Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[PTTG??]

Huh, sounds neat.

I'm... kinda glad I didn't hear about this the first time around because otherwise I would have gotten tired of waiting by now.

[Retropunch]

Huh, sounds neat.

I'm... kinda glad I didn't hear about this the first time around because otherwise I would have gotten tired of waiting by now.

Yeah from the dev videos it looks awesome - whilst there's a lot to look back at, at the time you could really see it was working well. I was a bit concerned about if it'd be quite as in depth as he promised (he was basically promising nearly turing AI with full market simulation) but it was definitely going to be awesome.

He then had a mental break of some sort - I get that, but it all sorta went badly. He just stopped posting and made all the classic signs of a dev just ditching a project (that had been kickstartered).
He came back with a 'developing a game is so hard' tract (after months of telling everyone how easy it was) and that as it was so difficult he had developed serious mental issues which resulted in him not being able to work or communicate with anyone. That's fine, everyone can understand that if that's the case, you need to ease off and mental problems are no joke. The problem was that he put that out and how he was changed and whatever, and then never posted again for another year and a half.

He now springs back into the foreground stating that he's been working tirelessly on solutions (and I half believe that), but I do wonder if he's been getting a few scary letters from kickstarter and has started to pull the boat along for another few weeks to keep them off his back for a while.

Don't get too excited yet in other words.

[Gabeux]

I hope he develops it fully. Sounds good.

[ollobrains]

results matter, sounds like his been busy and up and down and as long as the weekly dev blogs and maybe a beta resolve then thats good, another game drifter has been slowly ticking along, a bit like LT, starsector is anohter that is moving towards 0.8 so all tehse indie efforts are making progress

[Dohon]

I was very excited for the game. Very. Wasn't able to contribute to the kickstarter due to being late, but I loved his updates and his enthusiasm. Once he went dark and then told that he had mental issues, I sympathized. I came from the same dark place and it is a real battle to come back. But I'm sitting on the fence this time. If Limit Theory gets a release, I'll play it for sure. But I'm not holding my breath. Don't want to turn purple again.

[Retropunch]

I was very excited for the game. Very. Wasn't able to contribute to the kickstarter due to being late, but I loved his updates and his enthusiasm. Once he went dark and then told that he had mental issues, I sympathized. I came from the same dark place and it is a real battle to come back. But I'm sitting on the fence this time. If Limit Theory gets a release, I'll play it for sure. But I'm not holding my breath. Don't want to turn purple again.

I certainly sympathised with him, and I was willing to forgive all sorts with that. My issue however, was that after he came out and said 'that was a dark time, I'm basically over it, I'll post regularly etc. etc.', he then didn't say anything for nearly 2 years.

To come back and suddenly say 'oh hey guys I've actually been working REALLY HARD but not saying anything' is kinda a bit...well...jarring. Still, if he's got something that's PAX demo ready, I imagine they'll be at least enough for an alpha release at some point.

[Talvieno]

Beta, actually - not alpha - and yes, it'll more than likely be relatively soon. He's mostly gotten the performance issues solved at this point and is just working on getting everything back to where it was so he can finish the game proper.

As to why he suddenly came back in such a jarring manner... that was specifically my doing. I decided I was tired of his "must only show flashy things" mindset and pulled him out of it. I'm his Community Manager now, and I'm trying to make sure the long periods of silence never happen again - and keep him on the right track to finally get the thing finished.

I am going to second the "don't hold your breath" idea, though. It'll be done when it's done. Josh isn't setting a specific release date this time, because we all know how bad he is at sticking to deadlines. 

[Retropunch]

Beta, actually - not alpha - and yes, it'll more than likely be relatively soon. He's mostly gotten the performance issues solved at this point and is just working on getting everything back to where it was so he can finish the game proper.

As to why he suddenly came back in such a jarring manner... that was specifically my doing. I decided I was tired of his "must only show flashy things" mindset and pulled him out of it. I'm his Community Manager now, and I'm trying to make sure the long periods of silence never happen again - and keep him on the right track to finally get the thing finished.

I am going to second the "don't hold your breath" idea, though. It'll be done when it's done. Josh isn't setting a specific release date this time, because we all know how bad he is at sticking to deadlines. 

Good of you to pop in and congrats on the position - it's good to know that he's got a bit of help on that front. Going by the traditional definition of Beta meaning feature complete but needing polish, will that be the first release we see?

Whilst I'm really not a fan of early access and that whole thing, I can really imagine a dogfighting release (like star citizen did) would be a great step forward into getting a huge following built up and bring back those who doubted it'd ever really get anywhere. No need for anything fancy, I'm sure the demo he had for PAX with a bit of polish would be fine.

Also, whilst I know that he's not wanting to post just flashy things and have loads of videos and whatever, a more up to date video (even if it wasn't really anything we hadn't already seen) would do a lot to put people's minds at ease I'm sure.

[Talvieno]

Going by the traditional definition of Beta meaning feature complete but needing polish, will that be the first release we see?

