Hey Azrile! I'd love to see your game, could you link to it?
Can´t yet, maybe 3 weeks. I am just part of a team, I can´t announce early . The game launches March 2015 and demo will be available for download when we announce in a few weeks. And get this. we don´t need KS or crowdfunding and our ´demo´ will have actual combat, inventory and a user interface..
But hey, if you paypal me $200, I will let you play a dragon during our sequel!!! And there will be all these cool ideas, anything you can think of we will have in our game. But we need to raise $2000 to do the concept art for it.
Did any of you guys even search youtube for ´unity tutorial´ so that you can see how easy it is to do what they have done so far? Anyone that ever touched Unity would be laughing their asses off at those two videos.
So when is their demo set to launch? Is it something that the media will be able to play? Their little ´progress´ chart is for the demo, and it doesn´t seem to show much. The only thing that is complete is the ´dynamic respawning´ and some of the other really basic stuff is at 0%´ and that is for the demo, not the actual game. As great as the game sounds, I know that in a year, you guys will be still here talking about how the demo will prove this isn´t vaporware. I think slowly they will be able to figure out how to add basic MMO features like inventories and maybe some basic combat. But anything beyond even a very basic basic game is beyond this dev team. They keep making new promises and new dreams to distract you guys from the fact that they aren´t actually adding anything to the game. I see nothing from the devs except sending out press releases every time they meet another milestone for fundraising.
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
...
LOL, that tree painting isn't even close to the growing trees that Forged Chaos posted about their dynamic spawning. The painting trees just pop in fully grown. The dynamic spawning ones grew to different sizes over time. How can you even compare those.
um.. yeah.. look at the links I posted before regarding the tutorials for painting trees. It is the same thing. If you spent a few hours on Unity, you could do the same thing yourself Download it and try. It really is not complicated, no different than using photoshop.
And it is almost comical that you guys hinted that I am ´jealous´ of ToA because of my own game. We are releasing a full demo in a few weeks, our game is playable right now by the media to the extent that they can see it is a full game. We have given a release date. Our game will be on it´s first expansion pack before ToA even has a demo available. There is no way ToA can impact our sales and I am far from jealous of painting generic trees on a generic landscape. that is basically what everyone does the first day they play with Unity. Not to mention our game is completely different. Our game has combat, and inventories, and action bars, a world map and a mini-map, not to mention it has many many things that you can click on that do something.
I am only angry because there are real games out there that actually have real devs working on them that need KS and crowdsourcing, and the con men are taking away their chance to make games. There are two guys posting on the HE forums that are working on a MMO for the last 3 months who have more of a playable game than ToA after 10 years. Guys who can put up a video that actually show gameplay along with non-generic art assets should be the ones making games. Not guys who can´t develop anything except press releases. These guys should have done even a minimal amount of work with the FREE unity engine before they start fundraising for ´play a dragon´. They did not need $100,000 to get the camera working, or build an inventory or combat system. All those things should have been done before they even thought of begging for money. The ONLY thing they have done is beg for money, no actual work. Hey guys, we are thinking of allowing our dragons to fly loops, please give us $5000 so we can sketch a loop. They should forget all this stupidity and just build the basics first, and show that they can actually create something. Again, a novice could landscape a zone, populate it with models, create a combat and inventory system in under a month, without spending a dime. There is no reason your guys need to be begging for money now when they haven´t done the easy stuff... except that they don´t know how to do the easy stuff.
Seriously, 10 years and what, about $100,000 of suckers money ( no idea how much money they raised the first time before they just disappeared), and they have 2 videos and 12 screenshots, all with Unity default graphics. But don´t worry, when they disappear this time with your money, you can always come back in 10 years when the pop up again.
Your guys should spend more time learning to code, and less time begging for money, and then maybe they could figure out that pesky camera problem.
So really.. nobody answered.. when is the Demo coming out?
So really.. nobody answered.. when is the Demo coming out?
No data for the demo release, until now. I guess we just have to wait, and see what will happen. Two years (and not 10) for the new developing team aren't a big deal, after all.
Obviously, there's a chance you are right, and that this campaign will fail as it has already done in the past. Or maybe this time will be different, who knows. I guess that's a risk that whoever supports the project is ready to deal with. There are some really good ideas in this game plan, and perhaps the possibility to see them realized is enough for some people to accept the pitfall.
As I have stated before, we can just wait, right now. Because no one, not even someone with some experience in game making or expert in MMORPG field, can assert for sure how this story is going to end.
And it is almost comical that you guys hinted that I am ´jealous´ of ToA because of my own game. We are releasing a full demo in a few weeks, our game is playable right now by the media to the extent that they can see it is a full game. We have given a release date. Our game will be on it´s first expansion pack before ToA even has a demo available. There is no way ToA can impact our sales and I am far from jealous of painting generic trees on a generic landscape. that is basically what everyone does the first day they play with Unity. Not to mention our game is completely different. Our game has combat, and inventories, and action bars, a world map and a mini-map, not to mention it has many many things that you can click on that do something.
I am only angry because there are real games out there that actually have real devs working on them that need KS and crowdsourcing, and the con men are taking away their chance to make games. There are two guys posting on the HE forums that are working on a MMO for the last 3 months who have more of a playable game than ToA after 10 years. Guys who can put up a video that actually show gameplay along with non-generic art assets should be the ones making games. Not guys who can´t develop anything except press releases. These guys should have done even a minimal amount of work with the FREE unity engine before they start fundraising for ´play a dragon´. They did not need $100,000 to get the camera working, or build an inventory or combat system. All those things should have been done before they even thought of begging for money. The ONLY thing they have done is beg for money, no actual work. Hey guys, we are thinking of allowing our dragons to fly loops, please give us $5000 so we can sketch a loop. They should forget all this stupidity and just build the basics first, and show that they can actually create something. Again, a novice could landscape a zone, populate it with models, create a combat and inventory system in under a month, without spending a dime. There is no reason your guys need to be begging for money now when they haven´t done the easy stuff... except that they don´t know how to do the easy stuff.
Seriously, 10 years and what, about $100,000 of suckers money ( no idea how much money they raised the first time before they just disappeared), and they have 2 videos and 12 screenshots, all with Unity default graphics. But don´t worry, when they disappear this time with your money, you can always come back in 10 years when the pop up again.
Your guys should spend more time learning to code, and less time begging for money, and then maybe they could figure out that pesky camera problem.
So really.. nobody answered.. when is the Demo coming out?
Yes Azrile, you are right. It is not jealousy that you are showing, but fear. A normal developer would state hes opinion, in your case that you are not impressed with the features they have shown so far and that you don't believe they could make it. Instead you are selectively picking information, like continuously mentioning 10 years of development intentionally ignoring the fact that most of those 10 years the project was shut down. Also you are repeating the same argument that none is even countering, about the spawning system. We believe it is not painted forests, but a random generating system with its bounds to keep it natural. We have no idea how much work it would need, and none says it was hard, but still you are repeating time and time again, probably not much arguments to choose from i guess.
So, why would i rather trust ToA instead of playing your game tomorrow:
"combat, and inventories, and action bars, a world map and a mini-map"
This is the reason. Pretty much all you mentioned are standard game designs, which are on the market in the millions. Your games noteworthy points are nothing but generic game features. In ToA there will be combat, inventories, action bars as little as possible and no mini map or true world map. Yes, ToA won't give you a gps system, one of the main features why i would play ToA. They are not afraid, like many are, to push the player out of hes comfort zone for the sake of experience and role play. I don't even want to start pointing out ToA's note worthy designs, it would be a too long post to read. I just will say their design is different and ballsy compared to most of the "safe" designs of today. Here is the summery:
Their is one thing that gave me the trust i needed to support ToA. The shutting down of the project 10 years ago. Instead of compromising their design to a generic game and just making it, they rejected it. This shows that the devs are not in it for the money, nor that money will make them compromise the game (at least up to the million dollars). Knowing that the developers will never compromise their dream made me just feel like a comforting hand on my shoulders to support them.
