Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[nenjin]

You could just as easily hold the same position as DF having a reasonable UI.

It has a UI. That's more than you can say for PZ and its data plan.

And that must be the most epic 2 to hour game of fort mode ever, if you never use a save at all. Or the most shallow.

[MrStyx]

Saving is only a feature to those who think they can survive the impending zombie apocalypse.

[nenjin]

Or people who want to go to bed without committing suicide.

[lordcooper]

You could just as easily hold the same position as DF having a reasonable UI.

It has a UI. That's more than you can say for PZ and its data plan.

And that must be the most epic 2 to hour game of fort mode ever, if you never use a save at all. Or the most shallow.

Playing DF is a rare event for me.  But when it happens, it lasts all day.

Or people who want to go to bed without committing suicide.

Chill out dude, it's only a game.

[nenjin]

But it's true! If you're kicking ass, having the best game of PZ you've ever had...what are you supposed to do? Leave your PC running while you sleep? Or kill yourself? Neither of those are a good option for a game that's based around surviving longer.

The game being good isn't going to stop me from being critical of them when, I think, it's totally warranted. I feel sorry for them but my compassion and patience has its limits.

[Zangi]

Is it possible to put the PC on hibernate or sleep?  Or is that just as bad or doesn't work at all?

Albeit, my recent experience with that has been fairly positive with Windows 7...

[lemmy101]

I've bought plenty of games in alpha. This is the first one where saving the game was not considered a basic component, like keyboard input and printing stuff to screen. After some point, you run out of excuses to make for the dev team. I was running out before they got burgled.

Or to put it another way, no one would be playing DF right now if you weren't capable of saving the game, no matter how good it is.

Christ, even Binding of Isaac, which doesn't have game saves, had data saving when it shipped.

I want to like these guys, and their work. But it's long looked like they've had competency issues, and for me, this is the most damning evidence that they don't honestly have a plan. I already own the game, but I honestly can't recommend it to anyone at this point until they start deving with a mind toward a real product.

Prior to now the game wasn't labeled as alpha, it was a 'tech demo' which it was called purely because we didn't consider the game to be fully 'playable'. We then wrote saving. It was in. Then we got burgled and had our lives turned upside down. We lost months of work, and forgive us in our massive state of depression for not immediately getting back on with redoing the bit of development that was the biggest pain in the arse to do the first time around immediately afterward, and perhaps working on something that would help us refind our enthusiasm for the project.

FYI saving is about 50% rewritten at this stage, and of course we consider it an important addition. The lack of empathy due to being burgled and having a lot of your earthly possessions stolen to the value of over £10,000 and having yourself publicly humiliated and vilified over it, and then being expected to be the kings of professionalism still baffle me to the day. You're free to judge the direction of the project, of course, but of course we've had a solid plan. But solid plans get somewhat changed by unforeseen circumstances. If we hadn't been burgled your criticisms on saving would be completely invalid as it would have been in months ago.

[dennislp3]

But it's true! If you're kicking ass, having the best game of PZ you've ever had...what are you supposed to do? Leave your PC running while you sleep? Or kill yourself? Neither of those are a good option for a game that's based around surviving longer.

The game being good isn't going to stop me from being critical of them when, I think, it's totally warranted. I feel sorry for them but my compassion and patience has its limits.

Pausing the game and having your PC run while you sleep sounds like a small "price" to pay if its such a good game...shut your monitor off and deal with it the next day...is that really so hard?

For the love of god dont drag the indie stone forum bullshit crybaby thing here. ITS A FUCKING VIDEO GAME NOT THE END OF THE WORLD.

Lemmy (and the rest of your team) I dont get how you deal with the shit you do man...you have been cursed with the worst "fan"base I have ever seen...more like a trollbase.

[nenjin]

I forgive you. Just know that's the one thing on the list that's been missing for it to be playable experience for me.

Like I said, everything about the game is love, except the rocky and unpredictable path development has taken. And I'm not blaming you guys for the stuff that was totally out of your control. And I'm glad to hear that it's a rebuilding of the save code instead of starting from square 1. When that feature is in, I'll have no problem recommending the game to everyone. I have few problems now, aside from that one giant exception.

Pausing the game and having the PC run while you sleep sounds like a small "price" to pay if its such a good game...shut your monitor off and deal with it the next day...is that really so hard?

It's ghetto. For a product I paid money for, for a product they're trying to sell, alpha or not, indie or not, I expect something just a wee bit more professional. And this has been the case with the game for a long, long time now.

Like I said, at some point, I run out of excuses to make to myself about it.

If we hadn't been burgled your criticisms on saving would be completely invalid as it would have been in months ago.

I would like for nothing more than for that to be true, on both counts. To tell you the truth, I've always been mystified how the rest of the game could be that polished, for that long, and the save feature was still absent.

[dennislp3]

Ghetto? its an unfinished game...Jesus Christ lol

Just cause you want it doesn't mean the world needs to bow to your whims...why not...not play it?

[lemmy101]

I forgive you. Just know that's the one thing on the list that's been missing for it to be playable experience for me.

