1. #6841
    Quote Originally Posted by Kyanion View Post
    I kind of miss the earlier days when they went apeshit over anything posted and tried to prove how much of 'real game devs' they were. Now they are basically dead except the weekly 'look at us DO STUFF, WOW' posts.
    That's back when they still had expectation of getting money to develop, they had to protect their investment model. Now all they have to do is recruit volunteers by promising shares of future profits. It's about making of a show of developing the game to try and rebrand themselves from the past. As long as their unpaid laborers keep making forward motion, they can focus on trying to establish good credit.

    I strongly suspect 'looking to expand our team' is a smokescreen for 'the people we got to volunteer are quitting on us' in order to protect their public image. Instead of looking like they're spiraling around the drain, they appear to be successful and growing. Unfortunately, as long as this thread remains visible(we're the third hit on a search for Trials of Ascension, well above their sad little Reddit)that's not really going to work so well.

  2. #6842
    We owe it to the game world as a whole to keep this thread going.

  3. #6843
    Quote Originally Posted by Kyanion View Post
    At least that is how I imagine it went over there for ToA in the earlier days when they were making claims about the school of hard knocks teaching them how to become rockstars of the game dev world.

    If they want to be a rock-star, they should quit this nonsense and find a job. Do you want some french fries along with it?


    Quote Originally Posted by lawow74 View Post
    I strongly suspect 'looking to expand our team' is a smokescreen for 'the people we got to volunteer are quitting on us' in order to protect their public image. Instead of looking like they're spiraling around the drain, they appear to be successful and growing.

    They are doing this. There are more members who are not official and the team is working for free work.


    Fun fact:

    1. In Ultima VI, you can go to the Lyceum to get a scroll to exchange for the Wisp.
    2. Exchange for this gives you 100,000 gold, more than enough for you to finish the game.
    3. Buy gems from Yew, get the sword maker to make you glass swords in Britannia.
    4. By doing so, you can equip your whole team with unlimited 1-time glass-swords.

  4. #6844
    Quote Originally Posted by Bodoh View Post
    Fun fact:

    1. In Ultima VI, you can go to the Lyceum to get a scroll to exchange for the Wisp.
    2. Exchange for this gives you 100,000 gold, more than enough for you to finish the game.
    3. Buy gems from Yew, get the sword maker to make you glass swords in Britannia.
    4. By doing so, you can equip your whole team with unlimited 1-time glass-swords.
    I feel like I missed something here Bodoh. I'm ashamed to admit that I've only ever played Ultima 3 and 4 (though I own all of the titles- one day I'll get around to playing the others I hope) and while this sounds like an interesting tip to use in U6...I'm not sure how this is related to the ToA manpower issues.

  5. #6845
    Quote Originally Posted by Taojnhy View Post
    I feel like I missed something here Bodoh. I'm ashamed to admit that I've only ever played Ultima 3 and 4 (though I own all of the titles- one day I'll get around to playing the others I hope) and while this sounds like an interesting tip to use in U6...I'm not sure how this is related to the ToA manpower issues.

    Nothing, except trying to keep this thread alive .


    Fun fact:
    ToA:Exile, pretending to be UO, has a mere fraction of what UO has. It is not even a MMO.
    Maybe a mini-multi-player RPG with no dialogs, no NPCs, no quests...

    - - - Updated - - -

    Another company with Shady practices:

    https://www.facebook.com/SlavesofRome

    https://community.heroengine.com/forums/index.php?topic=2552.0


    Done by slaves

  6. #6846
    Quote Originally Posted by Bodoh View Post
    Near as I can tell, that one died over two years ago. Another example of someone thinking that HeroEngine would do most of the work for them, probably.

  7. #6847
    Another shady studio: - Hidden Blade Studio

    and... their domain is for sale!

    http://hbstudios.com/

    https://forums.unrealengine.com/show...tter-Followers

    - - - Updated - - -

    Another one that keeps spamming private messages on the Unity forums:

    Surface Entertainment

    http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/surface-entertainment-help-wanted.255488/

  8. #6848
    Quote Originally Posted by lawow74 View Post
    Near as I can tell, that one died over two years ago. Another example of someone thinking that HeroEngine would do most of the work for them, probably.
    I think Hero Engine itself is dead. Repopulation doesn´t seem to be any type of breakout game despite being pretty good and I think HE was banking on a share of Repopulation´s revenue to keep it going.. Hero Engine itself just doesn´t have any development going into it and for an engine that´s only real niche is making MMORPGs, that is a very small market compared to the thousands of mobile games made with Unity. Hero Engine hasn´t been updated in any meaningful way in years.