Secondly, they have a respectable character. Unlike you they are not disrespecting other games, game design nor developers. They say if they do not agree with something, but they never resort to bashing, not even on their own forums. Good people try to be recognized by improving themselves, not by miniscule of others. The same counts for developers and their games.
It is a shame that Indie developers like you are bashing others small developers instead of supporting them. In my opinion you are undignifying yourself and your own game by acting this way. It shows insecurity and weakness of character.
Red flags everywhere. Don't know what to say without sounding like a jerk. The goals. What was said in the dynamic spawning video early on. Concerns Azrile pointed out.
@Azrile So really your whole argument builds on whether or not the Dynamic Spawning feature is working in game or not - something you have excactly zero ways of either proving or disproving. Real smart. Let me clear up: If it works, then obviously they must be able to do some programming - heck, even programming that it seems you deam to be difficult. If it is real, then it is not scam, but someone geniunely trying to do something new, and working on a project they clearly love. If this is the case, then they have an 'excuse' for not having gotten to all the things that (and I quote you) "a novice could [do] in under a month".
I think it is a good thing that you and your friend didn't go the crowdfunding way, because you obviously don't have any idea of how to do it. You don't ask 10k$ to draw a sketch of a loop if you want to make a loop, you ask for 10k$ which you are going to use to attract more investors, and then you give your current investors a painting of a dragon doing a loop, because it makes them happy, attracts more investors and isn't something that is going to slow down their development process.
About the animations - I think we agree on them not being more difficult to do on a scaled up model, but also that they have to be done differently because a 20m*20m monster switching pose in one frame looks even more rediculous than a 1m*1m monster doing it. And the collision box should ideally be different than the standard circle (guess those things does make it more difficult) - but it is all something that can be done, especially if you are just a tiny bit creative and move away from the tried and true ways.
Yes Azrile, you are right. It is not jealousy that you are showing, but fear. A normal developer would state hes opinion, in your case that you are not impressed with the features they have shown so far and that you don't believe they could make it. Instead you are selectively picking information, like continuously mentioning 10 years of development intentionally ignoring the fact that most of those 10 years the project was shut down. Also you are repeating the same argument that none is even countering, about the spawning system. We believe it is not painted forests, but a random generating system with its bounds to keep it natural. We have no idea how much work it would need, and none says it was hard, but still you are repeating time and time again, probably not much arguments to choose from i guess.
So, why would i rather trust ToA instead of playing your game tomorrow:
"combat, and inventories, and action bars, a world map and a mini-map"
This is the reason. Pretty much all you mentioned are standard game designs, which are on the market in the millions. Your games noteworthy points are nothing but generic game features. In ToA there will be combat, inventories, action bars as little as possible and no mini map or true world map. Yes, ToA won't give you a gps system, one of the main features why i would play ToA. They are not afraid, like many are, to push the player out of hes comfort zone for the sake of experience and role play. I don't even want to start pointing out ToA's note worthy designs, it would be a too long post to read. I just will say their design is different and ballsy compared to most of the "safe" designs of today. Here is the summery:
Wow, you totally missed my point. So your game does not have inventories, combat or a map? How about a character creation screen? My point is that you need to do those things FIRST before you even start talking about ´growing up as a dragon and playing as a dragon´. Your devs cannot even program the most basic, common features of every MMO. They cannot even get the camera to show the character.
Your devs are hiding the fact that they can´t program or produce ANYTHING by constantly waving another ´dream´ in front of you. Hey guys, ignore the fact that 2 ( or 10 ) years into development, we still don´t have any skills in the game, or we can´t open any inventory.. forget all that stuff.. but we are telling you.. if you keep paying and keep waiting.. that someday you wl.l be able to fly loops with your dragon.
Brax from Forged Chaos here. Just wanted to thank everyone for your continued support of ToA and mmorpg.com for the coverage!
To clarify/correct a few concerns/misconceptions:
The dynamic spawning system is completely custom built, allowing us to control spread, flora type, growth rates of each tree type, collision, and a ton more parameters, and yes, it very much works in game.
A demo date hasn't been announced. It's not something we're trying to hide, we just want to be *really* comfortable in announcing it before we do. Considering we have some non-traditional features to build, I think it is fair to err on the side of caution. Anyone can watch our progress via our roadmap.
The game hasn't been in development for 10 years. We took a four year break between Shadowpool Studios and Forged Chaos. Even during the Shadowpool days, we launched our website that was full of ideas and concepts way too early. A mistake for sure, but one we learned from.
We received multiple funding offers during Shadowpool but they all came with the same strings attached -- drop our core features and be more like WoW. We had a choice to make - make a clone or make nothing. We chose the latter because we promised ourselves and the thousands that followed ToA we would be true to our design.
If you have doubts about us, we're perfectly ok with that! All we ask is that you do your own due diligence on our game before passing judgement, including stopping by our super friendly forums to ask your questions or voice your concerns. I promise you, you'll be hard pressed to find a friendlier community, even to the most critical cynic. Positive or negative, we listen to everyone. It keep us grounded in reality and opens our eyes to what otherwise might be missed.
About the animations - I think we agree on them not being more difficult to do on a scaled up model, but also that they have to be done differently because a 20m*20m monster switching pose in one frame looks even more rediculous than a 1m*1m monster doing it. And the collision box should ideally be different than the standard circle (guess those things does make it more difficult) - but it is all something that can be done, especially if you are just a tiny bit creative and move away from the tried and true ways.
The big hurdle ( IMHO) would be the camera. There is no way to show combat where it would feel good. You could force the player into first person view, but then you would never actually see the dragon fighting and the victim would appear to be hit by nothing. And again, ToA devs, after a year can´t even get the character to show up properly in the camera, do you really think they are the ones who are going to suddenly solve a camera problem that Blizzard gave up on in WOW? Blizzard tried in in WOTLK where players took over control of a giant in Zul´Drak.. and they couldn´t do it to where combat worked well.
The other big part of it would be the cost of animations. Try to tone down my comments. But your devs have done nothing but use default human running animations from Unity. They still haven´t done anything with combat. Player character ( human or dragon) need 100s of animations. WIth humans, they are easy to make and there are libraries that you can start with and modify to fit your game. As soon as you move away from bipeds, the cost of every single animation escalates rapidly... which is why most non-biped creatures have very few animations. Even in games with a budget like WOW, anything non-biped has only a few animations, always the basic six ( idle, walk, run, attack, behit, die) and sometimes 1 other attack. , and they actually try to squeeze them into any model they can because they are enormously expensive to create, which is why Blizzard is so big on using wyverns and drakes over and over again.. because the animations are so difficult to make. When you start throwing in flapping wings, a tail that moves or god-forbid is used for combat.. Forget about it. Just doing the basic animations for a dragon player would cost more than ToA has raised already.
You really think it is a unique idea. You really think nobody else has ever thought ´wouldn´t it be cool if dragons or other non-bipeds could be players characters´.. Everyone has thought of that, but again.. napkin developing is a bit different than actually modeling, animating and scripting. And despite having some cool ideas on napkins, your devs have shown nothing, absolutely nothing to indicate that they could solve cost and camera issues that every other developer could not solve. Napkin developing is very very easy.
Honestly this seems like the worst operation ever. Someone posted earlier that the devs used the money to hire a unity developer , and to pay for art to be made(I assume that means 3d modeling and animation.)
So the 3 devs seem to have 0 game developing skills. They are just like a bunch of kids coming up with ideas for a game and getting free money to pay random people. wtf?
10 years in the making and none of you decided to learn a skill, but you want to make a game?
Are you so silly you think "ideas" and "story" make the game? Every one has good "ideas" and good "story" it's the implementation and polish that matter.
You should have each learned a skill in the past 10 years instead of doing god knows what. I.e. one guy learn scripting, one guy learn 3d modeling, one guy learn animation.
This really shows why crowdfunding is the biggest scam ever. People talk shit about corporations but when they started and needed money they sold you stock that you could then get rewarded for if the company did well. Now we have crowdfunding which is just free money.
