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Post by banned on Aug 7, 2014 22:55:03 GMT
So you asked that they admit the game is a mobile ported to PC? I find your new found honesty refreshing and thank you for it. The first step is always admitting the problem. It's not a mobile game ported to PC, in fact the game started with its desktop build and then we added a mobile branch to it. The game is in simultaneous cross-platform development using Marmalade. A port would imply we needed to re-write for a different engine, which we don't because apart from in a few areas, our code-base is unified. "A port would imply we needed to re-write for a different engine," Disagree, "designed for mobile and ported to PC". The fact that you used a cross platform development engine is irrelevant. Just as if the basic design is for a console, the stupid radial menus proves the game is a port to the PC. This "because it runs on, was developed on" claim is not original and has not held water for any of the other companies whose desire to not alienate a secondary, read afterthought, market by the exposing their intended market, despite blatant obviousness, exceeded their ability to discern the truth. Mobile P2W cash shop elements in the very first images released. Thus mobile. Interface is designed for a touch screen. Thus mobile. Effects removed because they ran poorly on mobile. Thus mobile. Art, shadows, dumbed down for mobile. Thus mobile. I can go on... I can provide quotes from 22cans as well journalistic media. I personally would be less offended if the hypocrisy of the claim ceased and I was simply dealing with disappointment in lack of standards, like Trion's console port to PC game Defiance.
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Raspofabs
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Post by Raspofabs on Aug 8, 2014 13:42:46 GMT
I've never heard of "port" described that way, and I've done some ports in my time. Porting Wreckless to Gamecube from the XBox was my first (we had to port it out of middleware into a bespoke engine, and across hardware differences. That was tough). I wouldn't say we ported MaxPayne3 to PS3 and PC, just because the game was designed for 360 primarily, it was parallel development, just like Godus.
A port has a significantly different development schedule, and is usually done by a shop as work for hire without royalty as it is very much "not game development", it's taking a game that is finished, or in the very late stages of debugging before publishing, and bringing it to new hardware or OS.
Also, using "port" as a derogative term? It isn't a downgrade, or an upgrade, it's what it is, the act of bringing a game to a new platform. In that sense, Godus could be considered a port from desktop to mobile, not easily the other way round.
We spent some time trying to do something nice for a particular hardware configuration. You really shouldn't make any judgement leaps to assume it's the platform that all others stem from. It's really quite common to do cool things on the main platform, and not even mention them because they weren't that challenging, and then feel really proud that you managed to cram a much reduced, and still almost as pretty version, into the tiny "ported to" device.
Your points on design being driven by the mobile version sound more like anger towards being used as testers for a mobile release, and indicate to me that you are dissatisfied with the state of the game rather than the process. Just as much as a crash or a visual glitch, the design of a game can be considered a bug/issue too, and to me, this means that the upcoming PC sprint will begin to fix these design bugs. I agree that the game feels too mobile right now, but that's simply because there's just not enough of us to write two original titles at the same time, and from your comments that I have read, you agree that the mobile and desktop versions should be significantly different, and that difference requires more man hours to realise into a game with which the backers would be satisfied.
So, I guess, we will have to take the time to make things right, and actually, I've not heard about us stopping development any time soon from anyone, so there's still plenty of that time stuff for things to turn around.
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Post by Danjal on Aug 8, 2014 14:35:38 GMT
The thing with ports is, if its a good port - then you likely only know of its original platform because you KNEW that it originated from it. A good port has no clear and glaring features that are distinct to that platform.
Some simple examples of features leftover are: - A clearly designed control interface for its original method of control (be it touch controls, analog sticks, gamepad in general, actionwheels etc) - For *platform* to PC, one of the key flaws often is the lack of configuration options in a game that clearly needs them. (Key configs in particular) - The blatantly bad ones are if the 'key config' menu still shows a gamepad, or even worse, the specific gamepad of its original platform.
An example here would be Darksiders. That game was such a bad port, that if you didn't play with a controller on PC - it'd just assume that your analog sticks were constantly pressing up/down (depending on whether you inverted the axis or not) making the game unplayable.
