A Note of Disappointment

This forum is a place to talk about AGDI games and projects.

Moderators: adeyke, VampD3, eriqchang, Angelus3K

Message
Author
Adrian
Peasant Status
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 10:33 am
Location: Melbourne, Australia

A Note of Disappointment

#1 Post by Adrian » Thu Aug 03, 2006 10:37 am

I first came to this website during March, 2004. Having been an adventure game fan since playing the original monkey island, I was searching for more to play. I learned about Kings Quest and realizing to my joy, that two of the first installments are available at the website, updated to VGA graphics, containing voice packs and completely free!

So I played the first game and, finding it to be reasonably enjoyable I downloaded Kings Quest II+ Romancing the Stones. At first I was a bit apprehensive (I wanted the original game simply updated to VGA) but after a bit of deliberating installed and started the game.

The game absolutely blew me away. I found the music to be fantastic, the puzzles perfectly balanced, a story and script that pulled me right in, quality voice acting and memorable scene followed by another memorable scene (my favorite was the cloud spirit trials).

Feeling that AGDI interactive was the best thing since... well, ever, I got pretty excited and jumped on the wagon waiting patiently for Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire. This is where I finally get to the point of this post.

We waited till the end of 2004 hopefully waiting for release of the game. When it didn't come, we said ok fair enough, they are doing this for free; they should be allowed to have all the slack they want.  So we waited till mid 2005 and it didn't arrive, and then it didn't arrive at the end of the year ether. Now it's the eight month of 2006 and now it's still not released. Not only that, there isn't a single bit of news coming out of the developer journal anymore.

When I and many other's first came to this website, we had nothing but high hopes for the AGDI team. Not only had they released two excellent games, they already had plans for another release and it was/is to be free as well. We put you in much higher esteem then any of the other fan groups. Then, we were let down.

It's kinda like when the good kid (the one with a good heart, and a lot of potential) and the bad kid (the irresponsible one) do something bad together. When the teacher finds out, he ignores the bad one and says to the good one (You were the best, so now I'm especially DISAPOINTED in you). This disappointment is genuine, since the good kid showed the best human kind had to offer.

You or others may not feel obligated in anyway to get the game done, since your spending you own time to make something others enjoy. This is fair enough. The problem is that while you may not be obligated to release it anytime soon, you also need to look at what's the best thing or the nicest thing to do, if you want to be though of as great people you probably are.

It's understandable that you wanted to get Al Emmo out of the way, to be rewarded in the way you deserve to be, but as far as QFG is concerned, we feel abandoned. The worst thing was the total lack of news coming out of this website. If you're working on Al Emmo and there's gonna be a brief hiatus, tell us. If you're working on bug fixing, tell us how you're going, we don't care what news you have for us, as long as we don't feel ignored. Ponderer of AI is good example of this. He's made at least two large post's about the progress of the KQ:III patch.

Anytime someone asks the question about its release they get jumped on. “So” asks the fan on the forums “when do you guys think that QFG:II will be released?” to which he gets a flurry of responses to the effect of “They are doing this for free man”, “yeah stop whining, your only slowing them down” and “it will be DONE when it's DONE, now stop asking”.

It's impossible to believe that there is no time what-so-ever, to keep the fans informed. Rather than keeping us coming back every day, week, month only to be disappointed when no indication of progress is made, set some kinda date, and tell us what's going on. Saying it will be done when it's done is not a solution, it just feels like an insult. Why on earth would you want to be associated with Duke Nukem Forever a game with no hype and one that's been delayed for 10 years.

The fans may not be paying you any money for your hard work, but it's also untrue to say they are not giving you anything in return. Their praise and enjoyment and the increased download count they give is their payment. Now I'm afraid that might be going. I'm sure it wouldn't be nearly as worth the effort if no one played it.

Why am I writing this? Well, mostly to get something of my chest, but maybe just to see if it makes a difference. I visit this website every day. Not really because I'm still all that interested in the getting the game, but rather to see if when the game is released (I'm assume it will be eventually) I can become the fan I was before.

You guys are the greatest, and if you don't mind the horrible cliché, ‘with great power comes great responsibility'. Please don't let us down.

