Shadowrun Returns

[alanschu]

 

It's just as likely that they started talking DLC and MS said "Uh, you didn't mention anything about DLC in our initial talks" if we're just going to play the hypothetical game here.

 

No, it's not. "we were able to successfully negotiate an exception with Microsoft for us to provide our Backers with a DRM-free version of the Kickstarter rewards" - DLC is irrelevant, MS wanted DRM on everything.

 

 

So either this negotiation happened before hand (and hence should have been stated in the Kickstarter pitch)

 

or

 

This negotiation happened after the kickstarter, to which they made promises they didn't know that they could keep, and only after the fact were they able to secure no DRM versions for the backers.  (As such, Microsoft could have kyboshed this whole project by not allowing the DRM free stuff to be made, which would have led to an epic **** storm, or whatever negotiations occurred convinced Microsoft to make an exception in this regard.")

 

Your quote is making it seem like #2 is what happened, which is not a flattering thing for HBS, nor does it do much to infuse confidence in something like Kickstarter.

Edited April 13, 2013 by alanschu

[Oner]

I'm not happy though that they has such a stupidly successful kickstarter campaign and then say that they did not have the money to implement a proper savegame function.

The stupidly success of 1,8 million? It's a lot but not that much.

[alanschu]

Relative to what they were asking for, however, it is still quite the success.

[Majek]

If you're asking for what you can get but not what you actually need.

[melkathi]

 

I'm not happy though that they has such a stupidly successful kickstarter campaign and then say that they did not have the money to implement a proper savegame function.

The stupidly success of 1,8 million? It's a lot but not that much.

 

Compared to what they were asking and what other kickstarters get?

Let's not compare to PE or Torment, those were really odd ones out.

But they asked for 400k and got 1.8mil, 4.5 times as much as they claimed they needed to finish the game. It all looks like a lot of miscalculations on their part.

[AwesomeOcelot]

It's a design choice, they decided to spend time on other things, save states are hard to implement.

[Hurlshort]

The game looks way better than I initially expected.  With the whole iOS angle I was expecting something very old schoolish.  But instead it looks like a pretty deep game.  I'm not sure why they can't implement a save system, but I'm still pretty impressed with what they've done with the money.

[Nordicus]

I guess the Eschalon developers have better programming chops then if their far more obscure franchise has managed to keep that feature.

 

I was alright with some of the other minor disappointments regarding this game's development, but a checkpoint system in an even remotely open RPG just will not do. I'm highly skeptical whether this can work out

Edited April 14, 2013 by Nordicus

[ShadySands]

The gameplay videos still give me warm fuzzies but all the little issues and the cuts and changes to features don't really inspire a lot of confidence

 

I'm not too concerned with:

Infinite ammo

No loot system

Not being able to use other people's runners

Removal of the overlay system

Mages only cast/Shamans only summon

No progression for hired runners

 

But I am a little worried about:

Checkpoint saves

Unknown system for Deckers

[Oerwinde]

I don't get it, aren't saves basically files that store variables? I would think adding map #s and xy coordinates to the rest wouldn't be that hard.

[AwesomeOcelot]

I guess the Eschalon developers have better programming chops then if their far more obscure franchise has managed to keep that feature.

Didn't both their games take over 2 years to develop?

[Zoraptor]

I don't get it, aren't saves basically files that store variables? I would think adding map #s and xy coordinates to the rest wouldn't be that hard.

They're less complicated if using checkpoints, as there are fewer coordinates and they don't need things like AI states and positions to be taken into account. As a consequence they're also (potentially a lot) smaller in terms of memory requirements.

 

It's pretty weak reasoning though- you'd hope that sort of attitude was not applied elsewhere.

[Nordicus]

 

I guess the Eschalon developers have better programming chops then if their far more obscure franchise has managed to keep that feature.

Didn't both their games take over 2 years to develop?

Even if they did,

 

1) Did Shadowrun Returns development just suddenly start a bit before Kickstarter? I seriously doubt it

2) Did Shadowrun Returns HAVE to come this year?

3) Do you think Eschalon: Book 1 had even near the budget Shadowrun Returns has?

 

All in all, a longer production cycle for Shadowrun Returns would translate into more man-hours, which translates into more money needed. Unless they got extra money, having the game longer in development would barely change a damn thing, because it'd be fewer guys working longer. The only case where this helps, is when a game is being hurried so much that no amount of extra money and employees thrown at the problem will help things in the given time

Edited April 14, 2013 by Nordicus

[Majek]

I completely fine with checkpoints saves, even though they have even been explained and everyone is just jumping to conclusion on how it will be implemented.

