Trials of Ascension, Shady Practices and the Big Crowdfunding Debate

[NotADevAlt]

Nothing wrong with ''Shup up and take my money'' in itself though. But in regards to ToA, it's just silly.

The level of hyperbole that these guys have in their posts is hysterical though. OMG I HAS ALWAYS DREAMZED THIS GAME! HERES MY BANK ACCOUNT INFO!!!!1!!!1 What about this game specifically have they always dreamed about? The ability to play as a dragon or lame spider? There are a number of other games that can give you that option no?

This is also not the first time someone who can't use proper punctuation and makes himself look like an idiot that asks for this.

They have definitely had an influx of really bad grammar/punctuation/spelling guys show up ever since we pointed out the weirdness in all the perfect posts last year. However, all these new guys with the bad grammar/spelling now all seem to read the same way to me and I get that same sense of weirdness its all just the same person going out of their way to make grammar mistakes to look "normal".

Maybe I'm just being paranoid. Or maybe I can just sniff out other dev-alts... like me!

[Deleted]

Another quote recently made that I find to be important/informative...

By Brax:

To followup Elyssia...

1) You won't be able to redeem any of the codes until you're in the MMO, since that is what you purchased for.

2) Some items will be bound to the character that you use to redeem the item, and some will be account bound. We'll be sure to denote which is which so it's very clear at the time of redemption.

3) In the coming months, we will allow you to turn in your codes for FC credits (need a better name --- chaos points?). You will be able to use those credits to buy anything on our store for Exile, the MMO or anything else we might offer. Additionally, we will offer special items in the store that can only be purchased with FC credit as our way to honor those that gave in the early days. The exchange rate will be 1:1 with the amount you paid for the item(s) converted to credits. So, if you paid $20 for a kindrake, you would get 20 FC credits if you converted it.

Clear as mud?

[Azrile]

It is amazing he is talking like that..... and once again, they don´t have a character model in their game...

Repeating what i said a month ago. Demo Island will be the highest development point this game ever reaches.

[Bodoh]

60 per server = Unity Networking.


Can't be bothered to use Photon Server.

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60 per server...


Can I ask? - Did they host any servers on-line last year?

[Azrile]

He is still using "MMO"? Even after saying they will be aiming for at least 60 people per server? rofl xD

In one of their FAQs they stated that this is basically a different game and they are still planning the full MMORPG after Exile.

the thing is, these guys are basically on day 1 of development.. everything they do for the next year will might as well be a single player game... it is really really basic stuff. They are back to working on the character controller, which is basically what says´ when the player presses W, move me forward´..

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60 per server = Unity Networking.
Can't be bothered to use Photon Server.

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60 per server...
Can I ask? - Did they host any servers on-line last year?

They had a video where they appeared to have about 20 people online, on screen at the same time. It was basically a blank world. ( Last July)

The demo Island thing they did about 5 months ago... I never saw more than 4 people on at the same time, but others have said they had about 10 online. It was a bigger world, but still nothing really happening.

Both were hosted servers

It wasn´t a persistent world.. so probably photon. I have no idea, they jumped around to so many engines and so many different solutions it is hard to know what they are using at any given moment. Brax is similar to Proctor in that he gets distracted by something he has just read and changes right away without any research.

[Deleted]

Also we forgot something guys.

HAPPY 1 YEAR THREAD ANNIVERSARY YO! (The 17th this month)

[lawow74]

Shit, forgot to setup the special sales in our Store.

I want that double eyepatch! Or should I wait and get new and awesomer stuff later with my Myobi Munny?? Decisions, decisions...

[Azrile]

Shit, forgot to setup the special sales in our Store.

I just changed the title to ´ Thread:Exile´ I will add crossed swords in about a week. Unfortunately we can no longer host this thread here, so I expect you all to keep copies of it in Notepad on your personal computers. Do not fear about your post count totals, they will all be converted to Azrile Coins and you will be able to spend them at a 1:1 ratio.

[Bodoh]

Azrile, or anyone -

Do you have still have the old game client with you?

Can you PM me details how to download it?


Let's just I used to work for a big studio and I'm able to make sense of what it is.

[Deleted]

Shit, forgot to setup the special sales in our Store.

I am disappointed.

