Flatfingers wrote: ↑Mon Jan 13, 2020 9:55 pm
I still don't know whether Josh was forced to stop work on LT primarily due to exhausting his money and energy, or because there turned out to be technical challenges that proved too much for even Josh's talent to overcome.
Money and energy can (to some extent) be addressed by additional funding and a handful of good programmers. But if Josh hit The End because something in his vision for Limit Theory turned out to be just too difficult to implement in a reasonably satisfying way, adding people and money may not be enough.
Based on what he's said, compared with my own experience in game and general software development, it really seems like the combined stress of two main reasons were what caused him to run out of steam:
- He ran out of money
- The ever-increasing complexity of the code-base caused an overwhelming number of technical difficulties
With our experience, I'm confident we can untangle any of the messes in the LT code and get development back underway.
If there was something too technically difficult to implement, we will help him figure out how to either solve it or simulate it. That's a key point that I've noticed a lot of in LT: everything is "real" in LT, there' no "faking it" for any of the mechanics. And while that's amazing, authentic, and feels good to talk about and play with, sometimes it's not feasible to actually implement;
sometimes you have to fake it.
Josh is an incredibly talented technical programmer, but his only experience is LT and what he's taught himself; an experienced team can show him how to get past many of these challenges.
Flatfingers wrote: ↑Mon Jan 13, 2020 9:55 pm
I'd really like an answer to that -- how much of Josh's vision would have to be changed or dropped? Would what's left "feel" enough like the Limit Theory described in the Kickstarter?
We don't intend to change Josh's vision. If it's going to take too long to implement "everything," we will get the game in a releasable state and get it out the door, then patch in additional features as updates. Take a look at the letter I'm trying to send him:
viewtopic.php?f=2&p=169776&sid=7a05f9b5 ... 88#p169776. I posted it here so as many people as possible can see it in hopes that someone can get us in touch with him.
Flatfingers wrote: ↑Mon Jan 13, 2020 9:55 pm
I'd also be interested in knowing what happens to the Kickstarter pledges if someone else were to be granted the official right to complete a version of LT.
That's going to require coordination with Josh to figure out, but:
Deiain wrote: ↑Mon Jan 13, 2020 1:45 pm
zircher wrote: ↑Mon Jan 13, 2020 11:37 am
I guess someone needs to ask... If this does happen, will your team provide copies to backers or are we out of luck?
We intend to, at a minimum, distribute copies of the finished game to backers, as well as releasing on some kind of distribution platform. There is discussion of fulfilling the contribution tier rewards, but we'll need to evaluate that after we get Josh on-board.