PC Where is Madmole? Are TFP staying with Unity? Someone fill in a vet who hasn't been here in a while please.

Except that it was never a "deadline". See, even you are misreading the text to support your argument.

A rough estimate isn't a deadline. It's a hopeful maybe and nothing more.


That´s actually just semantics here, i didn´t misread, i just didn´t go into detail, because if you nowadays are surprised if people mistake a estimated guess for a fact, you have been sleeping under a rock for a long time tbh. Or you are new to the internet. I assume both isn´t true for mad mole.

 
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 Dang it, there goes the "get water in the pot from the water source" idea.


Well, that could qualify as an iteration of what we currently have so it's not impossible.

....and now according to this thread, I've just promised that players will definitely be able to get water using a pot before Christmas. ;)

 
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That´s actually just semantics here, i didn´t misread, i just didn´t go into detail, because if you nowadays are surprised if people mistake a estimated guess for a fact, you have been sleeping under a rock for a long time tbh. Or you are new to the internet. I assume both isn´t true for mad mole.
I don't think anyone suggested he was or is surprised by it.  Just that there's no reason he needs to waste time dealing with people who can't tell the difference.  With A21, when he said when he hoped to see A21 released, they very extremely clear that it wasn't a guarantee and was only an estimation and people still said that he said it would definitely be out when he said.  It kind of reminds me of the movie Willy Wonka with the song during the golden goose part... "I want it now!"  :)

 
You heard it here first! Water pots 12/25/23 or earlier! Thanks for the info leak, Roland.


All part of my plan to sell "Coal for Roland's Stocking" at a nice markup!

Link to my online store pending announcement that Water Pots have been canceled.

 
He didn't specify which Christmas...


Dammit, I forgot how clever and crafty he is.

All part of my plan to sell "Coal for Roland's Stocking" at a nice markup!

Link to my online store pending announcement that Water Pots have been canceled.
I've got a truckload of coal already saved up from a lifetime of being an @%$#. Maybe we could be business partners?

 
....and now according to this thread, I've just promised that players will definitely be able to get water using a pot before Christmas. ;)


I would even bet money that someone on the steam forums will mention that in the future. That´s why i don´t understand when devs even give out vague time frames. It always ends bad if there is just the slightest delay. Even just a day will trigger at least one idiot.

 
Besides, as others mentioned, everyone bugs him for estimated dates and when he gives them and they can't make the date, people complain.  It really isn't worth it for him to waste time
If that's the reason I have absolute sympathy for that.

I have quit participating in some other forum too (was a hardware test site where people also could ask for help when they didn't get something to run properly).

Was a cool time and indeed very satisfying for me, when I could figure out the problem and people came back and told "hey thank you that worked out now everything is fine"

But things grew more and more poisonous over time, and often a thread where somebody needed help developed fast into some offtopic controversy between different opinions on how to do stuff. Every time you made a suggestion someone came up with "that's not the way to do it blablabla". 

And also the amount of childish fanboy behaviour grew terribly, that was the worst.

So one day I realized that it wasn't fun anymore, and I was "why am I still doing this, putting my free time into this now mostly annoying "job". 

And so I stopped.

And btw I want to express my highest respect for people like @Roland and @meganoth and the other mods.

Thanks for still being here and endure us 🙂

 
I would even bet money that someone on the steam forums will mention that in the future. That´s why i don´t understand when devs even give out vague time frames. It always ends bad if there is just the slightest delay. Even just a day will trigger at least one idiot.


"Triggering idiots 2016 - present" is now on my resume.

 
Reading all this i sense a huge disconnect in the team between the programmers/engineers and the artists/designers.  The software side isn't managed properly whether it's lack of a decent lead or in fighting or whatever else.  It's plain as day to anyone whom is into making game systems and happens to read their code.  Implementing new features is going to be very difficult with the current general architecture giving any kind of deadline would be pretty difficult on top that it's normally risky to begin with.  We need a lead engineer to talk on the forums to actually get an idea what's going on much like I stay in contact with the community for my own project, I can actually give mechanical insight and be held accountable for dumb mistakes even if it's an opensource project.  Unless your ideas guy happens to be your lead designer and lead engineer, he's not the reliable source to mention what's going to happen or not.  The entire reason i got into software instead of just game design is because i've realized i want very difficult to achieve things and no one else is going to do it for me, you have to be in the trenches to really gauge the possibilities.  For a project like this the main job of someone who's leading the software team is to understand game systems engineering and general architecture, and two is someone who goes to the lead designer and say "no we can't accomplish this with our current architecture" or "to accomplish your desired X we need Y time to do Z rework"

