I already had a feeling this game was going to end up shitty but changing something like this when they're supposed to be as far along as they are? Lol. RIP people who gave them money.
I will never feel sorry for people that put $10k into a kickstarter, I might feel sorry for their spouse.
er.. you mean we gamers should rely on the big publishers to make innovative games with a passionate dev-team? risky uncertain backing is supporting is caring is voting is encouraging is loving true games!
Makers of spatial OS got a huge lump of money because their tech has a good potential on making money. You need to have something more substantial than just words to attract investors.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
As the CEO of Dynamight Studios - the company working on Fractured, also based on SpatialOS - I feel compelled to chime in this discussion.
For us, SpatialOS has been working out extremely well so far. We've picked it as our engine of choice in February 2017, and we started developing Alpha 1 for Fractured in August, so I can say we've have quite some experience with it. I can give you a quick overlook on the pros and cons of SpatialOS from our perspective.
* * Pros* *
It integrates easily with existing game engines, particularly Unity - which was our choice.
It allows you to do all the things they claim - in particular, creating a large, seamless world, with a gazillion of entities in it, pushing a lot of physics. It's scalable, and load-balancing works well.
They provide hosting and distribution of the game too.
They keep releasing updates - it's so much better now than it was, say, 8 months ago.
* * Cons* *
* It's relatively new and you can feel it: bugs and various issues still exist.
* It's relatively new and you can feel it 2: documentation is not where it should be yet.
* The fact you can use all that backend power doesn't mean you shouldn't optimize.
* * How it's been for us* *
A blessing! It's literally a blessing for an indie team with limited resources.
Sure, it can't do everything - like the post says, you have to make an authentication system yourself, plus ways to handle all the non-spatial systems and information. Authentication is trivial though, and Fractured doesn't have a lot of global information to handle. Moreover, we could fit our whole AI system (and likely others systems the CoE post doesn't mention) into SpatialOS workers.
In the end, there's one thing the Caspian himself said in his post that many seem to have ignored:
Their technology is still an extremely powerful solution for virtually all distributed simulations out there. But for our particular technology choices and game mechanics, it just wasn’t the ideal solution.
* * TL;DR* *
The fact SpatialOS wasn't a good fit for CoE doesn't mean it's "full of s...", "not delivering what it promises" and other claims I've read. It's a very powerful platform, with some issues related to its young age but constantly improving, and working out really well for other projects - including ours, Fractured.
As the CEO of Dynamight Studios - the company working on Fractured, also based on SpatialOS - I feel compelled to chime in this discussion.
For us, SpatialOS has been working out extremely well so far. We've picked it as our engine of choice in February 2017, and we started developing Alpha 1 for Fractured in August, so I can say we've have quite some experience with it. I can give you a quick overlook on the pros and cons of SpatialOS from our perspective.
* * Pros* *
It integrates easily with existing game engines, particularly Unity - which was our choice.
It allows you to do all the things they claim - in particular, creating a large, seamless world, with a gazillion of entities in it, pushing a lot of physics. It's scalable, and load-balancing works well.
They provide hosting and distribution of the game too.
They keep releasing updates - it's so much better now than it was, say, 8 months ago.
* * Cons* *
* It's relatively new and you can feel it: bugs and various issues still exist.
* It's relatively new and you can feel it 2: documentation is not where it should be yet.
* The fact you can use all that backend power doesn't mean you shouldn't optimize.
* * How it's been for us* *
A blessing! It's literally a blessing for an indie team with limited resources.
Sure, it can't do everything - like the post says, you have to make an authentication system yourself, plus ways to handle all the non-spatial systems and information. Authentication is trivial though, and Fractured doesn't have a lot of global information to handle. Moreover, we could fit our whole AI system (and likely others systems the CoE post doesn't mention) into SpatialOS workers.
In the end, there's one thing the Caspian himself said in his post that many seem to have ignored:
Their technology is still an extremely powerful solution for virtually all distributed simulations out there. But for our particular technology choices and game mechanics, it just wasn’t the ideal solution.
