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[ScriptWolf]

This is becoming to much like net gain for my liking, i really dont want to see another idea go semi vapourware, I think josh could learn a lot form having a talk with sparkbolt about developing games. They both have similar ideas and both have had to do huge backbone reworks on their games.

[gimli]

Josh hasn't logged onto his own site in ten days.

Now that is....weird. 

I don't know. I feel these guys are looking at this game as the chance of a lifetime to build the game of their dreams and perhaps even reach a historic status, similar to games like Super Meatboy. They want to give everything they have, even moving away from the original roadmap if they feel this is for the better of the game.
Is it good business practice? Hell no. Could we end up with something epic after a long period of delays? Hell yes.

Let's hope so. Definitely, the potential is there, but let's see that beta build first.

[TempAcc]

Man, if this thing goes vaporware, it'll be pretty damn sad, as in Cult tier sad. I'm willing to believe Josh is just really terrible at comming up with dates for things, or that something has happened and he kind of forgot to warn the community about it (hey, I don't know, maybe a thanksgiving day trip thing). Hopefuly it won't go vaporware.

[Neonivek]

And if this game suddenly explodes in a freek tornado accident I will be very disappointed. I know that Josh can't do anything to prevent spontaneous tornadoism, but he hasn't really said he would prevent it... Hopefully there will be no tornados.

[nenjin]

It might also be that he's realized posting small novels worth of responses on the forum is eating into dev time (and eroding motivation since the forums are undoubtedly reading a lot like this one), and is just staying off the forums until he's gotten the beta squared away.

[Zangi]

It might also be that he's realized posting small novels worth of responses on the forum is eating into dev time (and eroding motivation since the forums are undoubtedly reading a lot like this one), and is just staying off the forums until he's gotten the beta squared away.

Oh, he has been doing that?  Yea... it would be part of the problem.  Sadly.

[nenjin]

I think that's what originally motivated me on the game, was their ability to write pretty convincingly about their game and their vision. However, I think their level of communication directly relates to:

-Missing deadlines because they were constantly stating them.
-Overpromising on features.
-In some cases over describing systems. Great for hype-building. Not exactly a valuable skill during crunch time though.

Most devs stay pretty tight lipped once they're in actual production. KDG seemed to spend a lot of time answering questions on their forums. I like devs that communicate. But it does open them up to criticism because once they start talking to you in depth, that player/developer boundary starts to get a little blurry. Compare and contrast to devs like the Red Hook who, once the game was well into development, basically stopped talking or answering questions except in their own controlled venues. (Basically, dev videos.)

[Sergarr]

Criticism is good. Tight-lipped developing process leads to worse products.

What they need is not talk about "what they want to do", but about "what they've done". Toady, for example, usually talks about "what he has implemented in the last few days" and only rarely about "what he wants to do in the next month". And it shows in that DF is, contrary to what you would expect by only reading the features list, not a vaporware.

It's funny, because DF has gone through multiple rewrites of major systems, the same thing that the dev of TWS apparently wanted to avoid, but, unlike with TWS, people never called DF "vaporware".

[Neonivek]

people never called DF "vaporware".

>_>

[Cthulhu]

It is, actually.  I've heard it described that way more than once outside the DF Bubble.  it depends on how you define "vaporware."  Like, obviously a product exists and it's playable and fun, but the farther you go into the future the more pie-in-the-sky things get. 

Anybody else remember the old dev page with the splash(? I can't remember how they were described) goals?  An array of extremely specific events toady wanted to eventually see emerge from the gameplay.  Stuff like an elven swordsman cutting off a horse's legs and the momentum sending its rider face-first into a tree.

[Sergarr]

people never called DF "vaporware".

>_>

Well, there could have been some people who called it "vaporware", but they are idiots and don't actually count, because it's not vaporware by definition:

In the computer industry, vaporware is a product, typically computer hardware or software, that is announced to the general public but is never actually manufactured nor officially cancelled.

It is, actually.  I've heard it described that way more than once outside the DF Bubble.  it depends on how you define "vaporware."  Like, obviously a product exists and it's playable and fun, but the farther you go into the future the more pie-in-the-sky things get. 

Anybody else remember the old dev page with the splash(? I can't remember how they were described) goals?  An array of extremely specific events toady wanted to eventually see emerge from the gameplay.  Stuff like an elven swordsman cutting off a horse's legs and the momentum sending its rider face-first into a tree.

1) If your definition of "vaporware" includes "an actually playable game with tons of features that obviously took a long time investment to make", then it's actually useless as a word. You could use the words "not fully finished", "beta", "early access before it was cool", but you have to completely fail at English language to call DF "vaporware".
2) They were called "powergoals", and they were more of an inspiration of what the system should be able to achieve, not strict requirements.

[Neonivek]

1) If your definition of "vaporware" includes "an actually playable game with tons of features that obviously took a long time investment to make", then it's actually useless as a word.

One definition of vaporware is a game that will "never" or "seemingly never" be finished without officially being cancelled.

>_>

[Sergarr]

1) If your definition of "vaporware" includes "an actually playable game with tons of features that obviously took a long time investment to make", then it's actually useless as a word.

One definition of vaporware is a game that will "never" or "seemingly never" be finished without officially being cancelled.

>_>

...Do you even know what "0.40.24" means?

[Neonivek]

0 = Alpha
40 = The number of cores complete
24 = I actually forget.

[Sergarr]

Well, the thing is that there are only 100 core goals. So number "40" here is also the "percent of completion". It's what makes DF different from many other long-term projects - it has a clearly defined "progress bar" that only goes up.

It's why it's not really truthful to say that it's never going to be released - you could get an estimate for release time by extrapolating the current development speed.