 

Nordicus how the hell did you bring Eschalon into this? And you're just throwing assumptions around like they should mean anything.

[Nordicus]

Nordicus how the hell did you bring Eschalon into this?

 

Claiming that that a small-budget non-linear RPG can have a manual save system (not to mention looting) has more solid ground when one can provide an example

[Majek]

But how is a game that one guy + contract workers made in who knows how many years, without any promises, physical goods, ancient graphics  with basic animation in 800x600 resolution, simplistic writing and story, complete control over all IP, ... a proper example to compare to.

[alanschu]

 

All in all, a longer production cycle for Shadowrun Returns would translate into more man-hours, which translates into more money needed. Unless they got extra money, having the game longer in development would barely change a damn thing, because it'd be fewer guys working longer. The only case where this helps, is when a game is being hurried so much that no amount of extra money and employees thrown at the problem will help things in the given time

 

This "depends" really.

 

While I doubt that the size of the teams of either project reach this level of critical mass, in many cases it's typically better to have half the staff work twice as long.

 

Now, 10 people working for 2 years might not be a big difference over 20 people working for 1 year, you do start to get huge diminishing returns on adding people to a project, while the cost of adding people to a project tends to go up linearly.  100 people working for 2 years will almost certainly make a better game than 200 people working for 1 year.

[AwesomeOcelot]

1) Did Shadowrun Returns development just suddenly start a bit before Kickstarter? I seriously doubt it

2) Did Shadowrun Returns HAVE to come this year?

3) Do you think Eschalon: Book 1 had even near the budget Shadowrun Returns has?

1. Pre-production may have started before the KickStarter, they were in crunch for their latest release.

2. Yes, they don't have the money to extend the development.

3. I don't think Eschalon: Book 1 required the same amount of work or skill in terms of graphics. Eschalon: Book 1 doesn't have a port to a different architecture and interface. I don't know whether Eschalon: Book 1 has the same mod support.

All in all, a longer production cycle for Shadowrun Returns would translate into more man-hours, which translates into more money needed. Unless they got extra money, having the game longer in development would barely change a damn thing, because it'd be fewer guys working longer. The only case where this helps, is when a game is being hurried so much that no amount of extra money and employees thrown at the problem will help things in the given time

That's not true, there are roles where having more people working on one thing is not as efficient as one person working on one thing for longer.

[melkathi]

But how is a game that one guy + contract workers made in who knows how many years, without any promises, physical goods, ancient graphics  with basic animation in 800x600 resolution, simplistic writing and story, complete control over all IP, ... a proper example to compare to.

 

How does writing or resolution affect the ability to code a save-feature?

The writing is done by someone else in the team and so is most likely the whole graphicsystuff.

[Hurlshort]

It's not like there is any reason to lie about the save feature, if it was easy to implement, they would do it.

[alanschu]

How does writing or resolution affect the ability to code a save-feature?

The writing is done by someone else in the team and so is most likely the whole graphicsystuff.

 

Do they have a dedicated writer, or does the writer also program? (on smaller teams people become multidisciplinary)

[Mamoulian War]

Is not the something like "Save Memory State" function viable for PC gaming as it is viable for console emulators?

[alanschu]

It would depend.

 

The emulator is running in a virtual environment so it has a greater degree of predictability over the memory (specifically, the addresses) allocation within the virtual machine.

While the memory block can be assigned anywhere within Windows, as far as the emulator is concerned it's assigning the memory starting from 0x00000000 (or wherever it wants to start).

 

So if you were to save the memory state, you'd either need a virtual memory controller for the game (which may or may not be easy.  I have never done one...), or some way to ensure that you correctly map the reassigned memory to the correct locations.  Which would probably be effectively writing a "save anywhere" feature anyways.

[samm]

Short interlude regarding Steam, as I've been one of the vocal un-happies here: I understand their explanation and feel somewhat sorry for them now Damn Microsoft - at least they didn't force Games For Windows Live upon them and us gamers.

[AwesomeOcelot]

Saving the memory state tends to use more memory and you're saving all of it, which is fine for emulating devices that tend to have tiny amounts of memory like consoles from a previous generation (128MB at the top end), but even if the game runs comfortably using 768MB memory, you're going to want multiple saves, that's almost 4GB for 5 saves. Also with emulators that's not just saving the state of the game, that's saving the state of the whole system, which would mean you're running a game in a virtual machine, which is a larger task to code than the whole game itself.