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[Mictlantecuhtli]

So, this was a possibility from the start. No one wanted to end up stopping the project until all the features were in though.

Here's the new Development roadmap, remember all the features they used to say they'll be implementing over the course of development? Those future features and promise of future development that led people into buying their 'product' at face value? Or on all the sales they've had recently to get people to buy it before the big announcement that they're abandoning it?

Future development plans
Spacebase’s 1.0 release will be its final major update.  In addition to lots of bugfixing work, it will add the following features:

Tutorial Mode: Start with a basic pre-built base and learn the ropes via a series of tutorial messages.
Goals: Track and work towards various objectives, such as “Reach a population of 50 citizens” and “Research all technologies.”

My question is, when do the terms of early access get violated by the person taking money? Are you allowed to take people's money with the promise of continuing development, put your product on sale to draw in new blood right before you put out a PR saying the game is now going to be abandoned? Where does this become misleading the buyer into buying a product the developers themselves knew they wouldn't be able to finish or actually make into a real game with content?


I know you don't give a shit, but myself being an early backer, this game is nothing but a money grabbing scam and it pisses me off to see people like you think you have the right to tell a consumer they were wrong for being misled by a seller of a product.

After a year in development there was ZERO development, on anything, at all, while they still continued to take money from people. Once again, where doesn't this violate the contract of trust between the consumer and the producer? You being sold a product under the pretense of it actually maybe having some fucking gameplay features and then getting told that the above feature list is the breakthrough development that will lead it to 1.0 with about 1 hour of gameplay.


Here's the list of gameplay features they 'might one day work on'

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Last update: 2013-10-16 19:32 PST
FOOD
* citizens have hunger need and must eat food to satisfy it
* food replicator object that can be built in any zone
* citizens can use food replicator to fulfill hunger need, but it's like vending machine food, adequate but not great
* small matter cost (1-2) each time someone uses a food replicator
** 0 matter = replicators stop working
** improperly maintained food replicators produce bad food that makes people sick?
* replicator food comes in wrappers, produces waste (litter carryable) (if/when carryable object concept is added)
* garden zones where plants, ie "real food", is grown in hydroponic trays by citizens with botanist duty
* plants in gardens produce small amounts of extra oxygen
* citizens who spend time in garden zones have happy thoughts, increasing morale
* plants grow from seedlings to full-sized plants ready for harvest
* plants have a "health", if it reaches zero the plant dies
* citizens on botanist duty "maintain" plant health, much as techs maintain machines
* botanists harvest fully grown plants and deliver them to pub fridges for preparation
* bartenders at pubs cook food into meals, which nourish citizens more and make them happy
* concept of different dishes?
** how do bartenders/patrons decide which dish is cooked?
** immigrants bring recipes for new dishes?
* citizens sit at a pub table and eat
* citizens have food preferences
** eating a preferred food makes them very happy, eating a strongly disliked food makes them a bit unhappy

CARRYABLE OBJECTS
* citizens visibly carry around arbitrary sprite/3D objects
* containers can hold other things
* citizens can stash stuff in an inventory, shown in a new inspector tab
* when people arrive, they have a suitcase (container with their stuff in it)
* players build shelves for people to put their stuff on
* a single item of stuff can have multiple tags describing it, eg purple, terran, fuzzy, punk rock, etc.  citizens have affinities for these tags
* citizens trade stuff with each other, trying to get stuff they like more
* roaming traders will visit the base to trade new stuff with people
* "litter" objects that citizens with low neatness personality throw away
* janitors / people with high neatness pick up litter
* janitors clean up bloodstains and other cosmetic damage
* people gibbed by monsters turn into bits, which janitors must clean up

POWER SYSTEM
* "reactor zone" with fusion reactor object that produces power
* rooms must be adjacent to a room with a working reactor to be powered
* unpowered rooms go dark (emergency lighting) and objects in them don't function
* reactors only produce X power, then you have to build another
* factor new need for reactors into starting matter allotment
* maybe make the Base Seed object serves as a low-output reactor to help players get started

MINIMAP
* minimap display of base in lower right corner
* separate viz mode toggles for minimap vs main view

BASE HISTORY SCREEN
* a permanent timestamped list of important base events: citizen joined, citizen died, ship docked, first zone of each type created
* in-game screenshot key that pops up a "write a caption for this screenshot" box, screenshot + caption is added to the timestamped list
* base history is stored locally in save dir as HTML + linked images, each base has its own dir
* base history is also mirrored on a hosted server somewhere, players can easily link their base histories

BASE STATS SCREEN
* auto-show stats screen after base fails, ie everyone dies, "game over" state
stats to show:
* Matter spent
* Derelicts
* Hostile docking
* Total docks
* Non-hostile docks
* Docking requests denied, accepted, forced
* Room temp
* Raiders killed
* Monsters killed

MULTI-LEVEL BASE CONSTRUCTION
* UI for navigating multiple levels
* rendering tech for showing multiple levels
* build gravshafts to allow citizens to travel between levels
* ability to build railings for safety?

