallout / Jagged Alliance hybrid. I didn't really care about the first Dragon Age, so I'm not interested in the inferior Obsidian version. But I'm willing to risk quite a bit of cash for the chance at some sort of awesome Fallout / Jagged Alliance hybrid. That's one of my dream games.

P.S. The Infinity Engine games were only good due to the D&D license. That kind of structure needs to be imposed on the RTWP system to keep it from fully devolving into a clusterfuck.

 

[villain of the story]

Obsidian vs Fargo

2004 - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords - Bugged, Cut, Unfinished
2006 - Neverwinter Nights 2 - Bugged, Cut, Unfinished, THE CAMERA!
2007 - Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer - Bugged, Cut, THE CAMERA!
2008 - Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir - THE CAMERA!
2010 - Alpha Protocol - Don't even get me started on this popamole shit LOL
2010 - Fallout: New Vegas - Bugged, Cut, LOLLERCOASTER
2011 - Dungeon Siege III - Solid title, though uninspiring
2013 - South Park: The Stick of Truth - rating yet pending

inXile Entertainment

2004 - The Bard's Tale
2008 - Line Rider
2009 - Super Stacker
2009 - Super Stacker 2
2009 - Shape Shape
2010 - Super Stacker Party
2011 - Hunted: The Demon's Forge
2012 - Choplifter HD

All solid titles, though not relevant to us the least. Lesson learned: Fargo is capable of managing his projects. Obsidian, barely, if at all.

 

[EG]

Nothing's free.

I think one of the most visible Stat points are all the Humble Indie Bundles: http://www.humblebundle.com/
They always ask people what platform they have donated for, and Linux seems to always be far at the top, there's also a pie chart of Windows/Mac/Linux users.
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/06/14/humble-indie-bundle-5-closes-at-over-5-1-million-most-successf/

http://support.humblebundle.com/customer/portal/articles/281031-prior-bundle-statistics

Looks around 30% of the average pie is Mac/Linux. It's more than I thought.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Dexter

From your last link:

According to the promotion's website, Humble Indie Bundle 5 was purchased by 598,794 individuals, with an average purchase price of $8.53. Broken down by platform, Linux users paid more than anyone else at an average of $12.51 per transaction, while Windows users paid the least, averaging $7.97 per bundle. Still, the majority of purchases were made by PC users, with Linux users contributing the minority.

My point was that Obsidian's KS was doing quite well (1.6 mil) before Linux and Mac support was announced. It's easy to assume that their KS could have done quite well without it, especially with more detailed and better presented stretch goals aimed to make people drool.

Now, maybe Unity is a truly awesome engine, better than the Steam and the Onyx engine combined. Maybe it's a true joy to work with and they can build a game faster than using their own, RPG-ready engine they were so proud of 6 months ago:

https://twitter.com/ChrisAvellone/status/120945809519947776

"Obsidian's future = more RPGs with our own engine… finally."

Guess not, eh?

Anyway, maybe Unity is all that and maybe it aint. If it aint, it seems that Obsidian is taking a huge gamble, trading known for the unknown, just to get 10-15% from the Linux community. Hopefully, they know what they are doing, but they did make some blunders in the past.

 

[skuphundaku]

Then again, just how many people are we talking about using Mac or Linux? Is it really a significant amount of people capable of creating a financial momentum to push the game to be bigger and better? Is it worth abandoning your in-house game engine or some decade old game engine collecting dust?

I'm wondering that myself. Seems like a KS bandwagon that every developer wants to jump on.

It's something that is required by the donors. If you and VotS don't need it, it means just that you don't need it, it doesn't mean that nobody needs it.

Is it? PE got 1 mil in a day without promising Linux and Mac and hit 1.4 mil before the stretch goals were posted. Nothing suggests that pledges would have stopped, had that not announced the other platforms.