* * TL;DR* *
The fact SpatialOS wasn't a good fit for CoE doesn't mean it's "full of s...", "not delivering what it promises" and other claims I've read. It's a very powerful platform, with some issues related to its young age but constantly improving, and working out really well for other projects - including ours, Fractured.
I understand that you want to defend your own project but without skipping over the whole thread again: I believe the general complaint is that Caspian promised way too much. Too much for Spatial to handle.
Now he abanded Spatial for ..something else?.. claiming that this will work better than Spatial.
No one really believes that getting rid of Spatial will make things better.
I already had a feeling this game was going to end up shitty but changing something like this when they're supposed to be as far along as they are? Lol. RIP people who gave them money.
I will never feel sorry for people that put $10k into a kickstarter, I might feel sorry for their spouse.
er.. you mean we gamers should rely on the big publishers to make innovative games with a passionate dev-team? risky uncertain backing is supporting is caring is voting is encouraging is loving true games!
Makers of spatial OS got a huge lump of money because their tech has a good potential on making money. You need to have something more substantial than just words to attract investors.
Yea, this "investor" attitude seems quite common, but i think it´s inapt for this context, as the typical "backer" is a player who don´t get any monetary profits back from his "investment".
One could see such crowdfunding as a kind of collective, solidary effort. Like, you and your friends make a bbq, everyone spend some money for the ingredients and the best skilled making the salads and does the grilling.
I already had a feeling this game was going to end up shitty but changing something like this when they're supposed to be as far along as they are? Lol. RIP people who gave them money.
I will never feel sorry for people that put $10k into a kickstarter, I might feel sorry for their spouse.
er.. you mean we gamers should rely on the big publishers to make innovative games with a passionate dev-team? risky uncertain backing is supporting is caring is voting is encouraging is loving true games!
Makers of spatial OS got a huge lump of money because their tech has a good potential on making money. You need to have something more substantial than just words to attract investors.
Yea, this "investor" attitude seems quite common, but i think it´s inapt for this context, as the typical "backer" is a player who don´t get any monetary profits back from his "investment".
One could see such crowdfunding as a kind of collective, solidary effort. Like, you and your friends make a bbq, everyone spend some money for the ingredients and the best skilled making the salads and does the grilling.
Yup...just like that... except you gave your friend money for the BBQ and the party was supposed to be Sunday.. but then your friend tells you he couldn't buy the ingredients so the BBQ is postponed. He won't tell you when the BBQ will be, but now just tells you when he expects to go and buy the individual ingredients. Then to top it off he just told you that the Webber Grill he promised to use you money on was too expensive so instead he and his 2 buddies are fabricating their own grill in the garage.
Don't worry Bro.. we got this!
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
I already had a feeling this game was going to end up shitty but changing something like this when they're supposed to be as far along as they are? Lol. RIP people who gave them money.
I will never feel sorry for people that put $10k into a kickstarter, I might feel sorry for their spouse.
er.. you mean we gamers should rely on the big publishers to make innovative games with a passionate dev-team? risky uncertain backing is supporting is caring is voting is encouraging is loving true games!
Makers of spatial OS got a huge lump of money because their tech has a good potential on making money. You need to have something more substantial than just words to attract investors.
Yea, this "investor" attitude seems quite common, but i think it´s inapt for this context, as the typical "backer" is a player who don´t get any monetary profits back from his "investment".
One could see such crowdfunding as a kind of collective, solidary effort. Like, you and your friends make a bbq, everyone spend some money for the ingredients and the best skilled making the salads and does the grilling.
Yup...just like that... except you gave your friend money for the BBQ and the party was supposed to be Sunday.. but then your friend tells you he couldn't buy the ingredients so the BBQ is postponed. He won't tell you when the BBQ will be, but now just tells you when he expects to go and buy the individual ingredients. Then to top it off he just told you that the Webber Grill he promised to use you money on was too expensive so instead he and his 2 buddies are fabricating their own grill in the garage.
