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This is war (?)


le_souriceau

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3 hours ago, Daphne Jones said:

 

That makes the investors very dangerous since they could close the game, take their tech, and walk at any time.

The tech isn't all that great. All "single-shard" means is a bunch of long json strings being passes around a couple of servers. There are a number of projects working on similar systems to facilitate the single universe / persistence idea. There's nothing unique about DU's version of it.

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This confident attitude of showing the bugs and making-of from a trailer only confirms to me that NQ should be warming up as FB are showing things that have already been featured in videos from 2019. You haven't seen anything like this at NQ.

 

 

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Steam is good for:

  1. Make a game known.
  2. Provide a download and update platform.
  3. Adding "friends", steam overlay, achievements to games.

DU has all of those(except overlay).

Changing those to steam would increase development costs instead of cutting those by using a known API.

 

Steam is bad for:

  1. Sharing a huge % of profit.
  2. Enforcing a business model.
  3. Reviews on buggy games.
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NQ has nothing much to "blooper reel" as they have no content they created to show off since they think they can sit back and let players do all the work.

 

Also.. We need actual physics <-

Also Also .. NQ, good luck with that AvA and AvC implementation ;)

 

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3 hours ago, joaocordeiro said:

You mean, you hope this community keeps promoting your game despite ppl saying this is not the correct place to do it?

I specifically called this comment out. Nothing more nothing less. And that was simply not what ppl were doing here, so I commented about that. Idc what that dev said and what he does or when he registered his account. It was all about YOUR comment. So please, stay on topic. I dont read and ignore all other ramblings, couldn't care less 

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This thread went from us defending DU against an outside assailant, to arguing amongst ourselves about promoting other games, to games platforms....and even now back to us criticising DU again...

Fantastic reading. Keep it up.

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19 hours ago, IvanGrozniy said:

The tech isn't all that great. All "single-shard" means is a bunch of long json strings being passes around a couple of servers. There are a number of projects working on similar systems to facilitate the single universe / persistence idea. There's nothing unique about DU's version of it.

it is really not great. 

 

1. Server infrastructure isn't theirs, it's AWS

2. Game engine isn't theirs, its Unigen2

3. Data pipeline isn't theirs, it's mongoDB and Amazon's DynamoDB (afik)

4. Voxel to mesh algorithm isn't theirs, they implemented a known algorithm that other devs could implement for less cost and with the knowledge it is actually robust 

5. It hasn't scaled. There's no evidence that DU's tech can scale other than in advance of pre-planned events. Tech with no real-life proof of performance isn't worth anything because it is basically gambling that your devs can fix the issues for cheaper than it would cost to implement yourself. 

 

The thing about their tech is that it is fundamental to how a similar game would work, and no responsible dev would purchase that hoping to just plug it and and make it go.

 

You need real proof that a purchased architecture is robust -- proof DU hasn't been able to materialize. If DU is "just a glorified tech demo", it isn't a very compelling one. 

 

there's no way investors could take DU's tech and sell it for anything that would make it worth their time. 

 

It's one thing to buy Unreal Engine and use their code vs. making your own engine...whole different ballgame to buy unproven code from a game that hasn't scaled and seems mired in dev difficulties. Would end up costing you way more than it is worth, even if it only cost $1,000 it wouldn't be worth it for serious devs looking to make a similar game.

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31 minutes ago, ShippyLongstalking said:

4. Voxel to mesh algorithm isn't theirs, they implemented a known algorithm that other devs could implement for less cost and with the knowledge it is actually robust 

 

It was funny to see during an interview with JC how he was given praise for "solving" the voxel blobs and JC coming back "well.. it's actually not new"..

Here is the original document on the technology NQ uses called "Dual Contouring" from 2002 (!)

 

 

Overall NQ is really not doing anything new, the server tech they use has been around for many years and the only thing "new" is their application of the tech which, as you mentioned, has yet to be proven to actually work as we're not seeing close to the numbers of players NQ claims their tech can handle yet.

 

It's clear that the tech works well for much higher player counts than most others out there but they have yet to hit their "thousands or even millions" claim ..

 

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Honestly, NQ shit on their playerbase so hard that its not unprofessional to call them out like that. All the better if they are aware of how things go when you mismanage your game, chances are better for Starbase to succeed if they are paying attention.

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44 minutes ago, joaocordeiro said:

I dont think this is intended. 

Just a side effect from the overload of work. 

The problem is that "overload of work" went precisely into boning the playerbase, even though the community complained beforehand and they did it anyways. The sheer amount of changes in 0.23 was ALOT of WORK, you actually have to try to mess up that bad and they did lol. So much potential down the drain.

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13 minutes ago, Shulace said:

The problem is that "overload of work" went precisely into boning the playerbase

I agree with you, but, some of the players complained about the lack of depth into industry and industry talents.

Saying that everyone could do everything without any commitment.
 

This is a reaction to that complaining.
The result is bad, but we can say they "shit" on the playerbase when it was a result of hearing to it.

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24 minutes ago, joaocordeiro said:

I agree with you, but, some of the players complained about the lack of depth into industry and industry talents.

Saying that everyone could do everything without any commitment.
 

This is a reaction to that complaining.
The result is bad, but we can say they "shit" on the playerbase when it was a result of hearing to it.

Now, when you're in charge of a project, you have to be able to judge good advice from bad ones. Know your playerbase, taking advice from 12 or so people to change the whole game is a bit much. Its only those folks remaining; the "playerbase" that asked for this if you will. It boggles the mind.

 

Can you compare the games' subreddit activity falloff since 0.23? It's amazing really. I would honestly be shocked if there was more than 200 people still playing this game on a daily, that number is probably on the high end too.

 

Edit: The real reason they made the changes was that they underestimated player progression and wanted to make the game grindier to extend player subs/retention(they can't create meaningful content that works fast enough). I almost feel embarrassed saying that, everything else is just secondary, as ridiculous as it is, its true.

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1 hour ago, Shulace said:

Now, when you're in charge of a project, you have to be able to judge good advice from bad ones

Yea, I agree with you.
But can't we blame this in their "programmer/engineer  mindset"?

 

Because, the lack of professionals in areas outside of coding, thinking they can do it all,

the lack of tools to gather proper feedback,

the importance of a selected group of players, while disregarding others,

the general stubbornness regarding all this,

is usually associated with that narrow "programmer/engineer  mindset".

 

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10 hours ago, blazemonger said:

It was funny to see during an interview with JC how he was given praise for "solving" the voxel blobs and JC coming back "well.. it's actually not new"..

Here is the original document on the technology NQ uses called "Dual Contouring" from 2002 (!)

 

 

The "voxel to mesh" thing that NQ implemented was an idea that was only whispered about like some kind of mythical unicorn by the Landmark devs.

 

I have no idea who deserves credit for it, but it was something pretty incredible whoever figured it out.

 

The voxel tech was originally designed for building landscapes and terrain.  The whole purpose of it, as far as i know, is that voxels can be edited up close, and then simplified when they're viewed at a distance.  The problem is that spaceships don't look great when they're "simplified".  So dual contouring is what was causing the "voxel blob" issue.  It wasn't the solution.  

 

The fact that the whole voxel system wasn't even designed to be used this way (building things in detail) is something that the Landmark devs were only just beginning to wrap their heads around.

 

When you consider what the game looks like now, compared to what it looked like before they implemented the mesh server, it seems like a pretty big deal to me.

 

 

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