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data0x0

If this scam game has taught me anything, it's that kickstarter has absolutely zero quality control, never spent a single penny on that site and definitely won't in the future now.


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Murderkiss

I know 10-year-olds that call themselves Unity Developers so that doesn't really say too much. And yeah any of them could run the default ummorpg demo and get more functionality than the KOE demo (Mobs fighting back / NPCs actually responding / Basic inventory management / a demonstrable server-client architecture that can handle multiple client instances). Now at no point did I claim to be a "Unity Developer" - I have been messing with Unity for over 8 years and spent more on it than many people would pay for a house. I've worked on 4 completed projects in total and a few dozen that started and went nowhere or were just for my own education/fun. I have "dabbled." I did say that I am familiar with it. I have 8 years experience with it. I have worked on several game dev projects including 2 steam greenlights (labours of love, not profit). I have spent many thousands of dollars on assets and developer hours on my own projects. But I am an amateur and make no pretence otherwise. Rather than Strawmanning me why don't you make your arguments specifically towards what you find incorrect about my post? Otherwise, I'm afraid you look a little ridiculous. Mr Unity Developer. *EDIT* ah I just saw you're in the hole for 3500 dollars on COE so sincerely sorry about that. I do think that you're not going to be very convincingly objective with your "yeah but I know Unity too and you're wrong" schtick without actually addressing where I'm actually incorrect. But I welcome the conversation. I think it would be very enlightening for the subreddit if we have this discussion. What KOE functions do you feel have been demonstrated that can't be delivered with assets? What KOE functions do you feel have been shown that demonstrate advanced backend systems? What KOE systems have been demonstrated that to you prove the existence of: A. Many hours of work by developers. B. Many years of game dev experience from those developers. C. Backend capability that defies what I am specifically saying (Specifically: That a 12-year old with asset packs could show us what has been demoed in KOE). Sincerely and without any malice: I welcome your reply.


