State of Early Access

[kassa]

Hi,
I would like to know if you keep working on the game frequently or if it has become some spare time hobby that you work on the side? I mean 9months without an update is a long time (Edit: It has actually been almost 6 months, sorry). And all I've heard yet is that you don't make enough money from it anymore because of changes introduced by Steam. Even if you publish the new update (which you announced 3 months ago...) there are still a lot of things missing. The biggest thing in my mind would be animal farming, which means being able to lure animals into a fenced area and reproduce them just like in Minecraft. I also think the UI is pretty cheap, there are a lot of quality of life features missing like sorting, more hotkey slots etc.
I understand how much time and willpower it takes to keep developing a game, but it doesn't seem to me like you work fulltime on this project. Your last tweet on Twitter was on December, so you don't even give us previews or snippets on what you are working on currently.
It seems like people here hate talking about this, all they do is "being positive" and "supportive", but I feel like they are just giving you a free card to do whatever you want, whenever you want, without anybody critizising the progress...
At the end it's your choice to do whatever you want, I know the early access rules, I just don't know if you even work on the game anymore. And I mean really "working", not just adding a little stuff here and there when you feel like. I think future buyers should know about this before they buy the game.

[kassa]

Originally posted by Walter das Trevas:

I totally disagree with your opinion. You first suggested that you fear that the game will be abandoned, then "the game can be abandoned incomplete for the production of Rising World 2 in another engine? No thank you very much.

I experienced the same with the game Kenshi. Kenshi also uses a self-made engine and the game barely got any updates after a specific point. They just added the missing parts of the map and some new enemies. But everything else was just kept the same over many years.

Just think about this. Need to import an animated 3D model into Unity? Drag and Drop, done. Need to import an animated 3D model into your own game engine? Have fun writing an importer for the next months.
Need a User Interface? Unity provides very good User Interface tools. Your own engine? Have fun writing a UI engine with layering, resizing, font import, font rendering, object alignment, buttons, tabs functionality aaand so on.

I'm just sharing thoughts because I like this topic. As I said I'm not here for Rising World, I'm here because I'm a Sandbox Open-World lover. If you think about it he could work for the next 3 years on the Java version and be stuck with it or start over with Unity and we would have a better game in the future. Of course red knows better than I do, I'm just an amateur, but I think this is worth discussing, because why not? At least it's worth talking about it, it doesn't have to be acted out. ^^

My worry about the Java version is that red gets stuck in the limitations of his engine. And by limitations I don't mean that it's impossible, I mean it's just too much work to do it in Java compared to doing it in the engine. (maybe it's even easier to do it in Java, I don't know... I can't really fully judge if your engine holds you back and if it would have been a better decision to use Unity)

[Trillnar]

Rising world is Written in Java using the Jmonkey engine . On the other Hand Alchemists Awakening , is also written in java and its world generation is far superior to what is in Rising world . Another game called Evospace is using unreal engine , Some people think unity is better. I doubt it is the platform . I will say this , Java 8 is now Depreciated and Java 11 is due out later this year. Java 11 is supposedly a LOT faster and better then Java 8 is .

[Painkiller RH]

While I respect your opinion, kassa, I don't share it at all. Rising world is a labor of love. The whole reason why I got this game was because it's NOT using Unity or Unreal. I thought "my God, here's a dude who loves his project so much that he's not just using copy and paste assets, he's totally reinventing the wheel". I respect that to the point where every customer that comes into my store sees this game at least on pause. Granted, we don't always talk about the game, because my store sells gemstones, not video games. Sadly, a lot of people have suggested exactly what you have. What's even sadder to me is Red's right, a lot of people simply care about the final results or the final product. Not me, man, I respect what Red's doing, and genuinely don't care if it takes a decade to complete. Granted, Red's gunna do what he's gotta do, this is his project, and I respect whatever he chooses. But if I have a vote that counts for anything, I vote for Red NOT "abandoning Rising World and working on Rising World 2 in Unity".