Notes:
Not proof read because I could not be bothered reading it.
Great work on Kings Quest!

navynuke04
Honorary AGD
Posts: 5378
Joined: Fri Sep 13, 2002 1:19 am
Location: US of A
Contact:

#2 Post by navynuke04 » Thu Aug 03, 2006 10:55 am

Unfortunately, there is no way we can set any kind of release date simply because we still don't know. Any time we've set a release date, it's only led to disappointment to the fans. As an alternative, we've decided to simply say that "It will be done when it's done."

That said, progress does continue on the game. A recent post I read (within the last couple of days) said that the game pretty much has no more fatal bugs, and that most everything is now cosmetic. The bugs are much more difficult to track down and eliminate due to the complex nature of the game. When you fix something, you have to think how it might affect everything else. The game is really three games in one, due to the different character classes. Bug hunting is not an enjoyable process, but is necessary before the game can be released. It is being worked on; you shouldn't worry about that.

Anonymous Game Creator 2
The Prince of Shapeir
Posts: 8887
Joined: Tue May 08, 2001 4:12 am
Location: Phobos
Contact:

#3 Post by Anonymous Game Creator 2 » Thu Aug 03, 2006 11:27 am

I'm not really sure what kind of response you're expecting us to give? Do you want us admit that we've been lazy in not keeping up with the demands of people? Because that's simply not true, we've been working our asses of on QFG2VGA. It's been mentioned many, many times before that there is nothing newsworthy to report. How can this be stated more clearly? Would you have us take time away from the development process to fill the designer journal pages with garbage and lies? What purpose would this serve? People would see through it in an instant and we'd simply be wasting time.  We have given our word that the game is progressing and will be released; we don't know when. As soon as we have a good idea, we'll announce it in the designer journals; not a faux release date that has been pressured out of us on the forums.

You mentioned that there have been no designer journal updates and this is true to the extent that there has been nothing worth reporting. It does NOT mean that the game development has halted.  I recently posted a video trailer on the journals page to show that progress has been made and to show what kind of playable state the game is currently in. This shows that the release date IS fast approaching. So I'm not sure how this could be construed as being ignored.

Look, no matter what news is released, there will always be complaints. I'm just confused as to why you believe pressuring an already overworked team is going to help matters? In my mind this goes against encouraging us to release the game faster if you truly beleive that praise is the reward involved.  I've personally said that I'm disappointed about the delays and it's something I'm fully aware of. And I'm sorry, but you're just going to have to wait until the game is ready.

You've asked us to set a release date. How do you propose we do that? "We don't know" really means that we don't know. If we mention a release date, then either we're going to have to release a buggy product or cancel that release date and keep working on it. At which point you'd accuse us of lying.

I'm glad you enjoyed the remakes and are looking forward to QFG2VGA, but honestly... what kind of answer are you expecting? The only way I can answer your questions is to make up a bunch of complete lies. Is that what you want me to do? If so, then I might as well tell you that the game will be released tomorrow.

Adrian
Peasant Status
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 10:33 am
Location: Melbourne, Australia

#4 Post by Adrian » Thu Aug 03, 2006 11:45 am

Actually, I was considering writing on the bottom of the post, "you don�t really need to answer this" since it's not a question or even something that that is possible to give a simple response. I made a mistake not writing that. As I said in the last post, it was written mainly to get something off my chest.

I never ever said you were lazy. And I�m sorry if I you felt I implied that. The main points I was trying to make, was about jumping on people in the forums and the fact that there is no news at all. It just seems like it's not important to keep the fans informed if all you have is little details But if you say there is nothing to be said at all about your work, I can�t dispute that.

I�d never accuse you of lying and I don�t believe I did in the post. Yes you missed the realize dates you set before. That disappointed me a lot less than when it was replaced by "we don�t know�

Anonymous Game Creator 2
The Prince of Shapeir
Posts: 8887
Joined: Tue May 08, 2001 4:12 am
Location: Phobos
Contact:

#5 Post by Anonymous Game Creator 2 » Thu Aug 03, 2006 12:05 pm

The problem is that people expect different things. The majority of people expect us to provide a set-in-stone release date which we are held to. I don't personally feel confortable doing that because it puts pressure on us to have the game finished by that time, regardless of whether it's ready or not. And as seen in the past, this is something that can easily be overshot. It tends to be worse for our credibility if we mention a release date and then miss it, rather than just being honest and saying "We don't know" which is the truth.

