So what's up with this game?

[rataholic]

I've heard mixed reviews about this game, is it worth waiting for the long updates or should I just wait for it to be a "complete" game?

Any feedback is welcome!

[The_Box]

Hey, that's how it is. The fact that it's gonna be October in spite of me saying this week is totally on me, not the rest of the guys. Like I said, that was my misunderstanding, and I didn't ask for clarification on if 'these sprint' was 'this sprint' or 'these sprints', and said something publicly without being 100%. That's me, that's my bad. No excuse there, I was just flat out wrong and didn't properly understand.

[Yodar]

Origineel geplaatst door Box:

Hey, that's how it is. The fact that it's gonna be October in spite of me saying this week is totally on me, not the rest of the guys. Like I said, that was my misunderstanding, and I didn't ask for clarification on if 'these sprint' was 'this sprint' or 'these sprints', and said something publicly without being 100%. That's me, that's my bad. No excuse there, I was just flat out wrong and didn't properly understand.

Don't try and be a martyr Box, I respect you for it but we all know who is at fault here. None of us are under any illusion, Sauropod needs direction. This is one of the rare examples why a publisher can actually be a good thing. Just because the team is comprised of people who enjoy video games doesn't mean they will be good at making them if they have no business/organizational sense.

I honestly think Sauropod needs to look at hiring someone in to tell them what to do and when to do it by. We all love the Sauropod team for their passion regarding their game. No one can deny that they are fully committed. But they just have no clue on how to manage their time, resources and task priority. Two years down the line and we have a handful of changes. Entire movies and games are made in two years, engines can be written, that is half a degree and enough time to build 8 houses or an entire shopping mall. It is a flipping long time and nothing really to show for it.

[The_Box]

Origineel geplaatst door Gecko:

Don't try and be a martyr Box, I respect you for it but we all know who is at fault here. None of us are under any illusion, Sauropod needs direction. This is one of the rare examples why a publisher can actually be a good thing. Just because the team is comprised of people who enjoy video games doesn't mean they will be good at making them if they have no business/organizational sense.

I honestly think Sauropod needs to look at hiring someone in to tell them what to do and when to do it by. We all love the Sauropod team for their passion regarding their game. No one can deny that they are fully committed. But they just have no clue on how to manage their time, resources and task priority. Two years down the line and we have a handful of changes. Entire movies and games are made in two years, engines can be written, that is half a degree and enough time to build 8 houses or an entire shopping mall. It is a flipping long time and nothing really to show for it.

What? I'm not trying to be a martyr, I'm being honest about what happened there. That was totally me and I should have known better. I already knew the sprints were laid out 4 at a time, it didn't even occur to me that he could be talking about the end of the sprint series. I assumed and spoke on that assumption, and I'm accepting responsability for that fact. That's not called being a martyr, that's just being honest.

In addition, yeah, some games are started and completed within 2 years, but the actual averages are pretty far from that. Minecraft was 2 and a half, though they've been working on it steadily since and is at more than 5 years now, Dwarf Fortress has been under development for over a decade, Banished was worked on for almost 5 years, KSP has been under development for about 3 and a half years, Project Zomboid has been going on since March of 2011, and there are a whole, whole lot more examples other than that. Pretty much the only time you see 2 years or less is on either, A, relatively simple games that don't take tons of programming, or B, AAA titles with dev teams numbering several hundred.

That's not to excuse our lack of content so far, btw. Yes, we need to start getting more stuff out, but we chose to focus on our base systems first. As I've said before, additional content is useless if the systems in place can't handle it.

Origineel geplaatst door Abyssus_j:

Sounds like the dev team really needs to be using some sort of project managment tools/systems.

Some I recommend are;

* http://trac.edgewall.org/
* http://trello.com/

Others that look interesting but havent used;
* http://www.redmine.org/
* http://basecamp.com/

We're using Trello, actually.

[Yodar]

Just two questions:

- You say that your sprint series is 4 sprints. If it is measures in 4's why don't you just class a sprint as the same length as 4, instead of calling them sprints but content is only released after 4? Dunno if that made sense, made sense in my head. :/

- You say the sprint series is ending on October 4th. Does that mean that the AI will be completed on October 4th or is there a chance that you will need to do another sprint (4sprints?) before it is finished?

[The_Box]

While the sprints are planned in series of 4, that doesn't mean we'll only release a patch after 4. How many sprints we plan out has no relation to when a patch will be ready. It just so happens that, in this case, the number of sprints planned matches the predicted AI progress. As far as why we plan 4 3 week sprints rather than 1 12 week sprint is pretty easy to answer. It keeps us focused and targetted. If we put together the full work load for 3 months and just threw it all on a list, it would be scattered, overwhelming, and difficult to plan a course through.

