JoshParnell wrote: The Freelancer promise? Victor...to abandon the Freelancer 2 vision would be like leaving the lungs out of LT. You needn't keep asking for confirmation on that front

It's the only front I'm really passionate about, Josh. I've been concerned that the new you may have acquired altered views on certain aspects of the game. I see from your reply that your core beliefs have not been rewritten in your recovery process.

Thanks!

JoshParnell wrote:tl;dr - I know what I'm doing ... *lots of important stuff*

Glad to hear it. Your post might just deserve its own thread (with a link back to the original). Anyway, as much as I would have liked LT for Christmas, the long game is too important. I'd know time was being spent to do something right, than have a half-baked product. That said, I'm glad you're not making the same mistake as KOTOR II.

Jazehiah wrote:

JoshParnell wrote:tl;dr - I know what I'm doing ... *lots of important stuff*

Glad to hear it. Your post might just deserve its own thread (with a link back to the original). Anyway, as much as I would have liked LT for Christmas, the long game is too important. I'd know time was being spent to do something right, than have a half-baked product. That said, I'm glad you're not making the same mistake as KOTOR II.

Even for being half-baked, KotOR II was delicious, even more so with TSLRCM.

Grumblesaur wrote:

Jazehiah wrote:

JoshParnell wrote:tl;dr - I know what I'm doing ... *lots of important stuff*

Glad to hear it. Your post might just deserve its own thread (with a link back to the original). Anyway, as much as I would have liked LT for Christmas, the long game is too important. I'd know time was being spent to do something right, than have a half-baked product. That said, I'm glad you're not making the same mistake as KOTOR II.

Even for being half-baked, KotOR II was delicious, even more so with TSLRCM.

Yeah, and it wasn't Obsidian's fault, either. One of the best SW games ever (if not the best, but I wouldn't want to overlook anything), and certainly better than the first.

and sadly we will never see a KotOR III because of the stupid MMO

Zanteogo wrote:and sadly we will never see a KotOR III because of the stupid MMO

From what my brother tells me, the latest expansion to SWTOR plays much more like KOTOR than the rest of the game. I find it hard to believe, but will likely never find out because I stopped at level 55.

JFSOCC wrote:I won't call your development process into question, what I do question is your sea change in sharing information. You used to share what you were doing and I found your update videos/dev logs to be enlightening.

So my question is simply this: Will you share absolutely nothing until release (or just before) about development, or do you still intend to once in a blue moon share an update with the rest of us?

If I got it right, he is rewriting the whole thing again. This time there is this new approach, where you just have to transform all this already existent content in this new form, until the game magically appears. I quess, this will be the time for an update.

kostuek wrote:

JFSOCC wrote:I won't call your development process into question, what I do question is your sea change in sharing information. You used to share what you were doing and I found your update videos/dev logs to be enlightening.

So my question is simply this: Will you share absolutely nothing until release (or just before) about development, or do you still intend to once in a blue moon share an update with the rest of us?

If I got it right, he is rewriting the whole thing again. This time there is this new approach, where you just have to transform all this already existent content in this new form, until the game magically appears. I quess, this will be the time for an update.

I won't presume what Josh is and isn't working on, but if it is a re-factoring the game engine architecture, then everything will be "under the hood" so to speak. Some of my own proudest development moments are on things that you can't strictly see in the output, but come down to the underlying architecture. Writing code is easy. Writing good code is hard.

Zanteogo wrote:and sadly we will never see a KotOR III because of the stupid MMO

I was very exited when I first heard that LucasArts asked BioWare to make a new Star Wars game. I thought that it would be Knights of the Old Republic III with the graphic style of Mass Effect. (The perfect Star Wars game!) But BioWare ruined it. Sometimes I don't understand what's wrong with game developers. They had the perfect opportunity in their hands, and they just ruined it. Or maybe they didn't want to compete against their own Mass Effect games, I don't know.

Now Telltale is the only opportunity we could have. They are own only hope. (Except for the graphics. Telltale doesn't seem to want to create photorealistic games. A shame, but still far better that what BioWare could ever make. Maybe.)

Etsu wrote:

Zanteogo wrote:and sadly we will never see a KotOR III because of the stupid MMO

I was very exited when I first heard that LucasArts asked BioWare to make a new Star Wars game. I thought that it would be Knights of the Old Republic III with the graphic style of Mass Effect. (The perfect Star Wars game!) But BioWare ruined it. Sometimes I don't understand what's wrong with game developers. They had the perfect opportunity in their hands, and they just ruined it. Or maybe they didn't want to compete against their own Mass Effect games, I don't know.