I'd expect the game to definitely go into the alpha/beta stage this year. But that's pretty much the best guestimate that can be provided at present. I certainly hope that it can be released this year but I really can't say for sure if that will happen. The game will likely require many months of beta testing so it's hard to say.

After Al Emmo's release, we'll be hammering down and trying to reach that goal.  I understand that people want to play the game and that delays are annoying. Nobody is more aware of this than I am. But on the other hand, we want to release a stable product which will make the long wait well-worth it when everyone finally gets to play the finished product.

Erpy
Forum Administrator
Posts: 11434
Joined: Tue Sep 25, 2001 8:28 pm
Location: The Netherlands

#6 Post by Erpy » Thu Aug 03, 2006 12:17 pm

The only thing we know is that it's going to be released eventually. You may not feel as disappointed when we keep missing release dates we set, but a lot of people are like: "Why do you make promises you can't keep?"

I thought the trailer released fairly recently was a pretty nice update. But what most people really want more than anything else is not so much the details, but simply how long they have to wait before the game's out. And we don't have that answer. Frankly, we ALSO wonder sometimes how many nights of testing and scripting are ahead of us. The fan wonders for how long he'll have to think up other things to do. The developer wonders how long it'll take before he'll have the luxury of having to think up other things to do.

Most bug reports are really not that interesting. And they don't show any progress, just yet another bug off the list. But here's a recent one that MIGHT make an interesting story if you're curious:


- For quite a while, we had a bug that, when walking around the desert, would prevent monsters from showing up. The chase music would start playing, but no monster would show up to approach the hero. You could walk a few screens into any direction and the music would stop, signifying the monster gave up, but it never ever entered the screen. Replicating it was tough...it seemed to occur randomly. Sometimes no monster would show up, sometimes a monster WOULD appear and approach. We checked if there was faulty code that caused the chase music to play when no monster was supposed to appear. Wasn't the case. We checked if the monster code for some reason refrained from placing the monster in the room. Wasn't the case either. We checked if the monster was perhaps stuck outside the screen edge and couldn't direct-walk into the room itself. Nope. We checked the entire desert script for any lines causing conflict. Nothing... And all the time, the bug didn't show up in test sessions, it only happened if you casually played through the game.

Finally, we found out the cause. The person reporting the glitch had been sleeping until nightfall, went into the alleyways and practiced his magic. Then he went into the desert to hunt monsters, sometimes running into the bug and sometimes not. The glitch was in the calm and dazzle spells. When you cast either spell, a timer starts running. When it runs out, the spell wears off. What we forgot to do was stop and reset the timer when the player left the screen, meaning that the effect of the calm/dazzle spell was noticable in every screen the player entered until the timer ran out. This meant monsters you encountered were frozen just off-screen before they could walk into the on-screen area.

Initially, the bug didn't show because your spell skills were low and by the time you walked out of the city and stumbled upon a monster in the desert, the spell timers were already expired. It wasn't until spell skills became very high that the bug became noticable. The reason the bug sometimes didn't appear to pop up was simple...the monster that DID appear was always a ghoul and ghouls aren't frozen by calm and dazzle spells because they're undead.

These are the kinds of things we occasionally run into. This one made an interesting story. Many of them do not.

Image

Music Head
Defense Minister Status
Posts: 717
Joined: Sun Aug 15, 2004 3:55 am
Location: South Australia

#7 Post by Music Head » Thu Aug 03, 2006 12:22 pm

I think I speak for everyone here when I say the last thing wanted is the team to feel pressured into releasing a game which they believe is not up to standards. I'm just as anxious as everyone else to play the game. I'd much prefer a bug free game and wait a little extra time, then have the frustration of playing a game through and encountering bugs. I actually never got far in QFG4 because the bugs just ruined the experience for me. I'd hate to have the same thing happen with the QFG remake.

The fact that AGDI have already released two extremely beautiful KQ remakes and a promising Al Emmo demo makes me think that they're doing this for themselves more then anything else. The team must feel very passionate about what they are doing and if so should not be pressured.

Syn6
Peasant Status
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 6:33 pm

#8 Post by Syn6 » Thu Aug 03, 2006 10:43 pm

I don't really think most people realize how much the second half of developing a game (or any program) differs from the first. For example, for the most part, the first half is more linear and certain steps are completed in a certian order (i.e. write a script, then design the level, then draw the backgrounds, etc...) and toward the end, problems arise whose solution could cause more problems (i.e. fixing one bug could cause a new problem somewhere else in the program). With this in mind, there is no way for anyone to expect any sort of release date to be announced, and as it has be stated many times, having the designers update us with the progress would be like asking them to work on the same problem twice, once to actually fix it, and once to tell us what they did to fix it.