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...
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.
Honestly this seems like the worst operation ever. Someone posted earlier that the devs used the money to hire a unity developer , and to pay for art to be made(I assume that means 3d modeling and animation.)
So the 3 devs seem to have 0 game developing skills. They are just like a bunch of kids coming up with ideas for a game and getting free money to pay random people. wtf?
10 years in the making and none of you decided to learn a skill, but you want to make a game?
Are you so silly you think "ideas" and "story" make the game? Every one has good "ideas" and good "story" it's the implementation and polish that matter.
You should have each learned a skill in the past 10 years instead of doing god knows what. I.e. one guy learn scripting, one guy learn 3d modeling, one guy learn animation.
This really shows why crowdfunding is the biggest scam ever. People talk shit about corporations but when they started and needed money they sold you stock that you could then get rewarded for if the company did well. Now we have crowdfunding which is just free money.
On their own website, they say they contracted someone to ´model a house´ and they had difficulties because the persons vision didn´t match theirs. Look at the house. Why would you contract someone to make it? Again, anyone in this thread could download Blender or student 3dmax for free and build the same model in a couple weeks without any prior knowledge. Any serious developer, especially ones with 2-10 years of experience would be able to make that model in a weekend. They individually contracted for 1 house. Do you know how many art assets are needed for an MMO?
I think you have it exactly right. These guys have no skills, they just fundraise and plan to contract people.
MMOs are a huge undertaking. I can´t wait until these guys realize that Unity is for single player games and they actually figure out what Synchronous vs Asynchronous Architectures are. I already know how this story is going to end. They are going to contract someone to do combat for them in Unity... that person is going to get paid, and then at some point they are going to try to make it work with a server and realize it doesn´t work. Do you know how many MMOs have been made using Unity... out of about 10,000 games made? 0 Unity is great for making single player games, and can be tricked into making small team online games. But there is no backend for asynchronous architecture. There are a few hacked solutions.. but again... nobody has gotten asyncrhonous architecture to work on Unity anywhere near needed to run an MMO on it. We used Unity for our initial art pipeline and for initial mock-up world building because it is very simple to get art assets into the engine. But there is a reason why Elder Scrolls and SWTOR used Hero Engine as their base... because it is built for asyynchronous combat. When the ToA devs announced they moved from Hero Engine to Unity.... to make an MMO.. it is laughable for anyone that understands what it takes to build an MMO. SWTOR, TESO and the soon to be released Repopulation are done on Hero Engine... 0 MMOs have ever been successfully launched on Unity.
So this is how ToA is going to end. They are going to hire someone to do combat in Unity, which is a huge project and will cost them everything they have raised so far... and then someone is going to say ´wait, you do your combat calculations on the client' . For those that don´t know, there is a HUGE difference between MMOs and single player games. In single player games, the client is everything. In MMOs, the client is nothing but a place where you see graphics. All calculations are done on the server. And again, nobody, even very smart programmers working on their own beloved projects have done this with Unity. ToA is counting on someone they contract to figure it out?
So that is where it ends. They are either going to accidently hire someone to do the combat scripting in Unity, which they will then have to pay for and which cannot be used in an MMO... or else they are going to start asking around and try to hire someone who can do MMO combat properly in Unity.... and they are going to hear crickets.
And then, one day you are going to log into the ToA website and see this message...
´It is my unfortunate duty to inform all of you that we are momentarily freezing all development of ToA. You see, weve come to the end of our financial means and without an injection of capital ToA will not make it to market. We are putting all efforts into finding the required capital so you should expect to see even less of me/us around (if that´s possible, right?! ) for the foreseeable future.
In closing, I´ll shamelessly plug our own need for capital. Should you or someone you know might be interested in investing in the competitive yet highly profitable video game industry, please contact us. Interested parties may contact me directly at don@shadowpool.com for a complete business plan, proformas, and multimedia presentation, including in-game video footage. Please note that our required investment is in the six to seven figure range.
Best, Don Danielson Brax
Sound familiar to anyone who donated money 10 years ago? It is going to happen again very soon when they try to implement combat into the server process. It has never been done in Unity, they can´t do it themselves, and anyone that could possibly do it isn´t some volunteer they can pluck from their forum boards with promises of free hotpockets. Again, 10,000 unity games, no MMOs and they are going to try to accomplish this with some fraction of 50k? My guess is they will hire someone to do the client-based combat and hope nobody notices the difference until they have gotten more fundraising done.... that is if they even know the difference between the two types of architecture.
But just to be clear, and you can ask around on Unity or HE or whatever game development forums you want. Any work you do with combat scripting on the client is almost completely worthless to port to a server model, ever script would have to be rewritten. You literally have to start from scratch. I just noticed on their website that they have combat listed as 50% finished for the demo.... yet they also just this week contracted someone to set up their server.. so yeah, basically they are paying someone to do client-side combat, and either they are going to use it to con people, or they actually really don´t know that what they are building now is useless for building an MMO.
This is where fantasy meets reality. This is where design notes done on a napkin meet real computer programming.
Wow, you totally missed my point. So your game does not have inventories, combat or a map? How about a character creation screen? My point is that you need to do those things FIRST before you even start talking about ´growing up as a dragon and playing as a dragon´. Your devs cannot even program the most basic, common features of every MMO. They cannot even get the camera to show the character.
Your devs are hiding the fact that they can´t program or produce ANYTHING by constantly waving another ´dream´ in front of you. Hey guys, ignore the fact that 2 ( or 10 ) years into development, we still don´t have any skills in the game, or we can´t open any inventory.. forget all that stuff.. but we are telling you.. if you keep paying and keep waiting.. that someday you wl.l be able to fly loops with your dragon.
I don't understand why you think i missed the point. I understood you very well. You have a lack in believe in the creators of ToA. But your accusation of them being incompetent hold no ground. It is just your pretty wild assumptions which you got from the vids.
First i want to say that in the vids the devs just wanted to show specific things, how some things would work. We then didn't ask for more, so it wasn't polished, as they assumed many things might change. Secondly talking about change, the devs have been very active on planning the game itself and its features the last 2 years. Many ideas were proposed, changed, optimized. We as the community have seen that all happen. Not only that, we even participated in the change. That why it is that we know what is being done and what not. And this part is very important, because with this magnitude of new ideas has to have a really nice fitting. Lastly, if someone is a game designer, it doesn't mean he has to be a pro at programming or modeling. Nor does it mean that a pro at programming or modeling is a good game designer. I find that they have very good ideas that have inspired me as an game design hobbyist. I have no problem them paying someone to program parts of the game.
You had some good argumentation on how hard some things will be to implement, but you were mostly trowing with wild assumptions and offences. Now you can choose to continue with your bashing and non constructive comments or you can join us on the forum and actually do something constructive instead. Believe me, it is more fun planning ToA then being destructive on your colleagues.
Ps. Reading about unity not being able to make MMOs. I am no programmer, but a lot of people disagree. There seem to be solutions not that problematic about using middleware. MMO's are big work and have a tough market to go against. I think that is the reason why no MMOs have been released on it. Also as i understand unity gets improved all the time. So im not fearful of the future.
Unity is free. combat animations, modelling, character creation, inventory systems, skill systems, User Interface All of those can be done for free, and if you have 3 devs working on the project all of those basic systems could be done in two months,... and yet NOTHING is done.
Why is none of that done? Even if you say they started completely over last year. and nothing they did 10 years ago matters.. It has been over a year since they ´came back´. Why is NONE of that basic stuff done yet? All of which can be done for free. Why do you need to constantly fundraise and send out press releases when none of the stuff you can do for free is finished.
Why is nobody answering that question?
Ps. Reading about unity not being able to make MMOs. I am no programmer, but a lot of people disagree that unity can't. MMO's are big work and have a tough market to go against. I think that is the reason why no MMOs have been released on it. Also as i understand unity gets improved all the time. So im not fearful of the future.
