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[hemmingjay]

I spoke to a publisher 30 minutes ago who has been talking to HBS about consoles and HBS reportedly said if they sell 100k copies of Berlin they will have a greenlight to make SRR 2.0 in 2015. They also have plans for "a boatload" of campaigns and other DLC for SRR well into 2016 as long as consumer support remains. I also suspect that a few excellent mod makers may find jobs at HBS, so work hard guys.

[nenjin]

Three years is a long time to make promises like that, especially when it's contingent on their continued sales.

[Sergius]

I also don't feel cheated at all.

I mean, I can understand where people are coming from, disliking the game because "it's not what they expected", maybe they expected a free roam game like Fallout 1 or 2? Or something, or the battle system being not complicated enough.

But all this talk about getting scammed or developers pocketing millions... that really just reeks of trollbait.

[nenjin]

Yeah no, I think even people unhappy with the final product mostly aren't going that far.

[hermes]

I really love the dialogue and the atmosphere, but this "save" system is kicking my ass.  Very, very stupid design.

Actually the save system is very well designed, you just weren't paying attention.

It works like this: every time you get the loading screen, it saves.

Every time you don't, it doesn't.

It has to do with the fact that it would be a nightmare to save a "mission" (the safehouse is a mission too*) in a partially completed state; hundreds if not thousands of variables need to be cached and then later read back and every mission would need a different set of variables saved: every NPC's health status, location, armor damage, conversation trees, ammo counts, facing...every interact-able, movable, alterable, triggerable object...

*In fact, every time you visit the Seamstress's Union, it's a different mission.  They built the rooms once, but added the NPCs, dialog trees, and such, separately, and each exists independently of the others.

Yeah I understand how saving games works, and how the modular mission system works, so I understand how lazy they've been with the programming here.  For the time this game has been in development I'd be lying if I said I didn't expect more.  Those "thousands" of variables are easily stored and easily read.  Maybe just as differences from the starting point save.  Anything other than this horrible BS.  It's 2013 and I still have to say to my family.. "Wait... wait... I can't save here.... 5 more minutes, please!!"  I want to be able to enjoy the dialog and explore places at my leisure, not be on the clock because I have to reach a checkpoint whose location is completely unknown.

[Sergius]

A lot of games would just dump the entire memory state of the current turn anyway, so I don't see what's the "nightmare".

[Draco18s]

Yeah I understand how saving games works, and how the modular mission system works, so I understand how lazy they've been with the programming here.  For the time this game has been in development I'd be lying if I said I didn't expect more.  Those "thousands" of variables are easily stored and easily read.  Maybe just as differences from the starting point save.  Anything other than this horrible BS.  It's 2013 and I still have to say to my family.. "Wait... wait... I can't save here.... 5 more minutes, please!!"  I want to be able to enjoy the dialog and explore places at my leisure, not be on the clock because I have to reach a checkpoint whose location is completely unknown.

And this is why they invented alt-tab.
Seriously, just leave the game running.

And if you want a truly "Wait... wait... I can't save here.... 5 more minutes, please!!" go play The Longest Journey.  Unpausable cutscenes (beautifully rendered and voiced) that last over 15 minutes happen on like four occasions.  And if you skip them, you can't retrigger them.  Twice I was caught in one as dinner was being served.

I swear to god that one of them, near the end, was 45 minutes long.

[hermes]

And this is why they invented alt-tab.
Seriously, just leave the game running.

This is what I should do I guess.  One good thing I will say for the game is it alt-tabs nicely.

[Draco18s]

And this is why they invented alt-tab.
Seriously, just leave the game running.

This is what I should do I guess.  One good thing I will say for the game is it alt-tabs nicely.

That it does.  Unlike a lot of Triple-A games from recent years.

[nenjin]

Yeah, I'm not leaving an application running because they couldn't write a sensible save system. I'll just continue to say it sucks.

[puke]

and salaries for 22(i believe) people, which was probably something tragically low like an average of $25,000 a year(just over $500k) while living in a somewhat expensive city.

I cant hire engineers for six times that price. And thats just salary, the full cost of an employee is generally 2-5 times their salary when you factor in benefits, office space, equipment, etc.

I'd be shocked if they were paying under 100K to their programmers.  Staff of 20?  they built it on a shoestring, even considering that they would have had some non-kickstarter funding.  But they're probably still making money from their steam sales.  I'm sure its a success for them.

of course the artists and content developers and QA guys... those folks make less.

[Bdthemag]

Saving has been an industry standard for a very long time, there's frankly no excuse to not include it unless you were originally intending for the game to be on a device that couldn't handle saving very easily. Defending lazy programming because "they're a small company" or "were on a time limit" is no excuse. If everyone else in the industry does it, INCLUDING indie developers, then why couldn't they do it?

[lastofthelight]

Clearly, I need to go work for Puke. Holy hell! Must be location.

[puke]

welcome to silicon valley, chummer.  the cost of living will keep you as poor as if you were living anywhere else making less, so dont get too excited about it.

[MadMalkavian]

You see people? This is why I don't do crowdfunding and will never do crowdfunding - broken promises and violated dreams. I was almost more-than-tempted to purchase the game but after hearing all of this here backlash I'm inclined to just stick with the Genesis version.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also fun fact: Gridley, California is the sister city of Puke, New Zealand. Two places most people will have never even heard of.