Trials of Ascension, Shady Practices and the Big Crowdfunding Debate

[MMOIJamesPro]

Roflmao!!!! Oh my God, are you trying to blame me for not finishing City Life? Are you serious? I didn’t gave you a chance? Dude… I don’t have to give you shit at all. If you are capable of doing it, just do it, prove me how wrong I am instead going around online forums with a hand full of lame excuses.

Plus, you are giving me way too much credit, here is the thread you speak of:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/pro...y-life.355776/

If 2 posts in a forum thread are enough to bring the end to one of your projects, it explains why you have yet to finish any of them. Besides, no one was “attacking” you there, I already told you, you are just wasting time here pretending to be a victim… people told you exactly what was going to happen, that City Life, just like all the projects you announced before it wouldn’t go anywhere, that you would just get bored of it and come with something new, guess what happened.

Still, if it bothers you that much, I suggest you to leave the announcements until you actually have something minimally playable.

Oh and also…

“As long as I'm not asking for money at all then who the heck cares what I'm doing?”

“I have someone (won't mention who in public...) that I am talking with about funding the costs of the servers” (@ http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index....98177/page-31 )

Yes that one person who has agreed to fund the servers is someone very specific and is the ONLY person who I would accept money from to help with GM before launch. Not going to say who though until things are final and I have money in hand and am ready to get the servers.

[Juvencus]

City Life was NOT finished because I realized exactly what I said... Didn't matter how good I made it people were going to ensure that it failed even if I did my very best on it and it turned out to be a great game. Why would I put all my blood, sweat, and tears into a project that I knew would fail regardless of how it turned out all because I had a past project that Failed. I then turned my attention back to GM to try and prove everyone wrong.

How about you shut them up by actually releasing something finished, instead of using them as scapegoats for perpetually unfinished projects?

[Taojnhy]

City Life was NOT finished because I realized exactly what I said... Didn't matter how good I made it people were going to ensure that it failed even if I did my very best on it and it turned out to be a great game. Why would I put all my blood, sweat, and tears into a project that I knew would fail regardless of how it turned out all because I had a past project that Failed. I then turned my attention back to GM to try and prove everyone wrong.

Let's be honest here, okay? GM failed because you and your previous partner Hagel had gone to great lengths to point out how you were going to save GM and make sure it was made (for the fans!) only to turn around less than two months later and announce the project had halted development shortly after someone leaked that you were, in fact, working on a zombie survival game.

GM didn't just fail for reasons beyond your control, you stopped working on it. The only person who ensured your failed projects was YOU.

Then you stopped working on that Zombie Survival game to announce City Life.

Then you announce that City Life isn't being worked on anymore and you're back to working on GM.

Do you honestly not see a pattern here? Are you really so obtuse as to not understand why there are people who express their views with regard to your track record?

[lawow74]

The only person who ensured your failed projects was YOU.

Pretty much boils down to this. Others are not responsible for any of your other projects not coming to fruition. You chose not to work on them. What you say comes off as a vicious cycle of victimization and blame-passing that leads to self-fulfilling prophecies of failure. Honestly, it smacks of Munchausen Syndrome.

[Azrile]

City Life was NOT finished because I realized exactly what I said... Didn't matter how good I made it people were going to ensure that it failed even if I did my very best on it and it turned out to be a great game. Why would I put all my blood, sweat, and tears into a project that I knew would fail regardless of how it turned out all because I had a past project that Failed. I then turned my attention back to GM to try and prove everyone wrong.

You have never even started a project in earnest. You make a facebook page, install someone elses pack from the Unity store, and take a screenshot and then quit.
You spent 3 years on Greedmonger and in January of last year released a video that had nothing but Atavism, UMA and Unistorm. If we go back to the space invaders game, it probably has been like 6 years where you have been a ´developer´ who has never accomplished anything remotely resembling a game.

GreedMonger, RoH, Zombie, CityLife and now GreedMonger and I have never seen anything that wasn´t exactly what you would get if you bought the pack from the asset store and installed it into your project.