Now Telltale is the only opportunity we could have. They are own only hope. (Except for the graphics. Telltale doesn't seem to want to create photorealistic games. A shame, but still far better that what BioWare could ever make. Maybe.)

Y'know, I think a Star Wars game in Telltale's signature style might be pretty rad. I'd play a KotOR game that looked like that.

Grumblesaur wrote:Y'know, I think a Star Wars game in Telltale's signature style might be pretty rad. I'd play a KotOR game that looked like that.

I don't know what rad is.

Elaborating on my thoughts, if someone feels interested in why I think that Telltale is a good fit for this "universe", the problem is that, to me, KotOR 1 and 2 (considered as some of the best examples in this area) are not reproductions of what Star Wars is in the form of a game but a complete reinterpretation of some Star Wars elements. These are good games, but not particularly good Star Wars games. I believe that the people from Telltale are perfectly capable of recapturing the spirit of the original saga, maybe the only ones capable of such a feat, something that no one has managed to do so far, and something that IMO is not going to happen with the new movies neither. (Not even close.) And maybe that's a good thing, I don't know. Star Wars is a corpse that have been dead for decades but scavengers have chewed these remains for years. Maybe is time to accept that there is no longer flesh among those bones.

To make a SW game in any other style different from Telltale's would mean one of two things: to take just an element from the movies (like space combat) and make it your focus (which is like putting a chair in the middle of a room and call it a movie theater because there are chairs in movie theaters), or adding stuff that is not part of the SW movies to fill in the gaps left but all those elements from the movies you can't putt in your game (which is exactly what KotOR does). For a lot of people that would be enough, and have been enough, but not for me. I would rather like to play a game with everything a SW story should have and anything a SW story shouldn't. A difficult task, yes, but considering everything Telltale have done certainly something at their reach.

Or maybe Obsidian should do it. Chris Avellone have said that he feels curious about how a version of Alpha Protocol a la Telltale style would be, without all the action and the sneaking. Now he is not in Obsidian anymore (as far as I know), and he didn't say that he would do it, but is an interesting thought, particularly if they polish the concept (adding goals and failures) and let those unnecessary Game Over sequences behind.

I want to state a very simple fact about my criticisms when I share them. Pretty much every time I post it is because I fear that Josh might without realizing it be going backwards. It is very easy to do in this sort of process and I don't think many people understand that. There are quite a few different ways you can go backwards. Many more of course for going forwards. Many ways of going backwards that seem like you're going forwards. Development is not a clear or simplistic process.

I have faith in Josh, but when I critique, and Josh this is also directed at you. It is because I care about you and LT and I know if LT failed or you started failing again it could be some time before you have actually come to realize it. Hindsight is 20/20. Before you started going down the proverbial rabbit hole you thought you were on a winner you thought you were doing great and you were onto something amazing and awesome and certain ways you spoke and behaved sent up red flags to me that things were not all well in Joshland. As I said, hindsight is 20/20. You may think you know what you're doing and you may think you are doing it the best way and that you are "winning" but you may not. And I'm not saying you are or you aren't I'm just trying to make you mindful of this fact. You've done it before, it can be done again. Don't become arrogant and think that somehow because you dealt with your demons and you're in a better place that you cannot fall right back into the same traps you fell into the first time.

As far as this:

Xifong wrote:I vehemently disagree with this notion.

TGS wrote:...

I don't see how one could possibly consider this project to be anyones project but Josh's . Does the exchange of some money really mean that this project belongs to those backers? Money is a meaningless concept which we have have to put up with because it (like oxytocin) organises social behaviour . It's a means to an end . We use it to ensure that the innumerable wants of society can be met by creating a motive to generate abundances through efficiency and a working approximation of optimal resource allocation.

The "fact" that capital creates ownership is merely an illusion reflecting the way in which we as a species get lost in rigid systems and social orders, letting it abrogate our perspective of reality. The only real property is intellectual (and even that should be shared) .
When considering ownership (that construction of the ego) from this viewpoint , LT is 100% Josh's; it's his idea, his vision, his dream game and his journey. Every line of code belongs to him because he wrote them.