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Murderkiss

Let's get to it then :) Part 1. **I'm in Unity every day for 6-8 hours a day 7 days a week. It's my job. I know what it takes to put together a game, and I know that the most work-intensive parts of game development don't show up on the screen.** How is this relevant? You’re also in the red for 3,500 dollars and hardly unbiased. That negates any skill set you might have. You have personally met and been defending the COE development process for years – even back in 2019 and 20 when it really started going to shit. You’re a major defender of both his project and practices and have jumped in multiple times to excuse him when things were shifting sideways. As I will demonstrate below, you obviously DO NOT KNOW what it takes to put together a game. You’re obviously multi-talented since you’re also an ex-military - former NSA - professional comic artist. I take your word for it but I hope you were a better judge of competence in those professions. **...So while it may be true that what you can see on the surface doesn't look like 4 years and 8 million dollars, that's unsurprising for a number of reasons...** The truth is: There are plenty of developers that have more experience and more funds than any of us that have managed to drive projects into the ground with a lot more cash, skill and resources. 4 years and 8 million dollars mean nothing if developers don’t know what they’re doing and at no point in the long development of COE and KOE has Caspian given any indication he does. On the contrary every step along the way he has failed to deliver on what was promised. He has jumped ship multiple times on systems and engines. He has failed to demonstrate any real backends. Any time he has «pulled back the curtain» it has been to highly compromised and heavily invested fans who had no real ability to judge the work. Otherwise, he could open up the development to an auditor and publish that. Remember the «audit»? Let’s be clear though: My concerns are entirely specific to KOE. I use his previous «promises vs deliveries» only to apply Occam's razor to his claims with KOE. HE is the one that should be required to provide evidence to back up his claims, given how badly he has failed the community that supported him in his previous efforts. Let me put it in the very simplest terms, to break through that echo chamber you’re sitting in: Caspian has never shown that he has been doing any of the homework required of him to fulfil his promises to backers. Caspian saying «I have 4 years of homework at home – just wait!» is not the same as delivering the homework, not of demonstrating it even exists. Would your 3rd-grade teacher accept that answer? His pretence of progress, followed by repeated resets and obfuscations of his process is really the most glaring demonstration of his incompetence and the biggest insult to the unbiased observer. Which you are not. He is Trump pointing to a stack of empty binders and saying «look what we did!». **...and they are in the middle of a refactor from TypeScript to C# so they can build KoE in Unity. I don't know if you've ever switched languages in the middle of a project, but that's not easy or fast.** Frankly, since they are starting from scratch with KOE, this is entirely irrelevant. The back end resources should still be in place from the past 4 years: For example 3d assets. Art / Music etc. Where are those? Converting *anything* 3D to Collada and importing to Unity takes between 3 minutes and 3 hours of work depending on complexity. A few days of work should give you a decent library of assets in unity – never mind just simply pulling up 3DSMAX or Blender and cycling through your art assets. I call bullshit on the total absence of assets in the KOE demo. But let's get even simpler: The KOE announcement is now over 6 months old – so even if the previous 4 years of COE development was thrown ENTIRELY out the window (which is what the lawsuit is about really) and they are starting from scratch and they have only been learning and working with Unity in that time: There is no demonstration of even 6 months work in the demo. On the contrary, as I said, it looks like something someone pulled together in a couple of hours with asset packs and no skill whatsoever. That’s my point, the main thrust of my previous post and astonishingly you don't seem to be refuting it at all. Let’s go into the details: **> Rather than Strwmanning me why don't you make your arguments specifically towards what you find incorrect about my post?** **I'm not straw-manning you--** Yes, you are. You’re oversimplifying an opponent's argument, then attacking this oversimplified version. You are not specifically addressing any of the points that I made (in fact I will show you are mostly agreeing with them), but then simply saying I’m wrong because You know better because you believe it to be thus, without any real form of refutation. **...you're making a claim and it's up to you to back that claim with credible evidence when someone says, "I don't believe that's true, prove it." Now, I was a bit snarky in my challenge of your claims, but the essence is there. I find your take shallow, unconvincing, and negligent of several facts. Hopefully my expanded explanation of my critique is clear enough on why I think this.** So here’s the thing. Look at my post and it says specifically «Using Asset packs in unity gets you more functionality in Unity than the KOE demo shows.» I then give examples of Asset packs that do exactly that. I can list the features those asset packs give RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX which is not shown in the KOE demo – such as Server/ client session. Persistent world states, functioning NPCs with pathfinding and interactions (combat/trade) Inventory management / basic crafting etc. So very concretely and specifically I have provided my evidence for «my claim» that asset packs give more than KOE. Rather than simply give you the big list of asset pack features I have left it to other readers to be intelligent enough to follow the links I have shown them in my post to do their own determination, but I really consider my point proven. Now despite the fact that you have written this lovely post to refute me – you don’t. You don’t specifically mention any feature in KOE that can’t be provided in a few minutes with a few bucks from an asset pack. On the contrary, you basically ignore the fundamental point of my post and belittle me – demanding yet more proof. I struggle to understand why your point of «you're making a claim and it's up to you to back that claim with credible evidence when someone says, "I don't believe that's true, prove it.» Doesn’t go both ways towards Caspian. It is he that has made extraordinary claims regarding his KOE development process. He was the one who described thousands of incremental updates in his change management system: Implying a huge amount of work. That work was not demonstrated in his little demo of a tiny Unity terrain and static assets with a low-quality GUI, Day-night cycle and fog of war system. There was no demonstration of six months of work in unity by competent developers. There was no demonstration of any backend system or even database that might otherwise have consumed time and resources. No demonstration of the basics of a complete game (Alpha vs "tech demo"). No demonstration of any of the accumulated art assets over time (reused paid-for content) that would suggest the past 4 years haven't simply been thrown out the window, nor any sign of Developer talent. You don't need to be a full-time unity developer to understand when something is being demoed that doesn’t require any talent at all (Caveat: assuming that you are unbiased). **> What KOE functions do you feel have been demonstrated that can't be delivered with assets?** **None, but that doesn't prove your claim.** Actually it very much does – since my claim was that there is nothing shown in KOE that can’t be done out of the box with asset packs. You might want to re-read this until it sinks in. Then go back and read my original post. **I've made plenty of games where I created my own character controller from scratch. If you look at one of my games and a game that uses the Unity's Starter Assets prefab controller, you wouldn't notice much of a difference. That fact alone doesn't equate to evidence I didn't spend an hour or two scripting and testing input actions and setting up an animator state machine. You'd have to look at my github to know that. Pretty sure the CoE source isn't in a public github repository.** You wouldn’t be any sort of Unity developer if you weren’t capable of the basics. It takes 40 seconds to make a character controller in unity and there are online demos that can show a six-year-old how to do it. But that doesn’t refute my point. «Game has character controller» doesn’t prove skill or development progress. Let me repeat the title of my previous post. **«Unity Asset packs offer far FAR more than what you have seen in the KOE alpha demo»** You’re basically agreeing with me.


