Talvieno wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 09, 2019 8:54 am

edit: Actually, I wonder if I could post Josh's internal list here now, seeing as it's been over a year since Josh announced he was done with LT . I can't see that it'd do any harm. It had links to things and Josh's thoughts on what was done/how much, what he did and didn't want to add, and what he thought about each particular topic/mechanic/gameplay element. Would you guys be interested in seeing that?

Yes, very much interested!

by the way, long time no speak! But I am still around!

0111narwhalz wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 09, 2019 10:11 am

Talvieno wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 09, 2019 8:54 am

Would you guys be interested in seeing that?

I find it amusing that this is even a question.

That perfectly describes my reaction as well.

Yes, I'd also be interested in those docs, Tal, if you conclude that it's OK to release them. Maybe this is self-serving of me, because it justifies something I want, but I can honestly see the info you described as being part of the historical documentation of this project. As such, those notes would seem to be a reasonable part not only of the dump of LT code that Josh promised, but also the Book About LT promised in the Kickstarter.

Naturally I'd agree with you redacting personal comments and any other remarks that have nothing to do with LT as a project. It would just be nice to get a sense of Josh's perspective on LT's features as The End drew nigh.

The approval from you guys seems pretty excited and unanimous. I just wanted to be careful, but you guys don't seem to think I'll catch much flak for it, so here you go.

The State of Limit Theory (Google Spreadsheet)

The bolded comments on the right are stuff Josh wrote, as are the location of the "x" marks on the left. I wrote everything else.

CSE wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 09, 2019 3:01 pm

by the way, long time no speak! But I am still around!

Glad you're still around, CSE! I hope everything is going well for you

Talvieno wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 10, 2019 10:12 am

The State of Limit Theory (Google Spreadsheet)

Wow @Tal, thank you so much.. It's a shame Josh didn't show this to the rest of us, back when he was developing LT. We'd have said, stop there, release it like that, and let us play and explore
There was so much stuff there, that was implemented, that could have been a fun game for LT 0.1

Dang, I want to hug Josh and ruffle his hair right now..

Ditto (well, on the alpha release part, not the touching people part), that is a lot more implemented than I expected (I didn't follow the dev bits in the beginning.) That makes me even more keen on seeing what the community could do with the source code.

I've been staring at that spreadsheet for a while now, and a few things pop out.

One is that Josh started off wildly ambitious (not entirely a bad thing), and many of us, absolutely including me, did our very best to pile even more features onto that to-do list.

Another thing that stands out is the extremely clear split between "graphically pretty tactical dogfighter" and "moddable 4X/RTS/world-simulation." This spreadsheet tells the story of an epic fight between those two flavors of fun -- a fight that dogfighting-fun was winning handily. It seems apparent that Josh's real interest was always the exciting shooting in a gorgeous space setting. It's all the rest -- all the "world" stuff plus modding -- that he never got to implement, presumably because of the ridiculous amount of effort required to design a functional architecture for it.

It would be lovely if, as part of releasing the LT code, Josh could update a version of this spreadsheet to make it easy to see the final (from him) status of each of these features in the released code. And it probably wouldn't hurt to add a few rows to document the things Josh spent a lot of time on that aren't already broken out as particular features. (I'm thinking mostly of architectural/FPLT stuff, but features, too.) This might make it a little easier to figure out some of the future forms that the LT code might take.

Either way, this was nice. Thank you, Tal!

Flatfingers wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 11, 2019 3:19 pm

Another thing that stands out is the extremely clear split between "graphically pretty tactical dogfighter" and "moddable 4X/RTS/world-simulation." This spreadsheet tells the story of an epic fight between those two flavors of fun -- a fight that dogfighting-fun was winning handily. It seems apparent that Josh's real interest was always the exciting shooting in a gorgeous space setting. It's all the rest -- all the "world" stuff plus modding -- that he never got to implement, presumably because of the ridiculous amount of effort required to design a functional architecture for it.

