Trials of Ascension, Shady Practices and the Big Crowdfunding Debate

[MMOIJamesPro]

B

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.

How is Firewatch? From some of the videos I've seen it looks pretty good.

[Fornax-]

How is Firewatch? From some of the videos I've seen it looks pretty good.

It's linear, but great storytelling. My comp needs a new vid card, so I'm waiting a bit to jump back in.

[lawow74]

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.

Not really, as long as they can keep people volunteering to work on it for promised shares of a maybe-released project's possibly-profits, they'll keep trying. If they ever hit a point where the volunteers dry up, I personally wouldn't be surprised if they then made one more push on a KS before throwing in the towel.

[Bodoh]

@James,

- Why do you need dynamic culling for? There is network culling. It must be very slow game if client has to cull things that should be culled on the server before data is being sent to the client. That sounds like oh-oh if there are lots of items in-game and traffic will bring the game to a halt.


- The character controller system you have only seem to support nudes. Can you add clothes?

- Can you parent or put the stick on player's hand? Or if it is not parenting, please do what it is necessary so the stick don't seem floating around.

- Can you add proper gradients to the sun-spot and proper colors for the clouds? I think UniStorm has it, or you messed it up. The clouds looks abnormal.

- Can you fix the grass so there is less grass? Have you done a MMO before? People are not gathering grass and it blocks players view and eats up FPS time to render useless things.

[MMOIJamesPro]

@James,

- Why do you need dynamic culling for? There is network culling. It must be very slow game if client has to cull things that should be culled on the server before data is being sent to the client. That sounds like oh-oh if there are lots of items in-game and traffic will bring the game to a halt.


- The character controller system you have only seem to support nudes. Can you add clothes?

- Can you parent or put the stick on player's hand? Or if it is not parenting, please do what it is necessary so the stick don't seem floating around.

- Can you add proper gradients to the sun-spot and proper colors for the clouds? I think UniStorm has it, or you messed it up. The clouds looks abnormal.

- Can you fix the grass so there is less grass? Have you done a MMO before? People are not gathering grass and it blocks players view and eats up FPS time to render useless things.

The Occlusion Culling I do has nothing to do with Network traffic. I use it mostly for terrain which is completely handled client side. No need to send information about the terrain over the net when the client is perfectly able to load it on it's own. For network traffic I use Area of Interest. Only send data across the net for objects that are with in a certain radius of the player. I usually have different levels of AoI for different types of objects... Players and Mobs may be sent further out then say small props that players have placed.

[Kyanion]

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.

take a drink every time you see the word custom.

[Deleted]

take a drink every time you see the word custom.

Someone call me an ambulance.

[Mifuyne]

This scam is still on-going? Geez.
People are stupid as fuck.

[Scyclone]

This scam is still on-going? Geez.
People are stupid as fuck.

As always, I love your avatar :P

But yeah, how is this scam still going...

Then again, what group of unproven developers would even consider building an MMO as their first (or only set of) project. The guy doesn't understand that hes going to actually deliver something to the audience before he can just try to wring them for money. But then again, people are stupid enough to spend RL money on a hat for a game that hasn't and probably will never exist.

This is the same society that somehow makes Kim Kardashian's Mobile App Game successful... /sigh

[lawow74]

Thing of it is, it's really not a scam now. Before when they were asking for money and misrepresenting their ability to and progress upon making a game, it was. Nowadays it's more just an exaggeration. A fish story, if you will. They make a lot of noise about doing very little and hope they can somehow generate hype over their molehills. Still amusing to watch, and worthwhile to keep the fire burning on the off chance they manage to push something out onto the market.

[Pizzaman199]

You know, if you take out everything that happened with ToA before around a year ago, it's actually an inspirational story. Take out the spending of 60k+ of other people's money and the two failed Kickstarters and it becomes the story of what you can accomplish on the power of hopes and dreams alone. They're cobbling together a game of sorts very slowly. But there's still something that's actually being done. And people aren't getting paid if I've been keeping up with things properly. They'll get part of the profits at the end.

So yeah, everything that's being done now. The power of hopes and dreams!!! Granted that power is like a 1 hp engine nowadays but still. Given enough time, they could actually have a game at some point. 5 years down the line. With the same graphics they're working on now.

On second though, this isn't a very inspirational story.

[lawow74]

That's the biggest problem both projects will face: time. Given enough of it, they can overcome the technical hurdles to making their games, even if it eventually really does become a case of Push Button-> Make MMO. But by that point, will there be any market for their work? Granted, not everything has to be made to make money(consider the Watts Towers, for example)but that was kind of the idea...

[Deleted]

You know, if you take out everything that happened with ToA before around a year ago, it's actually an inspirational story. Take out the spending of 60k+ of other people's money and the two failed Kickstarters and it becomes the story of what you can accomplish on the power of hopes and dreams alone. They're cobbling together a game of sorts very slowly. But there's still something that's actually being done. And people aren't getting paid if I've been keeping up with things properly. They'll get part of the profits at the end.