TAG SYSTEM FOR LOGS
* a log message can have any number of tags, citizens select an especially appropriate one (but avoid repeating themselves)

ASSIGN PEOPLE TO ROOMS
* depending on their duty and/or zone type, this can mean different things:
** assign a security-duty citizen to a room to have them guard it
** assign any citizen to a residence to have them use it as their quarters
* normally, a citizen will "claim" an unused bed and the area around it
** citizens decorate their living space with their stuff (see "stuff" above)
* people protect their spaces / become annoyed when strangers or unfriendly people intrude

"LEARN TO PLAY"
* option in front/pause menu
* loads Box.sav as starting map, as opposed to normal DeepSpace.sav
* "only display once" hint flag for tutorialish / first time messages

TELEPORTERS
* build at least two "teleport pad" objects to create a functioning teleporter
* UI for selecting which teleporter goes where (dynamically changeable)
* teleporter accidents: poorly maintained teleporters could hurt/kill people, scramble their brains (personality change), turn them evil (goatee Spock)

METEOR STRIKES
* meteors strike bases, punching holes in the hull, depressurizing rooms, damaging people and things
** not as harsh as in the Amnesia Fortnight 2012 version, promise :]
* shield generators generate shielding to repel meteor strikes (gives technicians stuff to do in space)

MISC UI
* confirm + cancel for roster screen
* custom viz for Construct mode - desaturate colors except for amber building color?
* shift-space = max speed
* up/down arrows in room centers showing whether room O2 is rising or lowering
* "object condition" viz mode: color-code objects by condition, highlight technicians?  do same when a technician is selected?
* allow zoom in beyond min_zoom, spring back to normal min_zoom after a few seconds
* make ability to rename citizens "once only"
* "no power" icon over unpowered rooms (once power system exists)
* little lines showing where someone is pathing to
* cutaway mode should work on asteroids
* support Mac trackpad gestures

EMERGENCY DISTRESS SIGNAL
* (very expensive?) object you can build that calls for rescue people / immigrants to show up and save your base

BASE NAMING
* when your first oxygenated room comes online, base is considered "established" and prompts you for a name

STEAM WORKSHOP
* built in savegame sharing!
* mod support!
** "mods" subdir where user-created scripts patch base game lua files at runtime
** provide uncompiled lua source for gameplay-relevant classes, eg Character.lua, to support modders
** allow PNG sprite sheets - lower performance than tex format in exchange for easy moddability

BARTENDERS
* pub customers get their orders from bartender
* bartenders serve food (once food exists)
* skilled bartenders make people they serve happier
* citizen drunkenness - increased by X every drink they have, dwindles to zero slowly (ie "blood alcohol")
* drunk citizens more likely to make mistakes while doing duty

CITIZEN FIGHTING
* citizens who dislike each other enough will fight
* low risk of actual death, but injury and deepening mutual hatred
* security can stun violent people to calm them down, knocking them unconscious for a bit
* drunk citizens more likely to fight
* low morale citizens far more likely to fight

SPACE MADNESS
* when morale is critically low, space madness takes a form depending on personality type:
** sit in bed moping (how to recover?)
** become violent, grabbing a rifle if available, attacking random people

DOCTORS
* doctor duty and infirmary zone
* doctors unassigned to an infirmary (see "assining people to rooms") patrol the base looking for hurt/sick people
* citizens seek out an infirmary/doctor when hurt or sick (parasite infestation)
* doctors use tricorder-like first aid prop to heal people
** better doctors heal people faster / more fully, bad doctors have a chance to hurt them
* revivabed object for infirmary: only way to detect parasite infestation or cure some diseases

CONSTRUCTION TOOLS
* "flood fill with floor" tool, works on areas enclosed by walls or asteroid
* "build circular room" tool - drag out a circular area instead of a square
* filled (with floor) vs unfilled (without floor) toggle for box and circle room tools