There are people who think theoretically you should be able to do it, and a lot of people have started to try to do it and built hacks that they hope will work. But these are very very smart people, and none of them have successfully done it yet. And again, it is a HUGE technical hurdle that costs time and money.. which is why everyone uses HE or some of the other MMO engines. Unity is amazing for single player games, it makes world building and testing models and animations a breeze. But the core of the entire engine is to build a client that handles every function. Also, while possible, it is very doubtful Unity moves that way. All of their recent updates are more about making games easier to port to mobile... and again, they would basically have to start over themselves from scratch to make their engine capable of making MMO clients and servers.... which really is a small small market compared to the number of people making mobile games.
Unity is free. combat animations, modelling, character creation, inventory systems, skill systems, User Interface All of those can be done for free, and if you have 3 devs working on the project all of those basic systems could be done in two months,... and yet NOTHING is done.
Why is none of that done? Even if you say they started completely over last year. and nothing they did 10 years ago matters.. It has been over a year since they ´came back´. Why is NONE of that basic stuff done yet? All of which can be done for free. Why do you need to constantly fundraise and send out press releases when none of the stuff you can do for free is finished.
Why is nobody answering that question?
Ps. Reading about unity not being able to make MMOs. I am no programmer, but a lot of people disagree that unity can't. MMO's are big work and have a tough market to go against. I think that is the reason why no MMOs have been released on it. Also as i understand unity gets improved all the time. So im not fearful of the future.
There are people who think theoretically you should be able to do it, and a lot of people have started to try to do it and built hacks that they hope will work. But these are very very smart people, and none of them have successfully done it yet. And again, it is a HUGE technical hurdle that costs time and money.. which is why everyone uses HE or some of the other MMO engines. Unity is amazing for single player games, it makes world building and testing models and animations a breeze. But the core of the entire engine is to build a client that handles every function. Also, while possible, it is very doubtful Unity moves that way. All of their recent updates are more about making games easier to port to mobile... and again, they would basically have to start over themselves from scratch to make their engine capable of making MMO clients and servers.... which really is a small small market compared to the number of people making mobile games.
About the easy free stuff from Unity, it is because it is not that hard. Just recently they worked on how the inventory should work exactly. You can rush and make some easy details immidiatly and then change them every 6 months when you think of something extra or better, or you make a good thought through system and program it once without needing to make major changes after. So i understand this.
But about the unity engine and MMO's, what you are writing is constructive. While i don't understand exactly, they say that Unity could work with using other middleware engines. Here is the link:
And then, one day you are going to log into the ToA website and see this message...
´It is my unfortunate duty to inform all of you that we are momentarily freezing all development of ToA. You see, weve come to the end of our financial means and without an injection of capital ToA will not make it to market. We are putting all efforts into finding the required capital so you should expect to see even less of me/us around (if that´s possible, right?! ) for the foreseeable future.
In closing, I´ll shamelessly plug our own need for capital. Should you or someone you know might be interested in investing in the competitive yet highly profitable video game industry, please contact us. Interested parties may contact me directly at don@shadowpool.com for a complete business plan, proformas, and multimedia presentation, including in-game video footage. Please note that our required investment is in the six to seven figure range.
Best, Don Danielson Brax
I'm all for having a great debate about anything but when someone says something like this, it is time to walk away.
Client determines if player hit, how much damage is done, updates the health, and energy of player
Client plays animation of the attack swing.
MMO
Player pushes button to attack mob
Client tells server player attacked mob
Client plays animation
Server calculates if player hit, damage done, changes to health and energy
Client receives data from server
Client updates GUI to indicate results from server
Client ( for good programmers) adjusts animations if the original animation is incorrect.
All of that happens in less than about a tenth of a second.
Unity does not provide any way to communicate with a server in that way because it was built for single player games. Not only do you have to hack Unity to get it to send/receive information like this, but you also have to build, from scratch, your entire server architecture and how it will communicate back with the client. Hero Engine not only has all of this functionality built in, but it also gives you the server already set up and configured to run a MMO.
The same is true with inventory and banking systems. In MMOs, the fact that you own a sword, or if that sword is in your hand, your backpack or the bank are all stored on the server. How much gold you have is stored on the server. Any time you access your inventory, equip an item, open your bankbox... all of that requires your client to request information from the server in MMOs. In Unity, it is obviously all just done in the client.
Like I said, there is a reason why Indy MMO developers mess around unity, build their game in HE or another MMO engine, and then if you are really big, you modify the crap out of HE like TESO and SWTOR did. Moving from HE back to Unity makes no sense at all except that HE costs money and is drastically more complicated ( because of all the server stuff and you really don´t want to ear about Dom and Gom). I am fairly certain the ToA devs were just overwhelmed as soon as they opened the HE engine and couldn´t even do the most basic stuff. So they went to Unity which is like using any basic paint program.. everything is very very simple to do. I was tempted last night to write a 5 minute tutorial to teach you how to do everything the ToA devs have done so far, and it would take you longer to download Unity than it would take you to do it.
Thank you for explaining. For someone that isn't a programmer that was very new and informative(me).
About the things not done, i think you are mixing not being able to and just not doing it yet. With a game as ToA, the possibilities are big, and the balance of ideas is very hard. I think they needed to toy with the system to see just how big their implementation can be. Inventory is just a small part compared to the rest and is adjusted to other features ingame. So it is not that they are not capable but that they just didn't want to make it and redo it a 100 times. Some ideas and features will still adapt and change, and the inventory might go with it.
On the other hand it seems that even in 2009 people were thinking of solutions to make unity work for MMO's as from this thread:
If i misunderstood something in those links or some other feedback you have i will appreciate. It are the same links i posted before, but as you didn't address them i just wanted to put them in your attention again and see what you think about it.
Thank you Azrile for pointing out problems that most non developper would never have seen. As of now, i put my expectation on hold for this project until we are shown any real evidence of a game being made.
Nope, you got it right. There have been many attempts to do something similar. None of them have produced a game yet though.
Also, that particular tool you linked only handles the part of making the Unity client game communicate with a server. The person would still have to do all the server side stuff. It completely changes Unity and requires you to place spawns and do all NPC behaviors on the server. Again, this is really really hard stuff which is why if you read the comments these guys were being worshiped for just getting that first part of the process working.
Like I said, it is theoretically possible, and there have been a few good attempts and tools added. But in the end, it is just a situation that all the work you do to get it to work with Unity are not worth it. Just use HE which does all of that on purpose and doesn´t require you to butcher their engine to accomplish it. HE does everything Unity does except it doesn´t port easily to mobile games and the art pipeline is a bit more cumbersome. People say that Unity is easier to use, but that is because it does not contain all the tools necessary for a MMO, it is a tool for making single player games.
Originally posted by Azoth Thank you Azrile for pointing out problems that most non developper would never have seen. As of now, i put my expectation on hold for this project until we are shown any real evidence of a game being made.
They have $50k and 3 devs. There is n reason that after a year they shouldn´t have a basic game with at least the core functions of a MMO up and running.
Look at the tool that was linked above. Those people built a tool to increase the functionality of Unity, and the demo game they have to showcase the tool has more functionality than ToA.
The devs of ToA are just like kids in a candy store. They thought if they raised some money they could just hire people to put their dreams into action. Indie games are not like that. Your core team needs to be doing the modeling, animations and scripting and then maybe you contract out side stuff like music, or maybe some environmental art, stuff like that. But the core work needs to be done by the guys with the game in their heads or you are going to waste a lot of time and money explaining to people ´your vision´.
You just do not have 3 devs sitting on their butt doing nothing but sending email to forum members soliciting them to ´do the server stuff´ ´ do the house´ .. You will never build a game that way. Even the lead devs at WOW do codiing or modeling. Anyone can be a napkin developer and cool ideas are a dime a dozen. The hard part of making an MMO is having cool ideas that can actually be reasonable added to a game. Like playable dragons.. they will NEVER be added to a traditional human based MMO. Someone could develop a game designed around them being playable, but it would require all the artwork and game to be built around it.