You're looking at it the wrong way. Maybe in the beginning, when people weren't used to the KS pledge mechanism yet, that may have been the case. Now that people are starting to get used to it, since the money pledged to a Kickstarter project aren't transferred until the end of the fundraising period and the pledges can be canceled, many people pledge as an initial show of support but are ready to cancel the pledge if their demands are not dealt with in a satisfactory manner. For example, that's what I do every time I pledge. And I've pledged quite a lot. You think that if there was no demand for Linux, the developers would be adding it just for kicks? Some would, yeah, but those are a very small minority.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Obsidian vs Fargo

2004 - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords - Bugged, Cut, Unfinished
2006 - Neverwinter Nights 2 - Bugged, Cut, Unfinished, THE CAMERA!
2007 - Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer - Bugged, Cut, THE CAMERA!
2008 - Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir - THE CAMERA!
2010 - Alpha Protocol - Don't even get me started on this popamole shit LOL
2010 - Fallout: New Vegas - Bugged, Cut, LOLLERCOASTER
2011 - Dungeon Siege III - Solid title, though uninspiring
2013 - South Park: The Stick of Truth - rating yet pending

inXile Entertainment

2004 - The Bard's Tale
2008 - Line Rider
2009 - Super Stacker
2009 - Super Stacker 2
2009 - Shape Shape
2010 - Super Stacker Party
2011 - Hunted: The Demon's Forge
2012 - Choplifter HD

All solid titles, though not relevant to us the least. Lesson learned: Fargo is capable of managing his projects. Obsidian, barely, if at all.

I think I'd rather play a buggy Obsidian game than a stellar InXile game from that list.

 

[EG]

. . . since the money pledged to a Kickstarter project aren't transferred until the end of the fundraising period and the pledges can be canceled, many people pledge as an initial show of support but are ready to cancel the pledge if their demands are not dealt with in a satisfactory manner . . that's what I do every time I pledge.

The fuck?

 

[Infinitron]

Entitlement, bro.

 

[EG]

Entitlement, bro.

Madness.

Madness . . .

 

[skuphundaku]

Entitlement, bro.

If someone giving them money only under a certain condition is entitlement, then, yeah, it's entitlement. If they don't agree, then they must not want/need my money and I have nothing against that.

Also, asking for DRM-free and Mac/Linux support is a request that doesn't affect those that use Windows or don't have anything agains DRM, unlike the requests for particular game mechanics which, if implemented, will interfere with the enjoyment of others.

 

[skuphundaku]

. . . since the money pledged to a Kickstarter project aren't transferred until the end of the fundraising period and the pledges can be canceled, many people pledge as an initial show of support but are ready to cancel the pledge if their demands are not dealt with in a satisfactory manner . . that's what I do every time I pledge.

The fuck?

I guess you miss the good old times when publishers had all the power. It really stings when the plebes have the power to make demands, eh?

 

[villain of the story]

Obsidian vs Fargo

2004 - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords - Bugged, Cut, Unfinished
2006 - Neverwinter Nights 2 - Bugged, Cut, Unfinished, THE CAMERA!
2007 - Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer - Bugged, Cut, THE CAMERA!
2008 - Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir - THE CAMERA!
2010 - Alpha Protocol - Don't even get me started on this popamole shit LOL
2010 - Fallout: New Vegas - Bugged, Cut, LOLLERCOASTER
2011 - Dungeon Siege III - Solid title, though uninspiring
2013 - South Park: The Stick of Truth - rating yet pending

inXile Entertainment

2004 - The Bard's Tale
2008 - Line Rider
2009 - Super Stacker
2009 - Super Stacker 2
2009 - Shape Shape
2010 - Super Stacker Party
2011 - Hunted: The Demon's Forge
2012 - Choplifter HD

All solid titles, though not relevant to us the least. Lesson learned: Fargo is capable of managing his projects. Obsidian, barely, if at all.

I think I'd rather play a buggy Obsidian game than a stellar InXile game from that list.

I think I'd rather see Fargo put his managerial skills to creating the type of game we want than see Obsidian churn out yet another bugged, cut and unfinished product, however good it might or might not be. Luckily, we are getting to see both!

 

[Volrath]

Mask of the Betrayer was cut and buggy? o_O

 

[EG]

. . . since the money pledged to a Kickstarter project aren't transferred until the end of the fundraising period and the pledges can be canceled, many people pledge as an initial show of support but are ready to cancel the pledge if their demands are not dealt with in a satisfactory manner . . that's what I do every time I pledge.

The fuck?

I guess you miss the good old times when publishers had all the power. It really stings when the plebes have the power to make demands, eh?

