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Trials of Ascension: $50,000 Goal Met - Now Pushing to "Release the Dragons"
BMunchausen
Staff WriterMMORPG.COM Staff Posts: 400
Forged Chaos has steadily gained financial ground for its fantasy MMO Trials of Ascension, and is now looking toward its next four crowd-funding milestones with its Release the Dragons campaign. If reached, the next three goals will enable them to give players concept previews of the game's dragons and upon reaching the fourth, Forged Chaos will be able to assure the presence of dragons. Whoo!
The next four funding goals breakdown as follows:
$52,500 Concept art revealed for fire and frost dragon hatchling and young ages.
$55,000 Concept art revealed for fire and frost dragon juvenile and adolescent ages.
$57,500 Concept art revealed for fire and frost dragon adult and ancient ages.
$60,000 Dragons will be a PLAYABLE RACE at the launch of the game!
For details regarding backing rewards for the Release the Dragons campaign, visit Trials of Ascension's online store.
Comments
Release date? This game has been in development for like 10 years, they had a failed KS for like a million dollars and don´t even have the basics done so they can put up a demo after 10 years?
They have a lot of cool concepts, but anyone can sit at McDonalds and jot down some concepts on a napkin. At some point ( 10 years) you have to actually be able to show some of those concepts working in game, that you have a clue how to code and script stuff.
I wish these type of games would disappear and just come back when you actually have something, ANYTHING that resemples a game that will be released within 2 years.
10 years ago ? Was it before or after WoW released ?
I was just guesstimating. I know that in 2006 they ´officially´ announced they were abandoning the project.. I am not sure how many years it was into the development until that point. Then I guess Kickstarter came into being and they thought they could use that, so they put up a website and tried a Kickstarter last year, that was cancelled shortly before it was about to fail ( they were at like 80k out of 750k).
So definitely more than 8 years in development, and nothing more than a few screenshots. If you look at their ´roadmap of development´ it is only talking about a ´demo´ and still major systems are at 0%. Crafting and Magic both at 0% development for a DEMO of a game that has been in development for more than 8 years.
Almost all the cool features they talk about are not even started, again.. napkin development.
The first time I heard about it was last year with the first kickstarter, before that it could easily have been on ice and was only concepts on paper.
Didn't it take 10 years to make diablo 3 ? With all of blizzard ressources...
So a small group of people without any backers doing an mmo , yea you can expect it to take a really long time.
Honestly, as a Unity developer myself. I almost think this is a scam. I just looked at their video (1) on youtube. Everything they are showing is basically the default settings you get with Unity. A person could literally download Unity for free, and do what they showed with the default Unity assets in under 4 hours.
A 10 minute video, and the first 5 minutes of it, he doesn´t even move the character. They don´t have the camera working properly, nor do they have the trees affected by wind ( something that takes 2 seconds to do). There is no GUI, no inventory system, no actionbar, no nothing. Just a guy standing in the middle of a small area filled with assets that you get with Unity for free.
I am not calling this vaporware, but this is a game that is never getting released. If in all these years you don´t have a GUI, or don´t have an inventory system, or combat system... then the really cool things they are talking about are never going to happen.
This entire game right now is the default Unity engine and napkin notes.
They had a lot of hype back around 2005, then near the end of 2006 they said the game was suspended indefinitely because they didn´t have any money to make it. At that point, there was nothing ever shown of the actual game, just a lot of talk from the dev about what he had planned. I don´t think they even had screenshots.
Well they had some wind effects in the dynamic spawning video they have on the website, but other than that it just looks like generic objects you get for free so you are 100% correct.
Smile
The wind effect is called a ´wind zone´ it takes 3 seconds to add it to an area and it automatically blows grass and trees that are placed with the default unity engine. it comes with a nice breeze as default, but you can adjust it to have gusts or be more gentle. The reason the palm trees aren´t blowing is because they placed those couple trees manually and probably didn´t know how to script them ( add a default script) that makes them also blow with the wind.