I have been watching this forum for years as well (but have yet to post anything) and I understand how frustrating it is to "be in the dark" so close to the end but everytime I see someone posting about "delays" to the release, I think about how much more understanding people will be if they understand that the process of the latter part of developing any software can be very unpredictable and very frustrating......

gamecreator
Knight Status
Posts: 351
Joined: Sat Apr 01, 2006 9:54 pm

#9 Post by gamecreator » Fri Aug 04, 2006 12:43 am

Syn6 wrote:... With this in mind, there is no way for anyone to expect any sort of release date to be announced
Not sure what you meant by this.  Professional game companies provide release dates for games and they have the exact same problems you described.  In fact, a quick Google search shows some estimates even for 3rd Quarter 2008.

The issue is that AGDI is not a professional game company motivated by deadlines and money and therefore has no motivation to set a reliable date (note that even professional companies are sometimes forced to move these dates back).


Erpy,
Thanks for sharing the story about that bug hunt.  As a programmer, I think I appreciated it even more than the average gamer.

Syn6
Peasant Status
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 6:33 pm

#10 Post by Syn6 » Fri Aug 04, 2006 2:45 am

gamecreator wrote:
Syn6 wrote:... With this in mind, there is no way for anyone to expect any sort of release date to be announced
Not sure what you meant by this.  Professional game companies provide release dates for games and they have the exact same problems you described.  In fact, a quick Google search shows some estimates even for 3rd Quarter 2008.

The issue is that AGDI is not a professional game company motivated by deadlines and money and therefore has no motivation to set a reliable date (note that even professional companies are sometimes forced to move these dates back).
This was exactly what I was trying to say. Thank You!

adeyke
Moderator
Posts: 1734
Joined: Fri Aug 10, 2001 6:01 am

#11 Post by adeyke » Fri Aug 04, 2006 5:14 am

For example, sierra had a release date for QfG4 and they stuck to it.

Klytos
Infamous Sheik of Australia
Posts: 1722
Joined: Tue Apr 22, 2003 3:43 pm
Location: Rockhampton Australia
Contact:

#12 Post by Klytos » Fri Aug 04, 2006 2:03 pm

I used to have an issue with AGDI's lack of communication with the fanbase as I thought they should be more up front about their progress in games. I now totally understand where they come from and I support them 110%.

As someone mentioned above, there is a major difference between the first and the second parts of producing a game. The first part is easy, get the background drawn, add in the animation cycles required, add in the interactions required etc. This is especially easy with a remake (as compared to an original title, I don't want to make it sound too easy :) ) because the roadmap is already drawn. The second part is the hard part. Finding bugs is boring. Not only that, it's extremly difficult, and in some situations (like the one Erpy mentioned BTW Erpy, glad I didn't have to find that one...) they only happen after a particular sequence of events that you as the programmer wouldn't have thought of doing. This makes it so slow, you truly do not understand how slow this process can be until you've had to do it.

In my personal experience, we had a bug in KQ3 that happened when you walked into the Medussa screens, she would appear on the screen yet she wouldn't walk towards you. Sometimes. Once in every 12 tries or something. She was on a walkable area, her code was right, the timer code for her entry into the screen was right. Yet it didn't work. Sometimes. It took three of us a week to find that the issue was related to external timers that should have only been relevant to Manannan's code.

We don't think things are going to take as long as they do, yet sometimes, they take forever for a simple problem. In my example above, fixing the problem took about ... oh ... 30 seconds. Finding it, a week.

Setting a release date is difficult. For a team like Blizzard, it's not so hard, they have teams of hundreds working on single titles. AGDI doesn't.

Updates blow. The reason why people don't give updates is that it's boring. If you've just spent a week playing around with a single bug, you don't want to write a detailed report about it.

I could bang on about them doing this for free, that they're working as hard as they can, etc etc. The truth is that all of this is true.

The other thing about releasing information is this. There are a LOT of fantastic people in this adventure community. But there's also quite a few assholes who think it's their God given right to rip apart everything you've worked at, everything you've said. Some people love to tell you that you've done a totally shit job, that you're a liar and you should give up. Being in the forefront I know that AGDI have experienced a lot of this. I know that I am not interested in giving out a lot of information anymore because people will take everything you say and hold you to their version of it. Why bother putting yourself out there to be crucified?