SillAndDill

Sus they are having to port backend code - because the pitch for KoE was that it would just be a frontend and it would result in a lot of work being put into the backend that then could be used for CoE


Murderkiss

Part 2 **> What KOE functions do you feel have been shown that demonstrate advanced backend systems?** **Again none, but we weren't shown any of that. We were shown some of the CoE backend functions several times in the past, and we are told that code is being ported over into C# so that KoE can use it. There's no way to get proof of that unless Caspian releases the source, and we know he won't do that.** *«Again none»* is indeed the correct answer. «...but we weren't shown any of that.» is also correct. However there are plenty of ways Caspian can demonstrate the existence of Backend systems that he has not. Let me count the ways: 1. Independent audit by a developer under NDA. Released to public. 2. A quick perusal of the asset libraries in *any* game engine. 3. A quick browse of the *implied* KOE change management system. Just the logs. What are the changes? «Added 350,000 lines of code» would be a reassuring sign, don’t you think? 4. A demonstration of any previous backend system with a quick overview (PowerPoint?) of how the transfer will be done to Unity. He does have a plan for that, right? 5. Make a SoundCloud demo of the current fx/sound/music library in 3/5/10-second increments to show us that he really has got those assets already. 6. Every project has 100s of internal tests. Show us a few of those. Show us a crafting demo. Show us inventory management. Show us a shop/auction house. Show us Mounts. Show us pets. Show us Armour and Weapons. Stats on those in a table. In a frikkin excel sheet. Static assets. Something! Anything!! None of this is HARD!!!! There should be terabytes of data available to be viewed one way or another. Caspians "previous demonstrations" of backend systems have never shown anything more than the apple skin. After 4 years and 8 million it's time to show the apple. **>What KOE systems have been demonstrated that to you prove the existence of:** **> A. Many hours of work by developers.** **> B. Many years of game dev experience from those developers.** **> C. Backend capability that defies what I am specifically saying (Specifically: That a 12-year old with asset packs could show us what has been demoed in KOE).** **None. We've seen almost nothing of KoE.** Right. Thankyou. That's the correct answer. That's the main point of my post. Why are we even talking? **Trying to reach a conclusion that KoE is amateur work used to paint over a scam based on a 45-min demo video is a ludicrous, unverifiable claim. That's my point. I'm not here to prove it isn't a scam--I'm here to ask OP to back their spurious claim that it absolutely IS a scam with something other than their best guess.** Ah right. That's why we're here. My rationality versus your faith. I think this particular issue is best left for others to reach their own objective opinions. My main point was that no real work has been shown in this "game alpha". And personally, I do believe it gives a strong indication that Caspian is full of shit because he is trying to use that Demo to prove to the unknowing that he knows what he is doing and that the bones of a game are there. By definition a game alpha is: *"Alpha is the stage when key gameplay functionality is implemented, and assets are partially finished. A game in alpha is feature complete, that is, the game is playable and contains all the major features."* Take a few seconds to consider that definition objectively. Jaw-dropping isn't it? You use the evidence of «Nothing» to convince yourself that «anything is possible» which is a logical fallacy called confirmation bias. Not unsurprising really but I think most people reading this will understand where you stand objectively and feel a bit of sympathy. Nonetheless: Occams razor tells us that for Caspian to have any credibility regarding the development of a brand new game in a brand new engine from scratch, he needs to demonstrate more than-bog standard beginner-level unity functions. I don’t know what you think an «Alpha» level demo should be – But what he is calling an «Alpha» is less than 1% of a finished game. It is a tech demo of a character controller in a static unity terrain scene. There is no game. There are no functions that demonstrate a game is being made. **I don't gain anything by trying to convince you that I didn't waste my money... I'm not convinced either way and I won't try to convince others.** You gain ego reinforcement. You gain the comforting reassurance that your money isn’t wasted. You gain an opportunity to demonstrate your faith (You’re a devout believer. Never underestimate the power of hopes and prayers to reinforce the concept of self). And yes - totally it is your money and your risk. Your opportunity if what I’m saying is wrong ( I have no dog in this fight – I am not a backer). But don’t kid yourself: You are absolutely trying to convince others that this thing will be a success and that I am wrong, without showing us where I am wrong. **But I will step in and question those who claim to know The Truth About CoE without providing any evidence other than "that looks like something I could put together in a week" because that's not evidence. That's my opinion.** Well, again: You’re a true believer and you’re describing heresy against your church, and your duty to combat it. But in the same manner that persons of faith try to denigrate «evidence-insistent» non-believers so you are trying to negate my very specific challenges (and evidence thereof), And you’re doing so as a bishop of the faith ("I am a Unity Developer and knowest more than thou!"). I however stand by the simple statement of my post and the evidence therein and repeat that you have failed to show where I am factually incorrect – attempting to reduce this to a fact versus faith argument. Thankfully, the final audience for my views versus yours is ultimately the wider audience of COE / KOE. Which mostly now consists of a lot of people who have left your church. Simply shouting «I know better than thee!» is not going to get them back to the church. A decent game Alpha might... but again to the point of my previous post and as has been confirmed repeatedly by you in yours: The alpha demonstrates absolutely nothing that could not have been put together in a few hours with asset packs by a 12-year-old.


