Trials of Ascension, Shady Practices and the Big Crowdfunding Debate

[lawow74]

You stand in a large empty meadow bordered on the south by heavy forest with a river to the west. To the east you can see smoke drifting into the cloudless sunny sky. Thick overgrowth hinders passage to the north.

In the middle of this field are the skeletal remains of a dragon and inside the skeleton is a smaller skeleton of what appears to be a raknar. Inside the raknar's skeleton is a human skeleton.

Possible exits: W S E

Command?>

Get ye flask.

Though I cut my teeth on games more like this one.

[Maddoc]

I love how fast Brax does damage control when someone points at mistakes/errors/lies/bullshit, but when some spambot enters the forum, he just leaves it there. It's not been there for long, but Brax has closed negative threads within minuttes of their birth earlier.

http://trialsofascension.com/forum/t...aluation.4818/

[Azrile]

In a plot twist worthy of a facepalm, it emerges that their 2005 prototype looked like this:

You stand in a large empty meadow bordered on the south by heavy forest with a river to the west. To the east you can see smoke drifting into the cloudless sunny sky. Thick overgrowth hinders passage to the north.

In the middle of this field are the skeletal remains of a dragon and inside the skeleton is a smaller skeleton of what appears to be a raknar. Inside the raknar's skeleton is a human skeleton.

Possible exits: W S E

Command?>

screw you, now I had to go buy Zork from Gog.com Bonus points if anyone can remember the name of this game ( I can´t), but there was a text based game where you were on a broken down spaceship and were trapped in suspended animation ( I believe) and you could only free yourself by telepathically controlling 4 robots, each one had different abilities to repair the ship. I remember it came with this big fold-out map of the ship with little icons you could move around to remind you where the robots were. cerca 1990. I also remember a cool one where you were trapped in Dracula´s castle and once he bit you 3 times, you lost the game, so each night you had to find a way to prevent the bite.

too late fount it
http://www.giantbomb.com/suspended/3030-3134/

And wow, I am older than fuck.. 1983? but I probably bought it later. The other is name ´The Count´ from 1981!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Count_(video_game)

- - - Updated - - -

I love how fast Brax does damage control when someone points at mistakes/errors/lies/bullshit, but when some spambot enters the forum, he just leaves it there. It's not been there for long, but Brax has closed negative threads within minuttes of their birth earlier.

http://trialsofascension.com/forum/t...aluation.4818/

ah, you misunderstood. That is not spam, that is Brax´s new plan... fund the game by selling skin care products through his rockstar website.

[Nihilan]

Anyone remember the old "Adult" text based games from the mid 80's where you are on Venus or some shit and trying to find a way to hook up with the hot Amazonian Venus chicks without getting killed by monsters and stuff? Cant for the life of me remember the title. But i was just thinking about how cool it would be to rebuild those old Zork-style games using Unity or UE. Keep the step-by-step decision based play, but add sick backdrops, textures, and effects.

(Edit: Yes, im old.)

[Maddoc]

ah, you misunderstood. That is not spam, that is Brax´s new plan... fund the game by selling skin care products through his rockstar website.

Yes, I see it now. THAT was the master plan all along. Earning billions to fund their "game" by selling skin products. The post is still up btw, even after Elyssia (the mod) has been online. My guess is that she clicked the link and bought some products.

[lawow74]

Anyone remember the old "Adult" text based games from the mid 80's where you are on Venus or some shit and trying to find a way to hook up with the hot Amazonian Venus chicks without getting killed by monsters and stuff? Cant for the life of me remember the title. But i was just thinking about how cool it would be to rebuild those old Zork-style games using Unity or UE. Keep the step-by-step decision based play, but add sick backdrops, textures, and effects.

(Edit: Yes, im old.)

Maybe it was Leather Goddesses Of Phobos?

[Maddoc]

The fans show that they keep on chugging that sweet, addictive Kool-Aid! In the thread: "Has The Game"shut Down"?, Iauquai proves that he is the most hardcore drinker there is:

That is not necessarily true Ildefonse, they still have their artists, sound experts, writers and designers and they did have a second programmer that might be still there. Plus, they have had other programmers offered to help them, so FC just has to take the time to make the best decision for ToA.

[Azrile]

Anyone remember the old "Adult" text based games from the mid 80's where you are on Venus or some shit and trying to find a way to hook up with the hot Amazonian Venus chicks without getting killed by monsters and stuff? Cant for the life of me remember the title. But i was just thinking about how cool it would be to rebuild those old Zork-style games using Unity or UE. Keep the step-by-step decision based play, but add sick backdrops, textures, and effects.

(Edit: Yes, im old.)