How is this relevant towards Godus? Well Godus has some very obvious and glaring "Mobile" elements in its design. If someone didn't know the history, they'd quickly draw the conclusion that they were looking at a mobile game due to the heavy emphasis on touch-screen controls and the usage of screen-realestate. The choices for gameplay are also (especially earlier on in development) very much designed around a weaker platform.
So I don't think its that odd that people say Godus is effectively a mobile port. Since that is what it appears to be. As for any intention to adding stuff later. Given the nature of development recently, and the number of games that get "dropped" because they aren't profitable enough. That makes it very difficult to believe it when someone says they'll add it later - given the odds that "later" might never come.
So basicly - 22cans has, especially in the past months, shown a willingness and desire to actually move away from the blatantly mobile elements that most of us PC gamers dislike. Yet at the same time there has been a distinct focus on releasing the mobile version first (which has had its reasons). Going forward from there with a PC focused design will not be easy, unless you intend to overhaul a large portion of the gameplay, many players will be able to notice those strong mobile influences for a long time to come. That'll make it hard to claim/prove that Godus isn't a mobile port, but PC-developed in more than just name.
No matter how often I'm told - I'll have a hard time believing that you as a company will indeed overhaul the game to the extend that I will no longer see the glaring mobile elements and have the game as it was originally described. Atleast untill I'll be able to see that game with my very own eyes.
Will Godus ever get there? I guess at this point only time will tell.
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Post by morsealworth on Aug 8, 2014 17:47:24 GMT
"Godus have been developed for PC as well as mobile"?
Bullshit, it works under an emulator.
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razz
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Post by razz on Aug 8, 2014 22:51:49 GMT
There are enough articles and interviews on the web that tell that Godus was first and formost a mobile game, so that it doesn't matter what you try to claim here (though I can understand you from a more technical perspective). And if something behaves as a duck and walks like a duck and sounds like a duck - it's a duck. Everyone can easily see that everything in Godus is done mobile-orientied, so trying to sell us Godus as an PC-first development is pretty... making fools out of us. Others from 22cans have done that before, now you do. Thanks a lot, very nice.
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razz
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Post by razz on Aug 8, 2014 22:58:14 GMT
Will Godus ever get there? I guess at this point only time will tell. I think you can easily give the answer yourself. If 22cans would move away from their previous strategy, would they a) change something groundbreaking within the game mechanics, or b) tell people how to look at mobile/f2p-mechanics differently? Currently they do a lot about option B). See the community staff, see the PM commentary within Godus. They are still on the route that they follow the right direction and that everyone else is just wrong. Waiting for timers? Go and find something to do, you silly person, you just haven't understood how we want you to play this delicious game.Even if they cannot do a) because of some contract with DeNA, they aren't obliged to do b). But they like to do b). So your answer is clear.
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Raspofabs
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Post by Raspofabs on Aug 11, 2014 14:08:08 GMT
"Godus have been developed for PC as well as mobile"? Bullshit, it works under an emulator. If you're talking about the Marmalade simulator, that applies to every platform, not just desktop.
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Post by neonero on Aug 11, 2014 14:57:29 GMT
Also is marmalade a runtime environment like java?
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Raspofabs
Former 22Cans staff
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I like: coding, high peat single malts, ... , yeah, that's about it.