Anyway. we are announcing July 7th, and our demo has already been greenlit for Steam for the same day (free) and the full game will be available earlyish in 2015. We are mostly done already, just updating some art and optimizing... we want to be able to run on 5 year laptops... hahaha.. talk about unacheivable goals.
Originally posted by Azoth Thank you Azrile for pointing out problems that most non developper would never have seen. As of now, i put my expectation on hold for this project until we are shown any real evidence of a game being made.
They have $50k and 3 devs. There is n reason that after a year they shouldn´t have a basic game with at least the core functions of a MMO up and running.
Look at the tool that was linked above. Those people built a tool to increase the functionality of Unity, and the demo game they have to showcase the tool has more functionality than ToA.
The devs of ToA are just like kids in a candy store. They thought if they raised some money they could just hire people to put their dreams into action. Indie games are not like that. Your core team needs to be doing the modeling, animations and scripting and then maybe you contract out side stuff like music, or maybe some environmental art, stuff like that. But the core work needs to be done by the guys with the game in their heads or you are going to waste a lot of time and money explaining to people ´your vision´.
You just do not have 3 devs sitting on their butt doing nothing but sending email to forum members soliciting them to ´do the server stuff´ ´ do the house´ .. You will never build a game that way. Even the lead devs at WOW do codiing or modeling. Anyone can be a napkin developer and cool ideas are a dime a dozen. The hard part of making an MMO is having cool ideas that can actually be reasonable added to a game. Like playable dragons.. they will NEVER be added to a traditional human based MMO. Someone could develop a game designed around them being playable, but it would require all the artwork and game to be built around it.
Anyway. we are announcing July 7th, and our demo has already been greenlit for Steam for the same day (free) and the full game will be available earlyish in 2015. We are mostly done already, just updating some art and optimizing... we want to be able to run on 5 year laptops... hahaha.. talk about unacheivable goals.
Looking forward to it. What type of game is it ? Anything you can tell us ?
Thanks Azrile for the contrsuctive part of your opinion. As we can see it seems very likely that the unity engine has enough support for an MMO and that the future can only bring more easy. So i'm pretty confident it will work out for ToA.
As you continued bashing without real argumentation and chose to ignore my explanation for some courses of action i will drop it now. If you are more happy being a hater here then being constructive with us, then i can only hope for you that you will see the error of your ways as soon as possible. I'm off to the ToA forums to have some fun discussions instead.
Thanks Azrile for the contrsuctive part of your opinion. As we can see it seems very likely that the unity engine has enough support for an MMO and that the future can only bring more easy. So i'm pretty confident it will work out for ToA.
As you continued bashing without real argumentation and chose to ignore my explanation for some courses of action i will drop it now. If you are more happy being a hater here then being constructive with us, then i can only hope for you that you will see the error of your ways as soon as possible. I'm off to the ToA forums to have some fun discussions instead.
Yes, the fact that not a single MMO has ever been played with Unity is a sure sign that guys that can´t get their ingame camera to work can surely solve all those tech issues. Again, very smart people have tried for years to get Unity to make MMOs and all of them end up at Hero Engine.
Don´t get me wrong, discussions are fun. Every person who ever played UO had suggestions of how to make the game amazing. Dreaming about taming dragons and gathering a hoard and blah blah blah is all great. But at the end of the day, 3 developers who can´t model and who can´t script are not going to ever make a MMO, with 50k or 500k. . You see, real developers develop that sense of ´what can I do to make a great game´ and then they spend time learning to code, or how to use 3dsmax or learning ANY skill. At some point, you have to do some work, you can´t just discuss your dreams. There is no reason all 3 of these devs shouldn´t be very good with modeling after 10 years. It is insane to think that these guys have been working on this project for 10 years, yet none of them can do a model of a house. That is beyond lazy.
Right now, they have nothing in the game. They have the default trees and grass from Unity, they have a freebie character model, they have basic animations (2 or 3) for that character. That took them 1 year to accomplish.
The list of things they haven´t done is staggering, and each one of them takes longer than anything they have already done. Like I said, this is not vaporware because the Unity engine is so easy to use that it is impossible to not make something.. but when you are talking about them taking another year to have a function inventory system or even longer to have a combat system (even for single player game) we will all be dead before this game is released or cancelled again.
There aer dozens and dozens of ´mmos in development´ in HE. Those games, despite being self-funded, are much further along than ToA, in much less time. ToA isn´t a game, it is a bunch of people on a discussion board who have never programmed or modelled talking about crazy and then 3 guys who do nothing but say ´yeah we can do that, just send more money´..
Comments
Can´t yet, maybe 3 weeks. I am just part of a team, I can´t announce early . The game launches March 2015 and demo will be available for download when we announce in a few weeks. And get this. we don´t need KS or crowdfunding and our ´demo´ will have actual combat, inventory and a user interface..
But hey, if you paypal me $200, I will let you play a dragon during our sequel!!! And there will be all these cool ideas, anything you can think of we will have in our game. But we need to raise $2000 to do the concept art for it.
Did any of you guys even search youtube for ´unity tutorial´ so that you can see how easy it is to do what they have done so far? Anyone that ever touched Unity would be laughing their asses off at those two videos.
So when is their demo set to launch? Is it something that the media will be able to play? Their little ´progress´ chart is for the demo, and it doesn´t seem to show much. The only thing that is complete is the ´dynamic respawning´ and some of the other really basic stuff is at 0%´ and that is for the demo, not the actual game. As great as the game sounds, I know that in a year, you guys will be still here talking about how the demo will prove this isn´t vaporware. I think slowly they will be able to figure out how to add basic MMO features like inventories and maybe some basic combat. But anything beyond even a very basic basic game is beyond this dev team. They keep making new promises and new dreams to distract you guys from the fact that they aren´t actually adding anything to the game. I see nothing from the devs except sending out press releases every time they meet another milestone for fundraising.
LOL, that tree painting isn't even close to the growing trees that Forged Chaos posted about their dynamic spawning. The painting trees just pop in fully grown. The dynamic spawning ones grew to different sizes over time. How can you even compare those.
AKA - Bruxail
um.. yeah.. look at the links I posted before regarding the tutorials for painting trees. It is the same thing. If you spent a few hours on Unity, you could do the same thing yourself Download it and try. It really is not complicated, no different than using photoshop.
And it is almost comical that you guys hinted that I am ´jealous´ of ToA because of my own game. We are releasing a full demo in a few weeks, our game is playable right now by the media to the extent that they can see it is a full game. We have given a release date. Our game will be on it´s first expansion pack before ToA even has a demo available. There is no way ToA can impact our sales and I am far from jealous of painting generic trees on a generic landscape. that is basically what everyone does the first day they play with Unity. Not to mention our game is completely different. Our game has combat, and inventories, and action bars, a world map and a mini-map, not to mention it has many many things that you can click on that do something.
I am only angry because there are real games out there that actually have real devs working on them that need KS and crowdsourcing, and the con men are taking away their chance to make games. There are two guys posting on the HE forums that are working on a MMO for the last 3 months who have more of a playable game than ToA after 10 years. Guys who can put up a video that actually show gameplay along with non-generic art assets should be the ones making games. Not guys who can´t develop anything except press releases. These guys should have done even a minimal amount of work with the FREE unity engine before they start fundraising for ´play a dragon´. They did not need $100,000 to get the camera working, or build an inventory or combat system. All those things should have been done before they even thought of begging for money. The ONLY thing they have done is beg for money, no actual work. Hey guys, we are thinking of allowing our dragons to fly loops, please give us $5000 so we can sketch a loop. They should forget all this stupidity and just build the basics first, and show that they can actually create something. Again, a novice could landscape a zone, populate it with models, create a combat and inventory system in under a month, without spending a dime. There is no reason your guys need to be begging for money now when they haven´t done the easy stuff... except that they don´t know how to do the easy stuff.