All they have to do is select the tree and then hit ´add script´ and then select a default wind effect script and the palm tree would blow ... also and assuming they used the same prefab, it would affect all of the palm trees they placed manually.
Again, like I said, anyone, right now, could download Unity for free and do exactly what they showed in that video in under 4 hours.
If they don´t know how to add wind effects to trees, and they don´t know how to add mouse-scroll to the camera, then they are just playing very very basics with the default Unity engine.
The systems they are ´talking´about adding are impressive and very very complicated.. but there is no way they will ever get added if they devs can´t figure out how to zoom the camera or make placed trees move. This doesn´t even consider the fact that Unity is built mainly for single player games. The backend architecture is very VERY complicated to get to work for an MMO and I don´t think anyone has pulled it off yet... which is why we are building with Hero Engine. Again, very doubtful that guys who can´t get palm trees to blow will be able to pull off putting an MMORPG into an engine designed for single player games.
haha, these guys made $50,000 for downloading a free program and making a nice website.
OMG.. I just watched their video about ´dynamic spawning´.. You know what you were watching.. you were watching one of them use the default Unity ´tree´ tool that automically places trees. You select the tree, the diameter of the brush and the tree density you want and then you just paint the landscape and it automatically adds trees. This is not happening ´in the game´ it is like using Microsoft Paint, selecting a brush and then painting something red. The only difference is the tool in Unity allows you to paint trees.
And they are selling that as ´dynamic spawning´ ??
Here is a link to the Unity page that shows it
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/terrain-Trees.html
wow, so everyone on this forum can now do a KS and raise 50k
We are announcing our game soon, but no Kickstarter BS and no ´ in 3 years, if you donate $50,000 we may have a demo ready´.. in the meantime, if we raise $2000 we will show you concept art for a dragon that will be added to the game in 2025.
Our game is coming in March 2015 and is fully funded already. It is just disgusting to me that after 10 years, these guys have raised so much money from gamers and the only thing they can show for it is them using the basic tools of a free game engine that anyone can download.
Seriously.. $50,000 MORE money on top of what they got the first time? gamers are too naive sometimes.
If this is the game I'm thinking about, they have been around since 2001 or 2002 and had some big plans, but no funding to implement it. They did in fact have screen shots back then of some unconcious elf girl while showing off their "dragging" system whereby you could drag someone into chains and torture them so that they couldn't log out. In addition to their marriage system whereby two parents could have a child, and that child would be an actual player that grew up from a baby or something. Then an age system whereby people died of old age or got really old. If there was no player to inhabit the spawn, then an NPC would be made and it would follow the mother around.
No investors were interested in it since MMOs were seen as unprofitable, as it was before WoW came along and got people interested in putting money into the genre. In addition, it only had a few screen shots; most of the above was just napkin work from what little I remember about the game in general. It's just a very vivid thing to me, as my friends and I were into Ultima Online at this time, while also looking forward to the release of FFXI and admiring the pretty graphics of World of Warcraft from their 2001 gameplay trailers. The concepts of this game seemed intriguing from a Role Player's perspective, but they said something about working on the PS2 to make money to fund that game.
Yeah, they always had these really crazy plans, like you said with the child-raising thing. Now they are talking about being able to play as a dragon, and all this complicated hoops you have to go through to do that.
And that is really what makes me laugh, because they talk about this stuff that as a programmer I think would be exceedingly difficult to add to a game... and then at the same time they can´t get their camera to zoom. There just is no way they are going to pull off any of the stuff they talk about. Think about it, after all these years they still haven´t implemented an inventory system, a combat system or even a user interface.. which are core to any RPG. How in the world are you talking about hatching dragon eggs and blah blah blah, if you still can´t even make your player wear gear from their inventory.
There needs to be a new term, because this is not vaporware.. maybe we should call it ´rotware´.. because we will all be rotting in our graves before this ever is a playable game.
