This is not a dinosaur game!

[crazyroosterman]

The main response I have to the above is: why can't we do both?

We're in a stable enough position at the moment that we can afford to plod along with both things.  I'm also not in a very good state of mind for making a strategy game right now, and so the likely result of that would be pretty poor.  Keith is working on that, however; first with SBR, then AI War.  AI War 2 is still a long ways off programming-wise.

Meanwhile I'm able to focus on something else that I'm passionate about, and on a timetable that I have more control over.  I was passionate about Starward Rogue, but had no control over its timeframe thanks to being staff-heavy and past mistakes with the amount of time spent on SBR and so on.  We're now running a lot closer in terms of our expenses to our income, so the risks of doing anything are lower.

And in my case, I see a hole in the market here, and feel a burning desire for this kind of game, and so am thinking... why not?  The last time I had this feeling and noticed that kind of hole, AI War happened.  There literally hasn't been any other case where that's happened for me.  I'm brimming over with game ideas all the time, but that sort of situation is pretty darn rare.  For me it made sense to take a couple of weeks and see if it made sense and was something I could actually pull off.  The discovery was: heck yes, absolutely I can do this.

I totally get the concerns you guys have, don't get me wrong.  And you could wind up saying "I told you so" some months down the line.  That said, at the moment we're pursuing something safe (the Keith side of things, which he is more than capable of handling himself), and something that is more of a departure, but in a good way I think (the me side of things -- and I'm not pulling in Keith one iota for my bits).

I'm not sure how many of you read about the whole Trine 3 debacle, but that's not this.  Those guys really tried to go nuts with the graphical fidelity in 3D in a just absolutely insane way, and they were trying to live up to the standards of a prior game while also translating it into three dimensions, etc, etc.  That led to just so very many problems for them that they discussed.

he sounds like you know what your doing here still though I remember we were pretty confident about star ward and well I don't think I need to reiterate on that still hope this turns out better also if I may ask how is keith getting on with his prototype? just asking since last I heard form him was almost a month ago and you seem to be less busy than he does judging your activity here.

[x4000]

In terms of Stars Beyond Reach, yes, much confidence was had and then later dashed.  Nothing is sure in this business, and I was overconfident.  That said, this time I have a vastly more complete design available from early on in.  And it's already a game that is mechanically fun to play, which is a big deal.  We never really hit that point with SBR.

I'm not sure if I'm more or less busy than Keith, but I am trying to keep up some level of community engagement as part of my work at the moment.  Right now he's trying to keep his head down and just working with a few people on that first prototype.  There have been some setbacks with it, so I'm not sure how that will ultimately work out.

[crazyroosterman]

In terms of Stars Beyond Reach, yes, much confidence was had and then later dashed.  Nothing is sure in this business, and I was overconfident.  That said, this time I have a vastly more complete design available from early on in.  And it's already a game that is mechanically fun to play, which is a big deal.  We never really hit that point with SBR.

I'm not sure if I'm more or less busy than Keith, but I am trying to keep up some level of community engagement as part of my work at the moment.  Right now he's trying to keep his head down and just working with a few people on that first prototype.  There have been some setbacks with it, so I'm not sure how that will ultimately work out.

I wasn't referring to stars beyond reach I meant starward rogue stars hasn't come out yet so for all we know it might just end up making all the money spent on it back but thanks I hope he doesn't get set back to much.

[x4000]

Well, with Starward Rogue we always knew we had an uphill battle with the marketing.  I was distressed about that back in October when we decided to try for it, but it seemed like the lesser of the evils at the time.  In retrospect I still definitely agree with that assessment out of the two choices I was considering at the time.

The mitigating factors we thought we had set up marketing-wise were time of year (quiet on the AAA front) and the Humble Bundle promotional thing.  The former is less of a boon now that we have indie games coming out of our ears all year round, and the latter is something that was new to us and just didn't yield anything close to the return that we expected.  In the past we've also managed to "get away with" poorer marketing due to rushing things out the door based on... I don't know.  Mainly the kindness of strangers, to some extent, I suppose.  But the market is different now.

At any rate, with this new 3D game the idea is that we won't just be throwing it out there all of a sudden.  You're going to be seeing a bunch of videos, a kickstarter, etc, etc.  This subforum is me kind of testing the waters on that front.

[Cinth]

The discovery was: heck yes, absolutely I can do this.

So much of that.  It's a wonderful feeling right up to the point of OH SH**!  HEELLPP!!!

[crazyroosterman]

he fair enough things felt very optimistic during testing but any way it was like as people have pointed out repeatedly a case of nobody knowing about it sounds like this new game is certainly going to be nothing like that provided the kick-starter/early access works out personally I think kick-starter is going to work very well for you judging from the nice sort of things you created.