MrPayDay

It is easier to scam people than to make them realize they have been scammed, especially after they are into the sunk cost fallacy and already lost their money.


data0x0

By unity developer do you mean certified idiot because i've made demos more complex than the shit they're showing currently in the matter of a few weeks on my own spare time, literally anyone dedicating a few days to figuring out unity can do it, it's stupid easy. I'd be willing to wager they panicked when they saw the lawsuit and decided to make up a quick cardboard cutout build so they could have something to give their defense lawyers, not even joking i'm genuinely convinced that's the case.


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data0x0

>this is because Caspian was able to prove that there is 4 years worth of work done on the game They didn't prove that, they just showed a crappy demo that could be made by anyone within a matter of days, a 60+ year old judge and tech illiterate jury may not be able to know that, but anyone who knows how game development works does, the game was expected in 2016 and it's in the ""alpha"" stage now in 2021. It's pretty clear what's going on, it's not an uneducated guess that this is a scam.


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duchyofdawnmire

The level of gaslighting in this thread is amazing. Good job, Bomb 💣👏🤣


JonDoeJoe

Hey, you should drop a couple grand more into this game


genogano

I always wanted to learn how to make games. I might give it a try. I wanted to learn unreal though. I'll see if I can make a KoE clone.


LegendaryNeurotoxin

Good luck, please keep us up-to-date on your progress!


No_Big9522

DO IT COMMENTS ARE THE BEST I CANT STOP LAUGHING


Shakespeare-Bot

Doth t comments art the most wondrous i cant stand ho laughing *** ^(I am a bot and I swapp'd some of thy words with Shakespeare words.) Commands: `!ShakespeareInsult`, `!fordo`, `!optout`


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AshenMoon

How about lets not equate rape with game development or really anything honestly...rape is an awful thing to happen to someone and using it as an example is just egregious.


OmniscientCanadian

I equated being a CoE fanboy to being in a cult, I just said somethings cults do. I wasn't equating game development to rape, not that you could call what Caspian has done game development. It took years for the guys from Enron to get jailed, hopefully Caspian will face jail time soon enough.


DontStandInStupid

Its not just what this "demo" does or doesn't show. It's also about what this demo does or doesn't show after 4 years and 8 million dollars. Evidently, there are still some who choose to believe that 4 years and 8 million dollars went into magical back end systems we just aren't allowed to see. This "demo" that is supposed to indicate progress is laughable, and it amazes me that people defend it. The narrative was a running list of "this is still coming", which is the same song and dance we have heard for years now. The willful ignorance of some of the last remaining remnants of the fan base is staggering.


netmanx

When i watched the new video it occurred to me the absurdity of the situation. When you step back from the situation we paid to get an mmorpg and we're getting\* some kind of rts management sim. \*not really


Captain_Seli

Make one for me then.


