Everyone has different levels of what is acceptable to them. I'm a patient man and the delays to LT don't really bother me, yes I'd love to have it in my grubby paws but ultimately I have other stuff to occupy my time. I have no wish to offend anyone but LT is my second love and at present I'm more than happy playing my main game (Elite Dangerous). I love space games and I've backed a lot of kickstarters. I get the process, I understand the frustrations of folk who have waited patiently and now want to be able to play the game. But it's a kickstarter, it's a dream, it enables people to do things they probably wouldn't be able to do normally and there is a huge chunk of give and take with kickstarters. That applies no matter what the scale (Star Citizen anyone?) and no matter what the budget. You are investing in an idea and a plan but you have to accept the risks of that investment at the same time.

I honestly believe we are not a million miles from a Beta release and I really think it will be worth the wait. But hey what do I know!

TGS wrote: Now this is where I am personally getting frustrated. Josh found himself making mistakes where he found himself in those repetitive constant reiterating phases where nothing is ever good enough and he's just tweaking it ad infinitum. I kind of had a bit of an outburst on IRC tonight as I re-read over Josh's post where he talks about separating the components of the engine so that he doesn't end up with cascading bugs and I find myself sitting here thinking... "Okay... so he's doing more engine work to make his process more efficient and less prone to errors. Wasn't that what nearly half a year of work was meant to do with LTSL?"

I sort of feel the same to be honest.

During the whole LTSL I kept thinking, ok, so this is supposed to make the whole project more efficient and faster, then why isn't it? I sort of assumed that when Josh announced that some of his "directions" when his mind broke were mistakes, that the whole LTSL was one of them. This is not about complaining that Josh is moving too slow, or that he's not doing what we think he should be doing. I just never personally thought LTSL was worth the time when Josh was selling it as the best things since sliced bread, and apparently I was (sadly) correct.

The current work with separating engine components sure has the same vibe.

I am really past the point of "caring" (for lack of a nicer word). It's clear things either will get done, or won't.

I'm not sure why some are assuming that LTSL was (is) anything but what Josh said it was.

Etsu wrote:I'm not sure why some are assuming that LTSL was (is) anything but what Josh said it was.

I can only base it off what I saw. Perhaps I am wrong, but it didn't seem like the game had a massive content explosion, that he claimed it would, after he finished creating it.

Zanteogo wrote:I can only base it off what I saw. Perhaps I am wrong, but it didn't seem like the game had a massive content explosion, that he claimed it would, after he finished creating it.

It could be because:

1) We haven't seen the game since then, so we can't judge how much it has improved Josh's workflow.
2) Josh has not begun to use it at full potential just yet, but still is going to make his work easier.

Of course, this is still mere speculation. However, I'm very surprised about how quickly some have assumed that LTSL is not working as intended when Josh has already showed us how easy it becomes to create new content just changing some variables on the fly. I mean, he created plenty of new spaceship shapes and configurations in a matter of seconds. I have spent hours making my own so to me is already a big deal.

However, I'm very surprised about how quickly some have assumed that LTSL is not working as intended when Josh has already showed us how easy it becomes to create new content just changing some variables on the fly

Although I see your general point, I was under the impression that people have recently mentioned LTSL not to claim that LTSL does not work, but rather that maybe LTSL was unworthy in terms of the time-cost/benefit equation. Because the content changed in a sec was not due to LTSL, rather it is a characteristic of the PCG of LT. What LTSL was said to contribute to was in not having to recompile the game again each time a major content change was put in place. It is, it would be a speed up in debugging time. At the end, sure it is impossible to know for sure since nothing about the game content has been revealed in the past year. But what I understood from the recent mentions to LTSL was that sometimes people might see that the great amount of time put on it ended up being more of a derail from the main game functionalities in itself. Not that I agree: honestly, I never thought that much about the effects of LTSL until now.

LTSL is also the (sole) reason LT supports modding...just throwing that out there in case anyone forgot that LT was originally to ship as a hard-coded, tweakable-but-not-moddable game. Yes, a dev tool, but with pretty massive ramifications for the game's life after release...

--IronDuke

The main problem with LTSL or any endeavor to tweak the "process" is that 1. LTSL was never a planned function of the game as far as I know. It was a late-stage decision Josh made to make the process smoother, faster and as a side-effect give the game scripting/modding. If you have a project that can be done in 3 years barring some major failure. Then at year 2 you decide "Ya know what... I'm gonna take a half a year to a year to completely rewrite the game to make the process smoother and give this awesome scripting language" that makes no sense. It simply doesn't. No matter how you slice it... it does not make sense. Secondly at the end of the day we're talking about what I see as him improving the process of creating the game. Not creating the game. I don't care about the timeline or how late it is that stuff doesn't worry me.

