Trials of Ascension, Shady Practices and the Big Crowdfunding Debate

[Azrile]

So someone on their forums said they they might go for a Christmas release date. I really wanted to respond to that saying that Half-Life 3, Portal 3, and Team Fortress 3 are all coming out this Christmas too! I mean they all have the same chance to. Actually... I take that back. Valve actually makes games.... sometimes.... when they take a break from printing money with Steam.

Ok, they need to think things through. Last year Teddy started in February, and by January of the following year they had Demo Island..which was nothing but a premade map you could walk around in, as a human or a spider. They had ´collision´ combat, which is to say they had auto-attacks working, they had cutting down trees, and they had a really primitive building system. That was Teddy, a guy who knew how to use Unity.

Now they have 2 guys who never made a game before, and they are back to the phase where they are still working on the character controllers.. Basically they are at where Teddy was when he first started.. and they now need to learn all the Unity stuff to even get started.

They will not have Demo Island remade until NEXT Christmas.. as in 18 months from now. It took them months to even upgrade to Unity 5.

Myobi, we have all the stuff from their old forums, they can´t delete it.

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why?

it's an MMO, right? surely there's nothing wrong, ahem, sharing the client, since I won't be able to connect to the server...

all the MMOs allow you to download a free client.

I never got the client, I watched enough live-streaming to know what they had in the game.

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CTheRain is an insufferable c*nt who likes to speak as if he is part of the development team. Like most of the community, he has a vision in his mind about what ToA should be, and he argues as if the big three will bend over and just lick his bunghole if he commands it. They all have disparate ideas of what ToA is going to be, and they are constantly pushing their inane fantasies while ignoring the huge problems that will come from catering to all their little fetishes. God forbid anyone point out how implementing this crap is going to be nigh impossible for these asshats.

he is similar to Talon that they think the hard part of developing a game is coming up with ideas... and once you have all the ideas, you just snap your fingers and the game makes itself. Of course the same is true of Brax... twice now he has made roadmaps that look like something someone who has never made a game thinks is what needs to be done... oh wait....

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Does anyone have any idea, what the network topo is?

Photon Server, Photon Cloud, simple Unity Networking (lol) ?

Hard to say, i think they were using Atavism. I didn´t notice that stuff persisted on their servers, so it is possible they are just using photon or Unity Networking. They had a volunteer from their forums doing it.. not sure if he is one of the guys that stuck around.

[Kyanion]

Hum, does anyone had screen shots of Teddy saying that he had to come back to teach them how to turn on their servers? Can't find mine xD

I believe I have them Myobi, let me get them.
Edit:Hmm all I seem to have is the major post Brax made about having to pay Teddy in a short term contract to show them how to 'handle the server'. I don't believe I have the direct quote from Teddy. darn

[Fornax-]

I still have access to their three forums for testing, but there's nothing going on. I am sure the "client" is useless. I used it twice. I was online with about 15-20 people and we had lots of server resets. But this was the first time they had testers. The second time I went was for video, and I just didnt understand why...as it was the SECOND time...but now I do get it...Brax was getting video for the KS website. I was disgusted.

I think the more polished video they put together a few months later, with the little village going up in a time lapse, that probably had 20+ folks too, but its hard to know. I was not impressed and more and more sad that things were the way they were.

Anyway, it is amazing to me they think they are still going to make something that ANYONE is interested in. That anyone will buy.

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How bizarre. Earlier today I posted a question in their "roadmap" thread, and ended it with my " I gotta stop coming here" disgust piece. It's the thread that Bowen created about the roadmap, I posted in there. I guess Elyssia moves the post, and moves it in such a way that it looks like I "created" a thread asking questions about the roadmap, and then--heres the kicker---makes it so that I cannot POST in the thread I supposedly created. I do not have "sufficient" rights or some such nonsense. She locks it.

Amazing.

[lawow74]

You're not happy enough, Fornax. Only positive and upbeat posts are allowed now. Here, drink this Kool-Aid, you'll feel better.

[Bodoh]

Formax, I PM you.

[Fornax-]

You're not happy enough, Fornax. Only positive and upbeat posts are allowed now. Here, drink this Kool-Aid, you'll feel better.

Too true. I always felt I was fairly level headed, but there was a time there when I was entirely too optimistic.

Can't ever trust them again.