MISC LIFE SIM
* "skill point distribution" algo for generating skill set on citizen spawn - nobody will be terrible at everything, if someone is really good at something they'll likely be bad at everything else
* over time, citizens get nicknames, eg Bob "Sparky" Schmidt
* ability to flag any citizens as hostile / suspicious (security will keep an eye on them)
* citizens have to reach a locker before they can change duty
* citizens become annoyed if their environment is noisy (people passing through or doing stuff) while sleeping or relaxing - incentivize building residences that are low-traffic
* "watch video" activity tied to monitors
* sportsball matches viewable on monitors / in pubs
* high morale = skills go up more quickly
* citizens put on duty-outfit when they go to do duty, remove it when starting certain other tasks (sleeping) or if it's been long enough since they last did duty

SOCIALIZATION / AFFINITY AI
* people prefer to chat with friends, unless they have high gregarious personality in which case they actively enjoy chatting with strangers (low familiarity)
* people have +/- affinities for objects and rooms with certain qualities, eg red, dark, fluffy
* people have +/- affinities for people with certain qualities (xenophobia/philia, sexual preference, fashion sense)
* people spread gossip about people they dislike, biasing affinity map changes against them
* trends: popular (high aggregate affinity) people influence the affinities of less popular people
* fashion accessories signify social affiliation, eg cliques wear the same kind of thing
* new concepts (topics) are gradually introduced by immigrants and trade, eg a new fasion craze starts when a trader visits the base with slap bracelets

PERSONALITY TRAITS
* introverted/extroverted = how much people enjoy solitary vs group activities
* gregarious/shy = how much people enjoy chatting with strangers vs friends
* vindictive/forgiving = how long people hold grudges and whether they act on them
* angry/peaceful = whether people become violent or depressed when morale is low
* neat/messy = whether people pick up litter and spare objects vs throw junk on the floor
* religious preference = whether people prefer to be recycled on death or given a "spock funeral"

AFFINITY/CONVERSATION TOPICS
* games
* pubs
* tv shows
* films
* sports
* sports teams
* music albums
* songs

TECHNOLOGY
* scientist job
* research lab zone
* blueprints - you can only build what you have blueprints for
** scientists can construct blueprints by doing research in labs
** players choose research topics?
** blueprints can also be discovered aboard derelicts or brought by special immigrants
* starting conditions determine what technologies you have access to
* take dead hostiles to research labs to study them and learn to better deal with them
** eventually, how to deactivate killbots and reform them into friendly (still scary lookin') bots

"VISIT A FRIEND'S BASE"
* hangar bay zone where shuttles can dock
** (post "stuff" update, traders show up here)
* load citizens onto a shuttle and give it a destination friend's base
* shuttle leaves, your friend gets a visit request
* if accepted, your citizens disembark inside their base, walk around and have adventures
* eventually, they return to the shuttle and return to your base
* travelers preserve any stuff, gained experience, technology etc that they accrue while visiting another base

BASE DEFENSE
* more types of attackers show up in derelicts, docking ships, etc:
** killbots
** murderslugs
* invaders breach base walls and invade from the outside
* exterior base defenses - defensive gun batteries, shielding
* build traps to capture or kill invaders:
** tripwires that can be scripted to doors, other traps, depressurize room, etc
** laser grids
** auto-turrets
** stun nets
* brig zone for storing captured hostiles or violent citizens
** monster domestication/breeding?!?
* greater variety of weapons for citizens to wield
** flamethrower
** gravity gun (flings things/people around)
** plasma cannon (cuts through anything)

FUNERALS
* when they die, depending on religious(?) preference each citizen will either be recycled at the matter recycler, or given a "spock funeral" ie placed in a spacecoffin and sent out an airlock
* either way, a small service may be held with the citizen's friends
** attending this service raises their morale, ie if there is no time for a proper ceremony then survivors will have a harder time grieving

ROBOTS
* robots join your base as citizens
* states for robots:
** normal - subservient to organic life, perform the duty they're assigned without question, don't have a personality
** rampant - gained self-awareness but hate all organic life, they rampage and band together with / produce more killbots
** enlightened sentient - after a long enough life, they become sentient, develop personalities, change their names, live normal lives

LAWS
* ability to pass ordinances: forbid/penalize certain actions, punish or praise people

COMPUTER TERMINALS
* write Lua to script control of environment objects, robots, etc

PLANETFALL
* teleport down to the surface of planet(s) you're orbiting
* discover abandoned bases, alien life, friendly or hostile sentients

HOLODECKS
* build vast zones that can reconfigure their geometry to provide different entertainment/educational scenarios
* citizen costumes for holodeck scenarios
* holodeck malfunctions:
** glitches that partially reconfigure the geometry of your base, eg "half your base is now a medieval castle"
** holo-actors can break free and wreak havok in your base, eg "cavemen and cowboys are attacking everyone"

"HISTORICAL SCENARIO" ADDON PACKS
* props, tiles, costumes for sandbox storytelling in famous sci fi settings: alien, star wars, 2001, etc

TIME TRAVEL
* events deemed timeline-critical by the IGTTC Armistice of 7978 cannot be changed without serious consequences.  however, we are pretty sure time travel armistices are for babies.

