Limit Theory

[csebal]

I share the concerns of Kayoz and while I do not necessarily agree with his aggressive approach in voicing them, I find it even less appealing the kind of defense Josh tries to put up against that.

I prefer not to criticize kickstarters too much as I believe that everyone should have a shot at their dreams, but you just come over as way too arrogant for someone of your position.

Let me be blunt here, Josh: what you are proposing is ambitious even for a team of seasoned veterans. That you propose to do it alone is .. well.. the kind of thing I would expect from someone with no experience and the kind of thing that makes me not invest a penny in your project. You have a dream, have a few ideas on how to get there and think that it will be smooth sailing because there is nothing you can see that could prove overly difficult or challenging.

Here is how I envision your project sprung to life:
1) Hey.. I love coding.. I'm studying graphics, making a 3D engine seems like a good way to pass the time, plus those are so cool.
2) Hmm.. this engine really works well, all those nice nebulae and planets and models flying around, why not just make a game.. after all, now that I've got the hard part of it nailed down, how hard could it be?
3) That's it, I love elite, I love the X series.. but they all have flaws.. I can do better, I will make the ultimate game that combines the best of both.
4) Kickstarter projects are so popular now, let's fire one up and gather some money for it.

Now the order of things might not be exactly like I envisioned, but I'm 99% certain that it is just what happened. It happened to me as well a good decade ago, except that we did not have kickstarter back then and I eventually got bored of my project and moved on to other things.

Here is the thing, many of the tasks ahead of you seem easy, but you will realize they are extremely complex as they have many links to other systems of the game that you do not yet recognize. The big difference between a newbie and a veteran is not that the veteran can foresee these links and complexities, because even with all my years of experience I cannot foresee all the potential problems in the systems I'm designing, but I can recognize some off them off the bat simply due to me having experienced them previously, and I will certainly do expect the rest of them to occur. Game design (or any other software architecture design) is much like a Mandelbrot set. You start out with a basic image of the idea of what you want and the deeper you go in specifying the details, the more complex it gets. Problems will not be readily apparent until you refined the image enough for the details to show and only then will the real "fun" start.. that is trying to make things work.. conflicting goals be met at the same time, etc.

So when you talk about parts of your game being trivial or easy, the alarms go off in my head for a reason.

Even more so, when you say that you do not want to involve others in designing or developing your game, as you think that it reduces overall efficiency. If you really think that, then you either have no "professional experience" or it must have been a really bad one. Here are just a few things why you NEVER want to work alone on anything:

- Focus: if you think you can manage the entire project now, how about when it will have all added complexities of game logic, AI, sound, graphics, input handling and the like, each probably more complex in itself than what you have until now. Even assuming you can manage it all yourself, just the act of keeping everything together will require a good portion of your mental capacity, which could otherwise be put to more constructive use.

- Assistance: Maybe you have already had one of those long sleepless night, when you struggle with a problem that you have struggled with for days only to have a passing colleague or friend point at your code and say.. hey, that one there is wrong. Solving days of bug hunting just so.. with a few words. If you have not yet had those, well.. do not worry, you will. The reason for that is simple. We tend to get set in our ways and when you work on something for days, weeks or months at a time, you start to work partially from memory, not seeing entirely of what is in front of you, but supplementing bits of it with information from memory. A fresh, unbiased set of eyes often can find problems that you alone would not find for days.

- Skills: Different people are good at different things. Sure, a good developer can learn almost anything given enough time and resources to learn from, but it takes time.. time in which someone already skilled in that area could probably have solved the problem. Not to mention the difference between being able to do something and being good at something. You want people work on things they are good at.

- Maintainability: When you are forced to work with others, you will generally have a much cleaner code that is a lot easier to maintain..

I could probably go on, but it would be pointless really. You might have talent, you might have dedication, but you clearly do not have the right attitude. Good luck with your project. Even though I just do not see how you will succeed with it, if you stick to your current way of thinking or mentality.

[csebal]

double post. weird forum stuff or misclick.

[Saint Ruth]

... Better programmers than you have tried to write their own games in their spare time, and burned out or gave up. Generally, ya it looks easy peasy to code...

And some succeed!

Good luck to you, Josh!