Ugh, the amount of "wrong" here is overwhelming. Let me see if I can set you all straight.
1) ToA was originally under development by a large team using the name Shadowpool Studios over 10 years ago. They shutdown when they were unable to secure funding from a source that wasn't going to insist on changing core features of the game. This was right about the time that WoW came out, and many investors wanted them to create a WoW clone; none wanted to take a risk on something different.
2) Development was dropped completely when Shadowpool closed their doors. In 2012 the three lead designers, known as Brax, Varl, and Loestri, decided to give it another go, as over the course of 10 years none of the new games that were released were anything close to the core features of ToA. They created a new studio, Forged Chaos, and began redesigning the game. They scaled back several features, and removed others, to create a more realistic scope and a game that could be completed in a shorter time frame.
3) They tried a KickStarter late fall of 2013, but due to various aspects of their KS campaign, it did fail. I won't go into full detail here, but suffice it to say that many of it's shortfalls were due to a funding catch 22. (They needed stuff that cost money for a successful KS, but they were doing KS to raise money for the project, etc) They learned a great deal from the experience, and after some time to review and encouragement from the community, they opened up their website store so that their fan base could contribute financially to the project in January 2014. Kickstarter, btw, doesn't give any of the raised money to the company unless they hit their goal, so what they've raised via their store is all they have raised outside of their own pockets.
4) Forged Chaos' development was originally started using the Hero Engine. This engine had the great backend support for MMOs, but required far too many work-arounds for the features they wanted for ToA. The first thing they did with the funding provided by the site store was to upgrade to Unity. All the work of the previous year had to be scrapped, though they were able to salvage small bits of it, such as the raknar models.
5) The funding provided by the community has allowed the Forged Chaos team to hire a Unity developer to help them, and just recently a database programmer to help them with the backend work. This is in addition to the artists they contract for the custom graphics.
6) Brax, Varl, and Loestri all still have day jobs to provide for their families, so their time commitment isn't the same as it would be if they had full funding. But they still work hard to hammer out the specifics of design, seek out talent to help them with their goals, and develop the story of their game for us to enjoy. The three of them work closely with their community, presenting and explaining their designs to us and accepting feedback from us (though accepting and implementing feedback are two separate things!)
7) Originally their site store was just to raise enough money to release a demo and create other materials they would need for a successful Kickstarter, which they estimated at $40k, (a large chunk of that was to actually purchase the Unity Engine). It was because of community demand that they kept the store open and have been continuing to offer "stretch" goals of features that were slated for post-launch as release features. (For example, the dragon race was not originally going to be playable at launch, but if funding reaches $60k, they will include them as a launch feature.)
8) Trials of Ascension was never going to include marriage or offspring features. You're confusing ToA with another game that was in development at the time. ( I can't recall it's name).
I hope that clears up a lot of the misunderstandings I see in many of the posts above.
@MasterDCT: The devs have repeated on occasion that they would never ask you to support the game if you didn't really believe in the concept and seeing it come to fruition. I don't know if that has weight for you, but to me it declares that they fully understand the skepticism. They've (admittedly) failed twice; with Shadowpool and with the KickStarter. I'll be the first to admit the great barriers to seeing a game with such initiative as Trials of Ascension garner any sort of traction in the masses.
That said, if you aren't comfortable funding, just stick around in the forums and be a part of the community. You might not get beta or alpha access or any of the cool store perks, but you'll be able to enjoy the game in a few years!
@Azrile: I do understand where you're coming from, I really do. To say I haven't considered those things would be to call me a grand fool (as you seem to be calling the whole ToA community). If you'd take a gander over to the forums, I believe you'll find a core group of its members are mature, wisened folk who understand the risk but have weighed a CHANCE OF PROGRESS above the serious pitfalls.
If you disagree with the model and believe ToA will fail, that is well. No one would have you donate. But to harp on the work of another developer seems like bad form. Give dreamers a chance. Do I think Brax, Loestri and Varl alone can develop ToA? No. And neither do they. You'll see in even the most recent blog post that they're introducing more members to their team.