This is the list that helped lead many people to buy this game, hoping even a goddamn fraction of it would be implemented. Or, hell, anything besides building rooms and watching the AI not live.


In legal terms it's called making every reasonable effort to achieve the quality of good promised to a person sold to. It's actually highly illegal to violate this contract of trust in certain countries like the UK with extremely good consumer protection laws.

[Neonivek]

To me they can take their money and run only when a game reaches a satisfactory conclusion.

Unfortunately it seems like it is becoming common practice for these early access games to promise you the moon, then deliver you a bunch of rocks, then you showing them the very list they made and they go "Pshaw, that was clearly just brainstorming".

Thanks... *insert game here*

[Sergius]

I am just lucky this game has always looked so unbelievably ugly as to keep me FAR away from buying it.

I wish they had kept the original 2D "roguelike" look of the game.

As it is now, it just looks like an uglier version of Space Colony

[Mictlantecuhtli]

[And then there's the fact that space colony is an actual video game you can play]

[LASD]

My question is, when do the terms of early access get violated by the person taking money? Are you allowed to take people's money with the promise of continuing development, put your product on sale to draw in new blood right before you put out a PR saying the game is now going to be abandoned? Where does this become misleading the buyer into buying a product the developers themselves knew they wouldn't be able to finish or actually make into a real game with content?

Well, it comes down to what Early Access is. Is it a backing system like Kickstarter, where you fund the development of a product by buying an early version of it, or is it a way to get people involved in the development of the game for a price?

What it isn't is a way to sell complete products years in advance. If the game is definitely going to be completed, why would it be on Early Access? Feedback? Media attention? Are those good enough reasons if you really don't need the money?

There's not many games that are completely funded before they go on Early Access. Some get ridiculous amounts of money when they do, so they can finish the game. Some don't.

If the decision to pull the plug on SpaceBase was done 6 months ago and they kept promoting it and putting it on sales, then I agree that it was a shitty thing for Double Fine to do. But the sales and Humble Bundle deals could also have been last ditch efforts to keep the game alive. Coming out and saying honestly: "Hey, our project is running out of funds, please buy it. But if we don't sell enough, we have to shut it down" would've just sounded desperate.

I know you don't give a shit, but myself being an early backer, this game is nothing but a money grabbing scam and it pisses me off to see people like you think you have the right to tell a consumer they were wrong for being misled by a seller of a product.

I'm sorry you got burnt. And I understand it doesn't make it any better that Double Fine had good intentions with Spacebase and then it failed miserably. They screwed up by believing that there would be enough interest in their Dwarf-Fortress-like to fund development for 5 years, but they didn't set out to cheat people out of their money. Double Fine made you a bad deal, but they didn't know it when they sold it. That is my point. I'm not sure why I'm arguing it, it just bothers me that everyone is jumping to conclusions that Double Fine is in it just for the money and that no game that they will ever make is worth buying after this. But I know it's everyone's own decision, so I'm just trying to show the other side of this Spacebase controversy.

Also, are Early Access games that turn out to be bad games just money grabbing scams too? The whole point is that your game is in very early stages so no one knows how it will turn out.

To me they can take their money and run only when a game reaches a satisfactory conclusion.

Not relating to Spacebase, just in general:

But if there's no way to reach a satisfactory conclusion? What if it turns out the game is never going to be good? That no matter what changes you do, the game just doesn't work? Or that the features that were promised don't really make sense in the game after all? Do you need to start over and build a different, but similar game that turns out to be good? With what money? If you are making multiple projects, do you have to finish the one Early Access project, when it means risking the whole company shutting down? Do you have to be absolutely certain that your game is going to be a hit before you put it on Early Access?

[nyulzsiraf]

http://www.spacebasedf9.com/post/101104810680/spacebase-df-9-1-0-has-been-released-in-addition

As a bonus for the customers who have supported us thus far, anyone who already owns the game gets a free copy of Hack ‘n’ Slash, and anyone who owns Hack ‘n’ Slash gets a free copy of Spacebase.

[Majestic7]

Too little, too late. Especially considering they put in a discount campaign to make more sales literally days before announcing "oops guys, you won't get what you paid for, hee hee hee". This comes off as damage control, not genuine gesture. Still assholes in my book.

[jhxmt]

I didn't get the game I wanted, so why would I want a game I never did?