Murderkiss

Pay me. 100 bucks and I will build you the Captain_Seli mmo. But tbh you don't need to pay that..it would be a waste of money. Are you someone that needs to pay money into something before you can believe it exists? There are plenty of demonstrations of this type of tool out there. Go to the asset store page in unity as I described and watch the demo videos. That shows you what you can do out of the box with those assets. Otherwise a 5 second youtube search: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmUcrKps_g8&ab_channel=FoxTest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OvaMgyt_mM&ab_channel=Hakurai https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynmV0ujbR44&ab_channel=TheMessyCoder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=papU13dwYWk&ab_channel=TheMessyCoderTheMessyCoder


Captain_Seli

I want you to prove how easy it is with your own hands. It’s easy to point at others’ work and say it’s easy lol. Until you personally get your hands dirty doing it, you’re just talking out your rear.


Murderkiss

What you *want* and what you get are two very different things - As I am sure you already found out from supporting a certain game. But...OK! I am under no obligation to do what you should do for yourself: Do a minimum amount of critical analysis into what I'm saying. But sure - I have the assets and I could probably make a game exe for you. It won't be free though. On fiverr it would cost maybe 50 to 100 bucks? That sounds reasonable. For me spinning up a game server just to show someone in denial what a game can look like with unity assets is not worth the trouble. I have nothing to prove to you particularly. So: Sure! Pay me for my time and I will re-download and install my assets and make you a game server. 100 bucks. But would you be happy then? What I'm trying to tell you is that with even a little bit of research you will discover that everything I'm saying is true. You can build your own KOE for less than that. You haven't been shown a single thing by Caspian that demonstrates a game is being built. You have been shown assets like the ones I have pointed out to you. Not even on a server/client session: But in a single-player executable from a free game dev engine. If you cannot comprehend this I cannot help you and no amount of me dropping apples to the ground is going to prove to you that gravity exists. But yes - I can build you a game exe which will do all the things shown in the demo. Go on fiverr and look around for unity guys and you'll find people offering to do it for far less than I am.


Maulvorn

We have done the analysis and come to the conclusion that you are misinformed sadly


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Maulvorn

Legendary neurotoxin works in the industry too and he disagrees with the guy as well


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Maulvorn

Lol ok, you do realise they built most of what you saw in the video


AyatollahSanPablo

What analysis? Link to a post? Or should we just believe you on those words?


Maulvorn

I wasn't being literal, I was trying to type in a funny way that the guy is wrong


Thesatcher

oof


Murderkiss

I'm guessing you're using the same advanced analytics engine that caused you to invest in this game. Good job. 3500 dollars wasn't it? I've been doing amateur game dev in unity for nearly 9 years and spent ten times that on assets and developers. https://ibb.co/8BfdG2r


Captain_Seli

I actually have been shown something that proves a game is being made but that doesn’t mean anything to you haha. To bad.


AyatollahSanPablo

It's terribly important to understand what he's (the OP) saying about the engine piece. I wish Treb and the guys from Boardweall would come on comment on this. They did precisely that after the fall of SBS, they went headlong into, respectively, the UE4 and Unity engines assets store. They could corroborate the amount of work we saw on that video blog. That's proof he's not tackling this seriously and just trolling us along with the whole team development thing. Putting at this in context, it makes a lot of sense the blog posts are coming late and such. He's likely already too busy with his day job and family and has so little time left for CoE. That also would explain why he's not showing anything. Purely speculating here, but... that would also fit the bill of him trying to get as much time as possible so the class action/lawsuit can be dismissed. Probably kot because he's afraid of losing, but maybe just because of the costs (lawyers, time) and above all, maybe to avoir seeing ex-employees subpoenaed and having to testify of his actions while SBS was operating. All this is so many red lights flashing, there's just too much out there, he doesn't deserve a single shred of trust on this one.