And all these excuses about the bugs with the new Greedmonger.. it is something I have been talking about for over a year on this thread. You cannot Frankenstein a project. You cannot just buy random packs and expect them to work together. Yes, getting weapons attached to the correct bone at the correct angel takes 5 seconds.. end of story, and yes, in most situations you are going to have to do it individually for each weapon. But if you have 100 weapons, it is still only an hour to do if you know what you are doing. But you don´t know that because you are using everyone else´s work and then are perplexed when stuff doesn´t work automatically, and then looking for something else you can download to make it work.. It never will. You need to spend the time to actually learn this stuff and do it yourself. Again, it is just sad how bad those screenshots look after you have been working on this for 3 or 4 years... oh wait.. you keep having to start over because the ´new thing´ will be soo much better.

It is why you just keep jumping around.. Atavism, Landrush and now whatever you are using that you think will create a MMORPG.. and next month it will be something else.. and you never make any progress.

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Yes that one person who has agreed to fund the servers is someone very specific and is the ONLY person who I would accept money from to help with GM before launch. Not going to say who though until things are final and I have money in hand and am ready to get the servers.

Is this like the guy from Atavism that was going to fund you? Or is this like Lumpyman who said he could self-fund the development of Greedmonger, and then come to find out he didn´t even have enough money to mail out a dozen t-shirts.

there is a certain irony in the fact that someone pretending to be a game developer keeps getting humiliated by people pretending to be investors. That was one of the highpoints of last year. Having lumpyman come in here and talk about branding and self-funding Greedmonger, and then actually seeing who he was on the Googlechat.

[MMOIJamesPro]

You have never even started a project in earnest. You make a facebook page, install someone elses pack from the Unity store, and take a screenshot and then quit.
You spent 3 years on Greedmonger and in January of last year released a video that had nothing but Atavism, UMA and Unistorm. If we go back to the space invaders game, it probably has been like 6 years where you have been a ´developer´ who has never accomplished anything remotely resembling a game.

GreedMonger, RoH, Zombie, CityLife and now GreedMonger and I have never seen anything that wasn´t exactly what you would get if you bought the pack from the asset store and installed it into your project.

And all these excuses about the bugs with the new Greedmonger.. it is something I have been talking about for over a year on this thread. You cannot Frankenstein a project. You cannot just buy random packs and expect them to work together. Yes, getting weapons attached to the correct bone at the correct angel takes 5 seconds.. end of story, and yes, in most situations you are going to have to do it individually for each weapon. But if you have 100 weapons, it is still only an hour to do if you know what you are doing. But you don´t know that because you are using everyone else´s work and then are perplexed when stuff doesn´t work automatically, and then looking for something else you can download to make it work.. It never will. You need to spend the time to actually learn this stuff and do it yourself. Again, it is just sad how bad those screenshots look after you have been working on this for 3 or 4 years... oh wait.. you keep having to start over because the ´new thing´ will be soo much better.

It is why you just keep jumping around.. Atavism, Landrush and now whatever you are using that you think will create a MMORPG.. and next month it will be something else.. and you never make any progress.

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Is this like the guy from Atavism that was going to fund you? Or is this like Lumpyman who said he could self-fund the development of Greedmonger, and then come to find out he didn´t even have enough money to mail out a dozen t-shirts.

there is a certain irony in the fact that someone pretending to be a game developer keeps getting humiliated by people pretending to be investors. That was one of the highpoints of last year. Having lumpyman come in here and talk about branding and self-funding Greedmonger, and then actually seeing who he was on the Googlechat.

Ok... You guys want me to stop jumping around, buckle down, and make a game... I want the same thing... No more excuses as you guys like to say I'm giving... So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to lay out my plan for you guys in very general terms then I'm going to get my ass off this forum and do it. Then I'll be back when I have the first step done.

MMOs are huge projects. Lot's of infrastructure required, man power, ect. Which in all reality I don't have. So I present to you guys Greed Monger: Project Reality.

Step 1: Create a single player version of the game. The full world and all of the features that would be suitable to a single player game (No guilds, factions, ect. that we had planned). The Single player version will be a testing ground for features and ideas and will be released to everyone free of charge. This single player version will be released as soon as you can walk around the world and kill stuff. Then updates will be released on a weekly basis.

