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Vapourware Realms Beyond: Ashes of the Fallen - Chaos Chronicles reborn and dead again

Jarinex

Barely Literate
Joined
Oct 29, 2020
Messages
4
Mortmal said:
Let's not fetch your discord history , like true gentlemen.
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Go for it. You’ll see me being a pissy baby that we haven’t gotten updates recently about RB for a good while, then Hob said what was shown and I went “oh okay”. I have nothing to hide.
 
Dodo1610

Dodo1610

Arcane
Joined
May 3, 2018
Messages
2,172
Location
Germany
No one is dumb enough to give these guys money ever again. The Chaos Chronicles publisher went bankrupt and their new studio also has run out of money as well.
 
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Darth Canoli

Darth Canoli

Arcane
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Jun 8, 2018
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5,737
Location
Perched on a tree
Dodo1610 said:
No one is dumb enough to give these guys money ever again. The Chaos Chronicles publisher went bancrupt and their new studio also has run out of money as well.
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If they were serious, they would go on working on the game at a slower pace at home or during some week-ends while their money guy is trying to collect funds.
I'm quite sure it's easy enough to snatch CE funding if they can show an improved demo.
 
daveyd

daveyd

Savant
Joined
Jun 10, 2013
Messages
287
Darth Canoli said:
Dodo1610 said:
No one is dumb enough to give these guys money ever again. The Chaos Chronicles publisher went bancrupt and their new studio also has run out of money as well.
Click to expand...

If they were serious, they would go on working on the game at a slower pace at home or during some week-ends while their money guy is trying to collect funds.
I'm quite sure it's easy enough to snatch CE funding if they can show an improved demo.
Click to expand...

That is allegedly what they are are doing. There's apparently three people currently working on the game: The "CEO" / lead level designer (who is currently in negotiations with potential publishers), the programmer, and the writer / quest designer. But they're working on part time as they had to take on outside work for a source of income:


"It's going at a snail's pace right now as we gotta pay bills too

but the game and engine belongs to our company and we're not gonna toss it out".
 
MRY

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,719
Location
California
I think no one who hasn't made a game start to finish appreciates how much content it requires (no matter the genre), and even if you have, you still underestimate it massively, but perhaps a bit less massively than the uninitiated. Strangeland was supposed to be a 3-week project; it will be a 4-year one. Fallen Gods was supposed to be a 1-year project; it will be a 10-year one. I'm especially slow, of course, but the rule is true. Things that seem fun and fast when you're getting started become nightmarish slogs as you continue.

With full-on RPGs, getting the features in place is itself a huge hump, so when an indie RPG crosses the "all the features are there" threshold it seems like it should be reasonable to finish it. Not so! That's why even stuff like NWN mods, RPG Maker games, ChoiceScript text adventures, etc. get abandoned 1/3 of the way through (or 1/10, or 1/20, etc.). The more content you have, the more it interacts, the more content those interactions demand, etc., etc.

I first assumed this project would never succeed; then when they released the demo I allowed myself a glimmer of awed hope. Even I forgot the slog.
 
daveyd

daveyd

Savant
Joined
Jun 10, 2013
Messages
287
Those without access to the combat beta demo may also be under the impression there has been absolutely no discernible progress made since the it was released to us in May. But there have actually been quite a few small updates made to it over the summer. It has mostly been minor bug fixes, but they also squashed a rather persistent bug in August that had still been causing CTD when running it on Win 7. The beta is now very stable and while there's still a few bugs, and a few missing features (e.g., Rangers don't get "Favored Enemy" feat yet). the combat aspect is in pretty good shape overall.

I really have only a vague idea what state the game's actual official campaign is in, but it seems it is mostly the creation of content (quests) is the main thing that needs to be done before they can move to EA phase. It's definitely not a great situation for them to be in, but I don't think it's completely hopeless either.
 