First community update btw. I find it to be cringeworthy:

http://trialsofascension.com/news/ar...1#.VYPvzEZ5qM8

On Sunday we had a few of the Forged Chaos team drop by for a visit to the unofficial ToA IRC channel, run by community member BowentheKotoc. Notable discussion participants included Grune, Holmes, John_Trickle, Ibian, and bean. Thanks to all of you for making our visit great! We were able to answer all but two questions, which I promised to answer for them here after consulting with the team.

Q #1: Will Island owners be able to determine the average height of their islands, such as making them with steeper hills or mountains?

Q #2: Will Island owners be able to adjust the cave or tunnel density for their island?

Both questions have the same answer: We aren’t sure exactly how fine we can dial in the control for the procedural generation yet. As soon as we determine that, we will pass onto you all the different options you can use to customize your islands.

Dat answer... Which is technically not even an answer.

[Fliptables]

Has it ever been considered that to cat spells one would draw a shape on the screen with their mouse like in the god game 'Black & White' in order to cast the spell?

I was just thinking this while watching lets plays of games where as a mage you press a button having learned a spell and 'poof' you cast the spell with a small timer.
Which seemed a little immersion breaking to me.

If you had to memorise the 'symbol' for the spell and draw it in order to cast it while holding the needed components you wouldn't need to have this 'casting bar'. It would also add a layer of tangibility to magic that I haven't seen in very many games.

yeh I was thinking you would have to press middle mouse button or a key before you do the gesture.
Will take more work but it will be well worth it in offering a refreshing execution in an over saturated market

On a side note, rumor has it that Myobi is in fact one of the stoogies co-founders!

yer alts...yer alts...

[SneezyBeanBuns]

I am disappointed.

Dat answer... Which is technically not even an answer.

I didn't get an honorable mention. Maybe I should post the entire chat log somewhere.

[Deleted]

I didn't get an honorable mention. Maybe I should post the entire chat log somewhere.

Were you there? Please do so

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http://s29.postimg.org/dimtqcmkn/Untitled.jpg

"transparency"

Haha, that's amazing. Deleting all the comments in negative threads... Seriously, this is just too funny.

[SneezyBeanBuns]

Were you there? Please do so

pastebin[dot]com/KQheh3AR

I'm not old enough to post apparently...

[Deleted]

pastebin.com/KQheh3AR

I'm not old enough to post apparently...

Thank you for posting that. I read it all. Not much interesting has been said.

The questions provided in the Community Update weren't even asked in the IRC channel really.

Also how are you affiliated with ToA? Did you used to follow it but kinda lost all hope now? (Just like Fornax and Android) You didn't appear all that serious in there. Just there to try and catch some lolz if any were to be found.

[SneezyBeanBuns]

xD!

Isometric view.

Disgusting.

[SneezyBeanBuns]

Thank you for posting that. I read it all. Not much interesting has been said.

The questions provided in the Community Update weren't even asked in the IRC channel really.

Also how are you affiliated with ToA? Did you used to follow it but kinda lost all hope now? (Just like Fornax and Android) You didn't appear all that serious in there. Just there to try and catch some lolz if any were to be found.

I was serious. I can joke while I'm being serious. Every question I asked was serious. If I recall correctly...

Found out about ToA due to CTheRain's ramblings on 4chan. Gave it a look, seemed promising. I always appreciated Fornax and Priest on the forums. I participated for a while, gambled some money (no more than I would lose at a blackjack table), and kept an eye on "progress." It never went anywhere and the answers to my questions were so shitty that I just gave up. They are so clueless about how programming works. I'm not even a professional programmer and I can think of better questions to ask about future needs than they can. The only reason I'm not really angry is because I think they are well-intentioned. They are incompetent, however. Grossly so. I probably wouldn't mind playing a tabletop with them, but they're in the weeds when it comes to video games. I'd like to see them succeed, but they're occupied with their day jobs, which I'd also like to know more about. It's just a hobby to them.

This new development is a slap to the face. They wasted however much time they did on making a new website and essentially coming up with a presentation instead of CODING. I seriously want to know which books on programming they've read. I want to know how much real research on how MMOs are put together they've done. If I weren't on a job hunt myself I'd use my spare time to learn Blender and Unity and start making my own game.

They crave the hype so much. If they spent the amount of time programming that they do planning, they'd have something hypeworthy. It's just sad.