I'd also like to add that realistically for stuff like this you're better off abstracting away from the backend engine you're using unless there's very good reason not to, even if it's UE, it makes porting easier, makes the API generally more clean and easy to understand, usually helps iteration times to least with statically compiled langs.  A lot of devs are only recently learning the value of this somewhat thanks to unity's situation, though legally speaking if they stick to the version of unity they are using there shouldn't be issue, if there is, well it wouldn't really hold up in court.  Changing ToS for an existing software you already use isn't really supposed to be a thing.  Anyway though to really achieve what they want in the end eventually they are going to need to peal away from unity if they want to "go gold" as they put it.  That's non negotiable.  But it doesn't have to happen off the bat all at once.  It can be a more gradual process if they are determined to stick to the Actor/CS mixed pattern.  And like maybe that'll be sufficient if they don't plan on supporting 10+ playercount servers and more than a few hundred zeds.  You'd ditch this entirely and go data oriented if you were reaching for the multi thousands of zed like NPCs like I am.  Eventually they'll need to rip away from Entity.tick() anyway though and put more and more things in their own game system like a proper product would, it's not just runtime, this is an architectural change which for genres of games like this makes it vastly easier to maintain.  CS/Actor in their more conventional forms where you're not batching such as this game, only really works for very small projects or game jams or such.  It has a very quick time to prototype, with a downward trend in maintainability and thus not just time to add new features or bug fix, but runtime as a whole is a consequence, and adding more features typically harms runtime indirectly sadly.  If you properly batch and take it data oriented least for this genre mix though, there's theoretically an unlimited number of new things you can add without these problems or if there is a limit it's vastly outside the scope of anything any game's ever tried.

 
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If I'm reading this thread correctly then the next TFP game will be entirely made by Roland using the Notreal engine and mostly be about pots in their various sizes and uses.

 
If I'm reading this thread correctly then the next TFP game will be entirely made by Roland using the Notreal engine and mostly be about pots in their various sizes and uses.


I've binged the Barbie movie ten times so far writing down as much source material as I can. The next TFP game may or may not benefit from my work but I've definitely come to the conclusion that a movie co-staring Margot Robbie and Gal Gidot could be about anything and I just wouldn't care.

Wait...pots?

Reading all this i sense a huge disconnect in the team between the programmers/engineers and the artists/designers.


We are not weak-minded fools. Your Jedi mind tricks will not work on us.

 
Trying to figure out how to reply without quoting am sorry for that >.<  Look i realize I'm autistic as @%$# and I'm guessing you've been eating @%$# in general in the past.  I'd like to open up and honestly talk with ya 1 to 1 if you'd be ok with that.  Or in a public space whichever's more comfortable.  But somewhere that's a bit easier to dialog about and clear misunderstandings.  I can admit i'm a @%$#up a fair bit of the time but I do mean well and wish to actually contribute something and perhaps not as great as it could be there's probably something I can offer to the developers which is why am trying to make a bit of noise in the forums as of recent.  I did ask about you and someone mentioned you were a developer I think.  I've no idea how true that is but even regardless i can imagine you probably eat a lot of @%$# and might just be wary.  Please.  I can use critique for my social behavior i know it sucks, am really mostly wanting honest constructive dialog.

 
Trying to figure out how to reply without quoting am sorry for that >.<  Look i realize I'm autistic as @%$# and I'm guessing you've been eating @%$# in general in the past.  I'd like to open up and honestly talk with ya 1 to 1 if you'd be ok with that.  Or in a public space whichever's more comfortable.  But somewhere that's a bit easier to dialog about and clear misunderstandings.  I can admit i'm a @%$#up a fair bit of the time but I do mean well and wish to actually contribute something and perhaps not as great as it could be there's probably something I can offer to the developers which is why am trying to make a bit of noise in the forums as of recent.  I did ask about you and someone mentioned you were a developer I think.  I've no idea how true that is but even regardless i can imagine you probably eat a lot of @%$# and might just be wary.  Please.  I can use critique for my social behavior i know it sucks, am really mostly wanting honest constructive dialog.


