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Production Update #6: Beta No Go!


Legate of Mineta

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Is this project still being worked on full-time by the full team and what is the current source of funding. Also, it seems like the main source of funding at the moment is personal funds by the team itself? What is keeping development ongoing? I'd assume if personal funds are being used they must be either working on other projects/contracts, or have a normal full/part-time job? Is there going to be an update on the status of the funds already provided through kickstarter? Does the dev team need more money, have they run out? 

Also what is meant by back-end? At first it sounded like it was just about data synchronisation between say a client and a central server, but now it seems like the entire game (engine?) is being replaced?

 

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6 minutes ago, Misekato said:

Is there going to be an update on the status of the funds already provided through kickstarter?

To address this question, The team has stated before that the Kickstarter funds are mainly going towards the voice acting. They, ofcourse, can release an update but looking back at the quick updates posted before can show you the progress in that department. This is all from memory so I could be wrong.

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Misekato;

We're self-funded, but the Kickstarter was a great way for us to get funds which we couldn't budget for, including voice acting.

Back-end means exactly what you wrote but, as I understand it, it's not trivial for the Team to make the transformation. I'm not involved with that, though, so I may be missing some of the details.

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3 hours ago, Legate of Mineta said:

Misekato;

We're self-funded, but the Kickstarter was a great way for us to get funds which we couldn't budget for, including voice acting.

Back-end means exactly what you wrote but, as I understand it, it's not trivial for the Team to make the transformation. I'm not involved with that, though, so I may be missing some of the details.

Oh OK. So I take it: (this could be completely wrong, but as questions aren't really being addressed transparently, I'm just going to make a couple assumptions based on what could make logical sense)

  1. the game is currently being worked on part-time as this other source of funding must come from somewhere, which I assume being other work/contracts,
  2. the money raised through Kickstarter has already all been spent, predominately on art and voice acting - voice acting seemingly nearing completion (although the actual voices/samples haven't been announced or previewed yet) based on the latest update, extra art (skins) being worked on at last update (which could either mean the end of the extra art, or possibly still ongoing). This means that no money had been reserved for production of physical rewards, and as such, would have to come from revenue generated once the game has actually launched,
  3. The game is undergoing a transformation of either the client-database synchronisation, or possibly the entire game is being rebuilt now with a new game engine (or possibly both?). This would suggest that while things like art assets and the like are reusable, the actual game itself is not even close to completion as everything(?) is being recreated and tested? Its not clear what the 'front-end' that is being kept is. Is it just things like the UI? Or for example, would whatever has been completed be capable of running if it didn't have to sync to a central database (aka there is actually a functioning game in place)?

Another question, is what exactly caused the inaccurate forecast? Obviously things are progressing slower than expected but the key question is why? On the one hand, the team seems to have gotten three extra members to provide 'immediate expertise' on issues that have been encountered, but a later post suggests that it will take a few weeks for them to get up to speed? It's not clear on what basis they are helping out. Are they going to be just providing technical advice, or are they actually going to be involved in the grunt-work etc? I am aware it takes time to pick up someone else's code/work to figure out how they have done things, and then  take it from there, but if for example they believe that the entire foundation is less effective than another approach, is there the potential for a complete rework?

I mean there is no real point in providing a new forecast if it isn't clear what the issue was with the first one, and how that has been resolved. Otherwise all we really have is another arbitrary date that seems to have been picked as a date that is not too close, but not too late. From what I can gather it appears that the team has encountered issues outside of their expertise, rather than a deficiency in team size etc - meaning that work effectively ground to  a halt each time one of these issues occurred. Therefore has time for identifying and fixing errors been provided for in the new forecast.

If things aren't progressing well, and it might be better to just say, 'come back in a year or so' rather than each month saying - we are holding a vote and could release a beta anytime now if it is clear that it wouldn't happen. Especially as the updates aren't exactly all that informative or transparent.

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Misekato;

That's not *quite* correct:

1) The VB Team is full time.
2) Certainly, funding has been reserved for the physical rewards! That's a surprising conclusion to reach. :)
3) I don't actually know if you can play it with a local database. There were some very early versions where you could, but they got past that fairly rapidly. I couldn't say about that any more. The game's logic and UI is being reused with the new backend, however.

I do not think anyone supposed that there would be the need to replace the backend. In fact, I believe it was the earliest problem 'solved'. ;)

The new Team members are grunts as well as experts, fortunately for us. Although I can't say if there is the potential for a complete rework, I don't think that's planned. That would take a large amount of time. :)

As to the forecast, while it does include time the Team feels needed to troubleshoot, it represents only the earliest date the Team feels the game could be ready to beta. I think they intend to chart their progress by month.

At least for me, I don't think see the harm in the monthly discussion...I think that is a good thing, and at least I always look forward to reading what they produce. Perhaps it's because I am not technical, but the Updates seem both information and transparent to me...but then, I also have other sources of information, too. ;)

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I personal would be happy if some projects I backed at Kickstarter would give out at last a live sign each month but some even didn't give any news in months or years before suddenly they remembered about their Kickstarter backer.

Back when the Kickstarter for VB did go live I already said that I don't believe their delivery date, now they are even a few month late for the planed backer beta and I still think the beta won't start before March 2018 as nearly all game projects at KS are late by at last 1 year.

 

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Damn once again we hit rough & unpredictable waters……

Gods…… looks like we back to port and solder on another day with battle wounds on us…..

 

More setbacks? Man… well get thru the tough weather BCS and stand ready guys!  

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