Don't worry Bro.. we got this!
And the guy that's supposed to be the "best skilled" that's "making the salads and does the grilling" is really just a guy who roleplays being skilled at making salads and doing grilling.
I already had a feeling this game was going to end up shitty but changing something like this when they're supposed to be as far along as they are? Lol. RIP people who gave them money.
And the reason that can make a change like this, is because there has been no development. And probably never will be.
"So Mr. Caspian, you would like us to invest in your project?"
"Yes sir, that's right."
"Hmm, well, how about you show me what you have so far"
"Sure. If you'd just close your eyes and picture this............."
I already had a feeling this game was going to end up shitty but changing something like this when they're supposed to be as far along as they are? Lol. RIP people who gave them money.
I will never feel sorry for people that put $10k into a kickstarter, I might feel sorry for their spouse.
er.. you mean we gamers should rely on the big publishers to make innovative games with a passionate dev-team? risky uncertain backing is supporting is caring is voting is encouraging is loving true games!
For real? How long have indie developers attempted to use crowd funding to develop a multiplayer online title? How many successful examples do we have so far? How many failed or stagnated examples do we have so far? And COE now appears to also be under that 2nd category as well
And you come in here and post as if there is an actual choice?
If anything history is proving that you cannot develop an MMORPG on crowdfunding.
Briefly read the CoE forums to get a sense of the backer feeling over there after the SpatialOS news. Seems the biggest negative response to the announcement is one backer being "worried slightly". No one else seems to really care.
Briefly read the CoE forums to get a sense of the backer feeling over there after the SpatialOS news. Seems the biggest negative response to the announcement is one backer being "worried slightly". No one else seems to really care.
How is that even possible?
At this point CoE's terrible predicament is so obvious to any average person that the only ones left backing it are extreme ones who wouldn't be phased at all by news like this.
Briefly read the CoE forums to get a sense of the backer feeling over there after the SpatialOS news. Seems the biggest negative response to the announcement is one backer being "worried slightly". No one else seems to really care.
How is that even possible?
Do you REALLY need to ask that?
There are a total of 52 responses to the big State of Elyria 2018 update... There is double that in this thread alone and another 120 in the other MMORPG.COM thread on the same subject.. so let's call it 5 times the responses...
You are right... the vast majority of those "16,000" are pretty disengaged. I'd guess that most at this point have written it off. I mean, you would think that with a community of "over 200,000" forum members they would be having a lively discussion over there. Not just about the SpatialOS stuff, but about all the other parts of the SoE. Instead... silence.
Silence is golden right guys?
It's OK. Some day they are going to have to demonstrate a server with "Hundreds of Thousands" of characters simultaneously logged in. If they have lag, desync, and thousands of bugs we will know they failed. If they get it working well they will be hailed as geniuses.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
AHHhhhhh story time, sits back with a large glass of KoolAid provided free of charge from the investors committee and wonders if the new Dev the Rev J Jones will have any input in this meeting/adventure/storytime.
Hmmm... the second post on the Dev Journal is hilarious... and explains much. At least we know.. (well, pretty sure) it's not the crazy Drake guy again.
That sure was some solid feedback discussing concerns about the switch from SpatialOS...
Edit to add: Just 3 posts to the magic 7777... I hope I remember to make it memorable!
You know I do think SBS is definitely doing one thing wrong, and it is unfortunate. In their attempt to be transparent with their community it only gives all the Naysayers more ammunition to use against them and point the finger.
The transparency is awesome for those that understand creating anything is a process and sometimes things need to change for whatever reasons. But for those that don't understand than it is just something they can pull out when needed and try to ruin the credibility of something.
Yeah good thing they're transparent, because had he not been transparent of these ridiculous time lines then you guys wouldn't have gladly swallowed the possible 2019/2020 ETA. I guess as long as you're "transparent" or honest about something, it doesn't matter what you do, right?
If they shut down tomorrow and the reason given was "Sorry folks, we got fucked up', you better not try to get your money back because they were being transparent.
