Two mistakes from Star vault.

kishe

1)Too big of a project with way too small crew:

While their crew has talent needed (f.ex. parts of their art team used to work for ubisoft) They are way too undercrewed. They have 1-2 people per "department" so if two people gets sick at same time, the whole development of the game gets stalled.

This is the reason they cant cycle vacations either, if one of the three programmers are on vacation, level builders wont be able to work and if levelbuilders cant work, then artists and sound department cant work...because they're all dependant on each others work progress to actually get something done.

2)Saving money on where it counts:

 

Instead of licensing Unreal engine 3 from Epic games USA, they desided to save money by licensing it from Epic games china. While this saves them money it delays them by whole lot because Epic Games Chinas unreal engine 3 doesnt have things like Speedtree 5 yet while Epic Games USA's does so before Epic Games China gets it and sends SV the patch, SV is without speedtree technology that was promised to them.

 

For game boxes they went for south european sweatshop company that basically took their money and promised to get back at them. By the time the boxed copies are taking, I guess the CEO of the sweatshop has new address in Bahamas.

 

 

 

Galadourn

I think their decision to license UE3 from Epic China is related to the Titan platform (an MMO platform for UE) that is being developed by Epic China...could be wrong though

Lord_Ixigan

If Epic-China actually promised them speedtree 5 in any particular time-frame and they don't deliver and it's in writing then SV can just sue them.

I don't know who they used to make their boxes, but it seems like it wasn't a very large company so they may have just gotten shafted and there's nothing they can do about it. Depending on how many boxes were ordered and if the money actually was taken then I would imagine that SV would have just shut down and declared bankruptcy by now since they probably wouldn't have the money to either refund everybody's money or go find another publishing house (or whatever they're called). Since that isn't the case then I guess we'll just have to see what happens.

My guess is as we get further into the month (and the new year) we're going to find out very quickly what is going to happen.

If their money was stolen then they might just declare bankruptcy....unless there is some sort of corporate protection/insurance they have that they can use to replace the losses and find someone else to make their boxes. Does anyone have any information on what SV might be able to do if they were scammed?

I dunno if the Swedish government has a shield fund for this kind of thing, wouldn't surprise me, but I have no idea.

Vulpeculae

You are totally wrong in point 2. Epic Games US provides the Unreal Engine to the western world, and Epic Games China are the provider of the Unreal Engine in East Asia. However, Epic China is also the creator of the Atlas Technology which is Epic's MMOG solution which they provide world-wide.

The reason it takes time is that after Epic US implemeted ST5 in the engine itself, Epic China has to implement it  to the network solution (aka Atlas) as well.

So SV licenced UE3.5 from Epic US and Atlas from Epic China.

Galadourn

you're right, it's Atlas technology not Titan, my mistake

Slapshot1188

Originally posted by Lord_Ixigan


If Epic-China actually promised them speedtree 5 in any particular time-frame and they don't deliver and it's in writing then SV can just sue them.
I don't know who they used to make their boxes, but it seems like it wasn't a very large company so they may have just gotten shafted and there's nothing they can do about it. Depending on how many boxes were ordered and if the money actually was taken then I would imagine that SV would have just shut down and declared bankruptcy by now since they probably wouldn't have the money to either refund everybody's money or go find another publishing house (or whatever they're called). Since that isn't the case then I guess we'll just have to see what happens.
My guess is as we get further into the month (and the new year) we're going to find out very quickly what is going to happen.
If their money was stolen then they might just declare bankruptcy....unless there is some sort of corporate protection/insurance they have that they can use to replace the losses and find someone else to make their boxes. Does anyone have any information on what SV might be able to do if they were scammed?
I dunno if the Swedish government has a shield fund for this kind of thing, wouldn't surprise me, but I have no idea.

 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Maybe SV should file a Claims and Defenses request with their card company like the rest of us are doing against SV... 

Maybe the box company told them it would "probably" ship in Sept... but now are telling them it will ship "eventually"...

Hope they used a charge card.

 

ProfRed

I don't know on #1.  They are running into problems, but a sandbox is the only MMO a indy company can make.  You basically have to create a world, create base game systems that define a sandbox, and then drop in your npc's to populate the world.  I think they can pull it off if they can stay afloat.  Darkfall is turning more and more into a PvP centric game without many sandbox qualities going forward while MO is trying to model itself after UO with a much more open sandbox.

I wouldn't get all doom and gloom yet. 

r1tual

I agree it might be a bumpy road now but you all might be swalling what you say in the future and admitting StarVault pulled it off.

We need to withhold judgement until they release the game and get a few gold stage patches under their belt. 

 

 

The game still has alot of potential to be a great game.   its a given there will be problems during beta and development,  lets just wait and see what happens.  Judging them now isnt right.

Loke666

Uhm, both 2 points just said that they have very little money.

Can a team with 3 programmers pull of a successful MMO? Well, I know 3 programmers that quited from Blizzard and made their own game: Guildwars. Sold more than 6 million copies (but I guess they hired in more people as soon as they started earning money). It is possible to make a low budget game with few people. Arenanet however had Jeff Strain, he is still the best MMO programmer out there. SV better have good programmers.

It is hard to live as an indie company and I hope they pull it off but it is a really hard thing. We wont know one thing or another until the game actually releases.

thinktank001

I still think their biggest mistakes were:

- Scope to big

- Full pay beta

 

I know people go googoo-gaagaa over the prebuilt software packages, but in the end they really don't save time.  It just means the programmers spend more time debugging their licensed code instead of building their own, and knowing exactly where the bug came from.