Oh leave it out. Removing features clearly means that the first version of the game will be conceptually smaller, and there would be some code refactorisation to hook everything that remains back together. But don't tell me that more features, which equals more code, which equals more complexity, which equals more bugs, which equals more testing, actually... makes things simpler. It's prima facie incorrect.

Instead just lay out: what would you be willing to live without? Is the answer really nothing?

mcsven wrote:Oh leave it out. Removing features clearly means that the first version of the game will be conceptually smaller, and there would be some code refactorisation to hook everything that remains back together. But don't tell me that more features, which equals more code, which equals more complexity, which equals more bugs, which equals more testing, actually... makes things simpler. It's prima facie incorrect.

For a new game, yes. For a game that's already fully designed and been in development for several years, no, because every system you rip out has to be replaced by some kind of facsimile that can still be replaced by the real thing later on.

Things that Josh could delay and I'd still probably really enjoy the game:

• Reputation
• Colony management
• Fleet management
• Research
• player-side Station construction
• Jennifer Hale's voice as my ship AI (put last because I'm really not sure I could live without this)

And maybe some other things.

What would you cut from v1 to accelerate its release? NOTHING! Muahahaha!

mcsven wrote:

• Fleet management
• Research and development
• Multiple ship ownership
• An infinite universe
• Realistic marketplace
• Ship designer

Well, the first 4 points are too little to care about. We already saw some wingmen commands in action in one video. It should be a short way from there to "fleet management". "Research and development" are just some numbers in the database you need to update, if I got this right. "Multiple ship ownership" should be not a big problem also. But well, you can probably cut all this without "breaking" the game. "An infinite universe" (well, not really infinite - there is no way to create something infinite on a finite machine) is already there, it would even slow down "cutting" this.

"Ship designer" I would definitely cut. It's one task to generate some static ship procedural, it's another one to let the player build his own ship design, and probably a third one to put all this together in terms of balanced game play.

"Realistic marketplace" is the one thing, i'm worried about. The CPU load to truly simulate all this stuff must be huge. If I think about a game like Dwarf Fortress (with ASCII graphics), where your CPU will get real problems after some play time if the dwarf population grows , I don't quiet see, how this gonna work in LT. At least there are reasons, why we rarely see any heavy simulated markets in games, it''s CPU intense. But well, I might be wrong on that, we will see .

I would rather Josh take all the time he needs to make LT 1.0 the 1.0 it should be, feature wise anyways.

Going from the dev videos, we actually have already seen most of the features already working, so I'm not sure what he would even really need to realisticly cut at this point.

As far as LT beta goes, well, I think Josh should probally release that sooner than not. As soon as he has a mostly stable build that mostly fuctions. Beta it. I don't actually expect him too of course.

Crazy fine polish can of wait until after 1.0 if need be I guess.

Zanteogo wrote:I would rather Josh take all the time he needs to make LT 1.0 the 1.0 it should be, feature wise anyways.

Going from the dev videos, we actually have already seen most of the features already working, so I'm not sure what he would even really need to realisticly cut at this point.

As far as LT beta goes, well, I think Josh should probally release that sooner than not. As soon as he has a mostly stable build that mostly fuctions. Beta it. I don't actually expect him too of course.

Crazy fine polish can of wait until after 1.0 if need be I guess.

This is my stance on it too, but the thread title isn't "would you cut anything?" If it was, I'd say "Absolutely nothing - just give Josh the time he needs."

* Nothing *

If Josh removes features, my guess is that it will slow down the game development as Josh won't feel like it's living up to it's potential.
I actually think that smaller features added every now and then will SPEED UP Josh's development, as Josh will needlessly focus on all the systems that are interacting with the new feature in a code frenzy, and produce better code faster.

Remember Josh is not like us mortal programmers.

Okay, well, if a multiline post is too hard to read, I'll just write 'nothing' too. Because, you know, I had at least three things in there that I said I didn't care if they are included or not.

If I wanted Freelancer, which I don't, I'd play Freelancer. If I wanted the soundtrack, I'd youtube the soundtrack after release. I want to play a game that is fun and compelling from day one, whenever that day one be. And dynamic markets: if I wanted to pick up stuff and deliver them to another place, then repeat, I'd write a script for an NPC to do that and play something fun instead. To me supply&demand, logistics, these are the exciting part of a sandbox. Dealing with and exploiting the flux of a detailed simulation.

Nothing.

I'm not really all that concerned with a soon release date, I'll take the full game, as promised, regardless of when it comes out. Would I stay interested if it took until 2020, probably not. But I would still prefer it to be released as promised and be pleasantly surprised in a time where I had forgotten about LT than to have it be released incomplete.