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Post by Raspofabs on Aug 11, 2014 15:34:35 GMT
There are enough articles and interviews on the web that tell that Godus was first and formost a mobile game, so that it doesn't matter what you try to claim here (though I can understand you from a more technical perspective). And if something behaves as a duck and walks like a duck and sounds like a duck - it's a duck. Everyone can easily see that everything in Godus is done mobile-orientied, so trying to sell us Godus as an PC-first development is pretty... making fools out of us. Others from 22cans have done that before, now you do. Thanks a lot, very nice. You're right that there is a lot of talk about Godus being one thing or another. I think it's very easy to assume the worst if you're not satisfied, and I hope that the future desktop updates begin to address that for you. I think part of the problem is, I am a developer, I don't have the perspective you do. I worked on the game, and when I work on a game I see the code and the effort being put in to make it work, not the target audience metrics or whatever buzzword stuff comes down from on high. When I think of port, I think of a different word meaning. It's a bit like how scientists use the word theory compared to how evolution-skeptics use the word. I'm sorry you feel like I'm trying to make a fool out of you, but I am fabs();, and I tell no lies. I am a guy that writes code, makes things work, and generally will not hold punches if you are tying to hurt something I love. I'm not a community manager, and I'm not trained in trying to "give the people what they want to hear" so I can't bring myself to do that, instead, I hope that my opinions, hopes, and expectations, revealed to you, might help you in some way. I hope that Godus will please you. I expect that we can, given time, make a game that feels totally at home on the desktop, with proper core gamer elements (if that's what the people really want). And my opinion of Godus as a game is that it's a lovely canvas on which to explore many more gameplay mechanics, so I'm expecting to be working on it for quite some time. Making the design of the desktop version of Godus less mobile oriented isn't an if, it's a when, and when we do, it could do with a distinct goal. At present, looking at the 22cans suggestion thread, there is a lot of noise about removing the long timers, and not much else. I'm not seeing any suggestions on what to replace the long timers with though, we could do with some good alternatives for desktop. Where is the proboards feature-request thread?
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Raspofabs
Former 22Cans staff
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I like: coding, high peat single malts, ... , yeah, that's about it.
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Post by Raspofabs on Aug 11, 2014 15:44:50 GMT
Also is marmalade a runtime environment like java? Technologically, it seems to be an x86 / ARM library loader with a platform layer presented to that library. So, when the game boots, it's not really the game that's booting, its an instance of marmalade that loads the game code as a library, then executes the library. It's a very thin layer, not an emulator, so we don't get much in the way of performance issues when it comes to CPU intense stuff like AI or mesh regeneration. Most of the slow bits are where we have to do lots of "through" marmalade stuff, at which point we suffer the same kind of issues that people have when they start calling virtuals in tight loops. Instead of programming "for windows" or "for iPhone", we code in C++, "for marmalade". Most of the normal functions are wrapped up. For example a call to "malloc" actually calls a marmalade function that requests memory from the chunk of mem that it allocates at boot. Sometimes functions aren't properly wrapped (they are stubbed) and that can cause issues, as we expect all functions to do what they are meant to do, but that's the price we pay for being able to develop for all platforms by only targeting one common subset platform that is Marmalade. So no, not an emulator, more like a very thin virtualisation system.
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Post by Danjal on Aug 11, 2014 15:55:33 GMT
You're right that there is a lot of talk about Godus being one thing or another. I think it's very easy to assume the worst if you're not satisfied, and I hope that the future desktop updates begin to address that for you. I think part of the problem is, I am a developer, I don't have the perspective you do. I worked on the game, and when I work on a game I see the code and the effort being put in to make it work, not the target audience metrics or whatever buzzword stuff comes down from on high. When I think of port, I think of a different word meaning. It's a bit like how scientists use the word theory compared to how evolution-skeptics use the word. I'm sorry you feel like I'm trying to make a fool out of you, but I am fabs();, and I tell no lies. I am a guy that writes code, makes things work, and generally will not hold punches if you are tying to hurt something I love. I'm not a community manager, and I'm not trained in trying to "give the people what they want to hear" so I can't bring myself to do that, instead, I hope that my opinions, hopes, and expectations, revealed to you, might help you in some way. I hope that Godus will please you. I expect that we can, given time, make a game that feels totally at home on the desktop, with proper core gamer elements (if that's what the people really want). And my opinion of Godus as a game is that it's a lovely canvas on which to explore many more gameplay mechanics, so I'm expecting to be working on it for quite