There are a lot of people doing ´storybook´ games on Unity, which is kinda like what you said. At one point I saw a storybook kit on the asset store that was selling a lot of copies. In fact, Jason Appleton who I believe is on the Board of Directors of the GreedMonger new company MMOI did a second KS making a storybook game.

- - - Updated - - -

The fans show that they keep on chugging that sweet, addictive Kool-Aid! In the thread: "Has The Game"shut Down"?, Iauquai proves that he is the most hardcore drinker there is:

well, to be fair, Gassy is an artist and still involved. ´sound experts´ LOL... writers and designers is also true... After all, everyone who posts on their forums is a game developer.

[lawow74]

Oh please. If anyone was still actually writing code on that game Brax would be trumpeting it to the high fucking heavens. And yeah, they have artists, sound experts, writers and designers. They're a bunch of incompetent unpaid schmoes with shiny laminated nametags, but they're artists, sound experts, writers and designers, just like the Three Stooges are the lead devs...err...creative heads...err...co-CEO's...whatever, they're only human and you're a hater and a troll!

[Maddoc]

well, to be fair, Gassy is an artist and still involved. ´sound experts´ LOL... writers and designers is also true... After all, everyone who posts on their forums is a game developer.

Keep in mind that he is refering to artistS, sound expertS, writerS, designerS, and other programmerS.

[Sickjen]

Going through there website it just looks like a bad attempt at rp.

[Nihilan]

Maybe it was Leather Goddesses Of Phobos?

Oh my god, i forgot about the scratch-and-sniff games.

[Azrile]

Going through there website it just looks like a bad attempt at rp.

Do you mean the forum posters? or Brax RPing as a developer?

[Juvencus]

http://trialsofascension.com/forum/t...hut-down.4817/

I love how, by quoting you, he made the ban/post delete irrelevant

[Azrile]

GreedMonger has now gone more than two days without a single person posting on their forums. yeah guys.. good luck with that ´stress test´...

Tell Gassy to get that dragon down to under 20k tris and put it on the Asset store for $10 if he has 10-15 animations done for it. The secret to the asset store is to dumbify your stuff as much as possible. Include a prefab with the animator controller already done and the wanna-be´s will eat it up, people like the ToA devs can´t figure that shit out, so the more you can set up the prefab, the more it will sell.

Now this is funny.. someone at Speedtree has a sense of humor. Speedtree is selling ´speedweed´which I thought was just a pack of some plant models, but it is actually ´weed´....and the best part.. the price is $4.20

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/

[Fornax-]

Gassy (Josh) has been such a good sport too. He really is the nicest guy.

[Maddoc]

Atleast someone is sobering up:

I don't think that's true. FC has taken a lot of heat and some of it quite unfairly, but we also shouldn't dilute the truth.

I'm not sure who did the concept art, but I believe they contracted it out. Is there even anyone doing sound? They have writers and designers a plenty, but that doesn't do much good unless you're creating a MUD.

And I've never heard of a second programmer.

Not trying to be negative, so please correct if wrong. But neither should you carry a banner without knowing what you represent.

[khalltusk]

Indeed. I do wonder what this "plan" is. My money is on them going for some super saviour who will do x y z. Rather than a realistic lets learn how to do this our selves and knuckle down and work.

[Azrile]

Indeed. I do wonder what this "plan" is. My money is on them going for some super saviour who will do x y z. Rather than a realistic lets learn how to do this our selves and knuckle down and work.

It really doesn´t matter, same with Greedmonger. Even if they were totally legit and had all the pieces in place like games like Repopulation, GV, Shrouds, Shards etc.... The name of their game and their developers are so tainted at this point, they will never be able to get any marketing or hype going.

This is one thing Proctor and Brax don´t understand. Just because you have a few people ( and I mean a very few) who really support you and tell you to keep pushing, the 99% of players who disappeared into the night are gone. Most fans of a game are just that, fans.. they are not some ultra obedient cult-like following.. those fans saw what they saw and are not coming back. You aren´t going to win back fans a year or two from now, and any new people who discover your game are going to get overwhelmed by the negativity about your title and devs. less than zero... both games.

[Nihilan]

By the way, Atavism is now for sale on Steam. I saw it last night when browsing the Game Design Software to see what version of UE they had.

"BUILD YOUR OWN MMO!" It says in great big font over a poor background texture. They even had super legit quotes and player testimonials about all the great "MMO" games people are going to be making. I didnt actually read past the first page, but i couldnt help wondering if Brax and or the Greedmonger guys are quoted anywhere.

Anyways, given Azrile's critique of the package and its involvement with this thread, i got a chuckle out of seeing it listed. It seems to fall quite squarely into the "Shady Practices" part of this discussion.