[Avanar]

I am not sure why Unity should be better than jmonkey engine... For the player.

Unity has its pros but the downside is that it's always looking the same and is done out of a box.

Rising world is done with hard labor, heart and soul. If the game would cost 30 eur id still buy it.

Comparing it to Minecraft is wrong though. It's like comparing an suv with a race car.
Both cars, both powerful but in different ways useful.

I honestly hope red will not sacrifice the hard work and love he has put into the game for a short term success with another engine.

I doubt he will but just wanted to mention it ;)

[kassa]

Originally posted by Ryan:

While I respect your opinion, kassa, I don't share it at all. Rising world is a labor of love. The whole reason why I got this game was because it's NOT using Unity or Unreal. I thought "my God, here's a dude who loves his project so much that he's not just using copy and paste assets, he's totally reinventing the wheel". I respect that to the point where every customer that comes into my store sees this game at least on pause. Granted, we don't always talk about the game, because my store sells gemstones, not video games. Sadly, a lot of people have suggested exactly what you have. What's even sadder to me is Red's right, a lot of people simply care about the final results or the final product. Not me, man, I respect what Red's doing, and genuinely don't care if it takes a decade to complete. Granted, Red's gunna do what he's gotta do, this is his project, and I respect whatever he chooses. But if I have a vote that counts for anything, I vote for Red NOT "abandoning Rising World and working on Rising World 2 in Unity".

I think your thoughts are full of prejudice. The Unity developer team worked hard for many years on their engine. They have thousands of customers who send bug reports and fixing bugs is not fun, it's hard work. The engine is tested from all sides. It's a blessing for all developers to have such an engine at their hands. If someone "abuses" the engine to do asset flips or copy paste code from others, it's the developers laziness or lack of care for quality. As a hobby developer who just likes to try some things out, but doesn't want to develop a game, I can say that Unity is a lot fun to develop in, because it provides you with a huge amount of tools that you need. And I don't think it's bloated at all, the .dll to ship a game is only 20mb large (which is nothing by modern standards) and you can even disable features that you don't need thanks to the Package Manager.

Unity allows you to write your own Physics, Unity provides you with Mesh generation tools. And C# is fully functional, just as Java. You can also write your own shaders, you don't have to use a single premade Shader, you can do your game just as much "from scratch" in Unity as in Java. I think some people romanticize the idea of having "full control" and "everything is made by you". Don't you think the Unity Team working hard on fixing bugs full-time (8 hours a day or more) isn't a labor of love?

And do you think The Forest or RimWorld are cheap Asset flips limited by the Unity engine? I don't think so. I think the engine did a great job enabling the developers to have fun developing a game and having a frequent update cycle.

I still want to mention that I don't want to criticize red for not using Unity. I think at this point of development it's almost impossible to switch to Unity, because you already have a nice product and starting from scratch again would be a very harsh step. I just enjoy the talk about it. :)

[Avanar]

Forest is a great game but very limited in possibilities. Fixed environment, very small map, no voxels.

I still enjoy playing it. But it's still having too many limitations to be my personal favorite.

Rising world is different. Its also full of limitations but it doesn't feel like. Or at least as if there's a way around that.

Well, i think you got your answer. Rising world is neither abandoned nor on halt :)

[kassa]

Originally posted by Avanar:

Forest is a great game but very limited in possibilities. Fixed environment, very small map, no voxels.

I still enjoy playing it. But it's still having too many limitations to be my personal favorite.

Rising world is different. Its also full of limitations but it doesn't feel like. Or at least as if there's a way around that.

Well, i think you got your answer. Rising world is neither abandoned nor on halt :)

Just look at this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i05Iwce81cg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3lOI8McEec

Unity is fully capable of handling everything that is needed for this type of game.

[Avanar]

Sure is and still it isn't used in that way.

But again... Was your initial question answered or do you still have doubts?

[Tryst49]

Originally posted by kassa:

Just look at this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i05Iwce81cg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3lOI8McEec

Unity is fully capable of handling everything that is needed for this type of game.

