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Author Topic: Limit Theory  (Read 18082 times)

Talvieno

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Re: Limit Theory
« Reply #90 on: June 05, 2017, 09:14:06 pm »

Recent news from the last devlog post: Josh's intern and new hire (misunderstanding last time; it's an intern and a hire) are working excellently together. One's focused on gameplay, and the other is focused on helping get the code moving in the right direction. Performance is currently through the roof; 10k missiles generated, aimed, and set into motion in a single frame is peanuts now. This means it's now on to re-implementing and polishing gameplay.

In other news, while it's not part of the devlog, I've put together an official list of features that Josh still plans to put into Limit Theory. (this is 100% dev-confirmed.)
« Last Edit: June 06, 2017, 11:18:19 am by Talvieno »
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Mephansteras

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Re: Limit Theory
« Reply #91 on: June 06, 2017, 10:58:42 am »

This looks promising, I'll have to keep an eye on it.
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Talvieno

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Re: Limit Theory
« Reply #92 on: August 01, 2017, 12:27:56 pm »

A bit more news. There hasn't been much to post lately, but we now have a Kickstarter update that summarizes much of what I've already said here: Josh has two new programmers helping him with the code, ECS is solved, framerate issues are gone, we have a feature list up, and things are moving along quickly.
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Retropunch

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Re: Limit Theory
« Reply #93 on: September 30, 2018, 03:23:45 pm »

News for anyone who hasn't heard - the project is officially dead. He's written a long sad apology/sign off here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joshparnell/limit-theory-an-infinite-procedural-space-game/posts/2270873

He's gotten a lot of very supportive messages but, without wanting to sound callous, I think he's fucked up just as much as all the other smash and grab kickstarters and shouldn't have a get out of jail free card just for being a good writer.

He pocketed nearly 190,000 dollars to make pretty much nothing (he's releasing some pretty useless source code apparently). More than that though, he kept stringing people along with saying the reason he hadn't done anything for months/a year was due to mental problems - fine, everyone's understanding - comes back saying he had an alpha prototype and it was all pretty much done, and now comes back and there's absolutely nothing. He had no deadlines, no clearly defined product or anything like that to stick to, but yet still produced nothing of worth for nearly 200k.

Even at the time of the kickstarter it was apparently not too far off - so whilst I dont think it was a complete con, I am annoyed that he basically gets to walk away with everyone's money just because he's inept.
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With enough work and polish, it could have been a forgettable flash game on Kongregate.

Talvieno

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Re: Limit Theory
« Reply #94 on: September 30, 2018, 04:07:57 pm »

Hmm, you do come across as callous, although I realize that may not have been your intent. I'd like to point out a few things.

Quote
More than that though, he kept stringing people along with saying the reason he hadn't done anything for months/a year was due to mental problems
This is false. Just going to get that out of the way first. His "time off" for mental health equated to about three months of those six years - or about 4.2%, and he tried to work through that time as well, albeit without making much progress.

Most of the time was spent trying to get the engine to be capable of doing what he needed it to do - which is a good deal more than any commercially-available engine is capable of. Little surprise there. Josh is a single programmer and games can (and have) been delayed for years due to having to switch engines. Par time for an engine switch is 2-4 years, and more if you're trying to port content you already have. Team Fortress 2 is a good example here - a game that took around eight years to release due to engine changes and redesigns.

Moving on:
$190,000 divided by 6 years of development is about $31,500 a year, which is pretty close to minimum wage. He also spent up some of his personal savings, including at least one loan from family members that I know of. Not mentioned: he had at least two different "employees" he hired to help with the code - and their fees would've been taken out of that. If we assume he paid them... say... $20000 a year (for a total time of roughly one year each, that's down to only $150,000, which brings his yearly "wage" down to $25,000.

In short, he didn't "walk away with everyone's money". He spent it very carefully and there simply isn't anything left. He spent it all trying to finish the game.


The difference between him and your "smash and grab" Kickstarters is that he actually tried. I can attest to this personally; I had access to his Assembla and could see the pages of commits he did. This isn't like he spent three months working and then said "Meh, it's too hard, I'm just going to keep the rest of the money and refund a couple people if I have to, sorry guys!" He spent six years working on this project full-time to the best of his ability.

He quit college to chase his Ultimate Dream, and he's come away with nothing except the knowledge that he gave it everything he had, essentially wasted six years of his life, and he still failed, disappointing thousands of people in the process. That's got to feel pretty miserable, don't you think? That's why people are reacting with empathy. Anyone that would kick someone while they're down is a dick, and there are many more good people in this world than assholes.