So yeah, everything that's being done now. The power of hopes and dreams!!! Granted that power is like a 1 hp engine nowadays but still. Given enough time, they could actually have a game at some point. 5 years down the line. With the same graphics they're working on now.

On second though, this isn't a very inspirational story.

Exactly my thoughts! They've done more work right now than they have the last decade. It's so amazing!

[lawow74]

But I'm sure he'll get all those done once he finishes GM and shuts up all the unhealthily obsessed people who dog him about it at every step, so the thousands of fans of GM(as evidenced by all those hits on the website, y'know)can finally have the game they've been dreaming of all these years...

Also, looking at the GM post, I see he's thrown himself out there on Steam and YouTube.

[Azrile]

You know, if you take out everything that happened with ToA before around a year ago, it's actually an inspirational story. Take out the spending of 60k+ of other people's money and the two failed Kickstarters and it becomes the story of what you can accomplish on the power of hopes and dreams alone. They're cobbling together a game of sorts very slowly. But there's still something that's actually being done. And people aren't getting paid if I've been keeping up with things properly. They'll get part of the profits at the end.

So yeah, everything that's being done now. The power of hopes and dreams!!! Granted that power is like a 1 hp engine nowadays but still. Given enough time, they could actually have a game at some point. 5 years down the line. With the same graphics they're working on now.

On second though, this isn't a very inspirational story.

Yeah, I´ve laid off ToA ( except for some jokes) mainly because they are not wasting anyone´s money, and well, the people who get involved with them do not have enough experience to work for a real game, so even if they are being mislead about this hope of a pay-day.. for the most part, they are getting experience. There are thousands of games being made with Unity just like ToA.. just nothing worth talking about anymore. Their development is so slow, they are never going to release.

GreedMonger looks like it is getting ready to do something with Steam Early Access. There is like a pre-Early access community site that James put up last week. The sad thing is he started a Unity thread last week and this Steam site and has not gotten a single comment on either.

I give it a month and he will be announcing a different game, and probably blaming it on Myobi that Greedmonger was cancelled for a 10th time.

James, how are those t-shirts going..
Sep 13, 2015
Joel is sending me the remaining T-Shirts and I'll figure out the best thing to do with them

Oh, I love this stuff. When Frankenstein goes wrong!! poor poor James, apparently Unistorm is not a ´make weather´ button for him after all.

psst.. James.. for $1, I can tell you what you are doing wrong...

[lawow74]

It's important, as I've said, that people remain aware of the pasts of these two projects, in case they think about trying to contribute to them in some fashion. Those who do so anyways, so be it. And I won't lie, it's been fun ripping on their antics and pointing out their attempts at obfuscation(some of which still go on, as evidenced by the hyperbolic buzzspeak they keep using).

But however sleazy their self-representation may be, ToA at least has some level of organization and planning going on, with incremental progress being made. GM just comes off as a fanboy flailing around with some LEGO kits, thinking he can rename them GELO kits and make teh billyunz.

[Deleted]

Good job Myobi. By posting that list you've scared Proctor away...

[lawow74]

Good job Myobi. By posting that list you've scared Proctor away...

Nah, he's just finally taking that moral high road he talked about many Tuesdays ago...

[Azrile]

It's important, as I've said, that people remain aware of the pasts of these two projects, in case they think about trying to contribute to them in some fashion. Those who do so anyways, so be it. And I won't lie, it's been fun ripping on their antics and pointing out their attempts at obfuscation(some of which still go on, as evidenced by the hyperbolic buzzspeak they keep using).

But however sleazy their self-representation may be, ToA at least has some level of organization and planning going on, with incremental progress being made. GM just comes off as a fanboy flailing around with some LEGO kits, thinking he can rename them GELO kits and make teh billyunz.

Proctor posted more screenshots. All of them contain nothing but free stuff from the asset store. I am not saying I have photographic memory, but I have an uncanny ability to see something and remember where I saw it before. He used an obselisk-type statue that is a free item from the store, more free icons from opengameart, and a character from Mister Nectevious as his new ´character´.. Apparently at least we convinced him to stop using that naked guy with the staff that he couldn´t figure out properly parent to the hand. Now he just has a low poly guy running around with stitched-on armor.

[lawow74]

Proctor posted more screenshots. All of them contain nothing but free stuff from the asset store. I am not saying I have photographic memory, but I have an uncanny ability to see something and remember where I saw it before. He used an obselisk-type statue that is a free item from the store, more free icons from opengameart, and a character from Mister Nectevious as his new ´character´.. Apparently at least we convinced him to stop using that naked guy with the staff that he couldn´t figure out properly parent to the hand. Now he just has a low poly guy running around with stitched-on armor.

But I'm sure he's custom-coded them somehow by now, and anyway they're all good enough for him just until he gets the game up and running for everyone to test. Assuming he doesn't come back to prove how wrong you are again.