[Lucian]

Hey Kayoz, just wanted to say that I checked out Forsaken Fortress and I think its frickin awesome! Thanks for the heads up a couple of pages ago.

I sure hope they make their, goal its not looking too good for them at the moment unfortunately. Anyway, I pledged to that one too, honestly I'm blowing way too much money on these things nowadays but this is another one I really don't want to see fail.

[parusski]

ORIGINAL: vonRocko

ORIGINAL: JoshParnell


I will not waste any more time discussing matters with someone who clearly does not have any desire for a serious conversation, nor any desire to confess to a lack of practical experience.

Very wise. He is just a negative person, there is no need to waste more time on him.
Good luck kid!

But vonRocko, he is attracting new members to our forum. It's just a coincidence that they joined within a day or so of him.[;)]

[Lucian]

Actually there's no coincidence at all. Kayoz has become quite infamous on several other forums for the insulting and hostile way that he has interrogated this developer.

Not necessarily for the content of his argument, but for the aggressive way that he presented it.

Links were posted complaining about this "horrible person" and I came by to check it out. Simple really.

By the way I love Matrix, Distant worlds Legends is one of my favorite games, I really should have joined this forum ages ago.

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Lucian
Kayoz has become quite infamous on several other forums

Sorry to burst your conspiracy theory bubble, but that can't possibly be me. Perhaps someone's using my handle.

Matrix is the only forum I've addressed this subject. Only. Singular. Got it?

[Lucian]

Dont sound so guilty!!

The other forums were talking about your behavior ON the matrix forums, that's why they posted links to Matrix, not elsewhere. And that was what I was referring to.
But you knew that right?

Or did you....??

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Lucian
Or did you....??

Nope. Not me. I don't know how I can dumb down "no" any more so you can understand it.

I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish with this line of questioning. Why would I cross-post links to Matrix?

[Lucian]

sigh..... Ok one more time. I was in ANOTHER forum, not this one but elsewhere on the net. They were talking about YOUR obnoxious behavior in THIS forum, the one were chatting in now.
Someone who was not one of your many fans posted a link to THIS forum and I came here to see how bad you can really be.

I really, really hope you can understand the chain of events this time round. It isn't that hard.

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Lucian

sigh..... Ok one more time. I was in ANOTHER forum, not this one but elsewhere on the net. They were talking about YOUR obnoxious behavior in THIS forum, the one were chatting in now.
Someone who was not one of your many fans posted a link to THIS forum and I came here to see how bad you can really be.

I really, really hope you can understand the chain of events this time round. It isn't that hard.

Why are you even bringing this up? I can't control what they post. You know, it's raining in NYC. That's about as relevant to this discussion.

I find it oddly amusing that they're more concerned with whether or not I'm polite, than with the merits of my points.

csebal elucidates most of the biggest concerns with Josh's project in a nice, polite post. Hats off to him. Debate the points he brought up if you wish. Otherwise, I'm done - if you still want to throw money at Josh, then all I can say is "you were warned". Kickstarter has a "caveat emptor" policy - nobody can protect you from yourself.

[Lucian]

Sorry to burst your conspiracy theory bubble, but that can't possibly be me. Perhaps someone's using my handle.

Matrix is the only forum I've addressed this subject. Only. Singular. Got it?

That's why, because you misunderstood how I managed to hear of about the Matrix forum. You though I was accusing you of trolling other forums under an alias. And I wasn't, just this one. Hope thats cleared things up

By the way, we may not agree on LT, but I do agree that Forsaken fortress looks fantastic, thank for putting me on to that. I'm being serious.

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Lucian
By the way, we may not agree on LT, but I do agree that Forsaken fortress looks fantastic, thank for putting me on to that. I'm being serious.

Sorry - too many personal attacks of late. Kinda twitchy.

Forsaken Fortress does indeed look promising, from the manpower and concept point of view. They seem to have a good team of people with all the relevant skills necessary to pull it off. Unfortunately, they suffer from a very weak sales pitch and bad marketing in general. Unless something changes soon, they won't make their funding goal.

[Lucian]

Yeah I noticed their financial woes too. I did pledge, but it wasn't much. I've just bought SOTS II and don't have a lot of spare cash. I sure hope they make it, the game just looks awesome. I'd love to play a game like that. Hopefully they will seek funding trough other means if they don't make it.