No, it's all good. I was making a Star Wars reference joke based on your use of the word "sense". The TFP work environment is not anywhere close to the toxicity you are surmising. :)

The developers, artists, programmers, and QA staff are all very friendly, helpful, and collaborative with each other, and are in daily communication with each other on both business matters and fun outside-the-scope-of-work matters. Nobody is eating even a little bit of @%$#. Your attempt to analyze the inner-workings of TFP based on a thread full of posts by people not associated with TFP did make me smile and I suspect that you are projecting at least some of your own workplace experience/conditions into your view of what it must be like behind the scenes at TFP.

And I've never been hesitant about speaking my mind here on the forums...haha

Even if there were the problems you suspected, the owners would be more likely to seek help from professional consultants to improve the workplace culture than to comb the public forum of fans of their zombie game for advice. As a high school teacher, I work a lot with autistic folks and typically they just need to know when they've overstepped the bounds of appropriate social behavior or misunderstood subtle sarcastic humor as sincere earnest dialogue. I appreciate where you are coming from in your desire to help in any way possible but it isn't an appropriate gesture and it's not even necessary.

 
No, it's all good. I was making a Star Wars reference joke based on your use of the word "sense". The TFP work environment is not anywhere close to the toxicity you are surmising. :)

The developers, artists, programmers, and QA staff are all very friendly, helpful, and collaborative with each other, and are in daily communication with each other on both business matters and fun outside-the-scope-of-work matters. Nobody is eating even a little bit of @%$#. Your attempt to analyze the inner-workings of TFP based on a thread full of posts by people not associated with TFP did make me smile and I suspect that you are projecting at least some of your own workplace experience/conditions into your view of what it must be like behind the scenes at TFP.

And I've never been hesitant about speaking my mind here on the forums...haha

Even if there were the problems you suspected, the owners would be more likely to seek help from professional consultants to improve the workplace culture than to comb the public forum of fans of their zombie game for advice. As a high school teacher, I work a lot with autistic folks and typically they just need to know when they've overstepped the bounds of appropriate social behavior or misunderstood subtle sarcastic humor as sincere earnest dialogue. I appreciate where you are coming from in your desire to help in any way possible but it isn't an appropriate gesture and it's not even necessary.
To be honest I'd be surprised if that's correct considering it's been ten years and on the front of actually getting anything done it's been extremely difficult.  Handling that and not being stressed would be impressive.  But to clarify my skill set it's game systems engineering and i've yet to see an ambitious project like this be taken with grace, everyone on the software side alone would normally be arguing since at least in the non AAA space you have a majority of game programmers obsessed with doing OOP everything to the extreme almost to the obsession of uncle bob, there's nothing in this game that's been batched yet so far that i've seen in the code base.  Which is the direct cause of slow dev times and runtimes.  I'm not joking that doing that alone would multiply productivity by probably about 5x, if the architecture was actually planned and had it's metal tested ground up (though to be fair it's late for that now) it could easily be double that.   It's just very hard to find anyone whom understands this and isn't working at say blizzard.  Usually when I bring this up to other indie game programmers the common response is to resort to belittlement, no kind of dialog what so ever.  AAA companies will never seriously risk or innovate least not at large scale it's up to the indies and medium sized companies to actually take up the mantle.  I do very much wish to get into contact with the team working on this and exchange perspectives.  I should've done so a couple years ago but only now actually have an opensource project to actually demonstrate the experience and points I have to make.

 
To be honest I'd be surprised if that's correct considering it's been ten years and on the front of actually getting anything done it's been extremely difficult.  Handling that and not being stressed would be impressive.  But to clarify my skill set it's game systems engineering and i've yet to see an ambitious project like this be taken with grace, everyone on the software side alone would normally be arguing since at least in the non AAA space you have a majority of game programmers obsessed with doing OOP everything to the extreme almost to the obsession of uncle bob, there's nothing in this game that's been batched yet so far that i've seen in the code base.  Which is the direct cause of slow dev times and runtimes.  I'm not joking that doing that alone would multiply productivity by probably about 5x, if the architecture was actually planned and had it's metal tested ground up (though to be fair it's late for that now) it could easily be double that.   It's just very hard to find anyone whom understands this and isn't working at say blizzard.  Usually when I bring this up to other indie game programmers the common response is to resort to belittlement, no kind of dialog what so ever.  AAA companies will never seriously risk or innovate least not at large scale it's up to the indies and medium sized companies to actually take up the mantle.  I do very much wish to get into contact with the team working on this and exchange perspectives.  I should've done so a couple years ago but only now actually have an opensource project to actually demonstrate the experience and points I have to make.
In language you understand best: No is no.

 
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