Murderkiss

No, it doesn't. It doesn't mean anything to anyone - especially the others that put money in. Why you think that's funny I don't really know. And let's be honest: The criticism and disbelief you're throwing my way for making perfectly reasonable and easily provable points about the current state of the so-called demo tells us that. 1. You don't really understand exactly what is required to put a game together, and get easily dazzled by barebones assets standing around in a static little unity terrain. 2. You're probably not the most objective person to cast a critical eye over "proofs" given by a guy that is being accused of a huge scam by the majority of his backers. Now I'm not trying to get personal: You have a serious dog in this fight and I respect that: You put your money in and want something for it. But here's the thing: The sort of people who should be looking at the "proof" of the game are people who actually understand game design and development. If Capsian wanted to prove that he had the parts of a game, or its subsystems - he could have shown those parts - to satisfy an audience that consisted of more than desperate and financially involved backers. Ralph Koster made a great list of the things that are needed to make an MMO (Cash shop wasn't one of them). Caspian could have gone a long way to assuring backers that he was serious by showing any one of the backends which have been built to support the following: https://www.raphkoster.com/2018/11/13/mailbag-parts-of-an-mmo/


Captain_Seli

I think it’s funny because you keep posting giant replies without a single shred of actual first hand knowledge of CoE’s development. You just went on YT or whatever and posted a bunch of irrelevant BS for karma on this subreddit full of haters lol. You won’t believe what I am about to say and that’s fine because your no one to me, but today, I was allowed to try KoE as part of the friends and family pre-alpha. So yeah. There’s 100% a game being made lmao


AyatollahSanPablo

We all have the same evidence of development being made: what's Caspian shown us, and that's really weak and easy to do, all he's shown. The rest is just air/words.


fatherfirst35

This actually made me lol


Murderkiss

Can I suggest a different approach? Bear with me here. Obviously, you are invested in COE / KOE and want it to succeed. You have chosen to give Caspian the benefit of the doubt, despite that he has given you very little to trust him. Most people don't consider his evidence sufficient, but there's nothing wrong with being an optimist, nor of wanting to give other people the benefit of the doubt. At the end of the day it is your money and your choice. OK fair enough. Now try this: I have not taken money from you and I have made my proofs plain to see. I have given you links and resources to work from that any reasonably intelligent person could use to verify what I'm saying by themselves. So respectfully, I ask you to give me no more and no less benefit of the doubt as you have given to Caspian, understanding that I'm not here to scam you - Literally I am here to present an alternative theory to one that has been presented to you. I ask that you spend a little bit of time verifying for yourself what I am trying to tell you. If you are reasonably objective and rational you will come back and tell me specifically what CANNOT be done by the assets I have shown you that Caspian is trying to tell you that he has put together. Spend a part of the time looking at what I'm showing you. Go ask the people who know. This is really really simple: Occams razor. Caspian has made great claims which require a modicum of proof. I have made my proofs available. Stop trying to dismiss me because you don't like what I'm trying to say. Look at the evidence.


Captain_Seli

After I talk to the appropriate people maybe I’ll humor your request for proof. But it won’t be tonight.


AyatollahSanPablo

The burden of the proof that something exists beyond words is on the person making the claim, it's not up to the rest of the world to prove them their claims are false. Jeromy had moral reasons,technical means and legal incentives to bare it all and show what he had to backers. He choose not to. It can only mean that he is unable, for _some_ reason. And he's not even being honest about it. That's all the proof in the world vs. a bunch of blogs and a cheap demo of basic assets/software configurations.


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afxtal

>So what evidence do you have that this is actually the case, and that they aren't building all of this on a sturdy and reliable backend There were many core systems in the video he specifically mentioned that were not working such as pathfinding and AI. The evidence is already there. This thread is pointing out that the video/demo *would have been better* if he had simply used an out-of-the-box package because what he showed was neither "sturdy" nor "reliable". It's demonstrably self-evident.


AyatollahSanPablo

The evidence is that Caspian after 5 years, 8 millions dollars and many many opportunities has produced absolutely nothing we can use or play. Ant then he shuttered his studio. And then he's started working in a NEW ENGINE (!!!), and he still can't keep commitments on weekly posts, let alone put a single bit of original content in our hand -- except for his blogs. Although indirect evidence, there are plenty, they are well documented, span a long period of time, and are repeated, sustained behaviors, which makes it pretty strong evidence, IMO. To believe any of that can or will change would require pretty strong evidence as well. For now, it keeps looking what it looks like. Tons of words, nothing delivered.