[lawow74]

I always think of an early Simpsons episode where Bart and other kids ask their Sunday school teacher all these questions about Heaven and Hell, and in exasperation she shouts 'IS A LITTLE BLIND FAITH TOO MUCH TO ASK??'

[Deleted]

You're not happy enough, Fornax. Only positive and upbeat posts are allowed now. Here, drink this Kool-Aid, you'll feel better.

haha, Fornax is no longer part of this cult

Great moderating skills from Elysia though!

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Dev Blog #2 btw:

https://www.trialsofascension.com/fo...6/#post-131234

[Bodoh]

I like this:

We are still working out what logging in means

What is logging in? It means validating your user/password, and returning a unique encrypted session key to the MMO session. From there, using the same session key (with same IP, same URL), it pulls down the list of characters (+ game lobby data). From the game lobby data, you start the game with last X, Y, Z position + level of your character.

Do you need a mentor?

looking for qualified art talent to help

I'm also wondering what kind of artists they will bring into this game, considering the concept art is at amateur level.

[Kyanion]

Too true. I always felt I was fairly level headed, but there was a time there when I was entirely too optimistic.

Can't ever trust them again.

Considering how much TRANSPARENCY is going on over there they sure are quick to shoot down anything negative to keep the appearance that everything is wonderful in this 'community'.

Also love how the 'team' ballooned to 11 people. Yeah you really need that many people for something that is pretty much all coding right now. *eyeroll* These people are such jokes I will enjoy watching them fail all over again.

[NotADevAlt]

VARL
I’m in the process of writing up creature details for the first four starting creatures for Exile. I created a template which I hope will help everyone on the team see the details of each creature relative to our baseline species: the humans. I’m quite sure the template will likely go through a revision or two, but if not, I’ll be even happier! I also finished up this week working on defining the various biomes for Exile (even if some of them do not make the final options list). At least they’re done.

Why would this kind of stuff not already have been done previously? Its not as though Exile would have invalidated whatever the heck they would have conjured up in the first several iterations of ToA. Its almost like every time they move/upgrade the engine or something technical, that means they completely scrap everything they (claim to) have ever done and start over from scratch.

BLITZ55
GUI is still very much in the design stages. With meetings between me and Brax, we have started to generate some good ideas to start nailing down what we need and what the design should be.

Great man. So in the past week you accomplished having a meeting? Why can't you specify something concrete?

[Kyanion]

Why would this kind of stuff not already have been done previously? Its not as though Exile would have invalidated whatever the heck they would have conjured up in the first several iterations of ToA. Its almost like every time they move/upgrade the engine or something technical, that means they completely scrap everything they (claim to) have ever done and start over from scratch.



Great man. So in the past week you accomplished having a meeting? Why can't you specify something concrete?

It is like they think the past failures are invalidated because this new bullshit project they came up with. It is like "Oh we can't use anything from before!"
I love how many suckers they have recruited in this 11 man team to take shares of a game that will never get made. All the while it just empowers Brax to feel like he is a somebody yet again.

[lawow74]

Looked at the thread Fornax "created" about upgrading Unity. Yeah, real transparent, if by transparent you mean 'we gave a canned excuse wall of text reply that brooks no discussion by virtue of locking the thread'.

Hi ToA! We're still out here! We're not going anywhere! We'll make sure to remain a top search result for as long as you exist!

[Azrile]

If they are still in the ´meetings to figure out what we are going to do´... then why did the Unity upgrade take 5 months?? They used the Unity update as the excuse as to why nothing got done, but now all they keep talking about is starting everything over. If you have nothing done, upgrading to Unity is... downloading a patch..

My prediction... the two new ´programmers´ who are currently doing stuff like Mecanim ( the Unity animation system) are going to suddenly discover that ´ hey, Mecanim isn´t programming, it is just a tool.... why haven´t the 3 stoogies learned how to use this stuff in the last 3 years´... and then they are going to start seeing all this other stuff that the 3 stoogies haven´t done.... and then the lightbulb is going to go on that they are being dupped into doing all the work and learning Unity while the 3 stoogies post on the forums... Kinda exactly what happened to Teddy.

This is Brax´s 3rd or 4th team of volunteers and the same thing happens.. the people who are doing all the work realize that the 3 stoogies don´t know how to do anything and havne´t bothered to learn stuff in all this time. Seriously, Mecanim is something everyone who uses Unity needs to learn, there isn´t anything ´progamming´ about it.. it is just a glorified and complex state machine.

