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[Valid_Dark]

But.... I don't want to play your new game, I want to play a more finished version of Qud...   
do you ever plan on continuing development on it?

[unormal]

But.... I don't want to play your new game, I want to play a more finished version of Qud...   
do you ever plan on continuing development on it?

Yup, but it's always been a project we work on between other stuff. There's plenty of stuff we have in mind for it; but it'll remain a hobby until the day we get funding for an FPS-RPG set in the Qud world

We'll have another bout of working on it again at some point here, I've been working on Mono support for it on the side, for instance. I just haven't had anything fit to release recently.

[du3lingdragon]

I would rather pay money for a version of Qud with a graphical tileset and frequent updates. I think qud has more potential than you give it credit for.

[unormal]

I would rather pay money for a version of Qud with a graphical tileset and frequent updates. I think qud has more potential than you give it credit for.

Well, I completely agree that there's commercial possibility in Qud, we really love it or we wouldn't have spent years working on it ; I think we'll explore a more hardcore mobile roguelike, or roguelike-like at some point, and Qud would certainly be a pretty strong starting point for that project.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   I don't know if anyone here is interested but I figured anytime someone does a decent video of a roguelike Its worth reporting it in at the corresponding thread here at Bay12. Anyway a guy on YouTube called Bormac did a video of this and it was decent so here it is.

[Dutchling]

This thread has been dead for a while.

Anyway, can someone perhaps explain this to me:

[Morrigi]

It's an old poem, from what my google-fu has told me.

[Angel Of Death]

Does CoQ have a win condition yet?

[Dutchling]

It's an old poem, from what my google-fu has told me.

I just noticed is rhymed. I feel stupid now

[puke]

Does CoQ have a win condition yet?

No, it is basically abandoned.  The Devs wont acknowledge that directly but any time they are asked they respond that the next features may be added in 30 years or some-such, but they promise they do have those features roadmapped and it is still in active but slow development while they try to make money on other things.

They've been alluding to wanting to work on a commercial project for some years now, I guess they finally have a webpage up for a mobile game now so maybe they're doing work again.  I think the bottom line is they both have day jobs and other hobbies and you shouldn't expect too much.

More than anything I take it as a case study in how not to maintain a fan base, generate interest, or communicate with customers. 

Unormal is fairly active on forums though, so they're at least still paying attention to the idea of Qud.

[puke]

I think puke's being a bit harsh above, but I agree with him on one point; the devs have (purposefully, no doubt, as they can't finish it at this point) done little to generate awareness or interest in Qud, but despite that, it's still well-regarded and relatively popular. This attests to the quality of the game.

Yeah, I'll cop to that.  Your summation is well reasoned and accurate overall, I endorse your message.

[unormal]

We just have day jobs, families and thus a pretty finite number of hours to work on things. I'd say we give Qud a lot of credit for potential, it was a huge labor, which consumed many years of development to get where it is, and while it's not "finished", there's more hours of gameplay in there than a lot of AAA titles. We just wanted to try our hands at a commercial title, and frankly don't have time to work on both projects. We've got a lot of investment in the Freehold setting of Qud, even outside of the region, and you'll see more content for both Qud and Qud-world games from us in the future.

As a correlary to not having time to work on games, we also unfortunately don't have a lot of time for pre-marketing/branding/blogging, we're just working on Sproggiwood, trying to make it the best game we can. We started our first user trials early this month, which have gone well, and are shooting for a very-early-next-year release.

We've actually got a beta build of the next release of Qud we've been working on in a few spare hours, but it's only sort of half-way done. It's got a mutation re-balance and half of a new dungeon. You're welcome to try it out, but it's not quite ready for prime-time, as the new dungeon isn't fully completed.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/vlkzatq58yqkdl5/7hYSNm5s_a

I don't expect everyone that loved Caves of Qud to love Sproggiwood, they're very different games; however, it has an accessible but tactical mobile-interface roguelike at its core, and I hope Caves of Qud has proved that we're comitted to making thoughtful games, and with Sproggiwood, I'm specifically trying to remedy my personal distaste for many of the current crop of mobile games that are accessible, but don't provide any meaningful gameplay. My hope is that it is accessible enough AND deep enough to help introduce people to the fundamentals of roguelike game-play, and that some of them will make the leap up the learning curve to games like Caves of Qud and Dwarf Fortress.