Until you have walked a mile in their shoes (I have walked maybe 300 yards) you can't appreciate the whole process. I certainly appreciate AGDI a lot more than I used to, thats for damn sure.

Adventure_Knight
Royal Servant Status
Posts: 54
Joined: Sat Jun 24, 2006 5:00 pm
Location: Spain

#13 Post by Adventure_Knight » Fri Aug 04, 2006 6:02 pm

I would like to see more updates on the designers journal... But I guess that the lack of updates is because there's just beta testing left... (Right?...)

Anonymous Game Creator 2
The Prince of Shapeir
Posts: 8887
Joined: Tue May 08, 2001 4:12 am
Location: Phobos
Contact:

#14 Post by Anonymous Game Creator 2 » Sat Aug 05, 2006 6:09 pm

Wrong! (Said in my best Arnie accent).

Actually, Adventure_Knight, if you read the earlier posts in this thread by Erpy, NavyNuke, and myself, you'll see they give a pretty good indication of the development stage we're at right now on QFG2VGA.  I'd say it's the equivalent of limbo; the major part of development is over (i.e. the implementation of all graphics, music, puzzles and other assets), but game is not quite ready for alpha/beta testing stage yet. There's still a long list of bugs to work through before the game's stable enough to be considered an alpha version.

Here are just a few of the kinds of entries to be found on our to-do list at the moment. These are just a few issues out of literally thousands!
-Make it so players cannot click on the sneak button when they are overloaded (as this can reset the speed if the switch to sneak and then back to walk mode again).

-Check what happens in EGA game if you try to use magic rope in Air elemental encounter? Make sure our game handles this event the same way.

-I ran left from the oasis and encountered a brigand. The saurus bucked the hero off and ran away. Then the game crashed with an error about SetCharacterSpeedEx (sorry, didn't copy and paste it). Probably need to call StopMoving before it though.

-For all screens where you can walk off the edge by crossing over the 'walk off top' line (or whaever direction), we should put some code that will not trigger the room change unless the hero is using either his walking, running, sneaking, or saurus riding view.

-Turn EGO's scaling off whenever he levitates or uses the magic rope. Remember to turn it back on again after he comes down succesfully, when he falls, and also in special cases (like using it to enter Khaveen's window).

-Saurus' diagonal walking frames (NE, SW etc) seem to have some purple pixels in them still.

-When clicking on my waterskins in GUI 29 (inventory screen), the game crashed with this:

(ACI version 2.70.856)

Error: run_text_script1: error -6 running function 'interface_click':
Error: Integer divide by zero
in Global script (line 12450)

-At the end of levitating back down, climbing down from the magic rope, falling from levitating and falling from the magic rope, after the hero is set back into run/walk/sneak mode, the game will have to check if they are overloaded and if so, set them into walk mode and set their speed to the slow speed.
I don't think this the type of boring stuff people would really want to see cluttering the designer journal pages!

In the case that we got rushed into releasing the game before it's ready and we failed to fix, say, the issue with the saurus bucking the hero off, then the game will likely crash for any player who encounters a brigand in that particular desert screen while riding their saurus.

Knowing that these bugs exist and releasing the game anyway would not only be sloppy, it would be irresponsible and it certainly would not justify the long wait . All this waiting would be in vain if we simply released a buggy product which we could have already released probably a year ago.  It'd be much easier on us to release this as-is and just have the public find all the bugs for us. Then we'd only have to bother fixing them and not finding them in the first place. But we know that this would disappoint and frustrate people, and that's why we have a responsibility to fix all the bugs we're aware of before we feel comfortable releasing the game to the masses. This will ensure that everyone has the best gameplay experience possible without needing to worry about it crashing unexpectedly every 5 minutes.  

Personally, I don't really like releasing patches since I consider them to be a bit messy. I prefer to release a polished game and fix all known bugs in the first release if possible. That way, if any further bugs are found, they'll most likely only be minor issues which can wait until the next major release to be fixed. And at that point, we usually release a new version 2.0 with new features as well.