As a developer, he needs management and direction if he's going to produce anything. He's an exceptionally "good" person, and a brilliant programmer, but he's a poor solo developer. He would do much better working under someone else to produce part of a project, I think. The engine rewrites are understandable - he lacked the experience to know "how powerful" of an engine he would need - but he often got distracted with rabbitholes, which is what I'm referring to here. (He was also very overambitious, but that's also about lacking experience - which he has hopefully gained a good deal of from this.)
« Last Edit: October 03, 2018, 03:46:11 pm by Talvieno »
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xaritscin

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Re: Limit Theory
« Reply #95 on: September 30, 2018, 04:51:33 pm »

yeah from the videoblogs and everything else it seems this guy burned himself to push the project but nor the resources nor his skills could make it due to how ambitious was and the technical or programming requirements of the inner workings of the game.

wouldnt surprise me if Scrumbleship also ends like this seeing that Dirkson too had some kind of personal break down some years ago and i havent seen much announcements or devblogs (game has a GitHub or something but i dont really look at that).

anyways, its for the best i guess, i mean, the code of the game will become Open Source or something like that from what i've gathered so there's hope someone could take it as reference or something. as for Josh, the best we can do is encourage him to put his life together and move forward, Limit Theory was too much for him but perhaps he could develop something else, but not until he takes some rest from this nightmare of a project.

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Yolan

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Re: Limit Theory
« Reply #96 on: September 30, 2018, 09:05:15 pm »


This reminds me a little of Blockade Runner, another very ambitious space game that I backed and followed patiently for six plus years before it ended up abandoned. The devs did a lot of work, but their ambitious engine took up most of their time.

Making a game is a lot of work. If you go into it, you need some understanding that the scope of some projects is simply far larger than anything you are humanly capable of. Making an ambitious game, and your own engine? A team of a dozen might have failed.


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Retropunch

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Re: Limit Theory
« Reply #97 on: October 01, 2018, 02:25:59 am »

--snip--

I understand there are a lot of reasons behind all this, but I don't think I can wipe the slate clean just due to him being overambitious and having burned out. I'm sure he sacrificed a lot and tried hard, and I don't think he's a bad person, but  I remember watching the videos, and they were always couched in that 'I'm pretty much done I just have a few bits to do' language, so to go from that to nothing at all seems pretty disingenuous regardless of how nice of a person he is.

Equating it to a smash and grab kickstarter was probably wrong - I'm sure he did put in a lot of work and sacrificed a lot, but he must have seen early on (or at least earlier on than this) that he wasn't going to make it.

Really, I feel that he's flushed 200k of other people's money down the drain for nothing and must have known earlier than a week ago that this was going to be the case. Instead of trying to work round it or sort it out, he's just gone 'sorry guys I'm so burned out but the most important thing is I tried and lessons learned.' and walked out. That's what annoys me - he could have thought of a better way to do this than just going throwing out a bunch of half baked code and calling it a day.

Ambition is great, but I don't like it at the cost of other people's money - no matter how much they're willing to throw at you and how valiant your efforts are.
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With enough work and polish, it could have been a forgettable flash game on Kongregate.

ZeroGravitas

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Re: Limit Theory
« Reply #98 on: October 01, 2018, 08:49:52 am »

why do i know the name Josh Parnell? i feel like he worked on other games i've heard of but googling him turns up nothing
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Talvieno

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Re: Limit Theory
« Reply #99 on: October 02, 2018, 12:21:11 pm »

why do i know the name Josh Parnell? i feel like he worked on other games i've heard of but googling him turns up nothing
If you're the same Zero Gravitas I know from the Limit Theory forums, that would explain it. :)
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ollobrains

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Re: Limit Theory
« Reply #100 on: November 14, 2018, 09:05:10 pm »

no word from josh or the open source just yet, the community that is left is patientily waiting
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Caz

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Re: Limit Theory
« Reply #101 on: November 14, 2018, 10:57:02 pm »

wow, finding this thread in 2018 for the first time was a rollercoaster. apt for a game that was to be titled "Limit Theory".
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ollobrains

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Re: Limit Theory
« Reply #102 on: November 15, 2018, 12:20:50 am »

more akin to limit never released in a final form.  That said there are some other games out there a mix of indie and aa - aaa titles that kinda fill the void (x4 foundations coming up, no mans sky updates, ED, SC and smaller titles such as starpoint warlord gemini, SPAZ2, starmade, gensis one and dual universe)
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