Beta is backer-only, as promised on Kickstarter. The 1.0 release will be the first one available, most likely. It's not quite the traditional "early access" plan. I also don't think a dogfighting release is likely to be on the menu. I've mentioned it to him before, but he didn't seem very keen on the idea; he's very insistent about keeping promises to the Kickstarter backers - or at least, whatever promises he can.

Also, whilst I know that he's not wanting to post just flashy things and have loads of videos and whatever, a more up to date video (even if it wasn't really anything we hadn't already seen) would do a lot to put people's minds at ease I'm sure.

I do think he plans on making a new video at some point in the semi-near future - most likely to showcase the game before the Beta release, and probably another one as a launch trailer before the public release on Steam/GOG. I'm going to make sure he makes at least one gameplay video - it's good for getting the game into the public eye.

[Retropunch]

I do think he plans on making a new video at some point in the semi-near future - most likely to showcase the game before the Beta release, and probably another one as a launch trailer before the public release on Steam/GOG. I'm going to make sure he makes at least one gameplay video - it's good for getting the game into the public eye.

I think you need like...a lot of extra videos, not just a few immediately before launch.

I get that he wants to concentrate on getting the game out there and all that, but even if it's just a few 5 minute videos of him doing a bit of messing around/testing in game it'll do a lot to get people hyped and also put those who were (understandably) disappointed/confused with what all happened at ease/bring them back on board.

That Which Sleeps recently bombed hard and publicly, in a way slightly similar to Limit Theory (not the same, but the whole 'dev leaving and coming back after ages promising loads had been done') and so I think people do need way more reassurance than before - the best way to do that is show stuff happening. It doesn't need to be flashy, long or detailed, just 5 minutes every two weeks showing off what he's been doing in game.

I imagine from a personal standpoint it'll also help him push through the final hurdles. Getting that encouragement, excitement and whatever is always super useful.

[Talvieno]

I think you need like...a lot of extra videos, not just a few immediately before launch.

Releasing videos would be rather counter-productive at the moment. He's working on building back the engine proper now that he has performance going strong again, but the game isn't back to where it was before. People that hadn't been paying attention (most people, present company excluded of course) would think he'd actually wrecked the game and been piddling around for the past two years. He needs something new to show - something that makes it quite obvious that forward progress is being made.

This is all said without mentioning the fact that it was the excessive dev video work that helped push him over the edge and gave him a mental breakdown.


Now - all of that on the table, I do agree with you on some points. If he had something impressive to show, and could get videos out with minimal editing in a short period of time - I'd say he should absolutely post a few videos up, and I'm going to strongly encourage him to. I'm sure that after he releases Beta we'll be seeing a lot of videos on YouTube, too. He and Scott Manley (prominent YouTuber) met up one year at GDC, for instance, and he's planning on giving him a Beta key - and will probably release press versions as well. I think we're on the right track to getting Limit Theory some visibility.

That Which Sleeps recently bombed hard and publicly, in a way slightly similar to Limit Theory (not the same, but the whole 'dev leaving and coming back after ages promising loads had been done') and so I think people do need way more reassurance than before - the best way to do that is show stuff happening.

Aw, yes, I was following that project closely and was immensely disappointed after they dropped those updates on the situation. It had such promise. I'm still hopeful something may happen eventually, but... realistically, it's hard to expect anything more.

Josh has been posting images, though. Here's a few.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This last one is of his physics work - from a couple days ago.


And here's a gallery with more.

If you're interested, he's doing weekly devlogs here. I really don't think bi-weekly video updates are something we could consider, unfortunately, seeing as the previous update videos often chopped nearly a week off his coding time.

[Retropunch]

Ahh!! Y'see I hadn't seen any of the devlogs or pictures or anything. That's just as good as videos - my point was just that there needs to be sort of...tangible material (especially of a visual kind).

I know you're going through a website overhaul, but it'd be good to put devlogs in the 'announcements' section of the forum and in the news thing on the front page. I'm sure people here would be happy to get a weekly bump with a oneliner of what it's about (e.g. 'devlog 123438 is out: talking about implementing new shaders') when the new devlog comes out if you're happy to do so.

 

[Talvieno]

I've been posting in the announcements section of the forum with major updates for a good while now: http://forums.ltheory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=5031

A few weeks ago I started writing up non-technical summaries of Josh's posts and sticking them underneath his walls of text - including a tl;dr summary for those that don't have a lot of time.

As to the website... Yes, the website itself seriously needs updated. I've been bugging him to let me update it, and he's planning on giving me access when he has time. It's on his to-do list.


I can post weekly tl;dr summaries here too, if people want them.

[Rince Wind]

I would appreciate that.

[Talvieno]

Josh posted a devlog update today, just a short while ago. tl;dr: Josh is working on the whole ship/station/asteroid problem and it's more difficult than he expected. He also added in some pretty graphics additions yesterday.

Link: http://forums.ltheory.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=5993

For those that don't want to trawl through a ton of technical stuff, there's a non-technical summary at the bottom of his post.