    The problem with Hero Engine, similar to my experiences with Unreal, is that the art pipeline is just too labor intensive to make it feasible for a small team to build a game easily. With Unity, you can literally take anything you make in Max, Blender or photoshop and drag it into your game and it is usable within seconds. It is as easy as moving a file from one side of your desktop to the other. At most you have to scale the object to the correct size. With Hero Engine, if you want to actually make a MMORPG with all the artwork, you would need a full time person just to handle getting art from your artists and adding it to the repository so it could be used by designers. It isn´t difficult, but it is time consuming and annoying. Any type of tweaking to the character or animation would require the whole process again. I laughed at Brax early on because they were begging for help to get even a single character into their Hero Engine gameworld. While they should have been laughed at because they couldn´t follow the directions to do it themselves, the point is that Hero Engine requires directions to begin with to do something that Unity does with ease.

    ah, the good old days when I was still laughing at them for their incompetence in HE.... now look at them, all grown up and modeling cubes.

  9. #6849
    Yeah, I get the sense the MMORPG bubble burst some time back. Nowadays people want things like MOBA's, server-customized sandboxes and especially mobile games. So it would make sense that Hero Engine would shrivel up and blow away on the wind.

  10. #6850
    Quote Originally Posted by lawow74 View Post
    Yeah, I get the sense the MMORPG bubble burst some time back. Nowadays people want things like MOBA's, server-customized sandboxes and especially mobile games. So it would make sense that Hero Engine would shrivel up and blow away on the wind.

    It burst a long time ago.


    Anyone remember the successor to City of Heroes, where that scam MMO, after years of development, is same like ToA, constantly under development?

    ...

    Maybe should put up a thread. The FB page have all amateur art inside it.

    And the graphic artists there, same, have no portfolio.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Back to ToA...


    Sandmounds and more wood... seriously?

  11. #6851
    Always moving forward?

    Oh joy, their harvesting simulator now includes scaffolding. When do they add Port-A-Potties and hardhats?

    Also:
    Yevi was happy to share that he’ll be able to recycle most of what was used in the demo launcher and update it to use for ToA: Exile.
    So yay, they saved a few hours in programming? Wonder how many were wasted puzzling that out...

    Let's hear it for 'progress'!

  12. #6852
    Ohh I love the internet! Hahah god these posts are great!

  13. #6853
    Good to see they can't whitewash it all, Myobi. On a sidenote, what happened to Gassy the Goblin? He went totally silent a while back, did he finally wise up and take his modeling skills somewhere they might be appreciated(and more importantly, paid for)?

  14. #6854
    Quote Originally Posted by lawow74 View Post
    Good to see they can't whitewash it all, Myobi. On a sidenote, what happened to Gassy the Goblin? He went totally silent a while back, did he finally wise up and take his modeling skills somewhere they might be appreciated(and more importantly, paid for)?
    Hmm now that you mention it, that is interesting. I mean there isn't anyone to like every single post on the forums! Not that it would take more than 10 seconds to like all 5 of the posts.

  15. #6855
    Maybe this kind of internal test?



    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Kyanion View Post
    Hmm now that you mention it, that is interesting. I mean there isn't anyone to like every single post on the forums! Not that it would take more than 10 seconds to like all 5 of the posts.

    Gassy's modelling skills is at amatuer level.


    I was expecting something like professional level, like modelling 100 rigged, animated (with custom animations) in 1 year.

  16. #6856
    Quote Originally Posted by Bodoh View Post
    Gassy's modelling skills is at amatuer level.


    I was expecting something like professional level, like modelling 100 rigged, animated (with custom animations) in 1 year.
    When did I say he was or wasn't any good at modelling?

  17. #6857
    Quote Originally Posted by Kyanion View Post
    When did I say he was or wasn't any good at modelling?
    You didn't say.

    I commented on Gassy's models they are amateur level.

  18. #6858
    Quote Originally Posted by Bodoh View Post
    You didn't say.

    I commented on Gassy's models they are amateur level.
    You expected them to be above amateur level? I mean not one person involved in that project has been anything but an amateur. Hell most of them are not even at THAT level.

  19. #6859
    Quote Originally Posted by Kyanion View Post
    You expected them to be above amateur level? I mean not one person involved in that project has been anything but an amateur. Hell most of them are not even at THAT level.
    What do you mean or imply?

    They are better? They are worse?


    My own opinion is they are just starting out.

  20. #6860
    Quote Originally Posted by Myobi View Post
    I actually liked Gassy work. Sure, nothing to go crazy about, but he had some great stuff.

    If you join a large game studio, that's at novice level. Gassy would have to join at junior level.


    If he feels insulted, not my fault. that's how competitive the issue is.

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