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Lucian

Yeah I noticed their financial woes too. I did pledge, but it wasn't much. I've just bought SOTS II and don't have a lot of spare cash. I sure hope they make it, the game just looks awesome. I'd love to play a game like that. Hopefully they will seek funding trough other means if they don't make it.

If only I could leverage my apparent infamy to the benefit of FF.

Maybe if I start threads on various forums slagging them off, it'll get the cash rolling in for them?

[Lucian]

Dude if anyone can do it you can!! I have ultimate faith in both your infamy and your ability to piss people off enough to make them spend their money! [:D]

[radic202]

Wow, "this is the thread that never ends.............and it goes on and on my friend................" Anyways, good read from the outside looking in!!!

[JoshParnell]

I'm done - if you still want to throw money at Josh, then all I can say is "you were warned". Kickstarter has a "caveat emptor" policy - nobody can protect you from yourself.

Sorry, real quickly, just wanted to mention that KS is legally-binding. I.e., if you don't fulfill the promise, you are legally liable and, in theory, can have legal action taken against you, unless you can provide a refund. Just wanted to clarify that!

[Lucian]

Ok Josh, now that Kayoz and I are best-est buddies, let me play devil's advocate for a moment.

I do have concerns about something you said earlier about path finding not being an issue. My problem is that in the old Elite games, it was almost impossible to avoid having the AI smack your ships straight into planets and stations, often at several Km/sec.

So for the Elite team, it wasn't trivial, in fact they never managed to solve the issue through several iterations of games. The AI simply couldn't navigate. The X3 Terran Conflict autopilot is a little better, but they don't call it the "Auto Pillock" for nothing.

Could you tell us why these issues wont be a problem for LT? Has technology advanced sufficiently so that it's a non-issue?

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: JoshParnell
As for trading. Here's a simple model: suppose the NPC has a set of known locations. Randomly select some subset of these locations (for variability). Choose some subset of trade goods (perhaps the NPC deals in a certain type of good; it's trivial to generate such a set). Compute the good with the largest price differential among the locations, or, perhaps, the largest price differential per unit volume (again, it's obviously simple, just an outer loop over goods and an inner loop over locations). Now, invoke a "trade" strategy, where the good is the chosen good with maximal price differential, the "source" is the location with the lowest price, and the destination is the planet with the highest price. Other AI strategies, e.g. "TravelTo" will perform the rest of the work. Of course, this is a very simple algorithm, and the algorithms in LT are more complex. Nonetheless, it is a perfectly valid way to determine "what goods the NPC traders and carrying and to where."

Let's take a closer look at this one.

"Compute the good with the largest price differential among the locations... destination is the planet with the highest price. "

Given this method, and the player has opened up a newly generated area with a high price for the good in question, and let's put it quite far from the center of the explored/generated areas. You'll have a swarm of traders headed there - since they're all using the same decision making method.

Now, that's only one problem that your implementation will run afoul. There will be dozens, hundreds more as the code invariably grows. Whether or not you can spot them early in the dev cycle and what you have to do to kludge a fix in later on, is another question.

These sorts of issues will come up exponentially as the project grows, and discussing one or another method is pointless - which is why I said "clouds of fog". The details of one issue is besides the point. What is relevant, is that you intend to do all of this on your own and with no experience of your own or of others to guide you. Somehow you think you'll manage to do what very few novice programmers can do - keep the "big picture" firmly in their mind whilst coding the minutae. That's worrying.

Now, I'm not bothered that you spend your own time and effort on this. It could be a very educational process. But that you're asking for the investment of others, and glossing over (what I see as) the obvious weaknesses of your proposal in terms of it's likelihood of a successful conclusion - strikes me as disingenuous. As csebal pointed out, and I missed - most people don't know how to judge a project. They don't have the tools or knowledge. That you seem to be taking advantage of this is very worrying indeed.

Furthermore, if and (or as I contend) when you abandon the project, the failure will bring all other Kickstarter projects into disrepute. Your failure will negatively affect the chance of successfully funding projects that are proposed by groups that do indeed have a good chance of succeeding. But maybe that's what Kickstarter needs. A few more projects going down in flames, and maybe they'll start instituting a group to weed out the projects that have the worst chance of success. It's clearly needed.