Re: The End
Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2019 8:19 pm
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but only magma can char me?
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but only magma can char me?
I agree, Victor.Victor Tombs wrote: ↑Tue Dec 25, 2018 5:56 pmYes, it would be nice to listen to the OST for Limit Theory. From what I've heard of Francois Jolin's music I don't think I will be disappointed.
The project is dead, and honestly, I kinda don't expect to ever hear from him on here again.TheoryOfLimitations wrote: ↑Fri Feb 08, 2019 8:21 pm133 days since "The end" post. Has anyone heard anything from Josh? What's he up to, what's he doing? Releasing the codes isn't going to do me any favors I couldn't code my way out of a wet paper sack.
But I am curious as to what is actually going on. Is he still alive, is he still on planet Earth? Is he still releasing the code for others? How about this, every 134 days set aside 5 minutes to update the community and your investors as to what is actually happening. Fingers crossed!
Hooooboy. Be careful with that there speculation.Talvieno wrote: ↑Sat Dec 08, 2018 11:27 amBigger grain of salt than the rest of this post! I have no direct confirmation of exactly what went on, and only able to assemble a picture of what happened based on what I saw in the push/pull logs and the conversations I'd held with both of them much earlier this year.
Adam and Josh are two entirely different types of programmers. Josh is a graphics programmer. Adam is an engine programmer. Josh just wants things to go fast, even at the expense of physics - he even turned off physics collisions entirely for most of the dev videos! Adam, however, approaches it from a different standpoint: to him, physics are important. Second, Adam likes to use pre-built libraries and tools, whereas Josh wants to make his own. This was a common theme throughout LT's production cycle.
Some of the first major stuff Adam did with Limit Theory was all about engine work. He found different resources online and tried putting them into LT, with the goal and making collision detection work "decently enough". And it did! Unfortunately, collisions were still... strange. Collision detection does not a physics engine make, and if you hit an asteroid, there's no telling what direction you would've bounced off of it. Without a physics engine, you can definitely tell when one object collides with another object (for example, shooting a weapon at an asteroid), but if you want to model a ship hitting an asteroid, or two ships colliding, or semi-realistic docking? You need a physics engine too. This is something that I imagine bugged Adam a fair deal, seeing as he's an engine coder.
Enter the Bullet Physics Library: a modular, pre-built physics engine that you could plop down into the custom engine of your choice. It's built to be generalized and accessible, and, as is a common theme in this post, generalization and accessibility do not play well with performance. Adam started implementing it back in... June? July? Somewhere around then, I think. About that time most other forward progress on the game seemed to grind to a halt. I don't know anything specific about what happened, so again - grain of salt - but I get the feeling that Josh found that Bullet Physics played havoc with LT's framerate - especially with the large number of ships and asteroids that Josh wanted to have.
And what does Josh do when he finds out the engine is running too slowly for what he wants? He doesn't change his requirements to suit the new restrictions. He refactors.
Unfortunately, I've not gotten to hold a conversation with him in a long time, so I can't do much more than speculate about what went on between him and Adam, and why Adam left. I don't think speculating about that sort of thing will help anyone.
Nooope. I like building things myself nearly as much as Josh. Just looking at the logs I can see how that might have come across though.Adam likes to use pre-built libraries and tools, whereas Josh wants to make his own. This was a common theme throughout LT's production cycle.
Let me be clear when I say working with Josh on LT was some of the most fun I've ever had working on games. Josh is simultaneously one of the best programmers I've ever worked with and one of the best humans I've ever worked with. I'd go out of my way to work with him in the future.what went on between him and Adam, and why Adam left
Exactly why I said I wasn't going to touch it. I'd heard people speculating though and wanted to make a clear "don't go there, that's not helpful" statement.
My mistake then. I do wish I'd had more contact with you guys so I had a better understanding of things, but it is what it is. Everyone was just doing the best they could really.AdamByrd wrote: ↑Wed Feb 13, 2019 12:50 amNooope. I like building things myself nearly as much as Josh. Just looking at the logs I can see how that might have come across though.Adam likes to use pre-built libraries and tools, whereas Josh wants to make his own. This was a common theme throughout LT's production cycle.
This is well said.
This explains a fair deal. I had a couple talks where Josh where he mentioned "Adam found X library so we're going to use that" but I don't think he ever mentioned that he was the one wanting it in the first place.That's why you saw us pulling in libraries like Bullet and OpenVDB. These were things we both believed would help actually finish LT (I think it was even Josh's idea to just pull in a library rather than trying to turn the rudimentary custom physics we had into a shipping quality system). Bullet didn't turn out to be amazing, but it would have done the job. Looking back I still think that was the right call, even though I would have much rather written our own.
At the end of the day there was just too much work and not enough time, that's all.