Two Guys Are Back! SPACEVENTURE!

[Tawmis]

I wouldn't watch it if ye don't want spoilers.

[Tawmis]

And now with commentary!

[Tawmis]

Woot, Chris Pope and Mark Crowe both commented on my Commentary video! That's pretty cool.

[Rath Darkblade]

I just watched the first 13 minutes of the commentary (not taking notes or anything, just reading the comments from Chris and Mark etc.)

Tawm, I agree with you. It took 8 years - so what? Making an indie game like this is much more complex when you don't have a megalith like Sierra at your back, not to mention that making games now is a much more complicated matter than it used to be in Sierra's day. Not only that, but if you're releasing it also to Linux, Mac, smartphones etc. you have to debug it for those too ... massive headache. (Note I said "if"). Anyway, that's all by-the-by.

I wonder when SpaceVenture will come out in October? (Once the bugs had been ironed out, obviously). I'm looking forward to playing it!

[Tawmis]

I just watched the first 13 minutes of the commentary (not taking notes or anything, just reading the comments from Chris and Mark etc.)
Tawm, I agree with you. It took 8 years - so what? Making an indie game like this is much more complex when you don't have a megalith like Sierra at your back, not to mention that making games now is a much more complicated matter than it used to be in Sierra's day. Not only that, but if you're releasing it also to Linux, Mac, smartphones etc. you have to debug it for those too ... massive headache. (Note I said "if"). Anyway, that's all by-the-by.
I wonder when SpaceVenture will come out in October? (Once the bugs had been ironed out, obviously). I'm looking forward to playing it!

From what I gathered, it was the first week or so of October they're releasing a new build that fixes some of the bugs mentioned in my video (I am sure others, that may have been reported as well).

[Tawmis]

http://larrylaffer.net/archives/4418

SpaceVenture Update!

[Rath Darkblade]

Whoops, I missed this. *blush* Exciting news indeed! Ken and Cygnus can certainly afford this (from what I know), and it will breathe new life into SpaceVenture.

If this is successful, perhaps Ken might create a new game or two with Al Lowe or the Coles. Or Kristy Marx! Unlikely, I know, but I can dream, right?

[Tawmis]

Whoops, I missed this. *blush* Exciting news indeed! Ken and Cygnus can certainly afford this (from what I know), and it will breathe new life into SpaceVenture.

If this is successful, perhaps Ken might create a new game or two with Al Lowe or the Coles. Or Kristy Marx! Unlikely, I know, but I can dream, right?

Al Lowe has said after the LSL1 Kickstarter, he's done and retiring again.

Christy Marx, from what I have seen on FB (have her as a friend there), has gotten into photography (she takes some amazing pictures of the birds in her backyard that are on her feeder all the time). She's not mentioned anything about another game. I think because Christy Marx has kind of done it all (she's written for several animation shows - Gem and the Holograms, He-Man, etc) and she's written comics as well (such as ElfQuest).

[Tawmis]

http://larrylaffer.net/archives/4968

Hey everyone, we hope you’re all having a good holiday season. We wanted to do a quick update on the project. We have been in the process during most of this year, trying to move SpaceVenture onto the newer Unity platform. We had built SpaceVenture on an older platform due to the licenses that we purchased back years ago before Unity changed their licensing model. Of course, this was the newest platform back when we purchased the licenses.

What we did not expect was how extremely different things would be on the Apple/Android operating systems during the time period of finishing the game. We originally had licenses for Windows, Linux, Android, Mac, and iOS, however, at this point, the out of date Unity engine that the game was built on, can only produce SpaceVenture on Windows and Linux.

So in order to fulfill the game being released on the other operating systems, we are in the process of moving into the newer Unity engine. As you can probably guess, this has been quite an undertaking due to there being so many changes to the newest engine and the code it supports. We are going scene by scene and fixing all the issues found after the upgrade. Ken Williams’ Cygnus team started to help earlier in the year with this, but due to their game “Colossal Cave Adventure” experiencing some slow downs on its various platforms, they had to switch gears and focus fully on it instead of SpaceVenture.

The SpaceVenture team is now utilizing the newer Unity engine and tools to get everything straight. We are fixing bugs along the way and addressing many of the complaints that we got from our previously released build. We realize that a lot of you would like us to go ahead and release the game onto Steam. It’s important to understand that we only get one shot at making a positive impression with players on Steam, and hopefully get decent ratings/reviews there. We are counting on income from Steam in order to pay for reward shipping to everyone. That being said, if we release on Steam and players are unhappy with the results, it will be tough to make the money we need for the shipping. We don’t want to release the game there until we’ve got it stabilized on the newer Unity platform and have finished addressing concerns from the earlier build. Also once we’ve got things stable, we’ll release an updated build to all of you as well, not to mention Steam keys when the game goes on there.

As always, thank you all for your patience! This has been the longest haul of our lives, but we’re still hauling and not giving up! We hope all of you have a great rest of 2023 and a happy new year!

[Rath Darkblade]

Hooray for bug-finding!

Silliness aside, the Two Guys are doing the right thing here. An early release that's full of bugs would doom Space Venture to failure. We'll wait.

How many games (and other software) was released early, but proved to be buggy? Exactly.

[Tawmis]

I think the complaint is - this Kickstarter went live in June (I think) of 2012.

That's 11 years people have been waiting for the release.

I am fortunate because I got in with the cool kids and got to test the Alpha versions onward.

And I played (and beat) the latest version they released.

A lot of other people who funded the game, have not.

Imagine funding a game, and 11 years later, you still haven't gotten it.

People get upset when Pizza isn't delivered in 30 minutes!