Step 2: Create a dedicated Server and transition over to Player Hosted Servers that support 60 or so players. Add in the more Multiplayer focused features such as guilds, trading, ect. This version will be released as soon as all of the features of the single player version have been updated to work over the net. Then updates will be released again on a weekly basis with more content and extra features.

Step 3: Once all the features are implemented then start doing normal content updates and start planning for adding new features above and beyond the planned features at launch. At the start of this step go to a buy to play payment model since the game has launched. Start looking into seeing if there is still a desire for a full scale MMO and start planning to enlarge the team if needed in order to start pre-production and R&D for the full scale MMO again.

Based on some research though It seems like more and more players that are interested in Sandbox openworld MMOs are actually looking for player run servers though. The communities that can develop around a MMO can be extremely toxic and if you are able to host your own servers then your able to control the community or close your server to just you and a few friends if you so desire.

So I will now be back when I have released the single player version... Until then hope you all have a great night!

[Kyanion]

How about you shut them up by actually releasing something finished, instead of using them as scapegoats for perpetually unfinished projects?

Because his past track record speaks for itself. He cannot finish a single project. Instead on working on a game he was paid to work on he started up other projects all over the place. When he thinks there is ANY criticism his way he throws up his hands and abandons the project.

The reality is he CAN'T finish these projects, they are just too much for one person to handle or too much for one person to handle with not having the required skillsets to take on some of these large tasks.

[lawow74]

Oh man, this shit again >.< Bye, good luck with that solid plan of yours mr game developer! *sight* Oh well, that was amusing to read...

TBH there's nothing wrong with the plan in and of itself. But I seriously doubt he'll be able to follow through given his track record of expecting 'Frankensteining' as Azrile put it to handle the bulk of the work. I always admit there's the possibility I'm wrong, but if I were betting, that's the way I'd lay my money down.

ToA at least finally learned to start building something from scratch, though how much has actually been built to a functional level remains to be seen. They make a lot of noise about progress, but have little to actually show for it.

[Deleted]

TBH there's nothing wrong with the plan in and of itself. But I seriously doubt he'll be able to follow through given his track record of expecting 'Frankensteining' as Azrile put it to handle the bulk of the work. I always admit there's the possibility I'm wrong, but if I were betting, that's the way I'd lay my money down.

ToA at least finally learned to start building something from scratch, though how much has actually been built to a functional level remains to be seen. They make a lot of noise about progress, but have little to actually show for it.

Yet they do have more now than they ever had in the past decade. That's the only positive thing I can say about ToA right now. But then again, it's also pretty bad and humiliating...

[Fornax-]

Toa has more now than ever?

They have no more money, no more momentum, and no fanbase. They've wasted so much good will.

I suppose they could come out with some pitiful Life is Feudal clone, but even that game is struggling. One of the three main "devs" has left the project, and there is almost nothing but disgust from former decade long supporters like myself.

Do they have a working demo that can handle 12-18 avatars? I walked around and cut trees and stacked lumber on that little island. Do they have more than that now?

[lawow74]

ToA has claimed they've transported the code from Demo Island over to newer versions of Unity and they've been building this that and the other thing in the meantime, like an inventory system, crafting station models and so on and so forth, but it all comes off as them making mountains out of molehills, trying to hype on what slow and incremental progress they are making so people don't completely forget about them.

They still have a handful of people(other than us...I know, shocking!)following them, but as Fornax said, most of their longtime supporters jumped ship and ran some time back.

BTW, hello Fornax! Been keeping well? Enjoying all the GM popcorn drama?

[lawow74]

It's the same plan as Trials of Ascension, you actually believe that you can jump from an ONE indie sandbox game into MMORPGs? Especially considering the amount of survival sandbox games out there already and the experience of the people behind of these projects? Yeah… I don’t know about that…

It could work, if you had a proper studio handling the project. Unfortunately, FC and MMOI are anything but. You can take the engineering blueprints for the Empire State Building, sound plans, but if you give them over to a bunch of know-nothings to duplicate, don't expect any sort of good result.

