Bay 12 Games Forum

I've tried to get into this game two or three times now but I just... I can't... The tutorial sucks, but the MINIMUM 75 card deck is just excessive and, honestly, kinda intimidating. How can, even remotely, be expected to be able to fully build out a 75 card deck without opening stupid-large numbers of boosters?

Quote from: Xgamer4 on March 24, 2018, 12:38:59 pm

Quote from: Serenseven on March 24, 2018, 11:01:57 am

What was actually said was that one video - the "First Turns and New Maps" one - was scripted. Joe had a programmer friend look at an incomplete copy of the source code, and the friend found the script hard-coded into the function that normally would have handled the passing of turns. So that video does not actually show what it purports to show.

This is actually the only provable deception about That Which Sleeps. Provable because I was that friend, I found that script, I told Joe about it, and I still have that copy of the source code (with the script still inside it).

And before anyone asks: No, the incomplete copy of the source code I have does not compile into even a running executable, much less an actual game.

Outta curiosity, does it look like there's any supporting structure for turn advancement at all? I'm curious if it was scripted just to make sure Josh knew exactly what would happen so he could explain everything best, vs it being the only way to get it work.

Not that I think it actually is to aid recording... I don't have anywhere near that much faith in Josh. But it is a benign explanation.

Then similarly, does it seem to fail to compile because you're missing dependencies, or because it's fundamentally incomplete, or.. It had to have compiled in some form to make the videos even with a script, so I'm just wondering if failure to compile  has a benign explanation as well.

There are some classes named "TurnController", "GameController", etc., that seem to be the code representation of Unity objects that would be responsible for managing individual turns and the overall state of the game, respectively. There is nothing TWS-specific in them, however, so I assume these classes were auto-generated by Unity when the associated objects were put in the project.

I am not getting into the question of Josh's motives for scripting the video. All I stated was that that particular video is not what is says it is in the title. It claims to show the first turns, when in fact no turns are passing. I'm aware that putting an executable on rails temporarily for demonstration purposes is a thing - I've done it before - but I also took care to make everyone involved aware that it was just an illustration of planned future features, and not the actual features themselves.

The video makes no such disclaimer, and therefore is currently the only thing about TWS that can be proven to be a falsehood without relying on anyone's perceptions of "fraud", "malice" or whatever. It is an objective fact that that video is not what it claims to be. Why it is not what it claims to be is an entirely different question, and is not answerable with our current knowledge.

The source code I have doesn't compile because the linker is looking for Unity prefabs and other precompiled objects that are not part of the code I have, and that are not present on my machine. Josh's Unity environment presumably has these objects present and so his executable would compile.

I should also point out that the source I have is dated 10/23/2016. So we're talking about nearly year-and-a-half-old code here. Things may (or may not) be very different now.

Oh yeah, I'm not gonna pretend it's anything good. Absolute best case it's scripted based off an actual playthrough and that was never mentioned, worst it's an outright deception to mask the lack of progress. And the only way you'd have any idea is if he'd left some comment like "//ignore normal logic, play script for recording" which I really, really doubt happened.

How far does the script go, could you tell? Did we see everything in the video, or was there more to it?

Then it sounds like failure to compile is just from mismatched build environments. That's about as routine as you can get when the process is "zip up source, email away", so that doesn't personally worry me. And yeah, a lot can happen in a year and a half. Of course, a lot can fail to happen, and while everything we've seen recently looks very polished... Lack of polish on the map and UI hasn't ever been the problem   

He [Fen/Joe] gave us a few infos, including the one that there was no game at that point and the videos release where cripted mockups. So with that background, most of us just became nihilistic relating to this game. We kept the rest of the forum that wasn´t nuked alive (did I mention that at some point Josh or Fen just straight

A while ago someone made the point that it'd probably be best to take what Joe was saying the last few days before he left with a grain of salt. The one and only time he'd said anything like the videos were a lie, he'd never seen a working copy, the playtesters don't exist, etc was right when he was getting ready to wash his hands of the whole project and never look back, and at that point he had an extremely vested interest in redirecting the community's anger away from him and onto Josh. He'd seen how the community turned on Josh, and likely wanted nothing to do with it.

Also, the Kickstarter was ran by King Dinosaur Games, not Josh personally. And Joe is the registered agent for King Dinosaur Games, meaning he'd be immediately aware of any lawsuits filed (being the one to receive service). This whole "Kickstarter campaign was formally and legally ran by King Dinosaur Games, LLC and not Josh personally" thing is something *literally everyone* seems to be overlooking when talking about suing Josh.

The question I'm interested in is if someone (it's been Joe, historically) files an Annual Report for King Dinosaur Games this year, because that'd be a real and obvious sign someone is trying to keep this alive (you don't spend $500 to keep your business running just because - and the only punishment Massachusetts seems to have for not filing is that failure to file for 2 years gets the company dissolved).

Yeah, TWS looks like it'll definitely be one of the more complex grand strategy games out there, but it's definitely not alone. It looks roughly on par, or even less complex, than some of the Paradox games, and the UI actually looks quite good. Very dense, but well-laid-out and reasonable, just from the snippet we've seen. No "well, now we click 6 layers deep..." things, etc.

Josh. The dev's name is Josh. The original business partner that's now disavowed himself form the project was Joe.

But I'll admit, you railing so hard against a project you're not monetarily invested in, without even knowing the names of the two people involved, is amusing.

Your first link talks about legal action against a campaign that, apparently, literally took the money and ran, then lied about it. That's very different from That Which Sleeps.

Your second link is press about Kickstarter updating its ToS. Great, sure, but not really relevant.

Your third link is actually notable, but caveats being it was a default judgement, and the actual restitition was only $668. There's an additional $54000 in there, but that's legal fees ($23,183) and penalties for violating the state Consumer Protection Act ($31,000). And that was 2.5 years ago without, as far as I can tell, Washington filing anymore suits.

So, sure, the FTC pursued someone for not even trying, and Washington state got a default judgement on the one suit they filed. So other than "it might happen", I'm not sure you've established what you wanted to.

Few things of note. There seem to be 24 turns to a year, so 100 turns is "just" about 4 years. Which doesn't strike me as unreasonable for some of the challenges with that time. It also makes sense from a game play perspective. It means small things of importance could be happening on each individual turn, punctuated with large discoveries or shifts spread much farther out. It's the type of game play you'd want a game like this to have.

This set of videos opened at 1402.4, which is 17 turns beyond where he stopped the last video. But! It's not the same session. Last video he ran with Inatha, and thus time he ran with Karth.

I would bet against these being design documents, and for there being something real that's there. I'd likely abstain from betting on the existence of a mid/late game, but if forced would probably place a small amount on there being one. It'd be nice to see a playthrough

EDIT: Belial, apparently. Not Karth.

So, Josh's phrasing is that he'll be posting a video every week. Josh could go through Dec 2nd (Saturday) and technically be on time, by his phrasing. That's the most lenient I'm willing to go, though. If there's nothing by the 3rd, he's late.