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[forsaken1111]

Oh hey look he did that thing that I said should be done.

[Mephansteras]

Here is the update on kickstarter. For people who want to read everything.

[forsaken1111]

The game certainly is named well. It keeps popping back up just when people have written it off.

[lordcooper]

I do look forward to seeing the copious servings of humble pie that get dished out if this ever releases.

[Neonivek]

I do look forward to seeing the copious servings of humble pie that get dished out if this ever releases.

Humble Pie has an expiry date

[lordcooper]

Then let them eat humble cake.

[Sergarr]

Now that I've completely gutted the prior ambitious simulation we're left with a much more tried and true solution to robust AI needs - meaning that at worst case we're looking at the AI making some dumb decisions as opposed to the entire simulation collapsing

I reckon it's less about "determination" and more about "general programming know-how"; his AI bug, for example, is a good example of bad programming practices. Recursive function calls in situations where existence of a stable solution is not guaranteed, and without any random component to smooth it out? It's one of those things that first-timer programmers tend to do, because it sure does "look beautiful" (I know because I remember doing something like that when I was new);

If he was more experienced and thus started to work from already existing architectures (of which there are many), which incidentally never use recursion, he at the very least would not have had that problem, which would've accelerated his game development by 1-2 weeks - and that's only on that one problem. He undoubtedly have had many more, of which he hasn't told us, and of them, there were probably many that could've been avoided, saving literally months of coding time.

Where is the "smug" emoji when you need one?

But yeah, good to see him making actual progress now.

[Cruxador]

After so long, I'm still taking this with a grain of salt. One of the ones they sell at salt mines with weight measured in kilos. But it looks like he's thrown out a lot of bathwater, and I'm willing to believe that the baby is no longer drowning, if it was a baby to begin with and not just a pretty doll.

Some of his negative language seems a bit unnecessary though. He says quests "got neutered", but the decision he made seems like a good one that makes the important quests more important and gameplay potentially less tedious. And some of the things cut there seem like things that could potentially be re-added in some form via DLC if the game actually does come out, does well, and he doesn't want to just wash his hands of the whole affair (which would be understandable).

[Mephansteras]

I have a feeling a good bit of that language reflects his dismay at having to reduce the scope of his original design. Not that cutting/simplifying wasn't a good idea, of course, just that he's probably disappointed in how things went.

[Xgamer4]

Some of his negative language seems a bit unnecessary though. He says quests "got neutered", but the decision he made seems like a good one that makes the important quests more important and gameplay potentially less tedious. And some of the things cut there seem like things that could potentially be re-added in some form via DLC if the game actually does come out, does well, and he doesn't want to just wash his hands of the whole affair (which would be understandable).

That's just the attitude of a dev grumpy that this really cool thing he thought of isn't actually doable in any reasonable amount of time, when you were so sure it could be done. It probably shouldn't have slipped into the update, but if anything it's just a good sign for us, because it indicates that he's pulled things back to a point where it's reasonable and doable. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Though in general, yeah, I agree - in practice I think these were good decisions from a gameplay standpoint.

[Darkmere]

I'll believe it when it's actually released in a playable state that someone has actually seen. Not a minute before.

[Retropunch]

I have a feeling a good bit of that language reflects his dismay at having to reduce the scope of his original design. Not that cutting/simplifying wasn't a good idea, of course, just that he's probably disappointed in how things went.

It may well be part frustration, but I do wonder if his negative language also reflects how stripped down the game is going to be at the end of it. ANYTHING is better than nothing, but it may well be that the negative language is there to act as a sort of 'don't get your hopes up' message.

Whilst I'm impressed at his efforts to simplify, I'm not going to start the forgiveness train until I actually see some hard code.

[Mephansteras]

Sure. Skepticism is wise, certainly. But I am quite interested to see what does ultimately get delivered.

[Parsely]

Now that I've completely gutted the prior ambitious simulation we're left with a much more tried and true solution to robust AI needs - meaning that at worst case we're looking at the AI making some dumb decisions as opposed to the entire simulation collapsing

I reckon it's less about "determination" and more about "general programming know-how"; his AI bug, for example, is a good example of bad programming practices. Recursive function calls in situations where existence of a stable solution is not guaranteed, and without any random component to smooth it out? It's one of those things that first-timer programmers tend to do, because it sure does "look beautiful" (I know because I remember doing something like that when I was new);

If he was more experienced and thus started to work from already existing architectures (of which there are many), which incidentally never use recursion, he at the very least would not have had that problem, which would've accelerated his game development by 1-2 weeks - and that's only on that one problem. He undoubtedly have had many more, of which he hasn't told us, and of them, there were probably many that could've been avoided, saving literally months of coding time.

Where is the "smug" emoji when you need one?

But yeah, good to see him making actual progress now.

Practically the minute the dev's work was exposed to the outside world people quickly identified simple mistakes he's made, all of which could have been avoided if he wasn't so scared of looking stupid. Amazing.

This is what happens when people try to lock themselves in a room and make something. Whatever you emerge with in 1 or 4 or 12 years is either going to be old hat, or completely broken, if you do not give it some exposure to outside observation. At the least you have people making observations that you can use to improve your product. This is why a lot of open source projects are so well maintained and a single person project can end up involving many stupid mistakes (which isn't to say that open source has no weaknesses), because the bad single person project was being done by someone who thought he didn't need feedback because that's how he perceived other smart people to work (history books often fail to cover all the people that men like Einstein and Stephen Hawking were touched by). As my Biology professor said, the smartest person isn't the one who can make the quickest decisions or do things with the least amount of help, he's the guy who is willing to live without prejudice: he accepts that he can be wrong, he operates based on evidence rather than belief, and takes into account observations made by his peers.

The worst part is it's a mistake that gets made over, and over, and over again, because people, indie devs and bigger devs alike, are so affected by this powerful fear of embarrassment that it pushes them to hide their mistakes instead of sharing them so that people can learn.

[nenjin]

Because this crowd would have been so understanding if he'd released a broken piece of shit, amirite? He was a "fraud" without having released anything. He'd get called a fraud because what he did release didn't meet the expectations he'd set.

Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. I don't fault him for deciding noise wasn't going to help him.