What frustrates me is when someone (anyone doesn't necessarily have to be him) is side tracking and side stepping and basically working on things OTHER than the thing at hand in an attempt to improve the creation of the "process" of the thing at hand. Improving a process constantly rather than working on the project to me is simply wasting time. Now in this case it might be semi-justified if he has hit significant snags, but that is what I meant in my other post by him not really knowing what he's doing.

Hitting major snags (and they have to be pretty major to justify what he's now doing) at this stage in the game shows a major process failure at some point along the way. Now at that point if you are so determined to have "the process" working like a well oiled machine... (re: LTSL) yet you still manage to encounter these sort of hangups/snags then to me that calls into question the very capacity to see it through to completion on your own.

I know Josh has the talent and the skill. I wouldn't go as far as some go to call him a "coding warrior" or "LT jedi" or whatever the cute little euphemisms are that people use for him but he is very smart. I think he is perfectly capable of seeing this through if he stops letting his flaws get in the way. This is where I think he needs help. Not because he isn't capable of doing it. But because he isn't capable of stopping himself from stepping off the path so to speak to tweak something that shouldn't need tweaking. Now I know it really isn't my place or anyones place in the community to judge what does/doesn't need tweaking, but to me this is where the illusion of freedom can be a real dangerous mistress for someone who has these quirks.

For the first few years Josh just banged away on LT as a hobby and he enjoyed it and loved it. Then he started viewing it as a backed project, a commercial project and his stress levels went up. The problem is there needs to be a happy medium here. It is not appropriate for him to continue viewing it as a hobby where he has complete freedom because his freedom is costing time and while many are happy to wait for the next 5-10 years to see LT completed that is not realistic for anyone. I think personally that Josh feels that he is doing the best thing for LT and that is admirable. But I also don't think he is able to view it objectively, hence my post about him needing a fresh pair of eyes. I don't think he needs someone to take over roles for him I don't think he needs someone telling him what to do/don't do. But imo he needs a fresh set of eyes to give him insight that he cannot see himself.

Also I think personally that it might be a good idea for everyone not just him to stop viewing LT as "Josh's project". It's not. It's Josh's and 5,449 other peoples project. If a publisher were involved it would be their project. Literally. Their name would be all over it. Licensing, IP, ownership would all go to them. So this idea that people keep throwing that it is "Josh's game" and "Josh's project" it's not. It never was. I know it's cute and nice to think that but it isn't. crowd funding is a relatively new beast in that people still haven't quite got the hang of how it sits in the publisher vs indie vs collective collaboration mess but at this point my logic is that this project belongs just as much to the 5,449 backers as it does Josh, more so in many ways as they fronted the money to see this through.

Maybe Josh would have kept working on it had the kickstarter not been successful maybe not, but when money has been exchanged for an outcome you cannot with all realistic confidence give that person absolute unprecedented freedom to do with it as they please or you end up with situations where people don't deliver or change what it is they're delivering or basically just keep the backers in the dark and think that is somehow okay. (Btw don't take this as a gripe that he isn't communicating enough because that's a whole different topic)

Edit: I must reiterate that I do have faith in Josh's ability to make and complete LT. I just wish he'd get on with it in the most direct way possible.

Mod Edit: Paragraph breaks. USE 'EM NEXT TIME. --Grumblesaur

TGS wrote:What frustrates me is when someone (anyone doesn't necessarily have to be him) is side tracking and side stepping and basically working on things OTHER than the thing at hand in an attempt to improve the creation of the "process" of the thing at hand. Improving a process constantly rather than working on the project to me is simply wasting time.

And sometimes the way really is the destination. To a degree anyway. =P

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”
― Aristotle

“Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.”
― Molière

A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?
― Albert Einstein

One that would have the fruit must climb the tree.
― Thomas Fuller

The tree that is beside the running water is fresher and gives more fruit.
― Saint Teresa of Avila

Time flies like an arrow - but fruit flies like a banana.
― Terry Wogan

Then again, I'm not sure if I've gone bananas or just don't give a fig.

Gazz wrote:A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?
― Albert Einstein

One that would have the fruit must climb the tree.
― Thomas Fuller

The tree that is beside the running water is fresher and gives more fruit.
― Saint Teresa of Avila

Time flies like an arrow - but fruit flies like a banana.
― Terry Wogan

Then again, I'm not sure if I've gone bananas or just don't give a fig.

I guess it would depend on which tree you happened to climb.

Damn it! Now I want bananas... and we haven't got any. Grrr!

Poet1960 wrote:I guess it would depend on which tree you happened to climb.

Absolutely.

He that climbs the tall tree has won right to the fruit, He that leaps the wide gulf should prevail in his suit.
― Walter Scott

He that leaps from the tallest tree should get the broken leg debuff.
― Gazz