Like I said, everything about the game is love, except the rocky and unpredictable path development has taken. And I'm not blaming you guys for the stuff that was totally out of your control. And I'm glad to hear that it's a rebuilding of the save code instead of starting from square 1. When that feature is in, I'll have no problem recommending the game to everyone. I have few problems now, aside from that one giant exception.

Pausing the game and having the PC run while you sleep sounds like a small "price" to pay if its such a good game...shut your monitor off and deal with it the next day...is that really so hard?

It's ghetto. For a product I paid money for, for a product they're trying to sell, alpha or not, indie or not, I expect something just a wee bit more professional. And this has been the case with the game for a long, long time now.

Like I said, at some point, I run out of excuses to make to myself about it.

Thanks. Though, I mean, please put this in perspective. 'A product I've paid money for'. It's not a binary statement. In terms of the work that's gone into the game, and the price of many other games, you can't possibly hold a £5 alpha game in the same level of expectation as you would a £30 indie game? or a full price console/PC game? I mean if we were charging £15 for a finished game without saving it would seem a more valid criticism.

Surely?

Many prominent indies are starting to get frustrated at the 'devaluing' of indie games, where once you could happily charge £15 for a game if you felt it worth it, but in the age of bundles and whatnot everyone expects if its indie you should only be paying a couple of quid for it, or 5 games for 5 pound or whatever, even if the developer worked on that game for years and gameplaywise the game has as much to offer as commercial titles. The fact that a game that costs less than a single 20 pack of cigarettes for lifetime updates can be held with such criticisms for things that aren't in yet, especially considering extenuating circumstances as to why they aren't in yet, seems a real shame to me.

And FYI, I'd like to see you survive long enough to justify saving in the latest build. It was never our expectation that people would generally live long enough to require saving, and therefore it wasn't as high priority as 'more stuff to actually do in the game' or fixing serious issues and bugs with the game. It even had a warning screen saying 'this is a tech demo and not intended for many hours of gameplay, but just to show where we are headed.' We similarly stated that on the site.

[nenjin]

why not...not play it?

I haven't been. For months. And months. And months. So I've watched every update since before and after the burglary, waiting to see it drop. Given what I paid, I'll live. But as one of the first people, who bought purely on the premise, yeah. I feel like I'm entitled to say my piece. I know the team has already told really disgruntled fans where they can take themselves, and I'm not one of them. That doesn't mean I don't have an opinion of the team, and that it's not always flattering.

In terms of the work that's gone into the game, and the price of many other games, you can't possibly hold a £5 alpha game in the same level of expectation as you would a £30 indie game? or a full price console/PC game? I mean if we were charging £15 for a finished game without saving it would seem a more valid criticism.

Surely?

Surely, as noted above. I'm annoyed, I'm not flipping out nerd raging about it.

And FYI, I'd like to see you survive long enough to justify saving in the latest build. It was never our expectation that people would generally live long enough to require saving, and therefore it wasn't as high priority as 'more stuff to actually do in the game' or fixing serious issues and bugs with the game.

In the very beginning, I could see PZ as lasting no more than 10 minutes and that expectation worked well. It was still essentially a web app with low commitment.

Now, it seems like the game is on a different path, one that makes it a game that can be lived in, instead of visited for 5 to 10 minutes at a time.

As for whether or not I could survive long enough in the current version and that justifying a save game or not....kind of a moot point to me. With a save game I could at least re-approach the situation to try a new method. That alone would keep me playing much longer than constantly rebuilding characters.

The fact that a game that costs less than a single 20 pack of cigarettes for lifetime updates can be held with such criticisms for things that aren't in yet, especially considering extenuating circumstances as to why they aren't in yet, seems a real shame to me.

I'm not talking about the lack of pixel shaders, content or anything like that. To me, it's a basic, core thing for games to save out their data. Even Nintendo games made it a priority. So while I do feel for your guy's plight, I noticed the absence of this thing from day 1, and it's been an issue to me from day 1. While you deserve all the compassion in the world, and you've gotten quite a bit, that only goes so far.

[lemmy101]

With a save game I could at least re-approach the situation to try a new method. That alone would keep me playing much longer than constantly rebuilding characters.

Well considering the game is out of design only ever going to be save on quit with permadeath, this is not really a valid criticism in itself then since the priority of saving is different for you based on a misconception as you wouldn't be able to do this anyway except savescumming, just something that you don't like about a game that many people do like. Save would be purely a mechanism to continue a game later.

Thanks for your clarifications though, sorry if I get defensive only having our competency called into question over lacking save seems unfair to me.

[lordcooper]

With a save game I could at least re-approach the situation to try a new method. That alone would keep me playing much longer than constantly rebuilding characters.

Well considering the game is out of design only ever going to be save on quit with permadeath, this is not a valid criticism, just something that you don't like about a game that many people do like. Save would be purely a mechanism to continue a game later.

Dwarf Fortress style, eh?  I like it!

[nenjin]

Savescumming exists in DF too, and I do the same thing in DF. It's not an objection to the premise of the game.....it's the lack of a basic, CORE thing that any game played for more than 5 mins requires. Even if I wasn't going to "cheat", being able to continue a deep simulation from where you left off is necessary.