Andhaira
Arcane
- Joined
- Nov 25, 2007
- Messages
- 1,868,993
From Kickstarter comments page:
Just quoting for posterity as we all know how this story is going to end.
Infinitron
Corey Cole 2-time creator on August 17
In 20-20 hindsight, we now know this game would have taken at least three years with the original graphics concept, and it would not have looked good. Why three years? That's the minimum time it took for Lori to write the game text and dialogue.
In any case, the point is moot. We didn't change graphic standards because we couldn't make up our minds. We changed them because the original programmer left the team, and the new team couldn't make the old code work. See my post from last month, "It Takes a Team", at http://hero-u.com/it-takes-a-team/.
Again, we had no choice about going from 2D isometric to 3D. Our team of programmers and artists struggled mightily for two years, and the 2D results did not work well (where players could click) and looked mediocre. When our artists showing us 3D images that looked as good as JP's 2D concept art, and the programmers could make them work much better, there was no question about switching.
I just want to make clear that neither of those changes was made hastily or by whim - they were what we had to do to make a good game.
We did the exact same thing on Quest for Glory V for a different reason - it was a beautiful, voxel-driven game in which the frame rate on an average computer dipped to 2 fps. Since that would have been unplayable, we converted everything to 3D polygons. The game looked much worse, but playable trumps unplayable.
As with Hero-U, that change was an expensive decision, adding a year of development, and possibly $2 million to the development cost. In hindsight, it would have been cheaper to use a 3rd party graphics engine, and we would likely have had a better-looking game, but it's impossible to guess these things in advance. When Sierra budgeted out the game at $1.5 million, spending $500,000 on a 3rd-party engine didn't look like a smart move.
We later learned from other Sierra developers that two other divisions of Sierra made the exact same mistake with King's Quest: Mask of Eternity and Gabriel Knight 3. Each group developed a custom 3D engine for each of those games, and none was up to the standard of the best 3rd party 3D engines.
We chose to develop Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption under Unity to avoid making the same mistake. It's an established engine used by thousands of other game companies, large and small. However, the engine does not write the game; it's just one small piece of the puzzle. Whichever engine we used, years of writing, art creation, and programming were still needed to put everything together. Predicting just how long proved impossible - the "first law of Frisbee" is "make no remark more predictive than 'Watch this!'" Soon we'll be able to say that about Hero-U.
Egoncasteel on August 17
"Estimated delivery: Oct 2013" coming up on 4 years overdue, and that's with double dipping with 2 Kickstarter campaigns. Here I thought I backed a Quest for Glory Game not Duke Nukem.
Corey Cole 2-time creator on August 17
We're right on schedule for that, Egon - we started work on Quest for Glory V in 1992, and the game shipped in 1998 - six years. We started design on Hero's Quest in 1982, and it shipped in 1989 - seven years. Then again, we started Hero-U design in 2003, about 14 years ago. Its first incarnation was an interactive web site.
Justin
Superbacker
on August 17
The only thing your last comments proves Corey is how utterly ignorant your original ETA was. In fact, since you keep bring up YOUR specific past projects as a reference then it pretty much shows you knowingly lied about your original ETA. I can't believe you would use such phrases as "we're right on schedule". What happened to keeping it real?
All our games took 6-7 years so this one is right on schedule!!!! Oh but um, we thought for some unknown alien reason that this was originally going to take only 1 year and we based that on um, well....purple cows!
Further more you lied again on your second kickstarter project because you estimated for them total time to be 4 years.....more purple cows?
Don't tell us this game is right on schedule based on YOUR experience when YOU are the one that told us it was only going to take 1 year, then you said 4 years, both of which have passed.
We keep going around in circle with this, I expect you to at least "keep it real". Quit with the nonsense comments. Absolutely nothing about this project is on schedule!
Redshlrt on August 26
Is there any info to share on the unusable programmer work mentioned in the 'Money Matters' update from 2015? I haven't been following all the updates and trying to play catch up and search through comments is tough. I'm curious why that much work had to be scrapped
John and Chantelle Pasula 4 days ago
RIP My backer money.
Corey Cole 2-time creator 4 days ago
@Redshirt: Sorry for the slow response. You asked about "unusable" work. Generally it's when a developer (artist or programmer) implements a prototype, but doesn't finish it. We scrapped most of the 2D characters and backgrounds because they looked bad in comparison to the later 3D work. We still have a small number of 2D props in the game, hopefully not noticeable to players.
Two different programmers worked on sound and music subsystems, but did not finish their work, and it didn't fit into the systems we're using now. One of our top early programmers prototyped multiple scenes of the game using a combination of 2D and 3D, but they looked very primitive next to later work, so we scrapped them and started over. We're also remaking the opening video, because the art style in it does not fit with the current look of the game.
I should emphasize that this is a normal aspect of all game development. We hope to avoid it each time (and sometimes do), but often have to "bite the bullet" and accept throwing out earlier work. Quest for Glory V was a case where we initially developed prototypes using 2D, switched to an in-house Voxel engine that looked great, but was too slow, then developed a traditional polygon-based 3D engine that was fast enough, but looked primitive. That caused the project to run years late and millions of dollars over budget.
On both Quest for Glory I and II, we had scenes that were fully developed, but didn't work as intended. The Kobold Cave in QG1 had crashing bugs and had to be completely rewritten. The harem scene in QG2 was originally "guess the programmer's mind about the right path to take or die", so we had that rewritten. Both of those changes delayed the project release, and were very dangerous to do at the last minute, but had to be done.
Other than Lori and me, John Paul Selwood is the only team member who has been with us throughout the project. We've even had him redo a lot of his own earlier work as the graphic style developed and as he is maturing as an artist.
Just quoting for posterity as we all know how this story is going to end.
Infinitron