As a game designer, I'm sure you'll appreciate the difficulty in finding avid programmers who are familiar with the used engine (Unity). When the trio began, they had no experience with the engine and most, if not all, of the videos we've seen have been as the new developer, Teddy, incorporates for the first time into Forged Chaos. Also keep in mind that Teddy is not only implementing these systems but also has to create networking code alongside the functionality.
Really, we could go on and on. I'd ask that, rather than shout "Vaporware, vaporware," give FC and the community a chance to dream. With financial and personnel support, ToA will be a reality.
Let's get something straight. This game hasn't been in development for 10 years. A year and a half ago, they started on Hero, and then in January, 6 months ago, they restarted on Unity, which set them back a little.
Now you all can make a little bit more educated posts. The ToA of 2006 is NOT the ToA of 2014. They have a small team who has been working on this game in Unity for 6 months.
As a game developer i have to give credit to Trials of ascension for some amazing marketing abilities. As stated above the game footage shown thus far i could replicate in under six hours. TBH i am part of a two man team and we both have had kind of an ongoing joke about trials of ascension. we didn't do a kickstarter, we didn't take donations from people. we quit our jobs cashed our 401k's and poured 15 hours a day for the past 6 months into the game we believed in. in 6 months 2 guys we are weeks away from launch and are awaiting a hopefully successful greenlight campaign on steam. kudos to getting some crazy marketing skills going TOA guys it truly is amazing.
(Clarified in later post)
Exactly this. The only thing they have done is made a website and sent out press releases about fundraising.
This talk about Hero Engine and Unity? Are you kidding??? Unity is free. Anyone on this forum right now can go to
http://unity3d.com/unity/download
And download the engine absolutely free. And I almost promise you that anyone who can use Microsoft Word can create what ToA has shown in their videos in their FIRST DAY of using the engine.
And they are lying to you guys. The ´dynamic spawning´ that they have finished is NOT what they say it is. It is simply them using the Unity toolket to paint the terrain with trees. This is a basic BASIC feature and does not work in game, it is for making the map before players can get it. It is completely laughable that they have this marked as 100% complete when it is something that you can´t do ingame, only the developers can do with the unity toolbox before the game ships. Here is a video of a tutorial on youtube
Ironically, the person doing the tutorial uses ´palm trees´ as he paints the map. which is the same trees that ToA uses.
The only thing these guys have done is fundraise. It is obvious from watching their vids and reading their posts that they have no idea how to script or program the game. Things they talk about that are ´challenges´ are things most of us could do in under a minute. In the first video, in 10 minutes the guy talked about 3 challenges they haven´t done yet. I could have done all three of them before the video was over.
This game is never NEVER going to be made. They are going to use that 50k to contract out some artwork, and they are going to continue to trick you guys by using the toolkit and making you think what is happening is in the live game.
Download Unity for free, make a terrain and mess with building a map. And then you will quickly see how much of a scam ToA is.
Really, a big chunk of the $40k was used to buy the unity engine... which is FREE??? You can build your complete game using the free engine, there is a professional version which is $1,500 but you can build you game with the free version and then go professional right before launch or just launch your game with the free version. The professional versions adds some really advanced options, but nothing you need to build your game initially. There are thousands and thousands of games released from Unity using the free version... and everything ToA has done, and everything they have talked about doing can be done with the free version ( it is mostly just scripting). And for a fact, they are still using the free version right now... you can tell by the water.
yes yes, they continue to offer stretch goals and continue to ask for money.. and continue to promise stuff. Seriously, their next stretch goals are for nothing but concept art for dragons? Really? They want $6000 so that they can do a sketch of a dragon?
Sorry, but if they can´t get trees to move or the camera to zoom, there is NO WAY they are going to ever be able to program into the game the dragon system. The animations alone would kill them, it is why there are very very few games that have any really big playable race. And you think this technological hurdle is going to be overcome with $50k from guys who can´t make tress blow in the wind?