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vazha

vazha

Arcane
Joined
Aug 24, 2013
Messages
2,069
MRY said:
I think no one who hasn't made a game start to finish appreciates how much content it requires (no matter the genre), and even if you have, you still underestimate it massively, but perhaps a bit less massively than the uninitiated. Strangeland was supposed to be a 3-week project; it will be a 4-year one. Fallen Gods was supposed to be a 1-year project; it will be a 10-year one. I'm especially slow, of course, but the rule is true. Things that seem fun and fast when you're getting started become nightmarish slogs as you continue.

With full-on RPGs, getting the features in place is itself a huge hump, so when an indie RPG crosses the "all the features are there" threshold it seems like it should be reasonable to finish it. Not so! That's why even stuff like NWN mods, RPG Maker games, ChoiceScript text adventures, etc. get abandoned 1/3 of the way through (or 1/10, or 1/20, etc.). The more content you have, the more it interacts, the more content those interactions demand, etc., etc.

I first assumed this project would never succeed; then when they released the demo I allowed myself a glimmer of awed hope. Even I forgot the slog.
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With all due respect, there is a reason why Cleve is considered to be an autist(ic genius). If you work on a game for more than 10 hours per week and require 10 years to complete a 5 hour game (which If I recall correctly is how long FG is going to be), you probably belong in the same league - not that it's a bad place to be necessarily, I am looking forward to play your game in whatever distant future it comes out.

No offense, just my take on things. The un-initiated vs adept argument doesnt really work in favour of Realms Beyond. They asked kickstarter support, they've got it, they asked for government grant, they ve got it, and to what end? a combat demo that might (very unlikely) materialize into a game in 5 years? SMH.
 
V_K

V_K

Arcane
Joined
Nov 3, 2013
Messages
7,714
Location
at a Nowhere near you
vazha said:
They asked kickstarter support, they've got it, they asked for government grant, they ve got it, and to what end?
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To be fair, their kickstarter is only 2 years old. In the world of video game kickstarters, that doesn't even count as overdue yet.
Compare that e.g. to Hero-U, which did a kickstarter, and then a follow-up kickstarter two years later, changed art direction four times and ultimately got delayed by 6 years - but it was still released and turned out a fairly solid, if disappointingly unremarkable, game.
 
MRY

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,719
Location
California
vazha said:
With all due respect, there is a reason why Cleve is considered to be an autist(ic genius). If you work on a game for more than 10 hours per week and require 10 years to complete a 5 hour game (which If I recall correctly is how long FG is going to be), you probably belong in the same league - not that it's a bad place to be necessarily, I am looking forward to play your game in whatever distant future it comes out.
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Well, 10 hours a week for 10 years is ~5000 hours, right? That is 2.5 full-time-equivalent (FTE) years, give or take, unless my math is wrong. Even pretty barebones RPGs from the good-old-days have many more designer FTEs than 2.5 years. And with a smaller freelance, part-time team, you wind up wearing a lot of hats (project manager, therapist, accountant, recruiter, tester, etc.).

None of this means I'm not an autist, or that FG will be good, or anything else. But it's not as crazy as you think. What's actually crazy is the idea that amateurs working in the marginal hours of a busy life should be able to make a game with fewer FTEs than full-time professionals giving their core working hours, no?

The un-initiated vs adept argument doesnt really work in favour of Realms Beyond. They asked kickstarter support, they've got it, they asked for government grant, they ve got it, and to what end? a combat demo that might (very unlikely) materialize into a game in 5 years? SMH.
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I was trying to explain where RB team may have go awry, not where RB's critics went awry. I think they grossly underestimated how long content would take to produce. Generally speaking, I think there is a huge trap which is "once systems are in place and basic scope is defined, it's a pretty short downhill road to completion." Hence the NWN, RPGMaker, etc. analogy. In theory, those projects should basically begin on the short downhill stage, and yet they, too, end up in the quagmire. Content is just really hard to make, especially quality content. (God knows whether I ever made any of that...)
 
vazha

vazha

Arcane
Joined
Aug 24, 2013
Messages
2,069
Romances! How could you all forget them romances? Everyone's romanceable, including kobolds.
 
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