[Taojnhy]

This kind of mistake could mean the end of your company, it’s a huge risk to take. Yet I keep seeing these little unexperienced groups going like “oh yeah, I’ll just release a Unity sandbox game then make an MMO out of it!”, yeah… because it’s just that easy, just 4 steps.

Step 1: Decide to make a MMO
Step 2: Download Unity
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit!

[Bodoh]

You should see the non-English commentary about Greed Monger:
http://mmorpg.org.pl/news/zobacz/bed...glada-jak-shit

Obejrzeliście najnowsze screeny? To teraz powiedźcie mi, gdzie na tych zdjęciach widzicie jakość i te 90 tysięcy dolarów, które gracze wpłacili w 2012 roku na produkcję tego MMORPG’a? No gdzie?

It's not "just" the people on this forum who panned James for the sub-par graphics issues. This is now on MMO sites.

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It's not James who coded the game initially.

It's this guy:
https://www.elance.com/samples/coding-greed-monger-unity3d-c-mmo/121794948/

[Taojnhy]

Well, that's an interesting find.

[Deleted]

Great news everyone, ToA will have controller support!

http://www.trialsofascension.com/roadmap

[lawow74]

Great news everyone, ToA will have controller support!

http://www.trialsofascension.com/roadmap

Now show us a game you can control with it and I might think that means something.

[Azrile]

The thing James just does not get is that you can´t just launch some generic RPG or Zombie game or whatever and use that to fund a real project. He has no taste in art and no ability to make anything look good. I have no doubt he can ´create´ a basic RPG because there are assets on the store that do it all for you ( Ork, PlyGame).. But his inability to do any of the things necessary to make the game look decent means it is a no-starter. When you put up a video with that bad of lighting, or videos where creatures go all spastic with their animations.. it doesn´t matter if you have installed ORK.

You will be able to sucker a few people into buying ORK, but everything you have ever done has been so ugly and non-fuctioning that you aren´t going to even make your money back.

[MMOIJamesPro]

The thing James just does not get is that you can´t just launch some generic RPG or Zombie game or whatever and use that to fund a real project. He has no taste in art and no ability to make anything look good. I have no doubt he can ´create´ a basic RPG because there are assets on the store that do it all for you ( Ork, PlyGame).. But his inability to do any of the things necessary to make the game look decent means it is a no-starter. When you put up a video with that bad of lighting, or videos where creatures go all spastic with their animations.. it doesn´t matter if you have installed ORK.

You will be able to sucker a few people into buying ORK, but everything you have ever done has been so ugly and non-fuctioning that you aren´t going to even make your money back.

lol Sorry just had to return to respond to this... What makes you so sure I'm using Ork or any other RPG kit from the store? For the record I'm NOT. I'm coding everything from scratch or using and optimizing code I've already done. Minus of course things we had licensed like UniStorm. Why the heck would I spend months or even years developing something like the day/night cycle and weather effects when we have licensed a product that already does everything we need and has already been in development for years?

The Character Controller I'm using is a character Controller we licensed from the asset store. I've had to customize it some and plan to customize or even rewrite it as I get further in. The Mob Controller is 100% custom and currently shares no code with anything I've done in the past. Currently it supports Random Wandering, Random Way point traveling, Way point traveling in order, Combat, ect. It uses a FSM and has the ability to add custom AI logic by making a new script and inheriting from the Mob Controller then over riding the Mob Controller's Update method. Weapon handling and Combat is all custom code I'm just writing now and shares no code with anything I've done in the past. Mob Spawning and Player Spawning all custom coding I'm doing now. The Game Manager class is 100% custom. Cursor Manager 100% custom... Terrain Management is Custom but was pulled from the MMO Version.

The only Systems I'm using from the asset store are UniStorm, the Dynamic Occlusion Culling System I have implemented, and the Character Controller. The Ocean Shader was downloaded from the internet but wasn't from the asset store.

[Fornax-]

B

BTW, hello Fornax! Been keeping well? Enjoying all the GM popcorn drama?

Hey, hey. Yeah, playing Firewatch recently on Steam, barely keeping up with ToA. It's amazing they are STILL trying. It is beyond belief to me. Still, I pop over to see what's up every three to five weeks.

I don't want just be a sour pill, so I don't post much if at all. Sigh.