Like I said, they are going to use some of the money to contract some artwork and they will show you stuff in the toolkit and trick you into thinking it is something they can do ingame. and they are going to continue to delay and delay and delay. promises and stretch goals, the only thing they have accomplished.
1: Did you seriously not consider that they actually did make a system that works in-game, and that that is one of the things they've been working on? Is it so far from you capabilities as a programmer that you can not imagine others doing it?
2: Oh really? Humor me, what was these problems?
1: They do actually have good argumentation for the monetary requirements for their goals. The $2500 between each concept picture is obviously not used to make the picture. The picture is merely a marketing strategy to keep the players interested, and to show off their designs and ideas for the community to discuss.
2: Them not having the trees moving and camera zooming is not the same as them not being able to it. It's a question of priority. And as you, and others, already said, it is something that could be done by anyone using Unity on their first day. So it probably isn't a question on whether they are actually able to do.
3: The animations are not harder to do on bigger models silly. Of course they have to be different than if it was a smaller creature so that it doesn't seem like they move at the speed of light, but obviously a master programmer like yourself could figure that out. The difficulty of making a larger and thus more powerful race is in the gameplay. (And in not having the collision feel awful). And it is in their game design these developers excell. And the 50k still isn't to create the dragon race. (The keywords are "available at launch").
Hey Azrile! I'd love to see your game, could you link to it?
Listen to their own video regarding trees, the camera.... again, the video showed nothing except the things they couldn´t accomplish. we have trees, but we can´t make them move, we have stuff you can click on, but nothing happens. We plan on allowing you to see your whole character, but we can´t scroll our camera yet. If these were minor things for them, they wouldn´t have mentioned them. Like I said, anyone who actually knows how to script in Unity could have had all those issues fixed in less time than it took the ´lead dev´ to tell you that they couldn´t do it. If they knew how to do it, they could have spent 5 minutes before the video fixing it, and then actually said something during the video besides ´we can´t do this´.
You are wrong about animations, completely wrong. Like I said, there is a reason why almost every game out there has bipeds (small xz axis) as main characters and all species that can be character are nearly the same size. Yes, you can animate a dragon easily but if you try to look at it from the perspective of the dragon the animations will look terrible, choppy and combat animations will be extremely EXTREMELY limited because of distance issues. Character models need hundreds, sometimes 500, animations that are all front and center of the players screen so even the tiniest flaws get revealed. Dragon mobs would have maybe 12-20 animations and they are seen from the perspective of the player looking up at the dragon, so the limited animations there are can have their flaws easily hidden. There is also the huge issue of cameras when you are talking about controlling large creatures. The camera will be very difficult to control to give any type of view of combat.
And that is the problem with these devs.. they are neither programmers nor graphic designers so when they wrote all these crazy plans on napkins, they had no idea what they are talking about. They are just dreams that cannot be implemented in a real game, and definitely not by these guys.
EVERYTHING they have shown so far is what a 10 year old could do after downloading Unity.
They can promist whatever they want ´at launch´ because this game is never going to launch. And my guess is that it will be over a year before they can get any type of working demo that media can play. Like I said, everything they have done so far is a lie for a video. The things they showed with dynamic respawning is NOT in the game, it is in the toolset. I was thinking these guys were just incompetent and dreamers. But once I saw them lying about that dynamic respawning feature I knew they were con artists. They know that ´dynamic respawning´ is not in the game yet they are telling you guys it is and using that video to trick you.
I feel bad for real game developers that try to use KS or crowdfunding to get things started because these con artists are further going to build up distrust. I am lucky, we self-funded our project, are nearly ready to release and don´t have worry about ´oh great, another kickstarter scam like Trials of Ascension´.
But it is ok, you guys will be here next year at the same time talking about your ´dreams´ and making justifications on why a playable demo is not available yet.