Development Info Kingdom Come: Deliverance Update: The Trials of Game Development

[DarkUnderlord]

Wow, they're fucked. They hired way too many people and with a lack of crystal clear design document, are now wasting time fielding ideas from them.

I ignore them and they feel like the ship is tossing in the waves without a helmsman.​

Watch this game lose sight of its design goal, drift into development hell and run out of funds again. It sounds like they're having arguments because people aren't sure what's going on and no-one's in charge... That's a death-knell.

If you hire 30 people, it's because you have clearly articulated jobs for them (We need models developed for this list of creatures / characters, we need X textures for this, we need this many towns built along these lines... and if you don't have that, you hire the concept artist to design the towns and sign off on their concept before you hire the 10 people to build it). Not because "we can now do twice as much! lol".

Right now, they're paying a lot of guys to twiddle their thumbs while they wait.

 

[flabbyjack]

Concur with DU.
This game sounded very cool. Then I looked into it. Now -- not so promising.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Ya let's threat him like a moron because he's actually being honest and transparent about the development.

He could also not say anything and you would have the impression everything is going according to the euphoric creative vibe all the KickScammers try to display.

If he was truly fucked he wouldn't outright say it. Be glad he's being transparent about the difficulties of running a project instead of all the con artists like Fargo, Robert or the Harebrains

I have a former classmate who is now working as an engineer in poland for a portuguese multinational construction company and the shit he tells me about how people work there is beyond the pale, even worse than working in Angola were his exact words, so it doesnt surprise me when Eastern european developers and proper project development don't seem to go very well hand in hand.

Czech republic is a first world western country. Wealthier than Portugal.

 

[sser]

The $1,500,000 stretch goal was a Project Manager.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Fucking typical lack of respect for the source material. Bet they screw up Captain Marvel and completely cut Batman and the non-powered faction.

 

[ZoddGuts]

Wow, they're fucked. They hired way too many people and with a lack of crystal clear design document, are now wasting time fielding ideas from them.

I ignore them and they feel like the ship is tossing in the waves without a helmsman.​

Watch this game lose sight of its design goal, drift into development hell and run out of funds again. It sounds like they're having arguments because people aren't sure what's going on and no-one's in charge... That's a death-knell.

If you hire 30 people, it's because you have clearly articulated jobs for them (We need models developed for this list of creatures / characters, we need X textures for this, we need this many towns built along these lines... and if you don't have that, you hire the concept artist to design the towns and sign off on their concept before you hire the 10 people to build it). Not because "we can now do twice as much! lol".

Right now, they're paying a lot of guys to twiddle their thumbs while they wait.

Reminds me of Double Fine situation with Broken Age.

 

[Markman]

Kingdom Come: (Under)Deliverance

 

[Haba]

Project and scope management are always the biggest challenges in projects that involve "creative" people with "ideas". You need to have a crystal clear vision and an iron will to enforce that vision.

Or then you need a whole lot of luck.

 

[markec]

They should have focus on main features, create something remotely playable and put it on Steam Early Access. But they decided right course of action would be digging a large money hole, year later they can put a monument over it in honor of this vaporware.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Crystal clear design documents and highly efficient planning sound nice in theory, but I would guess that they don't happen very often in the real world. In fact, there is a whole popular approach to developing software called agile development which pretty much counts on unexpected stuff coming up all the time, and allows developers to adjust to it. Now that doesn't mean you shouldn't plan at all, or run a company like a frat house, but I just think some of you are reading way too much into his comments. They got more money than they expected, the past year has been pretty wild and unpredictable for them, and they've been running around like headless chickens trying to get all of that stuff done. Also, hiring people can be complicated and have to be done in advance, since some of them are foreigners or might get another job or whatever else, you might not be able to hire them at the exact moment when you need them.

We won't know how well that company is managed for a while yet, but based on what they've managed to accomplish so far with a skeleton crew and small budget, I wouldn't panic just yet.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Czech republic is a first world western country. Wealthier than Portugal.

Those mainland degenerates have twice the Czech Republics GNI, in Portugal you are less likely to be murdered, raped, unemployed or fat.

Spoiler

I cherry picked all those statistics, to make Portugal look superior, something that will haunt me to the end of my days... i need to atone for this somehow.