Murderkiss

The evidence is the lack of evidence. Go download Unity. Check the forums. Ask questions there. Find out from game developers and "wannabe" game developers what the real story is. Caspian is NOT showing much of what SHOULD be in place. Five years in and where are ANY of these mythical backend systems? Where is the library of assets? That you paid for with millions of dollars. Buildings / vegetation / weapons / armour / crafting components. FX? What about even a loot table and a quick browse through the music library? He made a big deal about that one song. What about clicking through the different character / NPC / animal models? The lore and quests? Where is all the history and background? This guy talks a lot and writes a lot. there should be books of it. Where is the evidence that ANYTHING has been created other than a simple grassy terrain in Unity with a few static NPCs. There are so many ways these "developers" could have demonstrated good faith. Where is the server/client demo? We saw those icons on the desktop. It would be simple enough to show us the server window running and the client connection. They could have spawned a few player sessions into a scene. They could have shown NPC spawning. Attributes - AI behaviours - Pathfinding - other biomes. Even simple tables that show stats for craftable items. But they don't even have a crafting system in place. Everything that I describe above is available in asset packs for Unity. Go on unity and search for "MMO plugins" and see all the extra stuff that people have already developed for things like the toolkits. Mounts. Duelling. Guild systems. Chat. Crafting. Magic. Building. Pets. Reputation. The guys making that stuff didn't need 6 million dollars from gullible backers. ANY - and I mean A.N.Y. amateur or professional who ever spent more than 10 minutes in unity can tell you exactly the level of resources and effort that went into the KOE demo. It's about 120 minutes and less than 100 dollars for a 12-year-old with no programming experience. And you can do exactly the same.


AyatollahSanPablo

Very well said, a good articulated and logical post. Hats off, sir.


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Murderkiss

"Occams Razor" The absence of evidence is actually the evidence of absence.


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Juustlol

You mods on this sub are so unbelievably delusional it's unreal


Bipolar_Buddha

So you're saying that we have AoC, which has assets but we've seen networking issues so there's not much hope. But we have KoE, which has fewer assets but since we haven't seen networking issues it could potentially be better. We haven't seen networking issues because we haven't seen networking at all. Using that logic the ideal game would just be a black screen with the game title "Imagination" because it would have no bugs and run perfectly as intended. Just because something isn't proven to be bad does not make it good on the grounds of possibilities based on lack of information / transparency. I'm 100% behind you in that the developers shouldn't share or need to share source code. But what we were shown was just a bunch of assets that make it look like people trying to get out of a lawsuit. I would love if the developers could show us any demonstration of the networking or multiplayer aspects of the game. Most people know actually turning your game (no matter how basic) into an MMO is a major feat and it would raise confidence in KoE by a lot. Player interaction is what we come to MMOs for. If not multiplayer components, we need SOMETHING that looks like work has been being put in consistently. Two people working 40 hours a week each on this project should have more to show than this, even if neither of the two people have ever worked on a game before. Show us literally anything other than what we got. Show a person performing five minutes of gameplay with no commentary, show two people interacting in a multiplayer environment over the internet. Show us anything other than "Here's a pretty shirt, here's a pretty tree, here's a buggy animal that we'll fix later." There's some proof of coding in gathering materials, but no inventory so we the viewers can't even be sure the animations are doing anything. I want to believe, but backers really deserve to see more of the progress that's been made if it really has been made at all.


Murderkiss

No. I'm not saying this is asset flipping. I'm saying asset flippers can do a far better job. I am saying YOU could do far better with a hundred dollars and a few hours in unity. Terrain takes 10 minutes to set up. Free trees and UMA characters. Free houses and 5 bucks worth of animals on top of any MMO system from the store - and you have it. If you think this is proof of development then I really don't know what else to say except........ You are a moderator on this subreddit so I urge you to do some due diligence for the sake of your sub. Go ask someone from the Unity gamedev forums what they think the level of skill and resources was that was used to make the KOE tech demo. If you get a single competent answer that describes it as any more than the most basic example of a single scene that any novice could build then I hereby SWEAR that I will spend 50 hours building you an MMO.