The fleet management level of the game have no interest to me, but I think that part is already well hammered, so... *shrugs*

I think it's a reasonable question. As good a programmer as Josh is, he's just one person, and everything takes time. In the real world where that matters, you have to be willing and able to prioritize or you never get anything done.

So I accept that feature cuts are a fair question. I also note that existing features and planned features aren't the same thing. While removing some feature already implemented might add development time, choosing not to implement some planned feature would, for a minor cost in redesign time, not cost a lot of additional development time. In other words, for most cases I would not agree that "cutting" planned features adds development time.

How then to decide what's negotiable and what's firm?

I go back to Josh's Kickstarter description. The vision of play described there was "interact with the game world in different ways." So features that clearly and directly support that vision must be retained in some form so that the overall game satisfies the promised play experience.

That still leaves a lot of room for "how" to implement those features. In particular, I think it means assessing the degree to which any component of a feature helps that feature support the overall goal. If it's quick to code and delivers a core gameplay capability, it should stay; if its contribution is questionable, then it has to go in the "maybe not in version 1.0" list.

This applies in particular to choosing between a simple version of a feature that provides the minimum gameplay capability and a complex implementation of that feature that does a lot, and looks fantastic, but takes more time to code and debug because it has many more interactions and potential failure states. Choosing the simple version in all cases would not be correct because that yields a bland and boring game. But choosing the highly-detailed version in all cases isn't right, either; you'll never finish.

All of which is to explain why I'd cut the things I'd cut to get version 1.0 of LT out the door in 2016:

• Detailed fleet management (some is required for the KS vision)
• Dynamic, integrated economy (fake it with faucet/drain)
• Advanced NPC AI (I'd hate to see this go, but again: fake it)
• Complex "warp rails" (not critical to the KS vision or a Freelancer feel)
• Research (diminishing returns is hard to integrate with a never-ending game)
• Hacking (nice but not absolutely required for trading/fighting/exploring)
• Production (let things appear by magic, and keep player crafting simple)

Factions I'm on the fence about. It's a potential time suck, but I think it might be required for the social glue holding all the gameplay together -- "contracts" in particular. I think the Projects system probably also has to stay in some form; it's a very useful wrapper for managing different kinds of non-combat gameplay.

I appreciate that some of these will feel undesirable to some of us. Heck, i don't like them! But if we're going to be serious about what we'd each be willing to give up to get version 1.0 playable this year, well, there's where I'd start.

Flatfingers wrote:

• Complex "warp rails" (not critical to the KS vision or a Freelancer feel)

i still find that the tradelanes are an integral part of the freelancer feeling, and warp rails are the LT version of them, so an implementation of them is necessary imo

Flatfingers wrote:

• Research (diminishing returns is hard to integrate with a never-ending game)

i still think that diminishing returns is not a must for research, but thats off-topic

Flatfingers wrote:

• Hacking (nice but not absolutely required for trading/fighting/exploring)

there is some form of hacking confirmed for 1.0? i only remember "cool, but not for V1.0" statements..?

Cornflakes_91 wrote:

Flatfingers wrote:

• Complex "warp rails" (not critical to the KS vision or a Freelancer feel)

i still find that the tradelanes are an integral part of the freelancer feeling, and warp rails are the LT version of them, so an implementation of them is necessary imo

I agree, Cornflakes.

But you knew I would, Flat.

Great post Flat, a good answer to my question.

I've been quite surprised at the answers I've received. I find the argument that cutting features would increase the dev time to be daft, which may come across in my previous posts. Yes, I can see that there is a very specific set of circumstances in which that may be true (if we were a few days away from a release, or if the codebase was most static except for content scripts) but given we know he's still got the hood up and isn't so much tinkering as building the engine from scratch right now... it just doesn't hold water.

More surprising still though is the mentality of "cut nothing". Firstly, these aren't features that won't eventually make it into the game - they just won't be in v1. This point seems to have been lost in translation.

Secondly, surely we all want to play the game as soon as possible? I've been reasonably strong in my advocacy that as a community we shouldn't pressure Josh and that he needs space to reverse out of the blind alleys that a first time developer will inevitably go down. But at this point my view is that he'd be be better off releasing something slightly conceptually smaller in the shortest time frame that a happy mental state allows. Certainly it should have all the Parnell polish we've come to expect and some really nice features to distinguish LT from other games. But I can't help but think that having the game out in the wild and allowing Josh to incrementally improve it would be a much healthier place to be than the current state.