Cheers!

e: I tweet a decent amount of incremental progress/screenshots from my personal account if anyone wants to keep tabs on us: https://twitter.com/unormal
e2: ...also our mobile game development is only a year old at this point, so while it's been a bit, it's not really vaporware.
e3: here's some screenshots of Sproggiwood if you don't want to dig through my twitter.

http://i.imgur.com/M6sOm3V.png
http://i.imgur.com/7m9AvBV.png
http://i.imgur.com/QTzHVdc.png
http://i.imgur.com/qEiAHBR.png
http://i.imgur.com/BVMM47O.png

[unormal]

As a correlary to not having time to work on games, we also unfortunately don't have a lot of time for pre-marketing/branding/blogging, we're just working on Sproggiwood, trying to make it the best game we can. We started our first user trials early this month, which have gone well, and are shooting for a very-early-next-year release.

Thanks for the reply. I just wanted to highlight this bit in particular, and say that though I'm pleasantly surprised Sproggiwood is so close to completion, an early-next-year release is pretty soon. I hope you guys manage to find time for some of the marketing/blogging/internet presence aspect, because who knows; perhaps I'm wrong about it and it would be exactly my sort of game, but there's no chance of me or others finding that out without the information about it being there (and accessible). Not saying this to criticise, I just genuinely want it to be a success so you can continue to make games. Preferably Qud ones

If you're still around - any thoughts on the idea of doing a Kickstarter? For Qud, I mean, not Sproggi.

I agree that we need to up our visibility; and we'll be ramping up as we get closer to release; but I'd rather have an awesome game and ramp up the marketing than spend all our time marketing the crap out of an under-developed game. Maybe the second tack would make more money, but just not our style.

If we were going to kickstart something, it'd probably be a Qud-world game, not necessarily Qud itself.

e: Ultimately I think to really commercialize Qud it'd need to have a graphical engine, and in today's device and OS environment, I'd want it to be cross-platform as much as possible, so it'd end up being a ground-up re-write to make that work. Secondly, in the years of working on Qud we learned an awful lot about game design, and I'd want to bring that knowledge to the table in a commercial game. It has a completely out-of-bounds scope, and I prefer leaving it out there as a game to tinker with, rather than try to make the tough choices and cuts necessary to really complete a viable commercial product. Qud has generated a few hundred dollars in donations, but it's a love-letter to the community, not a serious piece of commercial work. I could certainly imagine bringing the best parts of Qud (setting, mutations, tinkering...) to a new game with a reasonable, rational scope, and a cross-platform engine and executing on that.

[puke]

Ah, you guys are alright.  I guess I find myself overly critical because I see some well intentioned engineers trying to create and market their own stuff, and I imagine the specific places where I might fall down in a similar situation.

I hope sproggy is successful for you, it actually sounds pretty great.  I hope you get to make other Qud properties in the future, and don't get to tied down by the rabbid fans of your original property, even though I'm one.

Keep on keepin' on.

[unormal]

Ah, you guys are alright.  I guess I find myself overly critical because I see some well intentioned engineers trying to create and market their own stuff, and I imagine the specific places where I might fall down in a similar situation.

I hope sproggy is successful for you, it actually sounds pretty great.  I hope you get to make other Qud properties in the future, and don't get to tied down by the rabbid fans of your original property, even though I'm one.

Keep on keepin' on.

Thanks for the goodwill; This has always been one of the best communities out there, and keeps showing itself to be full of great people. Even if Sproggiwood doesn't end up being your thing, I hope you keep an open mind about future games, because we'll be back to Qud sooner or later.



e2: Follow us at https://www.facebook.com/freeholdgames