Seriously, 10 years and what, about $100,000 of suckers money ( no idea how much money they raised the first time before they just disappeared), and they have 2 videos and 12 screenshots, all with Unity default graphics. But don´t worry, when they disappear this time with your money, you can always come back in 10 years when the pop up again.
Your guys should spend more time learning to code, and less time begging for money, and then maybe they could figure out that pesky camera problem.
So really.. nobody answered.. when is the Demo coming out?
No data for the demo release, until now. I guess we just have to wait, and see what will happen. Two years (and not 10) for the new developing team aren't a big deal, after all.
Obviously, there's a chance you are right, and that this campaign will fail as it has already done in the past. Or maybe this time will be different, who knows. I guess that's a risk that whoever supports the project is ready to deal with. There are some really good ideas in this game plan, and perhaps the possibility to see them realized is enough for some people to accept the pitfall.
As I have stated before, we can just wait, right now. Because no one, not even someone with some experience in game making or expert in MMORPG field, can assert for sure how this story is going to end.
Yes Azrile, you are right. It is not jealousy that you are showing, but fear. A normal developer would state hes opinion, in your case that you are not impressed with the features they have shown so far and that you don't believe they could make it. Instead you are selectively picking information, like continuously mentioning 10 years of development intentionally ignoring the fact that most of those 10 years the project was shut down. Also you are repeating the same argument that none is even countering, about the spawning system. We believe it is not painted forests, but a random generating system with its bounds to keep it natural. We have no idea how much work it would need, and none says it was hard, but still you are repeating time and time again, probably not much arguments to choose from i guess.
So, why would i rather trust ToA instead of playing your game tomorrow:
"combat, and inventories, and action bars, a world map and a mini-map"
This is the reason. Pretty much all you mentioned are standard game designs, which are on the market in the millions. Your games noteworthy points are nothing but generic game features. In ToA there will be combat, inventories, action bars as little as possible and no mini map or true world map. Yes, ToA won't give you a gps system, one of the main features why i would play ToA. They are not afraid, like many are, to push the player out of hes comfort zone for the sake of experience and role play. I don't even want to start pointing out ToA's note worthy designs, it would be a too long post to read. I just will say their design is different and ballsy compared to most of the "safe" designs of today. Here is the summery:
http://trialsofascension.com/guide/
The second is because of the developers:
Their is one thing that gave me the trust i needed to support ToA. The shutting down of the project 10 years ago. Instead of compromising their design to a generic game and just making it, they rejected it. This shows that the devs are not in it for the money, nor that money will make them compromise the game (at least up to the million dollars). Knowing that the developers will never compromise their dream made me just feel like a comforting hand on my shoulders to support them.
Secondly, they have a respectable character. Unlike you they are not disrespecting other games, game design nor developers. They say if they do not agree with something, but they never resort to bashing, not even on their own forums. Good people try to be recognized by improving themselves, not by miniscule of others. The same counts for developers and their games.
It is a shame that Indie developers like you are bashing others small developers instead of supporting them. In my opinion you are undignifying yourself and your own game by acting this way. It shows insecurity and weakness of character.
Red flags everywhere. Don't know what to say without sounding like a jerk. The goals. What was said in the dynamic spawning video early on. Concerns Azrile pointed out.
@Azrile So really your whole argument builds on whether or not the Dynamic Spawning feature is working in game or not - something you have excactly zero ways of either proving or disproving. Real smart. Let me clear up: If it works, then obviously they must be able to do some programming - heck, even programming that it seems you deam to be difficult. If it is real, then it is not scam, but someone geniunely trying to do something new, and working on a project they clearly love. If this is the case, then they have an 'excuse' for not having gotten to all the things that (and I quote you) "a novice could [do] in under a month".
I think it is a good thing that you and your friend didn't go the crowdfunding way, because you obviously don't have any idea of how to do it. You don't ask 10k$ to draw a sketch of a loop if you want to make a loop, you ask for 10k$ which you are going to use to attract more investors, and then you give your current investors a painting of a dragon doing a loop, because it makes them happy, attracts more investors and isn't something that is going to slow down their development process.
About the animations - I think we agree on them not being more difficult to do on a scaled up model, but also that they have to be done differently because a 20m*20m monster switching pose in one frame looks even more rediculous than a 1m*1m monster doing it. And the collision box should ideally be different than the standard circle (guess those things does make it more difficult) - but it is all something that can be done, especially if you are just a tiny bit creative and move away from the tried and true ways.
Wow, you totally missed my point. So your game does not have inventories, combat or a map? How about a character creation screen? My point is that you need to do those things FIRST before you even start talking about ´growing up as a dragon and playing as a dragon´. Your devs cannot even program the most basic, common features of every MMO. They cannot even get the camera to show the character.
Your devs are hiding the fact that they can´t program or produce ANYTHING by constantly waving another ´dream´ in front of you. Hey guys, ignore the fact that 2 ( or 10 ) years into development, we still don´t have any skills in the game, or we can´t open any inventory.. forget all that stuff.. but we are telling you.. if you keep paying and keep waiting.. that someday you wl.l be able to fly loops with your dragon.
To clarify/correct a few concerns/misconceptions:
The dynamic spawning system is completely custom built, allowing us to control spread, flora type, growth rates of each tree type, collision, and a ton more parameters, and yes, it very much works in game.
A demo date hasn't been announced. It's not something we're trying to hide, we just want to be *really* comfortable in announcing it before we do. Considering we have some non-traditional features to build, I think it is fair to err on the side of caution. Anyone can watch our progress via our roadmap.
The game hasn't been in development for 10 years. We took a four year break between Shadowpool Studios and Forged Chaos. Even during the Shadowpool days, we launched our website that was full of ideas and concepts way too early. A mistake for sure, but one we learned from.
We received multiple funding offers during Shadowpool but they all came with the same strings attached -- drop our core features and be more like WoW. We had a choice to make - make a clone or make nothing. We chose the latter because we promised ourselves and the thousands that followed ToA we would be true to our design.
If you have doubts about us, we're perfectly ok with that! All we ask is that you do your own due diligence on our game before passing judgement, including stopping by our super friendly forums to ask your questions or voice your concerns. I promise you, you'll be hard pressed to find a friendlier community, even to the most critical cynic. Positive or negative, we listen to everyone. It keep us grounded in reality and opens our eyes to what otherwise might be missed.
Thanks for the time!!
The big hurdle ( IMHO) would be the camera. There is no way to show combat where it would feel good. You could force the player into first person view, but then you would never actually see the dragon fighting and the victim would appear to be hit by nothing. And again, ToA devs, after a year can´t even get the character to show up properly in the camera, do you really think they are the ones who are going to suddenly solve a camera problem that Blizzard gave up on in WOW? Blizzard tried in in WOTLK where players took over control of a giant in Zul´Drak.. and they couldn´t do it to where combat worked well.
The other big part of it would be the cost of animations. Try to tone down my comments. But your devs have done nothing but use default human running animations from Unity. They still haven´t done anything with combat. Player character ( human or dragon) need 100s of animations. WIth humans, they are easy to make and there are libraries that you can start with and modify to fit your game. As soon as you move away from bipeds, the cost of every single animation escalates rapidly... which is why most non-biped creatures have very few animations. Even in games with a budget like WOW, anything non-biped has only a few animations, always the basic six ( idle, walk, run, attack, behit, die) and sometimes 1 other attack. , and they actually try to squeeze them into any model they can because they are enormously expensive to create, which is why Blizzard is so big on using wyverns and drakes over and over again.. because the animations are so difficult to make. When you start throwing in flapping wings, a tail that moves or god-forbid is used for combat.. Forget about it. Just doing the basic animations for a dragon player would cost more than ToA has raised already.
You really think it is a unique idea. You really think nobody else has ever thought ´wouldn´t it be cool if dragons or other non-bipeds could be players characters´.. Everyone has thought of that, but again.. napkin developing is a bit different than actually modeling, animating and scripting. And despite having some cool ideas on napkins, your devs have shown nothing, absolutely nothing to indicate that they could solve cost and camera issues that every other developer could not solve. Napkin developing is very very easy.