You are simply showing a demo that has been designed by people who wrote the code and know how it works inside out and upside down so they can work within it's limitations without even trying. That's going to be a lot different to those trying to do something and having to read the manual to see how.

If you think it's so easy to use Unity to design a game like this, why don't you design a game yourself? See you in 4 years when you have no hair left and all your backers are screaming at you to "fix the damned game" when the bugs are nothing to do with your game but everything to do with trying to make Unity's mechanics do what YOU want.

Planet Nomads is a prime example of that. Place too many hinges and rotors in close proximity on a vehicle and it will jump about, disassemble and ultimately explode into a million parts. Fast forward to about 3:00 when it rolls over.
https://youtu.be/N1xHy2c8c1g?t=189
Not to mention the wheel glitch that made vehicles launch into space. Visually, there is a gap but the physics meant the gap was too small. The result is that the wheel effectively applied force on a surface and since the surface was not fixed to the ground, it flew off, taking the wheel with it. Since the wheel was still constantly applying force, it never stopped. The devs could never fix that because it was a Unity mechanic. It would mean a complete redesign of the games assets.

So I'm in agreement with others here. RW is better without Unity.

In addition, you have the ability to create a whole new engine when you're done. Remove the assets and leave the engine which is now already tailored to work with a game of this type.

Unlike Unity which is a general purpose engine.

[ArcticuKitsu]

Going to hate me, but I felt the need to chime in again. >Insert stereotypical Canadian "sorry!"<

Originally posted by kassa:

I really appreciate your game, because let's be honest, there's no alternative. I just wish there was a Minecraft with realistic graphics, like you are trying to do.

There honestly isn't, and why I keep hyping and praising Rising World as much as I do. Sure, it may be "corny" and "lemming like", but there is a legit reason why I follow Rising World. I also keep noting I have little time to play games with Rising World also finding its way constantly in my free time, and for actual legit reasons. It's not because I "white knight" it, or whatever trolls have said. I love the PNB system, the sound, and etc. It all fits nicely. It's gradually being molded into a game I can use as a HUB to even display my awesome creations outside of building structures to even eventually using sound & eventually imported models.

Red51, Waveshapr, and friends have done an excellent job, and I love it. I can't wait for wood types to match their tree types, and etc.... Just like Minecraft. Avanar shall keep noting Rising World & Minecraft don't match, and he may be correct, just a few more things to note Minecraft side, then Rising World can fully deviate the other direction doing its own thing. It still has lessons to learn from Minecraft before it can fully deviate.

1) Boats, 2) Farming, 3) Wood types/building materials being their own thing, & etc.

I've tried Empyrion, Survival Simulator, Kingdoms, Staxel, Conan Last Exile, and etc.... Nothing quite hits as well as Rising World does. I even forgot a few of their names.......

That's why I would even like the idea of abandoning Rising World and working on Rising World 2 in Unity. I only care about having a good realistic Minecraft game, but no developer was able to deliver it yet. If it requires abandoning this Java version, I wouldn't care.

These types of suggestions never end well, and I've seen what it does to a community over at SCS community making me highly wary of going over there. People kept harassing SCS developers to upgrade their DirectX engine, something which would take many years to do at the level they are with their game. Now, imagine Red51 doing this with Rising World.... It be best to stand your course, or risk angering your consumer base almost similar to how SCS has done with the American Truck Simulator map rescale. With how long the biome update took for Rising World, and the water update, people aren't patient. Make people wait far too long we then see people bringing out protest gear of pitchforks and torches....

People then cry out Red51 has abandoned the game, he's a vile developer, and etc. I've seen it done to SCS Software, we've seen it here, and we've seen the result done to Blockscape. If Red51 can manage it in a few months, then sure. Be my guest, restart Rising Worlds. If it IS that easy, then do it in 5 months, or else people shall protest again. Or better yet, start a background project but that defeats the point when the resources could be spent on the main game itself.