Indeed the series is ending on the 4th. While we'd like to have the AI finished and ready to go then, that's not a promise. Things can always crop up on you, especially with something as complicated as a full AI rewrite. If we do need to sprint on it more to get it ready, it wouldn't be another 4 sprints.

[Starglazer]

Origineel geplaatst door Box:

AC is a great series, which one are you on? I'm really looking forward to Unity, and desperately hoping it's better than Black Flag.

I just started Brotherhood. It looks remarkably beautiful! I've finished one and two already. They just keep getting better :)

[Tanchyon]

Origineel geplaatst door Box:

AC is a great series, which one are you on? I'm really looking forward to Unity, and desperately hoping it's better than Black Flag.

I know this is off topic so I will be brief, but I have played them all and I reckon Black Flag was by far and away the best. Although i do like pirates lol.

[The_Box]

Some of the things they did in Black Flag were great, you're right. The sea was beautiful and I loved the ship play. The story was all over the place though, they weren't sure how to handle the narrative. "A pirate trained by assassins". No, no not really. Giving someone a weapon and kicking them off your island does not training make, lol.

[The_Box]

I'm sorry you view it that way, but I actually felt it to be the appropriate word to use, what with it being a response and saying that we are indeed using something you put forth as a suggestion.

[Jamison]

Origineel geplaatst door Abyssus_j:

Origineel geplaatst door Box:

We're using Trello, actually.

PR/Community Managment, best to strike the word "actually" from your vocabulary.
Its actually makes people feel like they're talking to a teen actually.

Anyway, if they're using Trello and still struggeling there is plenty of resources on the net to teach you how squeeze more out of it and get better results.

Actually, it doesn't really matter what word he used. Management software or tracking software doesn't speed development. It helps to keep track of changes and keeps everybody on track. It doesn't magically increase production speed by 200%.

It's getting ridiculous how you are bashing Box when he is providing all of the input you need to your questions, except for an exact date for the next update. Which is completely acceptable (in my mind), especially for an indie development company.

[Jamison]

Origineel geplaatst door SweFox:

Keep up the amazing work Box :).

Agreed!

[Vinyl Wookiee]

Love the game, but been waiting for new content for awhile!!

[Tanchyon]

Origineel geplaatst door SweFox:

Keep up the amazing work Box :).

Are you for real? Sure Box is doing lots of amazing work stalling... but what of the rest of them? C'mon, you figured out keyboards and steam, surely you aren't silly enough to blindly believe them when there is nothing to show for it. And there won't be for a REALLY fricken long time. Watch this space and wake up.

[BasementJedi]

Origineel geplaatst door Box:

4 sprints are planned out at a time, and the 4th sprint in this series ends on October 4th.

I'm looking at the calendar, but things are not lining up for me. The current sprint just ended Aug 22. You said there was a week of debug/planning time after each sprint. Then Oct 4th is the end of another sprint. What am I doing wrong here with that two week gap?

• week ending 8/8/2014 Sprint
  
• week ending 8/15/2014 Sprint
  
• week ending 8/22/2014 Sprint
  
• week ending 8/29/2014 debugging/planning week
  
• week ending 9/5/2014
  
• week ending 9/12/2014
  
• week ending 9/19/2014 Sprint #4
  
• week ending 9/26/2014 Sprint #4
  
• week ending 10/3/2014 Sprint #4
  
• week ending 10/10/2014 debugging/planning week

[BoredUltimatum]

Origineel geplaatst door Abyssus_j:

Origineel geplaatst door Tanchyon:

surely you aren't silly enough to blindly believe them when there is nothing to show for it.

Its not hard to ask people you know to make favorable comments to support you on teh internets. It is however completly unprofessional and leaves a really bad impression when people find out.

I just dismissed it as further proof of Saurapods enduring incompetence.

I've started messing around with some game coding at http://pyjsdl-test1.herokuapp.com/ as a hobby in my spare time.
Judging by their progress, I (one dude with zero funding) am on track to make Castle Story before they do. /facepalm

I'm not trying to support them, I haven't really been following the updates that they have been releasing. However, I do have to note that (A) getting other people to post in your support is a pretty strong claim to make without evidence. (2) Python, JavaScript, and other such scripting languages are WORLDS apart from the kind of programming needed for a decent size game. Even if you don't go down to C/C++ level you still need something like the C# that Unity uses which requires you to better know the underlying mechanics of HOW the computer is physically carrying out your commands to have any sort of efficiency. Stuff like memory management (sure C# has garbage collection but that's only collection, not management), not overloading pipelines, thread management and synchronization, etc.