Honestly this seems like the worst operation ever. Someone posted earlier that the devs used the money to hire a unity developer , and to pay for art to be made(I assume that means 3d modeling and animation.)
So the 3 devs seem to have 0 game developing skills. They are just like a bunch of kids coming up with ideas for a game and getting free money to pay random people. wtf?
10 years in the making and none of you decided to learn a skill, but you want to make a game?
Are you so silly you think "ideas" and "story" make the game? Every one has good "ideas" and good "story" it's the implementation and polish that matter.
You should have each learned a skill in the past 10 years instead of doing god knows what. I.e. one guy learn scripting, one guy learn 3d modeling, one guy learn animation.
This really shows why crowdfunding is the biggest scam ever. People talk shit about corporations but when they started and needed money they sold you stock that you could then get rewarded for if the company did well. Now we have crowdfunding which is just free money.
D3 was supposedly playable inhouse back in 2005
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/107797-Diablo-III-Looked-Heavenly-in-2005
http://kotaku.com/5761172/this-is-what-diablo-iii-looked-like-a-long-time-ago/
EQ2 fan sites
On their own website, they say they contracted someone to ´model a house´ and they had difficulties because the persons vision didn´t match theirs. Look at the house. Why would you contract someone to make it? Again, anyone in this thread could download Blender or student 3dmax for free and build the same model in a couple weeks without any prior knowledge. Any serious developer, especially ones with 2-10 years of experience would be able to make that model in a weekend. They individually contracted for 1 house. Do you know how many art assets are needed for an MMO?
I think you have it exactly right. These guys have no skills, they just fundraise and plan to contract people.
MMOs are a huge undertaking. I can´t wait until these guys realize that Unity is for single player games and they actually figure out what Synchronous vs Asynchronous Architectures are. I already know how this story is going to end. They are going to contract someone to do combat for them in Unity... that person is going to get paid, and then at some point they are going to try to make it work with a server and realize it doesn´t work. Do you know how many MMOs have been made using Unity... out of about 10,000 games made? 0 Unity is great for making single player games, and can be tricked into making small team online games. But there is no backend for asynchronous architecture. There are a few hacked solutions.. but again... nobody has gotten asyncrhonous architecture to work on Unity anywhere near needed to run an MMO on it. We used Unity for our initial art pipeline and for initial mock-up world building because it is very simple to get art assets into the engine. But there is a reason why Elder Scrolls and SWTOR used Hero Engine as their base... because it is built for asyynchronous combat. When the ToA devs announced they moved from Hero Engine to Unity.... to make an MMO.. it is laughable for anyone that understands what it takes to build an MMO. SWTOR, TESO and the soon to be released Repopulation are done on Hero Engine... 0 MMOs have ever been successfully launched on Unity.
So this is how ToA is going to end. They are going to hire someone to do combat in Unity, which is a huge project and will cost them everything they have raised so far... and then someone is going to say ´wait, you do your combat calculations on the client' . For those that don´t know, there is a HUGE difference between MMOs and single player games. In single player games, the client is everything. In MMOs, the client is nothing but a place where you see graphics. All calculations are done on the server. And again, nobody, even very smart programmers working on their own beloved projects have done this with Unity. ToA is counting on someone they contract to figure it out?
So that is where it ends. They are either going to accidently hire someone to do the combat scripting in Unity, which they will then have to pay for and which cannot be used in an MMO... or else they are going to start asking around and try to hire someone who can do MMO combat properly in Unity.... and they are going to hear crickets.
And then, one day you are going to log into the ToA website and see this message...
´It is my unfortunate duty to inform all of you that we are momentarily freezing all development of ToA. You see, weve come to the end of our financial means and without an injection of capital ToA will not make it to market. We are putting all efforts into finding the required capital so you should expect to see even less of me/us around (if that´s possible, right?! ) for the foreseeable future.
In closing, I´ll shamelessly plug our own need for capital. Should you or someone you know might be interested in investing in the competitive yet highly profitable video game industry, please contact us. Interested parties may contact me directly at don@shadowpool.com for a complete business plan, proformas, and multimedia presentation, including in-game video footage. Please note that our required investment is in the six to seven figure range.
Best,
Don Danielson
Brax
Sound familiar to anyone who donated money 10 years ago? It is going to happen again very soon when they try to implement combat into the server process. It has never been done in Unity, they can´t do it themselves, and anyone that could possibly do it isn´t some volunteer they can pluck from their forum boards with promises of free hotpockets. Again, 10,000 unity games, no MMOs and they are going to try to accomplish this with some fraction of 50k? My guess is they will hire someone to do the client-based combat and hope nobody notices the difference until they have gotten more fundraising done.... that is if they even know the difference between the two types of architecture.
But just to be clear, and you can ask around on Unity or HE or whatever game development forums you want. Any work you do with combat scripting on the client is almost completely worthless to port to a server model, ever script would have to be rewritten. You literally have to start from scratch. I just noticed on their website that they have combat listed as 50% finished for the demo.... yet they also just this week contracted someone to set up their server.. so yeah, basically they are paying someone to do client-side combat, and either they are going to use it to con people, or they actually really don´t know that what they are building now is useless for building an MMO.
This is where fantasy meets reality. This is where design notes done on a napkin meet real computer programming.
I don't understand why you think i missed the point. I understood you very well. You have a lack in believe in the creators of ToA. But your accusation of them being incompetent hold no ground. It is just your pretty wild assumptions which you got from the vids.
First i want to say that in the vids the devs just wanted to show specific things, how some things would work. We then didn't ask for more, so it wasn't polished, as they assumed many things might change. Secondly talking about change, the devs have been very active on planning the game itself and its features the last 2 years. Many ideas were proposed, changed, optimized. We as the community have seen that all happen. Not only that, we even participated in the change. That why it is that we know what is being done and what not. And this part is very important, because with this magnitude of new ideas has to have a really nice fitting. Lastly, if someone is a game designer, it doesn't mean he has to be a pro at programming or modeling. Nor does it mean that a pro at programming or modeling is a good game designer. I find that they have very good ideas that have inspired me as an game design hobbyist. I have no problem them paying someone to program parts of the game.
You had some good argumentation on how hard some things will be to implement, but you were mostly trowing with wild assumptions and offences. Now you can choose to continue with your bashing and non constructive comments or you can join us on the forum and actually do something constructive instead. Believe me, it is more fun planning ToA then being destructive on your colleagues.
Ps. Reading about unity not being able to make MMOs. I am no programmer, but a lot of people disagree. There seem to be solutions not that problematic about using middleware. MMO's are big work and have a tough market to go against. I think that is the reason why no MMOs have been released on it. Also as i understand unity gets improved all the time. So im not fearful of the future.
Easy question.
Unity is free. combat animations, modelling, character creation, inventory systems, skill systems, User Interface All of those can be done for free, and if you have 3 devs working on the project all of those basic systems could be done in two months,... and yet NOTHING is done.
Why is none of that done? Even if you say they started completely over last year. and nothing they did 10 years ago matters.. It has been over a year since they ´came back´. Why is NONE of that basic stuff done yet? All of which can be done for free. Why do you need to constantly fundraise and send out press releases when none of the stuff you can do for free is finished.
Why is nobody answering that question?
Ps. Reading about unity not being able to make MMOs. I am no programmer, but a lot of people disagree that unity can't. MMO's are big work and have a tough market to go against. I think that is the reason why no MMOs have been released on it. Also as i understand unity gets improved all the time. So im not fearful of the future.
There are people who think theoretically you should be able to do it, and a lot of people have started to try to do it and built hacks that they hope will work. But these are very very smart people, and none of them have successfully done it yet. And again, it is a HUGE technical hurdle that costs time and money.. which is why everyone uses HE or some of the other MMO engines. Unity is amazing for single player games, it makes world building and testing models and animations a breeze. But the core of the entire engine is to build a client that handles every function. Also, while possible, it is very doubtful Unity moves that way. All of their recent updates are more about making games easier to port to mobile... and again, they would basically have to start over themselves from scratch to make their engine capable of making MMO clients and servers.... which really is a small small market compared to the number of people making mobile games.