I'd however say continue developing Rising World to completion before you jump onto Rising World 2.

I'm really confused why nobody is doing it. Of course there are some Sandbox games, but they all have themes like post-apocalyptic, sci-fi or with zombies. I wish there was a normal sandbox game with destructible Marching Cubes terrain, normal voxel blocks building and some tools for planks, arches, roofs, walls etc. that don't use voxels, but just models or simple 3D shapes.

When you add in zombies the right way the game can still be fun. Sure, people may be worn out with zombies, protesting here and there, but when done right zombies can still be done right. The games you're most likely picturing when typing that most likely have done it wrong. Having played 'Arizona Sunshine' in VR the other night I want to go back to blast more zombie heads off. I love how zombies feel in that game over '7 Days to Die'. They feel more weighted, more legit, and actually zombies. THOSE zombies should be in Rising World, IF we do gain zombies. We won't, but IF we do, 'Arizona Sunshine' zombies are the best. BOOM! Headshot!

Also, about your "confused why nobody is doing it", I'm confused why nobody wants to also make an inspired game of Silent Hunter 3. There is 'Uboat' (UBOOT), just more up to date with surface warships. The games developers should make they won't, while they make other weird games. Someone should be making another game similar to Rising World, Silent Hunter 3, and other games filling in the void of the gaming market. We were to gain a Star Wars free-roamy game until moronic Electronic Arts killed it. I'm livid. So many things wrong with the gaming market right now I'm livid about many things, and Electronic Arts is to blame for the quarter of the things right now. Indie game developers have to pick up the slack of the greedy AAA game industry.

>Insert Ubisoft's "It's hard modeling woman" excuse<

I write about this, not to pressure you or to be mad about anything, you could say I just really "care" about especially this idea of a game (marching cubes, sandbox, open-world, do-what-you-want, build beautiful stuff). I know we are here for Rising World, but I personally I'm here because I care about the idea of especially this type of game and right now Rising World seems to be my only hope. Your product delivers the most compared to other games.

Speak your mind. Now, if you were on a Subnautica Steam forum, or elsewhere people would be censoring you left and right claiming "freedom of speech censorship", something I've come across them whining about. Say what you need to say. Don't hold back.

[red51]

Well, basically everybody's right in this topic ;) Each approach has advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, engines are always limited. As @Tryst49 mentioned, Unity and Unreal are "general purpose" engines. You can use them to create almost everything, but when creating something that deviates too much from the standard, you will hit certain limitations sooner or later. And sometimes it can be quite tricky to find workarounds for these limitations.
For example: Both Unity and Unreal Engine offer tools to create a terrain "out of the box". This is fine for most games with a static, fixed world, but of course these tools are useless for a game like RW. Instead the terrain (and everything that's related to this, i.e. vegetation, shaders, collision etc) needs to be created programmatically. Now it depends on how much freedom these engines give you when it comes to custom mesh generation. Unity doesn't allow you to create procedural collision shapes in a separate thread, for example (which could lead to performance issues), while Unreal Engine has no support for Texture Arrays (which are crucial for RW).

But on the other hand, these engines have other major advantages, e.g. a solid physics engine and a great rendering pipeline. And they make your life much easier sometimes (due to the tools they offer to you). For example, if you want to create a GUI, this is a very easy process in Unity or Unreal. You have a nice WYSIWYG editor, and it takes you a few seconds to create some simple UI elements. In Rising World, we have to create the GUI programmatically instead. This is very time consuming and can be quite tricky if you need to change the position of a GUI element (which requires you to update the coordinates of most other elements accordingly). Over time we developed some tools for handling the GUI, but this is still nothing compared to Unity or Unreal.
This is just an example, there are many other tools in the big engines which can speed up game development and are very helpful when it comes to prototyping etc.