[tombik]

"Both"
"At the same time"
"But also"
"It is not the only thing"
"It also includes"
"There are many systems"

Here is my current understanding of Arcen's policies regarding many things. As an indie company, making one game which specializes in one thing, and doing this one after another would make more sense I assume.

It has been a while since I saw a single game idea that is perfected so elegantly, that none of its components (like graphics, UI, tutorials, sounds) actually are in need to be justified by the "indie" phrase.

I hope this last game is more refined than the others, since solving overcomplexity problems, (and also solving bugs in a different setup in mind) will definitely tire you.

Although, if I understood you right, you will try to refine 7 days to die, which you love. Most of the charm of 3d games comes from immersion, which is tremendously aggravated by good 3d models. What I am trying to say is, as far as I know, indie community is less tolerant with not perfect graphics when it is in 3D.  I guess you already considered this, but I just try to give you the initial feedback you are asking.

If you could make a game you love, and play with your wife, even that would be one of the biggest things a person can achieve. Just dont overreach, and dont add new mechanisms before perfecting the existing ones, and I am able to see something is great is shaping up. And yes, kickstarter is really a good idea to fund your business, since it is one of the sources I use for deciding whether to pick up some games after its release on steam. And you have many devoted fans (whose love will make mine look like tiny), I am sure that with enough tiers and different rewards (like naming a mech in the game etc.) you will be funded.

The only thing is release dates are one of the biggest problems that developers are faced there. So, dividing all tasks to do to be able to get playable games even after leaving some systems after release will definitely make sense.

I dont play 3d games mostly, but my wife likes survival games, and I will ask her opinion about the game when there are more information. For now, to my horror, it again looks like a risky project, but if you are sincere about comparing your hype for this to AI war, then we should all shut up

[x4000]

The 3D graphics bit is something where it's a bit of a mix in terms of what people will accept.  7 Days is a good example: it looked not-great for a long while, and yet has a huge playerbase.  However, they spent like half a year trying to incrementally improve their graphics.  Their playerbase has pretty vocally said "why???"  It doesn't look so vastly enough better to make it worth it, and it made performance drop through the floor.  A lot of their "HD" models have a whole lot less character than their older models that were SD.

There are then other games like Rising World where the graphics are a clear detriment, and I kind of cringe with that.  What I've got already is lightyears ahead of that, and I actually know how to optimize things (both in terms of models and LOD and a variety of other tricks) to keep things speedy, whereas a number of other devs don't seem to.  I've sacrificed a number of piece of gameplay that are overly heavy on performance (network and otherwise), like voxel terrain.  None of that!  It's not key to what I want this game to do, and I can get vastly better visuals and performance out of it without it, so here we are.

I'll also note that the biggest issue with a lot of games that might look reasonable but intead look terrible is that they have no sense of how to use light, shadow, color grading, etc.  This is an area I have almost a decade of experience in.

Anyway, the proof will be in the pudding.  I look forward to being able to show you some first videos in a few weeks.  I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

[Captain Jack]

Anyway, the proof will be in the pudding.  I look forward to being able to show you some first videos in a few weeks.  I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

And I look forward to actually working on the name.   Finally found the list though, I'll shoot you some later tonight.

[x4000]

Anyway, the proof will be in the pudding.  I look forward to being able to show you some first videos in a few weeks.  I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

And I look forward to actually working on the name.   Finally found the list though, I'll shoot you some later tonight.

Awesome -- it would be super nice to have an actual name by that point, yeah.   I've been mulling it but not coming up with much.

[Pumpkin]

Okay. I'm not yet sold on this idea (survival and 3D), but now you've told us more, I'm trusting you. Thank you very much for taking the time to reassure your community. I'm looking forward for the preview videos and the kickstarter.

Good luck, Chris. Good luck, Arcen.

[x4000]

No worries!  And yeah, I don't figure everyone who is an existing fan of Arcen will be a fan of this.  Like most of you, I like more than one type of game.  The chances that all of my tastes would line up exactly with yours are minuscule.  That said, I also hope that for many of you this will be the only game you like in the survival genre because everyone else is just "doing it wrong."

[crazyroosterman]

No worries!  And yeah, I don't figure everyone who is an existing fan of Arcen will be a fan of this.  Like most of you, I like more than one type of game.  The chances that all of my tastes would line up exactly with yours are minuscule.  That said, I also hope that for many of you this will be the only game you like in the survival genre because everyone else is just "doing it wrong."

hey I'm very much looking forward to this(provided my laptop can cope with it fingers crossed) just well yea when it comes out of early access for reasons I've already stated.

[x4000]

But now we ARE making a dinosaur game over here: https://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/board,120.0.html