Kickstarter is not intended to be a venture capitalist enterprise designed to allow the bourgeoisie even quicker access to the intellectual fruits of the creatives. It's a voyage into the democratic selection and support of new concepts and projects and ideas. It provides an individualistic corrective to an age-old economic concept of asset allocation, except unlike politics its not producing autocratic democracies . Sure, the backers of LT made it possible with their little moneys but the project existed before the kickstarter campaign and before Josh even thought of it. No matter what, it finds existence in a platonic idealism of the mind. It just so happens that the right resources, skills and vision came together at the right time to give LT a physical existence. Using the model of a publisher to developer relationship as analogy for our relationship to Josh (I would have backed if I hadn't noticed LT too late) implies that one believes it to be the way things should be . I don't think that everyone believes that the developers (in general) contribution to a game should be marginalised by the economic power of the publisher.

Money does not equal ownership! Kickstarter allows us to transcend the old paradigm of capitalism and we cannot waste a such a platform by elevating the role of money ( a means to an end). Josh is sole intellectual owner of this game and we are merely along for the ride. If he sees some new path he wishes to explore then we should accept LT as a product of his mind and let its development takes its natural course; our only right towards LT resides in our sharing of its platonic ideal (which exists in shared space).

Lurker out.

While I respect your opinion, I'm sorry that the world currently works the way that it does. Blame America for that. I don't like it any more than you do, in fact quite possibly less. I often make hostile comments towards/against capitalism, I do not like it. Crowd funding is a relatively new concept that you are telling me I have the incorrect definition for. First off I've never suggested that it is a venture capital system, but given that you mention it. It actually kind of is. As yet it is still very vaguely defined in that we simply haven't seen enough test cases that have gone south enough to gauge how it is viewed in the eyes of the law. I will view it the way I view it because while I agree that it is Josh's baby, Josh did not do this on his own. Crowd funding may seem like a fluffy way for people to throw money at ideas they wish to see realized but there is still a very real transfer of money into a person/group/entity in the capacity of investing. The same terms are not defined in that the backers do not receive financial return on the idea/project but at the end of the day they are still seeing a return in the form of the end product.

In that respect crowd funding is a half way point between investment and purchase. It isn't quite an investment but it isn't quite a purchase. In my opinion if you use the logic that the project owner has full and complete rights, freedoms and liability with that project then you are giving them way WAY too much power and basically you're saying the people have no rights and that is something I cannot support. Nor does the legal system support that. I probably went a bit too far with saying that Josh doesn't own it in that of course he owns it. He owns the rights to it. But the backers have rights too. And while Josh has suggested that the backers backed him... to make his dream game. I think that still falls within a pretty specific set of conditions. Meaning Josh does not have complete freedom to go off the deep end and try to create something that far supersedes his original plan while adding 5 years to the development process. So at the end of the day in a capitalist world, crowd funding is still the handing over of money to see an idea through to completion. Lastly on this particular aspect of the post, lets not get into a pro/anti capitalism discussion/debate. It is up there with politics, it won't end well. I hate that we live in the society we do that puts it above all else. Anyone here that knows me to any degree will likely know this. I've had many a discussion about it with certain members of the community.

But I don't think Josh is doing that. I don't think Josh has any malice or ill intent. I think he's just trying to make the game as best he can and he's had some stumbles along the way. My purpose... in every "negative" post I've made is to try to make sure Josh does not stumble again. For his sake and for the backers and for the potential customers in the future. No one benefits from him stumbling, least of all him.

He says he knows what he's doing, and normally I'd simply trust in his capacity to say that. But my nature as a realist suggests to me that in some of his recent posts he is showing some not good signs in his speech patterns and choice of words, phrasing etc. Coupled with his past stumbles. In my experience if someone stumbles once you let it pass as "shit happens" or "nobody's perfect" if someone stumbles multiple times you then have to open up to the possibility that future stumbles are not only possible but probable. Therefore my conclusion personally and of my own opinion is that he doesn't know what he's doing. Either I'm right or he's right. I'd love to be able to say I'm wrong because then it would mean everything is peachy. I hope I am wrong. We shall see.

JoshParnell wrote:

JFSOCC wrote:I won't call your development process into question, what I do question is your sea change in sharing information. You used to share what you were doing and I found your update videos/dev logs to be enlightening.

So my question is simply this: Will you share absolutely nothing until release (or just before) about development, or do you still intend to once in a blue moon share an update with the rest of us?