some time. Making the design of the desktop version of Godus less mobile oriented isn't an if, it's a when, and when we do, it could do with a distinct goal. At present, looking at the 22cans suggestion thread, there is a lot of noise about removing the long timers, and not much else. I'm not seeing any suggestions on what to replace the long timers with though, we could do with some good alternatives for desktop. Where is the proboards feature-request thread? If I have to be completely honest here - I can respect a post like this much more than a "We're working on it, but *EXCUSES AND REASONS* cause us not to be able to fullfill our own design." As for good suggestions for alternatives - No offense to you (I don't know what Matthew and George have been able to get your way), but many of us HAVE been providing suggestions. Some good, some less so. On how to provide alternatives to the timers and how to make the game function better in the long run. I've even seen suggestions to incorporate the timers into a deeper layer of gameplay without being so "in your face" about it. Often, the suggestions are made primarily as comparisons to other titles, as not everyone has the same degree of knowledge in terms of design and programming. But that shouldn't be too big of an issue. Another big problem with the timers isn't so much the timers in and of themselves, but the fact that there is nothing else to do within the game. Sculpting used to be the go-to activity, but in later versions it has been made so expensive that you can't really provide minor changes to the landscape without spending tons of belief. The voyages mini-game isn't enjoyable for many players, and in the current version once you finish the 4 sets, you have to wait a full week for more. Which makes it that the game has a couple of loosely tied together mechanics that overall cause you not to have a lot of things to do. In my current game I'm mostly waiting for belief to gather so I can build up my next settlements. I need farming and mining settlements to unlock more cards and to advance further. Now as a result of the implementation of the Pit of Doom, I effectively have trains of people heading there every 1~2 hours to supplement my belief income. This does speed up my overall progress, cutting a few days off of getting to the end-goal. But other than leashing followers to their demise I have nothing to do. I've finished all the voyages, I've dealt with the Astari and I don't have the belief to create my next settlement. (currently at approx 1000 followers, 30 wheatfields, no ore) So what COULD be used as an alternative? Well for starters implementing an actual resource system would circumvent the need for an artificial one. If you actually need 20 wood and 10 stone to build something, you have your 'timer' build in. And if you can provide the resources faster things go faster. If you do not have the resources, you instead go to acquire the resources meaning you have that to do. On the other hand, 22cans seems to want to avoid making Godus into a full-on RTS. And restrict it mostly to guiding. In which case I'm questioning some of the current resources available in the game and I would point you to this thread I made quite a while ago. I'll need to brush this up to the current version of the game to make some of it more up-to-date, but for the most part a lot of it would still be functional. TL;DR - To make the timers less of an issue, step one would be to provide the player more things to do that do not cost him/her an arm and a leg. If you want the player to be a GOD - stop making him a gardener and groundskeeper and make the player more powerful. Also, stop make the player have to tend to all the little things if you do not want him to micro-manage. On the other hand if you believe it is up to the player whether they micro-manage to fine detail or not, then provide the player with the tools to do so. Once players have the tools at their disposal to create impressive terrain without it costing a ton of belief or other resources they will be far more inclined to do so. Don't tie the player down at every turn. The game is supposed to be entertaining. Not tedious.
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Lord Ba'al
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Post by Lord Ba'al on Aug 11, 2014 15:57:55 GMT
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Post by Crumpy Six on Aug 11, 2014 16:13:10 GMT
Sam, Matthew and George have supposedly been producing report after report of our feedback and suggestions over the last six months, so these are all documented somewhere at 22Cans and will be addressed to the development team prior to the PC sprint (right??). I don't see why we should repeat all these suggestions YET AGAIN.
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Raspofabs
Former 22Cans staff
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Post by Raspofabs on Aug 11, 2014 16:24:14 GMT
Sam, Matthew and George have supposedly been producing report after report of our feedback and suggestions over the last six months, so these are all documented somewhere at 22Cans and will be addressed to the development team prior to the PC sprint (right??). I don't see why we should repeat all these suggestions YET AGAIN. As a coder, I'm not going to be on the receiving end of those reports. I get the stick / whip from the designers. So I'd imagine you're completely right and the designers do already have some good stuff to go on. There's no point in not adding new ideas in the wake of the latest update though.
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Raspofabs
Former 22Cans staff
Posts: 227
I like: coding, high peat single malts, ... , yeah, that's about it.
I don't like: object oriented design, and liver.