Another big advantage is multi platform support. The PC market is dominated by Steam, and their changes in October make it much less attractive for serious Indie developers. If Rising World was just released today, I'm sure it wouldn't be successful at all (unless a big YouTuber finds and plays the game etc).
The true winners of the traffic changes are AAA studios and big indies with hyped games, and asset flippers of course. Another problem is Steam Direct, which opened the flood gates for all sort of low-effort trash games and asset flips. On some days there were more than 50 games released on Steam (without taking DLCs into account) oO This combined with the traffic changes makes game development extremely risky, at least when it comes to serious game development.

Before Rising World was released, I spent around 15,000 € to develop it (sounds, music, 3d models, legal stuff etc). I put all my funds into the project and even had to borrow some money. Of course I wasn't sure if I ever get that money back, but you know, no risk - no fun. I'm glad I took that step, but I'm not sure if I would do that again today (after the traffic changes) - game development was always risky, but today it's much more risky than it was a few years ago.

I am a passionate PC gamer, the last console I had was a SNES when I was child, since then I'm only playing PC games, and I was always upset in the past if big studios obviously preferred the console market. But today it seems to be very important to take the console market at least into consideration. While the PC will always be our main platform (irrespective of Rising World), I'm afraid we cannot survive in the long run if we totally ignore the consoles. Unfortunately there is no chance to run a Java game on a console, so if we ever want to release a game for Xbox or PlayStation, we're basically forced to use an engine like Unity or Unreal in the future.

If you'd told me that story six months ago, I'd just laugh in disbelief. But I never thought Steam would implement changes which cut our traffic by 70% "over night"...

Actually both Unity and Unreal made great progress in the last years, and it's true that the Unity developers and Epic really care about their engines. But apart from the limitations mentioned above, I guess the biggest issue is the extensive usage of "assets" from the asset store. This makes game development (too) easy though, but sometimes results in unfixable bugs, potential performance issues, and this really makes your game look like hundreds of other Unity/Unreal games. Actually I'm not so happy about the asset stores (at least when it comes to so called "game templates"), because in my opinion, they are partly to blame for the fact that we have so many asset flips out there. But this is a different story.

Nevertheless, when we started working on Rising World, using an engine like Unity or Unreal wasn't an option at all, since both engines had too many limitations at that time. Today things look a little bit different, but recreating RW from scratch sounds like a mammoth task. On the other hand, our main goal is to get Rising World into its final state, without using any dirty tricks (like simply discarding most planned features etc). And certainly it would be a pity if the journey ends once Rising World hits 1.0 (since there is so much potential for more features which aren't covered by our original roadmap). With the traffic changes in place, we will run out of money sooner or later. If that happens, we will still continue to work on RW, but this might slow down development even more. So of course we will do everything we can to avoid this situation.

But I'm confident that there will be a solution that satisfies everyone :) As I said before, development will definitely go on, no matter what happens, and we will do everything we can to prevent Rising World from burning in eternal Early Access hell ;)

[Jon]

Rising World is unique. Red, your posts give me [and us] a better insight into what it takes to create such an experience. Thank you for your passion and effort. I [we] will support you in any way we can.

[kassa]

Thanks red51, I really appreciate your honesty and openess. It's just that from a simple consumerist perspective I want the game to progress. I originaly wanted to make this thread to strike a balance. Of course understanding your situation is good, I was just afraid that too much understanding and "positivity" leads to stagnation, because: If everybody is already happy, why would you keep putting much effort into it?

And you could really ask yourself: If this game would be more polished and feature-complete, maybe people would notice it much more and see it as a legit alternative to Minecraft, in the same league. Even if it sounds harsh, I think that the lack of success and publicity is partly blamed on the slow development. By slow I don't mean that you are lazy, I just mean that the results are slow. Of course there are underlying reasons, but as a consumer I usually should mostly care about the product and results, not about the background.

I don't think Rising World would just vanish in nothingness if it would be polished and feature-heavy like Minecraft. It should at least be considered that the decline in interest for this game might also be because the game is in Early Access for a long time and lacks some features that go beyond building and which would make it a fun experience, like creepers blowing things up, animals bringing life into your home, skeletons lurking underground etc. - If it's not an adventure, then of course, what is there to do for Let's Players?