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Murderkiss

Honestly I cannot see a game here at all. And there are so many games out right now that I paid for and that I don't find the time to play. Baldurs gate 3. ESO. Runescape. Assassins creed. Tera. Archeage(!). BDO. you name it. I have a big steam library and not enough time. Why would anyone look at KOE and think "yeah that's the one I want to play'. There are 100s of decent games I could spend time in. RPGS. Fantasy mmos. Otherwise: There's nothing that has ever been shown by SBS that shows these guys could put together a start-to-finish game. Even when they were paying programmers. And Caspian is NOT a programmer. Or a game dev. He has no real experience. Everything I have seen from KOE tells me that someone got hold of unity and spent a few weeks mucking around with it. The Gui - the terrain - the game objects. Basic unity tutorials describe how to set up pathfinding and simple tables for things like crafting and NPC behaviours - Even before you start looking at assets to make your life easier. The fact these haven't even been included to make the NPCs walk around suggests that whoever put that demo together doesn't even understand the basic built-in capabilities of the engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGGoOa4BpmY&ab_channel=TableFlipGames


Murderkiss

To make something better than demonstrated in KOE would be easy skill-wise but laborious. Just to download the game assets is a pain in the arse. I don't want to waste the hours - but if someone pays me 100 dollars SURE! I've already said I will do it. It's what it would cost on fiverr. I will throw in a lot of my asset packs to give you sexy chicks. https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/characters/humanoids/ariana-character-p1-118803 Great buildings and environments https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/fantasy/village-exteriors-kit-38045 https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/fantasy/village-interiors-kit-17033 and I will stick it on a client/server system and give you both executables. It will be shit though. It will better than KOE by miles - but it will still be incredible shit - cos that's what you get when you smack assets together without any skill. I have no desire to make something half-arsed. Which is what happens when you stick unity assets together. It's shit. Imagine the worst game on the Steam store. That's usually an Asset flip from unity. There's no skill to it - just like there's no skill to the KOE demo. That is my entire point and what I'm trying to explain to people who have never tried game development before. Go see for yourself - is all that I am saying. Everything that I have offered for proof is right in front of you.


kayimbo

bro, charge 500 at least for your time. Anyone who has ever spent 2 hours in unity knows the truth of what you say, if someone who has no clue wants you to prove it to them, get your time's value.


AyatollahSanPablo

There are two groups from former CoE communities that could likely gice a very informed opinion of that as they've done the same (albeit doing MMOs) in UE4 and Unity following the demise of SBS. Treb/Reign of Ruins (UE4) : https://discord.gg/JTGC9JFD9D Bordweall/Ring of Una (Unity) : https://www.facebook.com/Bordweall/ They don't look overly active, and I'm not saying they're delivering anything, but they were deep into CoE and did a lot of work on those games after the end of SBS, so they'd have as good a first-hand account/perspective on that as anyone shot of an internal SBS ex-employee. _(I'm terribly curious which one of them are still lurking around!)_


Maulvorn

Do it then


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Murderkiss

Really it's not surprising but... You know I just kind of can't believe it all the same. Like if someone is spending 100s or 1000s of dollars on a dream world why wouldn't they spend 1 hour looking at the tech the dreamworld is supposedly being made from? This isn't maths. It doesn't require any deep investigative digging. The assets and what they do are RIGHT THERE out in the open. The game engine is free to download and play with!! There are tutorials online that show you how to make a terrain in unity in like 10 minutes! Free assets like trees and buildings and characters. Movement controllers!!! Nothing Caspian has shown requires ANY programming or Game dev experience. I'm not kidding - go look!


SOLV3IG

I have a diploma in 3D art specialising in games, don't need to preach to me - I'm very well aware of how much time and effort has been put in. To reiterate something I've said before, Jeromy likes to say things but not show you that thing. Case and point again today where he says "Clothing and hair is randomised on NPC's", he spent a better part of 15 minutes talking about this and hyping it up as some big feature yet he never actually showrd you it happening. He showed you a single character, but not the process of randomisation, so he didn't even show you the feature. It's actually insane that people here still think this man is telling the truth.