And thanks for the comments, Klytos. Just wait till you have your first nervous breakdown; it's a doozy!  :lol

Adventure_Knight
Royal Servant Status
Posts: 54
Joined: Sat Jun 24, 2006 5:00 pm
Location: Spain

#15 Post by Adventure_Knight » Sat Aug 05, 2006 7:44 pm

Gee, now I feel ashamed by my lack of information. Well, keep up the good work!

dynamic1
Peasant Status
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Sep 09, 2005 9:39 am

#16 Post by dynamic1 » Sun Aug 06, 2006 12:22 am

Erpy, being a programmer, I can really appreciate that story about the bug... I can feel the pain of anyone trying to debug that...

I'm going to join the "bug free at some point in the future" crowd, rather than the "buggy but definite release date" crowd. Frankly, anyone who's played QFG4 shouldn't even have to think about this.

Lastly, and I think I'm repeating things that have been said for a THIRD time in this post, the only thing that needs to be said in AGDI's defense for any complaints is "IT'S FREE." C'mon, I have to pay for water for chrissakes, and I need that to live. Seeing people complain that they might not get a game for free is pretty ridiculous.

ZachSchuster
Peasant Status
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Aug 06, 2006 4:38 am

#17 Post by ZachSchuster » Sun Aug 06, 2006 4:50 am

Hello, I've been around a long time but it's been so long since I've posted, I forgot my username and password!

Anyway, as someone who worked for three years on a documentary I can appreciate the long hours and dedication required for such a project.  Fine tuning this and that is tedious and frustrating.

I would, however, like to offer my opinion.  Take it as just that: an opinion.

First, I found the finer points of the bug fixing to be very intriguing.  I'm no programmer or scripter, but it made me appreciate some of what it is you have to do.  I find that giving "tangible" examples of what problems are going on and (with the calm/dazzle bug) what their solutions were, are very informative.  I wish there was more of that, it makes me respect the work you do even more!  Now, of course you have better things to do than posting every little thing, but an occasional "Here is a bug we're working on" would be great.

And on the topic of deadlines, would it be practical to put something on the website that says something like: We don't have a deadline because we don't know, but we don't even expect beta testing to begin until at least <INSERT MONTH/YEAR HERE>.  This would of course be followed by a disclaimer saying that the date might change, but if I know that I shouldn't expect anything until December...

Anyway, just some thoughts and suggestions.  There will always be the naysayers.  I think it's great what you're doing and appreciate the work that you're doing!

Zach

adeyke
Moderator
Posts: 1734
Joined: Fri Aug 10, 2001 6:01 am

#18 Post by adeyke » Sun Aug 06, 2006 5:10 am

Even if they said "don't expect anything until time X," I know people would over-optimistically misinterpret that as "we promise it'll be done by time X" and feel disappointed if it gets pushed back.  So I don't think that would work too well, either.

User avatar
haradan
Knight Status
Posts: 282
Joined: Thu Dec 08, 2005 7:21 am
Location: Mexico

#19 Post by haradan » Sun Aug 06, 2006 8:06 am

Well, as I said in another topic, I definitely respect what you do, all the hard work you put into the games, and I also respect the decision you make about releasing the game when you feel it's ready and about not posting new information. That's the very least thing I can do for you, RESPECT your decisions, in exchange for these marvelous games.

On another hand...
-Check what happens in EGA game if you try to use magic rope in Air elemental encounter? Make sure our game handles this event the same way.
If you still have the doubt about it, the magic rope is the easy way for the thief to defeat the elemental.

SPOILER!!!
After climbing to the top, you wait a little and the elemental passes below you, then you can throw the dirt (without aiming at all, it's automatic) and the elemental freezes so you can catch it. Each class can just throw the dirt in the usual way, or use a special skill (strenght for fighter, levitate for wizard, and rope for thief). There, my two cents, I saved you about 5 seconds on that one (although it probably took you 20 seconds just to read it!). ;)

Klytos
Infamous Sheik of Australia
Posts: 1722
Joined: Tue Apr 22, 2003 3:43 pm
Location: Rockhampton Australia
Contact:

#20 Post by Klytos » Sun Aug 06, 2006 2:03 pm

Ha, I've not had the breakdown yet, thank god.

I try to live my life in a stress-free zone, although that's hard at times. I tell you something though, scripting computer games doesn't allow much stress-free times. So I try and do exercise and stuff, bush walking, etc. That helps. Or I drink a lot.