Reading your posts makes me think something is not right with you.
CSE basically added 2 years to the development of Camelot Unchained in order to build their own engine to do the things SpatialOS can and what Soulbound wants for CoE. I'm interested to learn why Soulbound thinks they can build their own solution so quickly without impacting development time much.
CSE basically added 2 years to the development of Camelot Unchained in order to build their own engine to do the things SpatialOS can and what Soulbound wants for CoE. I'm interested to learn why Soulbound thinks they can build their own solution so quickly without impacting development time much.
Pretty sure CU is not planning "Hundreds of thousands" of persistent characters on a single server either. Those characters never log off and will remain in game, fully functional even when the players log out. THAT is the part which will be fascinating for CoE to demonstrate. If they did this in-house with a few guys in a few months it would be revolutionary. We would never need more than 1 server for a game ever again.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
CSE basically added 2 years to the development of Camelot Unchained in order to build their own engine to do the things SpatialOS can and what Soulbound wants for CoE. I'm interested to learn why Soulbound thinks they can build their own solution so quickly without impacting development time much.
Pretty sure CU is not planning "Hundreds of thousands" of persistent characters on a single server either. Those characters never log off and will remain in game, fully functional even when the players log out. THAT is the part which will be fascinating for CoE to demonstrate. If they did this in-house with a few guys in a few months it would be revolutionary. We would never need more than 1 server for a game ever again.
The point of the server tech like SpatialOS is that it isn't really one shard. It dynamically combines different server shards seamlessly. The operational power of each single shard can be very limited depending on the demands of the game. They may just have 50, 100, 200 players in one area or what ever the graphic demands can handle.
Technically CU could scale unlimited land masses and nearly unlimited players but they want a finite player base per server to create the "server pride" wanted from pop limited factions.
It's more about how they want to utilize the tech customized to their own game and 1000+ players per single battle in a finite puzzle like game world is their goal over spreading the population out in order to emulate nearly unlimited, scaling kingdoms.
The main difference between the 2 games (and likely where the time in development differs specifically related to dynamic server scaling as further enforced from interview link above) is that CoE needs nowhere near the optimization CU requires. CoE runs much like ESO where close up visuals are highly detailed but long range visuals are degraded by LoS blocking and limited draw distance with distance fog. CU has nearly unrestricted viewing distance ... likely the furthest any mmorpg has ever attempted. CoE likely only will handle a fraction of the players in one single battle compared to CU as well.
My guess as to why SBS thinks they can get away with their own tech development quickly is because of how they plan on utilizing it. They don't need to adjust the base game engine that builds the game as it doesn't need to scale locally worth shit ... only slapping together physical servers dynamically through cloud tech is required with each only handling limited demands per server.
Comments
For us, SpatialOS has been working out extremely well so far. We've picked it as our engine of choice in February 2017, and we started developing Alpha 1 for Fractured in August, so I can say we've have quite some experience with it. I can give you a quick overlook on the pros and cons of SpatialOS from our perspective.
* * Pros* *
It integrates easily with existing game engines, particularly Unity - which was our choice.
It allows you to do all the things they claim - in particular, creating a large, seamless world, with a gazillion of entities in it, pushing a lot of physics. It's scalable, and load-balancing works well.
They provide hosting and distribution of the game too.
They keep releasing updates - it's so much better now than it was, say, 8 months ago.
* * Cons* *
* It's relatively new and you can feel it: bugs and various issues still exist.
* It's relatively new and you can feel it 2: documentation is not where it should be yet.
* The fact you can use all that backend power doesn't mean you shouldn't optimize.
* * How it's been for us* *
A blessing! It's literally a blessing for an indie team with limited resources.
Sure, it can't do everything - like the post says, you have to make an authentication system yourself, plus ways to handle all the non-spatial systems and information. Authentication is trivial though, and Fractured doesn't have a lot of global information to handle. Moreover, we could fit our whole AI system (and likely others systems the CoE post doesn't mention) into SpatialOS workers.