[Azrile]

On Sunday we had a few of the Forged Chaos team drop by for a visit to the unofficial ToA IRC channel, run by community member BowentheKotoc. Notable discussion participants included Grune, Holmes, John_Trickle, Ibian, and bean. Thanks to all of you for making our visit great! We were able to answer all but two questions, which I promised to answer for them here after consulting with the team.

Q #1: Will Island owners be able to determine the average height of their islands, such as making them with steeper hills or mountains?

Q #2: Will Island owners be able to adjust the cave or tunnel density for their island?

Both questions have the same answer: We aren’t sure exactly how fine we can dial in the control for the procedural generation yet. As soon as we determine that, we will pass onto you all the different options you can use to customize your islands.
Dat answer... Which is technically not even an answer.

The reason they can´t answer this is because they are making this shit up on the fly. There is NOTHING that I ever heard of that will allow them anywhere near the power to pull of just creating a random island like that and make it automatically playable with all their other features as a live game. There are certainly tools within Unity that can pregenerate a map for you, and some can even put terrain textures.... but those are very very VERY rough maps that have to be edited and fine-tuned afterwards... and that is all they are, just the land to run on. To take that, and then turn that into something you load the rest of your game on top of?

This is one of the things I was talking about.. Pressing W and having your character walk forward is a milestone on their roadmap.... meanwhile, they don´t even have a clue about the really difficult stuff that they are just assuming they can easily figure out when they get to it.

There will never be caves on a map done the way they want to do it.. it is imposssible using a heightmap. Here is the live-trainer of Unity on a presentation covering making heighmaps.. near the very end.. someone asks about caves.... he makes caves by leaning rocks against each other, without using the heightmap

http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/m...-to-heightmaps

As always, Brax is just talking shit about stuff that he doesn´t understand at all. Talking about ´dial in the control for´ where? He makes it sound like they can just write ´how many caves do you want´ and then have a button that goes from 1-100 and there is some magic program that will be able to make a map with that many caves? He is talking about a major feature of their ´new´ game that they haven´t even started working on and have no idea how to even do it.. but hey, it is going to have dials...

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From their new post.
There was a lot of initial debate on whether or not to include the very basics of combat in this milestone or not. The simple act of swinging a weapon requires several animations, and to land a hit both hit boxes and collision detection are required. Then death, also requiring an animation, and respawning would be needed as well. But what would the point be of having a working client if you all could only log in and look around?

I can´t even put words to it.... how lost they are.. If attaching an animation to a character model and making it fire when you press a button is daunting..... oh.. my bad.. it would be 2 animations..... and oh.. adding a hit box to someone...... how complicated.

this stuff is literally 2 minutes of work... this is stuff that you do that you don´t even think about when you do it because it is so basic..

how many of you remember tying your shoes this morning.. if this was ToA, they would be writing a blog about it and have 15 different stages of it appear on their roadmap. They are really really incompetent.... writing what they wrote about the swinging animation would take longer than actually adding those basic things to a main character..

[Deleted]

https://www.trialsofascension.com/fo...eads/lol.4933/

Pure negativity on their forums! I bet when I wake up tomorrow that thread is gone. Thread made by a guy called Opizze.

[Azrile]

https://www.trialsofascension.com/fo...eads/lol.4933/

Pure negativity on their forums! I bet when I wake up tomorrow that thread is gone. Thread made by a guy called Opizze.

Favorite quote from Ellysia

All 11 members of the team know that we're going to produce a game, and with this scaled back design we will be able to have something playable in a much shorter time frame than an MMO.

What scaled back design? Again, you have a guy who couldn´t turn on the servers five months ago making a pretty big assumption about what he can do with servers for the new ´scaled back game´... also.. now they have 11 team members again.. 3 co-founders who can do nothing, a few social media people, a community manager and 2 guys who program on their spare time..... and yet.. here we are.. 5 months after Demo Island.. and the ´developers´ are back to getting the character to move correctly... Please stop saying you have 11 developers.. you have 2 guys who are learning to use Unity for the first time, in their spare time...

Any Joe Blow could download Unity and have the same amount of non-progress almost instantly. Would love to hear her estimate her ´much shorter time frame´.... because time is going to go by really fast while these guys spend 3 hours a week learning every newbie thing about Unity. Yes, an MMORPG would have taken them 30 years, but this new game is still going to take them 20.