The only thing that stings is you (and your friends) consider it acceptable to "pledge" a "donation" then withdraw it, if twenty-eight days down the road, they fail to announce a hip new feature you were hoping for initially.

But, of course, it doesn't matter until after the campaign is done.

No one basis decisions off that amount of money during the process, after all.

 

[Dexter]

2004 - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords - Bugged, Cut, Unfinished- LucasArts pushed it out ahead of being ready for "Christmas Release", 13 months development time cutting out several months of planned development: http://mixnmojo.com/news/KOTOR-II-Deleted-Content-Restored-by-Fans

You may be wondering why The Sith Lords feels unfinished. That's because it was. LucasArts had Obsidian rush the game to make a Christmas 2004 release. That meant they had to delete or truncate a lot of content that was meant for the game, including the ending. Obsidian reportedly requested that LucasArts release an official update to the game to restore the game to Obsidian's original vision, but LucasArts denied the request.

2006 - Neverwinter Nights 2 - Bugged, Cut, Unfinished, THE CAMERA! - ATARI, they didn't particularly want to pay much for any fixes but Obsidian still patched the game for quite a while after release, camera was fine for me after initial 2-3 hours to get used to it, 27 months dev time
2007 - Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer - Bugged, Cut, THE CAMERA! - one of their best games, patched later
2008 - Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir - THE CAMERA! - I personally hated this one because there was no storyfaggotry to be had and only boring, repeating combat encounters
2010 - Alpha Protocol - Don't even get me started on this popamole shit LOL - they likely screwed this up themselves with bad planning and feature creep, SEGA was likely also yet again pushing for release near the end though but given they gave them an extra year to work on it understandable
2010 - Fallout: New Vegas - Bugged, Cut, LOLLERCOASTER - Bethesda, they were in charge of QA, we also already know about the MetaCritic thing, it was better in about every way than Fallout 3 despite yet again only 12-18 months dev time, they did what they could with the given resources and time

2011 - Dungeon Siege III - Solid title, though uninspiring - technically competent and bug-free, but imo their worst title to date, they shouldn't try ARPG when they aren't good at it, rather continue with storyfaggotry
2013 - South Park: The Stick of Truth - rating yet pending

inXile Entertainment

2004 - The Bard's Tale
2008 - Line Rider
2009 - Super Stacker
2009 - Super Stacker 2
2009 - Shape Shape
2010 - Super Stacker Party
2011 - Hunted: The Demon's Forge
2012 - Choplifter HD

All solid titles, though not relevant to us the least. Lesson learned: Fargo is capable of managing his projects. Obsidian, barely, if at all.

In general I don't get your double standard in regards to Obsidian and inXile, it is rather apparent that you hate Obsidian out of some butthurt reason, but aside from Neverwinter Nights 2, which was alright and MotB, which was one of their best products NONE of their titles were intended for the main PC audience, KOTOR was even a Xbawks RPG and only ported to PC half a year later. They've had to scrape by with publisher work, demands and them constantly dictating the terms, handling layoffs and cancelled projects all the time and haven't fallen to producing iOS and Facecock games just yet like inXile, this is the only "PC title" since Neverwinter Nights 2 and their only title without publisher influence.

Yet inXile has done the very same thing, and they even have games under their belt vaguely reminiscient of RPGs too, and you got nothing to say about that?

Obsidian is not Black Isle. Obsidian has made their own CRPGs and they were bad. I'm not interested in any more games in that glorious tradition of Obsidian games.

Obsidian is as close to Black Isle as any company is going to be if it dissolves and people move on working somewhere else, most of the key people from back in the day are still there and they are still interested in making similar things, just didn't have the opportunity to do it until now.
I guess we will see in ~2 years if you have a reason to say "told you so" to everyone or not. I'm hoping for the best, and my biggest concern still is Sawyer.

Anyway, maybe Unity is all that and maybe it aint. If it aint, it seems that Obsidian is taking a huge gamble, trading known for the unknown, just to get 10-15% from the Linux community. Hopefully, they know what they are doing, but they did make some blunders in the past.

Make no mistake, I'm still not particularly happy about Unity, I'd rather they used their own or another engine and port it to Linux instead. I'm not a supporter of Unity in any way, but I still like to see Linux versions of as many games as possible.