I will share more as we near release. Naturally, for building hype purposes, I will steadily be ramping up before 'the drop'. Again, I do have every intention of sharing content again at my own pace when I have content that I want to show

By the way please don't think that my posts are in relation to 1. Release dates 2. Lateness 3. Information. You could be silent until beta for all I care lol. As long as you don't fall back into any bad holes/habits/etc. For you just as much as for us.

That being said I do have to admit that I have this weird underlying fear that by the time you release LT onto the world it will be irrelevant amongst all the other games coming out or worse... it simply won't have fit together cohesively after all the work you've put into trying to streamline the development process.

JoshParnell wrote:And that's exactly what's happening now. Yes, it has taken time, but I now have an elegant technical solution to both the monolithic engine problem AND the scripting performance problem. That much I will divulge. When this solution has been built up to the point of supporting all of LT's existing content, the content algorithms will simply be transferred over -- no work will have been in vain (not even LTE or LTSL, because they were important milestones for my coming to understand the right way). This time, I can guarantee that there will be no circularity, simply because there is nothing more that I could possibly do, technically, to energize LT's development than what I am doing now (to explain what I mean would be both too divulging and too technical). There will be plenty of back-and-forth in finessing the game, but not technology. One can either choose to believe or not believe me in this regard...it doesn't really matter, as LT will come in time and all of this will be over when the release drops.

Okay, I'm writing a separate post on this because I feel this warrants a separate post beyond my previous wall of text as it changes directions entirely. This quite frankly is what I needed to hear. This is exactly the sort of explanation that clears my... doubt I suppose would be the word. I'm all for keeping things close to your chest because I personally find nothing wrong with that. Privacy is everyone's right, even if a project manager of a crowd funding project wishes to remain private until they have something they deem worthy of revealing.

Anyway got a little side tracked there. The point is that my doubts came from certain comments and phrases and things you/Josh (For Josh reading and for anyone else reading) were saying. Basically coming from a hobbyist psychology background of 10+ years I tend to see patterns in behaviour based on the words and phrases people choose to use. Every single thing we say can reveal things that we don't necessarily intend to or even know we are revealing. That being said this was without context. You were showing very real signs of falling back into your old/bad habits. This post you made has revealed just enough of the extent of what has been going on to quell my worries. You gave an impression some time back that you were on the "home stretch". That gave me some serious optimism. I could see beta hitting this year and even foolishly made a speculation on that which met with some not so positive comments. Then a few of the more recent posts just sent up red flags left and right on your repetitive/cyclical tendencies. You've cleared that up. I am somewhat optimistic again. Won't be foolish enough to speculate on time frame even though I personally like doing that just cause I find it fun to occasionally be hopeful instead of ruthlessly realistic, contrast is always nice. One thing I will say though is that I do really hope for all concerned that once you do make the decision to start releasing more info/screenshots/videos/etc... that it blows us all away. For that to happen your "game" has to be on display. Think about that for a few minutes. The game. Not the engine. Not a chunk of it. Not a specific feature. But the game. Not because we the public need that much information but because the past year+ has shown that while you've done amazing things with the tech individually, we don't know what the state of the game is as a whole. So when you do make that decision. I'd recommend that you compile a trailer of sorts. Showing small clips of each thing you can do... just happening. And it can't be all graphics. It has to show actual mechanics. A lot of devs really don't get that, even professional seasoned devs. So once you go that route. If you want to truly build hype. Show the game. Show its mechanics. Briefly. Don't just focus on one thing. Don't show it with the UI turned off. We already know how beautiful the game is. We want to know how it plays, how it functions. How things function together. That... would blow us all away. I would throw money at my screen. Except I don't think throwing my plastic card at the screen would accomplish anything.

JoshParnell wrote: PS ~ I would like to apologize for my tone. I realize it is unusual for you all to see anything but a dapper Josh. Current life circumstances + a change in medical circumstances + the tone of this thread have all summed up to a not-so-cheerful forum demeanor. For that I apologize.

Honestly Josh, you don't have to apologize. In fact I personally appreciate the tone. Serious topics warrant a serious tone. You weren't hostile, you weren't mean and you weren't dismissive. That... is how you relate to your public. One of the many reasons why I don't think you need a PR person. You're fine with PR.

Josh, that you can deal with criticism but it still kinda gets to you is a sign that you're a perfectly normal human being~

You know, I really want this project to succeed if only to shut up that dipstick on that other forum, wherever it was, that said all those years ago that it couldn't be done