Steam: raspofabs
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Post by Raspofabs on Aug 11, 2014 16:50:26 GMT
So what COULD be used as an alternative? Well for starters implementing an actual resource system would circumvent the need for an artificial one. If you actually need 20 wood and 10 stone to build something, you have your 'timer' build in. And if you can provide the resources faster things go faster. If you do not have the resources, you instead go to acquire the resources meaning you have that to do. cue sound of hand hitting forehead: And, how about getting rid of destroying trees and rocks by poking them, and only allow them to be "mined" or "felled" by the people? Obviously, sculpting can carry on cropping the vegetation, but yeah, I like the move to true game resources. Also, when I was playing for our in house focus test, I was sick of the event map reinforcement timer. I think you should be able to leash your followers to the event harbour to reinforce directly. I should be posting this in the feature requests thread you guys kindly put up for me
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Post by 13thGeneral on Aug 11, 2014 17:16:02 GMT
So what COULD be used as an alternative? Well for starters implementing an actual resource system would circumvent the need for an artificial one. If you actually need 20 wood and 10 stone to build something, you have your 'timer' build in. And if you can provide the resources faster things go faster. If you do not have the resources, you instead go to acquire the resources meaning you have that to do. cue sound of hand hitting forehead: And, how about getting rid of destroying trees and rocks by poking them, and only allow them to be "mined" or "felled" by the people? Obviously, sculpting can carry on cropping the vegetation, but yeah, I like the move to true game resources. Also, when I was playing for our in house focus test, I was sick of the event map reinforcement timer. I think you should be able to leash your followers to the event harbour to reinforce directly. I should be posting this in the feature requests thread you guys kindly put up for me Wow. We actually got through to someone? I lkke the idea of leashing the followers to the Voyage harbor. Good call, Raspofabs!!
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Post by Danjal on Aug 11, 2014 17:42:02 GMT
While I don't know how effective it'd be. In my experience the benefit of having the entire team (or atleast parts of the entire team) directly accessible means you can get clear answers from each department or speciality. Simple example, if the CM's are depending on Peter and Jack to relay information back and forth stuff gets lost in translation. I for one think it is worth the risks to have a direct like with both the 'coding' aswell as the 'graphical' sides. Finding the right person can be iffy at times (not everyone is as suitable for community interaction especially when things get toxic). But ultimately its gonna be worth it. I think receiving input from you guys directly ( Raspofabs & feanix) has at times proven to be more usefull than the chewed through and prepared information relayed through others. But thats how I see it atleast. The more layers, the more boxes, the more transitions. The more information will change and lead its own life.
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Post by morsealworth on Aug 11, 2014 18:17:12 GMT
I would say that info from you two is the ONLY useful info.
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Lord Ba'al
Supreme Deity
Posts: 6,260
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I like: Cats; single malt Scotch; Stargate; Amiga; fried potatoes; retro gaming; cheese; snickers; sticky tape.
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Post by Lord Ba'al on Aug 11, 2014 18:34:31 GMT
cue sound of hand hitting forehead: And, how about getting rid of destroying trees and rocks by poking them, and only allow them to be "mined" or "felled" by the people? Obviously, sculpting can carry on cropping the vegetation, but yeah, I like the move to true game resources. Also, when I was playing for our in house focus test, I was sick of the event map reinforcement timer. I think you should be able to leash your followers to the event harbour to reinforce directly. I should be posting this in the feature requests thread you guys kindly put up for me Still waiting for you to post your suggestion in the feature request thread.
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Post by Monkeythumbz on Aug 11, 2014 20:49:01 GMT
I would call it "not very good". You all know that I think the PC version till needs work to become truly great and that I've been compling a list of community suggestions/requests, so this shouldn't come as a surprise. So can we look forward to the next store page update clearly stating something along the lines of, "Our development proceeds through sprints of development that may have differing platform focuses, of which we are presently in the midst of a mobile-focused sprint and as such much of the design available to you is representative of that, but we intend to proceed to a PC-focused sprint within the coming months. Please take this into consideration before you purchase the game, since while adjustments are made to the PC platform during this sprint to account for its differing business model (buy to play vs. free to play), some areas of balance and design may retain elements of the mobile version for the time being." I think that follows with much of what you've been BSing about over the last few pages here, if I'm not mistaken. And this took me all of maybe five minutes to write out. Okay, the Steam storefront text has now been updated: check out this post for full details.
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