Concerning the game, i predict this will hit Steam early access with an unfinished mediocre release, due to lack of funds in an attempt to stay afloat. Or it will be canceled outright.

 

[Haba]

Crystal clear design documents and highly efficient planning sound nice in theory, but I would guess that they don't happen very often in the real world. In fact, there is a whole popular approach to developing software called agile development which pretty much counts on unexpected stuff coming up all the time, and allows developers to adjust to it.

Agile relies in a clear plan with a predefined scope like everything else. Agile is agile in reacting to changing circumstances. It doesn't mean that you should intentionally change those circumstances all the time, no development method can cope with that. You need to have predefined milestones with agile as well.

Besides, all game development tends to be "agile" anyway.

 

[Metro]

Did anyone expect anything less from the Vav-meister. This thing had trainwreck written on it from the getgo. Most developers are utterly lost without publisher constraints.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Agile relies in a clear plan with a predefined scope like everything else. Agile is agile in reacting to changing circumstances.

Those two statements contradict each other, no? Changing circumstances can very easily change both your "clear" plan and your scope. You do still need to plan of course with agile development, but as Vavra mentions in that blog post, they've got a pretty detailed design document. It's just that all his work on getting the game published/kickstarted in the past year kept him from finishing that up.

It doesn't mean that you should intentionally change those circumstances all the time, no development method can cope with that.

How are they intentionally changing circumstances?

 

[Haba]

By adding trivial features that are outside of the scope? I'm not specifically talking about KCD since I haven't seen the the project plan.

But... I.e. if you're making a survival game where survival simulation is the core, adding fishing makes sense. If you are making a story-driven game, fishing is fluff that should be cut - unless you have spare time.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

By adding trivial features that are outside of the scope? I'm not specifically talking about KCD since I haven't seen the the project plan.

But... I.e. if you're making a survival game where survival simulation is the core, adding fishing makes sense. If you are making a story-driven game, fishing is fluff that should be cut - unless you have spare time.

Adding trivial features like what though? Fishing was in their scope since the beginning, since it was shown in some of those early Kickstarter videos. Maybe you are referring to the player being able to work as an innkeep, something that was talked about in that last blog? But if that's the case, Vavra mentions that once they realized that it would take a nontrivial amount of work to be implemented, they decided against it, so seems to me like they are avoiding that sort of thing.

 

[DeepOcean]

Reminds me of Double Fine situation with Broken Age.

Man... they would truly need to FUCK IT up to reach that stage, Double Fine failed doing a fucking casual adventure game and Daniel Vavra doesn't seems like a self deluded, immune to cristicism asshole like Tim Schafer is.

 

[NotAGolfer]

By adding trivial features that are outside of the scope? I'm not specifically talking about KCD since I haven't seen the the project plan.

But... I.e. if you're making a survival game where survival simulation is the core, adding fishing makes sense. If you are making a story-driven game, fishing is fluff that should be cut - unless you have spare time.

Adding trivial features like what though? Fishing was in their scope since the beginning, since it was shown in some of those early Kickstarter videos. Maybe you are referring to the player being able to work as an innkeep, something that was talked about in that last blog? But if that's the case, Vavra mentions that once they realized that it would take a nontrivial amount of work to be implemented, they decided against it, so seems to me like they are avoiding that sort of thing.

Tbh I don't see much difference between fishing and innkeeping. Both are minor leisure activities that are supposed to increase immersion and reactivity of the game world, but take away focus from fleshing out the core gameplay. Worst case scenario: A medieval theme park with lots of boring minigames and opportunities to waste time but not much actual content besides the main story... something like a medieval GTA, only even more boring, since galopping isn't suited for hot pursuits, wheelies and monster stunts and there aren't even 'splosions. Everything gets better with 'splosions ... maybe except Michael Bay movies.

 

[Metro]

I WANT TO BE A DRAGON... that manages an inn.

 

[Zeriel]

I WANT TO BE A DRAGON... that manages an inn.

Dragon inn. Take on the challenge of making sure all the highrolling Ancient Wyrms have an elf princess courtesan to serve them when they come in, but watch out for lowly draconians trying to sneak in.

 

[Metro]

Sounds like Larian's next Biowarian dialogue tree disaster.