GuJiaXian
Royal Servant Status
Posts: 101
Joined: Thu Mar 06, 2003 12:57 pm
Location: Roswell, Georgia
Contact:

#21 Post by GuJiaXian » Sun Aug 06, 2006 9:07 pm

Anonymous Game Creator 2 wrote:I don't think this the type of boring stuff people would really want to see cluttering the designer journal pages!
But see, that's exactly what I enjoy reading about. I completely understand about not posting "release" dates, but coming to the AGDI website a few times each week and seeing *some* sort of news update (even if it's Al Emmo-related) lets me know that stuff is still happening behind the scenes. Perhaps I'm strange, but seeing even the occasional, brief list of "outstanding bugs" is kinda cool...it lets me appreciate what you're putting into this project, and it also gets me excited about the eventual release of the game.

Hope that made sense...in a nutshell, I'm sure I'm not the only person who'd love to see smaller "updates" once or twice a week. In the past you've expressed concern over the time that posting updates takes; just cut and paste a short list of bugs and say, "This is what we're dealing with this week; wish us luck!"  :)

Stone The Crows
Peasant Status
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Jul 07, 2006 2:50 pm

#22 Post by Stone The Crows » Mon Aug 07, 2006 2:04 am

I have to say in all honesty, I'm happy as long as this site stays up and the forums have people posting.
I was under the impression that it would be done in '04 as well, but we all know now that assuming something like that was purely wishful thinking. So, all I can do is be patient and when it dose get released be grateful.

Blackthorne519
Royal Vizier Status
Posts: 2301
Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2003 3:37 am
Location: Central New York
Contact:

#23 Post by Blackthorne519 » Mon Aug 07, 2006 8:26 pm

I don't know what all this "call for patience" is about.

Gimme the game or I'm NEVER COMING BACK!  And I'm taking everyone with me!



Bt

jpnuar1
Knight Status
Posts: 194
Joined: Wed Feb 09, 2005 1:10 am
Location: Michigan, USA
Contact:

#24 Post by jpnuar1 » Tue Aug 08, 2006 8:56 am

GuJiaXian wrote:
Anonymous Game Creator 2 wrote:I don't think this the type of boring stuff people would really want to see cluttering the designer journal pages!
But see, that's exactly what I enjoy reading about. I completely understand about not posting "release" dates, but coming to the AGDI website a few times each week and seeing *some* sort of news update (even if it's Al Emmo-related) lets me know that stuff is still happening behind the scenes. Perhaps I'm strange, but seeing even the occasional, brief list of "outstanding bugs" is kinda cool...it lets me appreciate what you're putting into this project, and it also gets me excited about the eventual release of the game.

Hope that made sense...in a nutshell, I'm sure I'm not the only person who'd love to see smaller "updates" once or twice a week. In the past you've expressed concern over the time that posting updates takes; just cut and paste a short list of bugs and say, "This is what we're dealing with this week; wish us luck!"  :)
My thoughts exactly. I know that many people would be bored by such a post, but I'd still kinda like to see what you are working with, even if it is just bugs...8o



Another idea for setting the prospective release date could be to set a post continuously listed under the current date saying something along the lines of "Forseeably, the game will not be ready for at least 7 more months". At least until the to-do list shrinks a little... That could work better than setting an actual date (or even specific month), since until you guys changed the release dates to "It'll be done when it's done", QFG2VGA was kinda stuck at around 6-10 months till alpha since like, sometime 2004, hasn't it?
That way, people wouldn't wouldn't complain when you miss a date, but then they wouldn't check in every other day to check if it's been released yet, and thus start randomly flaming you to help pass the time when they see that it still hasn't... ;)

gamecreator
Knight Status
Posts: 351
Joined: Sat Apr 01, 2006 9:54 pm

#25 Post by gamecreator » Wed Aug 09, 2006 4:01 am

I think we've pushed and pried long enough and we've gotten as much of an answer as we're gonna get.  So, just to summarize what we've been told by AGC2, QfGII will be
Anonymous Game Creator 2 wrote:...released this year...
And there you have it.  Look for it this year.  ;)
GuJiaXian wrote:In the past you've expressed concern over the time that posting updates takes
I missed this.  How long does the average update take (not including preparing a video trailer or the like)?  I ask because they seem pretty free-flowing and natural and usually they're just a few paragraphs.  Even if it takes an hour every two weeks, I think that's reasonable.

Post Reply