About the easy free stuff from Unity, it is because it is not that hard. Just recently they worked on how the inventory should work exactly. You can rush and make some easy details immidiatly and then change them every 6 months when you think of something extra or better, or you make a good thought through system and program it once without needing to make major changes after. So i understand this.
But about the unity engine and MMO's, what you are writing is constructive. While i don't understand exactly, they say that Unity could work with using other middleware engines. Here is the link:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/is-it-possible-to-actually-create-mmorpg-with-unity.26325/
Ps. sorry that is an old post. here is a newer one from 2013.
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/mmo-construction-kit.179338/
I'm all for having a great debate about anything but when someone says something like this, it is time to walk away.
Let me explain the differences
Client based game
Player pushes button to attack mob
Client determines if player hit, how much damage is done, updates the health, and energy of player
Client plays animation of the attack swing.
MMO
Player pushes button to attack mob
Client tells server player attacked mob
Client plays animation
Server calculates if player hit, damage done, changes to health and energy
Client receives data from server
Client updates GUI to indicate results from server
Client ( for good programmers) adjusts animations if the original animation is incorrect.
All of that happens in less than about a tenth of a second.
Unity does not provide any way to communicate with a server in that way because it was built for single player games. Not only do you have to hack Unity to get it to send/receive information like this, but you also have to build, from scratch, your entire server architecture and how it will communicate back with the client. Hero Engine not only has all of this functionality built in, but it also gives you the server already set up and configured to run a MMO.
The same is true with inventory and banking systems. In MMOs, the fact that you own a sword, or if that sword is in your hand, your backpack or the bank are all stored on the server. How much gold you have is stored on the server. Any time you access your inventory, equip an item, open your bankbox... all of that requires your client to request information from the server in MMOs. In Unity, it is obviously all just done in the client.
Like I said, there is a reason why Indy MMO developers mess around unity, build their game in HE or another MMO engine, and then if you are really big, you modify the crap out of HE like TESO and SWTOR did. Moving from HE back to Unity makes no sense at all except that HE costs money and is drastically more complicated ( because of all the server stuff and you really don´t want to ear about Dom and Gom). I am fairly certain the ToA devs were just overwhelmed as soon as they opened the HE engine and couldn´t even do the most basic stuff. So they went to Unity which is like using any basic paint program.. everything is very very simple to do. I was tempted last night to write a 5 minute tutorial to teach you how to do everything the ToA devs have done so far, and it would take you longer to download Unity than it would take you to do it.
Thank you for explaining. For someone that isn't a programmer that was very new and informative(me).
About the things not done, i think you are mixing not being able to and just not doing it yet. With a game as ToA, the possibilities are big, and the balance of ideas is very hard. I think they needed to toy with the system to see just how big their implementation can be. Inventory is just a small part compared to the rest and is adjusted to other features ingame. So it is not that they are not capable but that they just didn't want to make it and redo it a 100 times. Some ideas and features will still adapt and change, and the inventory might go with it.
On the other hand it seems that even in 2009 people were thinking of solutions to make unity work for MMO's as from this thread:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/is-it-possible-to-actually-create-mmorpg-with-unity.26325/
And i think this thread shows that a system is already developed for Unity:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/mmo-construction-kit.179338/
If i misunderstood something in those links or some other feedback you have i will appreciate. It are the same links i posted before, but as you didn't address them i just wanted to put them in your attention again and see what you think about it.
Nope, you got it right. There have been many attempts to do something similar. None of them have produced a game yet though.
Also, that particular tool you linked only handles the part of making the Unity client game communicate with a server. The person would still have to do all the server side stuff. It completely changes Unity and requires you to place spawns and do all NPC behaviors on the server. Again, this is really really hard stuff which is why if you read the comments these guys were being worshiped for just getting that first part of the process working.
Like I said, it is theoretically possible, and there have been a few good attempts and tools added. But in the end, it is just a situation that all the work you do to get it to work with Unity are not worth it. Just use HE which does all of that on purpose and doesn´t require you to butcher their engine to accomplish it. HE does everything Unity does except it doesn´t port easily to mobile games and the art pipeline is a bit more cumbersome. People say that Unity is easier to use, but that is because it does not contain all the tools necessary for a MMO, it is a tool for making single player games.
They have $50k and 3 devs. There is n reason that after a year they shouldn´t have a basic game with at least the core functions of a MMO up and running.
Look at the tool that was linked above. Those people built a tool to increase the functionality of Unity, and the demo game they have to showcase the tool has more functionality than ToA.
The devs of ToA are just like kids in a candy store. They thought if they raised some money they could just hire people to put their dreams into action. Indie games are not like that. Your core team needs to be doing the modeling, animations and scripting and then maybe you contract out side stuff like music, or maybe some environmental art, stuff like that. But the core work needs to be done by the guys with the game in their heads or you are going to waste a lot of time and money explaining to people ´your vision´.
You just do not have 3 devs sitting on their butt doing nothing but sending email to forum members soliciting them to ´do the server stuff´ ´ do the house´ .. You will never build a game that way. Even the lead devs at WOW do codiing or modeling. Anyone can be a napkin developer and cool ideas are a dime a dozen. The hard part of making an MMO is having cool ideas that can actually be reasonable added to a game. Like playable dragons.. they will NEVER be added to a traditional human based MMO. Someone could develop a game designed around them being playable, but it would require all the artwork and game to be built around it.
Anyway. we are announcing July 7th, and our demo has already been greenlit for Steam for the same day (free) and the full game will be available earlyish in 2015. We are mostly done already, just updating some art and optimizing... we want to be able to run on 5 year laptops... hahaha.. talk about unacheivable goals.
Looking forward to it. What type of game is it ? Anything you can tell us ?
Thanks Azrile for the contrsuctive part of your opinion. As we can see it seems very likely that the unity engine has enough support for an MMO and that the future can only bring more easy. So i'm pretty confident it will work out for ToA.
As you continued bashing without real argumentation and chose to ignore my explanation for some courses of action i will drop it now. If you are more happy being a hater here then being constructive with us, then i can only hope for you that you will see the error of your ways as soon as possible. I'm off to the ToA forums to have some fun discussions instead.
Yes, the fact that not a single MMO has ever been played with Unity is a sure sign that guys that can´t get their ingame camera to work can surely solve all those tech issues. Again, very smart people have tried for years to get Unity to make MMOs and all of them end up at Hero Engine.
Don´t get me wrong, discussions are fun. Every person who ever played UO had suggestions of how to make the game amazing. Dreaming about taming dragons and gathering a hoard and blah blah blah is all great. But at the end of the day, 3 developers who can´t model and who can´t script are not going to ever make a MMO, with 50k or 500k. . You see, real developers develop that sense of ´what can I do to make a great game´ and then they spend time learning to code, or how to use 3dsmax or learning ANY skill. At some point, you have to do some work, you can´t just discuss your dreams. There is no reason all 3 of these devs shouldn´t be very good with modeling after 10 years. It is insane to think that these guys have been working on this project for 10 years, yet none of them can do a model of a house. That is beyond lazy.
Right now, they have nothing in the game. They have the default trees and grass from Unity, they have a freebie character model, they have basic animations (2 or 3) for that character. That took them 1 year to accomplish.
The list of things they haven´t done is staggering, and each one of them takes longer than anything they have already done. Like I said, this is not vaporware because the Unity engine is so easy to use that it is impossible to not make something.. but when you are talking about them taking another year to have a function inventory system or even longer to have a combat system (even for single player game) we will all be dead before this game is released or cancelled again.
There aer dozens and dozens of ´mmos in development´ in HE. Those games, despite being self-funded, are much further along than ToA, in much less time. ToA isn´t a game, it is a bunch of people on a discussion board who have never programmed or modelled talking about crazy and then 3 guys who do nothing but say ´yeah we can do that, just send more money´..