In the end, there's one thing the Caspian himself said in his post that many seem to have ignored:
Their technology is still an extremely powerful solution for virtually all distributed simulations out there. But for our particular technology choices and game mechanics, it just wasn’t the ideal solution.
* * TL;DR* *
The fact SpatialOS wasn't a good fit for CoE doesn't mean it's "full of s...", "not delivering what it promises" and other claims I've read. It's a very powerful platform, with some issues related to its young age but constantly improving, and working out really well for other projects - including ours, Fractured.
I believe the general complaint is that Caspian promised way too much.
Too much for Spatial to handle.
Now he abanded Spatial for ..something else?.. claiming that this will work better than Spatial.
No one really believes that getting rid of Spatial will make things better.
One could see such crowdfunding as a kind of collective, solidary effort. Like, you and your friends make a bbq, everyone spend some money for the ingredients and the best skilled making the salads and does the grilling.
Don't worry Bro.. we got this!
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
"So Mr. Caspian, you would like us to invest in your project?"
"Yes sir, that's right."
"Hmm, well, how about you show me what you have so far"
"Sure. If you'd just close your eyes and picture this............."
How long have indie developers attempted to use crowd funding to develop a multiplayer online title? How many successful examples do we have so far? How many failed or stagnated examples do we have so far? And COE now appears to also be under that 2nd category as well
And you come in here and post as if there is an actual choice?
If anything history is proving that you cannot develop an MMORPG on crowdfunding.
How is that even possible?
There are a total of 52 responses to the big State of Elyria 2018 update... There is double that in this thread alone and another 120 in the other MMORPG.COM thread on the same subject.. so let's call it 5 times the responses...
You are right... the vast majority of those "16,000" are pretty disengaged. I'd guess that most at this point have written it off. I mean, you would think that with a community of "over 200,000" forum members they would be having a lively discussion over there. Not just about the SpatialOS stuff, but about all the other parts of the SoE. Instead... silence.
Silence is golden right guys?
It's OK. Some day they are going to have to demonstrate a server with "Hundreds of Thousands" of characters simultaneously logged in. If they have lag, desync, and thousands of bugs we will know they failed. If they get it working well they will be hailed as geniuses.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
AHHhhhhh story time, sits back with a large glass of KoolAid provided free of charge from the investors committee and wonders if the new Dev the Rev J Jones will have any input in this meeting/adventure/storytime.
At least we know.. (well, pretty sure) it's not the crazy Drake guy again.
That sure was some solid feedback discussing concerns about the switch from SpatialOS...
Edit to add: Just 3 posts to the magic 7777... I hope I remember to make it memorable!
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
If they shut down tomorrow and the reason given was "Sorry folks, we got fucked up', you better not try to get your money back because they were being transparent.
Reading your posts makes me think something is not right with you.
You stay sassy!
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Jump to minute 27 and listen to how he talks about SpatialOS and how it was being used. That was just 3 months ago.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Technically CU could scale unlimited land masses and nearly unlimited players but they want a finite player base per server to create the "server pride" wanted from pop limited factions.
It's more about how they want to utilize the tech customized to their own game and 1000+ players per single battle in a finite puzzle like game world is their goal over spreading the population out in order to emulate nearly unlimited, scaling kingdoms.
The main difference between the 2 games (and likely where the time in development differs specifically related to dynamic server scaling as further enforced from interview link above) is that CoE needs nowhere near the optimization CU requires. CoE runs much like ESO where close up visuals are highly detailed but long range visuals are degraded by LoS blocking and limited draw distance with distance fog. CU has nearly unrestricted viewing distance ... likely the furthest any mmorpg has ever attempted. CoE likely only will handle a fraction of the players in one single battle compared to CU as well.
My guess as to why SBS thinks they can get away with their own tech development quickly is because of how they plan on utilizing it. They don't need to adjust the base game engine that builds the game as it doesn't need to scale locally worth shit ... only slapping together physical servers dynamically through cloud tech is required with each only handling limited demands per server.
You stay sassy!
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018