[Kotori125]

So, let's see:
-Creating Creature Details

Um...besides the obvious 'there were never creatures in game', why would they need to create new details for existing creatures. Unless they never did that, which begs to differ, what is their 'lore' even about? Besides the obvious storybook rather than, you know, relevant game history and information about, you know, creatures.

-More Art Talent for even more art assets
Now, Elyssia stated that they are reusing most of the animations (but no mention of art assets in which the animations deviate from?). Now, the pessimist inside is stating that they are recreating these assets, or at least there were never really any custom assets (aside from spider, and possibly gassy's dragon stuff). The other side (can't really call it optimistic with this track record) is exactly how much art assets do they need going from demo island to alpha islands. And will those new artists be paid with 'future profits' due to being part of the team?

-Cut-and-Paste from old code base...
But Elyssia states that the code was a mess, that it wasn't good code for their new approach, such and such excuses. And all fingerpointing blaming on Teddy doing such a horrible job that it makes it impossible for them to utilize his code, and that Teddy is the bad-guy here (Sorry Teddy). And yet they are cut-and-pasting such code? And if they were indeed cut-pasting code, why the HELL do they need to come up with a new character movement controller again, like it is/was some big hurdle and some grand accomplishment.

And it really seems as if their new philosophy to transparency is: Fuck you. Stop asking legitimate questions about our business practices and the logic in how we develop our project; we are totally transparent. We don't care about the thousands of dollars you previously donated (and we wasted) and how long you have supported us; we will give you a shiny badge on this new website, see, we care. Heavy forum moderation to combat legitimate questions; we enjoy communicating with people via our website.

The whole thing just continues to be so weird and odd and funny-in the sad way.

[Bodoh]

It takes an average developer 15-30 mins to upgrade from 4 to 5.
From 5 to 5.1, it takes 15-30 mins again.

Nothing special.


Ask him for a stack dump or error list. Possible?

[lawow74]

I can see their change in philosophy, which is 'produce and ignore the critics/trolls'. They're trying to appear like they're doing something, documenting it with blogs and the like, and shutting down dissenting opinions(trolls and asshattery, according to Lord Brax )and discussion of them. They're doing everything to wipe out/ignore their past failures and act like it's a completely new product and not a reduction of a reduction of a reduction of a BSPD cooked up around 13 years ago in the wake of UO adding a PvE-only area.

[Kyanion]

I can see their change in philosophy, which is 'produce and ignore the critics/trolls'. They're trying to appear like they're doing something, documenting it with blogs and the like, and shutting down dissenting opinions(trolls and asshattery, according to Lord Brax )and discussion of them. They're doing everything to wipe out/ignore their past failures and act like it's a completely new product and not a reduction of a reduction of a reduction of a BSPD cooked up around 13 years ago in the wake of UO adding a PvE-only area.

Yeah I mean it totally isn't the internet age where people can just look up the name of something and see all of the shady things that surround it. Good fucking luck getting to Steam ToA! I welcome the challenge.

[ThePotato]

I guess im not even worth a percent of a percent for visiting their website (UK here)

[Azrile]

-Cut-and-Paste from old code base...
But Elyssia states that the code was a mess, that it wasn't good code for their new approach, such and such excuses. And all fingerpointing blaming on Teddy doing such a horrible job that it makes it impossible for them to utilize his code, and that Teddy is the bad-guy here (Sorry Teddy). And yet they are cut-and-pasting such code? And if they were indeed cut-pasting code, why the HELL do they need to come up with a new character movement controller again, like it is/was some big hurdle and some grand accomplishment.

And this begs the question of who actually decided the old code is garbage? Brax who couldn´t turn on the servers, or two programmers who never used Unity. Unity uses a version of C# that is very specific for games.. knowing C# helps, but you aren´t going to start learning Unity and be able to look at someone else´s code and determine it is junk in a couple months.

My guess is the ´old code´ is garbage because Brax messed up the servers after Teddy left and screwed something up. He had months alone with the server before the new guys came on board.. And I predicted that would happen. This is not a huge project and Teddy was working on it alone, obviously he was writing the code the way he liked it... but it is silly for Ellysa or Brax to say the code was garbage since none of them know anything about anything.

And this will happen again soon when the new programmers leave like everyone before them.