As I said, I made this thread to balance things out. I don't think it's healthy to just see the developer perspective and completely forget about the consumer perspective. Of course nobody is entitled to your work, because you have the freedom to do whatever you want with your life, nobody is entitled to anything. But at the same time I want to be free to say when I'm not fully satisfied as a customer.

And just look at Kenshi, it got released recently and now it's on the top of the GoG charts for months. And they didn't even add much more features, they only finished it. I think people lose more and more trust in Early Access in general.

[Avanar]

@kassa: your last part isnt true, in my opinion. sure, you hear very often "release that damn game finally!". but thats just life - those unhappy are the loudest ones. those satisfied or at least patient are not heard.

early access means you can watch a game getting developed and participate in it. each patch either enhances the game (as in RW) or completely changes it (as in 7d2d). some people are not reading the disclaimer well enough, which states that each patch can completely change your game experience.
and this is what early access truly means. we are guinea pigs who pay for getting to try the maze. and considering that only a part of the gamers is crying for a finished game i would say that most people are fine with that - as long as the game is getting seriously developed. rising world surely is such a game. there are some things which i personally would love to see improved and i dont keep pushing red on chat or forum about it :)

but overall rising world is a great game. i never met any other that could keep me busy and challenged for that long. i got shocked when i read i had already 1000 hours in it. but i started off with the standard block-system, was too lazy for anything that doesnt go fast.

then i played survival on a very strict server (thank you @Arcticu) and learned to have patience with planks and beams... and out of a sudden i got enlightened and found myself working only with planks and beams - the most advanced building system on the market. i have no idea how red51 managed to develop this one and no one else did, but it is the best out there!

now i currently play single player and not using even 1 block. i try to craft furniture by mself as far as possible. i learn by doing and aech building in my world is getting better.

i am curious about the next update, which will bring bandits and skeletons as you requested, but overall it wont change my game experience. fiddling out planks and beams is a challenge in itself.

and its the reason why i say that RW can´t be compared to Minecraft. Minecraft is a great game and was my first game of this type. but its a finished game, had several years in early access as well, a huge community to support it with mods and microsoft pushing in money as much as needed - not even considering the merchandising, spin-off-products, etc.

RW is not having a marketing at all (boooh), still in active development, not even a fracture of the budget, a small community and no spin-offs (yet).

and still each time i log into minecraft and think what to do i see this blocky thing, imagine how a house or castle would look like... and go back to rising world. with its nearly unlimited possibilities in building.

my vision is to create a huge, endless world with cities in it of all different types. place NPC (hostiles and friendly ones) and leave the world open for players to settle in it, use it for just playing a kind of adventure mode (ill implement quests and a story) or just hang around and discover what there is.

each time i read in 7d2d that someone enjoys the building system i have to laugh about it. 7d2d is a great game about zombie-fighting and i also actively play it. but building? i could go back to minecraft and have a similar experience. no thanks.

long story, short - patience is a virtue and if you allow yourself to forget the bad experience in the past with several games, relax and enjoy this game and community, you will see that waiting half a year for a patch in RW isn´t all too bad. the challenge to really master planks and beams is a huge one and nothing you can do in a few hours or even 100. and once you managed this there will be other things to do.

[Moonstone Mom]

Kassa, you mention Kenshi. My son has followed that game's development and it has become one of his favorites. Perhaps you aren't aware that it was in development for 12 years from Greenlight. It too was a labor of love for it's dev and there was a strong community supporting it through that time.

You speak of adding a balanced voice as a consumer. I trust that you aren't trying to say you speak for all consumers. There are many consumers who don't necessarily share your opinion. Of course you are entitled to state your opinions just like the rest of us. Now you have; thanks for the input.

This type of game is becoming very popular. I'm sure at some point you will find a game that matches all your criteria and doesn't frustrate you. Don't give up hope. New games are coming out all the time.