Do keep in mind that Josh wasn't taking into account the code he wrote for LT 1.0 (or 0.1, or whatever we call the pre-engine-rewrite version). He was just taking into account what he had in the version he was working on at that moment, and for the most part, that was the dogfighting code. As you remember, he wrote that dogfight stuff so he could have something functional for PAX, so naturally, yes, that would be most of what was "completed" in that list.

But yes, we did add a lot to his dev to-do list.

I was very much thinking about that PAX code (both versions, actually). It's very fair to observe that that the pretty/immediate/hands-on/exciting stuff is of course what you want to show off at an expo. Most people find it a lot easier to get the sense of tactile features -- pretty space! good combat AI! cool explosions! -- than simulationist stuff that runs in the background to create content and that takes time to express.

But while I think Josh could find himself enthusiastic about the world-sim features (and Freelancer certainly had some, such as the trading aspect) or procedural content generation, I never had the impression these were his first love. The "Implemented" column of the spreadsheet tells that story.

None of which (as I think you know) is a criticism. I'm sure that somewhere in my 5000 comments here is at least one pointing out that it's very OK to take a break from implementing Must Have But Not Really All That Interesting features to do something fun. One person working on a big project needs to find ways to stay motivated. If that means doing pew-pew occasionally, rather than laying plumbing all the time, then absolutely that's fine. I encouraged Graphics Josh to play now and then!

That said... it looks like the plumbing needed for all the non-dogfightery features was just too much. Most of the core non-dogfighting systems, on which the many world-simulation features would be built, don't seem from the spreadsheet to have been started: things like non-combat AI, factions, colonies, projects, and mining. Without being able to get to the point of working on those core systems, there was no way to get to all the detailed features in the Kickstarter that provided a setting and reasons for the dogfighting.

Again: this is speculative analysis, not criticism! I'm just thinking out loud about what I see -- none of it is finger-pointing, and there is a lot of exculpatory reality I'm not mentioning here (mostly having to do with "if you've never tried to build a game, you don't really know how hard it is").

I'll always wish more could have been done. But I'll always be amazed by what actually did get done.

How I see it:
He should have release public (or to backers) version way more early on, to keep up motivation.
This also allows players to give feature requests to currently relevant ingame mechanics, which would be way more on point than generalized thoughts.

I have ton of fun with my world generator for 7 Days to Die.
NitroGen for Alpha 7DtD

This is mainly because people use the program, and give me regular feedback and bug reports.
It also lets me know what part of the program people consider most relevant (number of requests on that element).

And having regular updates also lets me keep a realistic program structure in mind, that does not stray off into over-engineered details. When refactoring I always try to keep it in a running state.
(the time within start and end of refactoring is very risky, as stopping for a longer time somewhere inbetween would leave the project a mess)

And if the motivation fades: well there is always at last the last working version remaining. So the project did not end in a drawer so to speak.

...keeping the project under wraps so many years is the main reason it failed in my opinion...

Talvieno wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 11, 2019 4:24 pm

But yes, we did add a lot to his dev to-do list.

Well, all I ever wanted was an updated Microsoft Freelancer game with the modern graphics that Josh had already demonstrated he could provide, Nathan. I was under the impression that this was what Josh was going to be working towards but...

Does anyone know where Josh is working? Has he decided to use the LT code at his new job?

I feel the urge to go over this list and cancel things out, like 50% of what was planned for 1.0... Guess that's what a "feature creep" looks like.

kostuek wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 16, 2019 2:33 am

I feel the urge to go over this list and cancel things out, like 50% of what was planned for 1.0... Guess that's what a "feature creep" looks like.

I wouldn't mind seeing your list of what LT 1.0 should have been. I have my ideas too.

I'm more than half tempted to do the same thing

Edit: Ok so I looked back over and decided to have a crack at it. The goal here is to have a "get it out the door" mentality and promised features/extras will come later as time and money permit. Here is the list.

Edit 2: Moved list to In My Limit Theory thread.

nickgreyden, this is exactly the kind of specific outline I'd like to see suggested.

To keep this thread dedicated to comments specifically about the end of Josh's Limit Theory, could I persuade you to repost your suggested list of features to the new "In My Limit Theory..." topic?