- Status
Another +1 for bi-weekly vids!
For me personally, I don't want the video updates to take away TOO much time from the development of the game; until the rest of the team goes full-time, that is. I think a bi-weekly would work perfectly. Also, I really like the suggestion someone made in the Discord about a written update on the forums.
Having a short and sweet update thread in the forums on the week in between the videos I think would be awesome; just to keep the momentum going.
=========
**EDIT**
Apparently I was late to the conversation today.
@Grummz said the following in Discord (3:15 PM PST / 6:15 PM EST / 10:15 PM UTC):
This sounds pretty AWESOMESAUCE!!
8 FOR Em-8ER
.
For me personally, I don't want the video updates to take away TOO much time from the development of the game; until the rest of the team goes full-time, that is. I think a bi-weekly would work perfectly. Also, I really like the suggestion someone made in the Discord about a written update on the forums.
Having a short and sweet update thread in the forums on the week in between the videos I think would be awesome; just to keep the momentum going.
=========
**EDIT**
Apparently I was late to the conversation today.
@Grummz said the following in Discord (3:15 PM PST / 6:15 PM EST / 10:15 PM UTC):
This sounds pretty AWESOMESAUCE!!
8 FOR Em-8ER
.
Last edited:
Likes:
Wyntyr, Mahdi and Pandagnome
It would've been neat to get to see more details on the baked model.
Anyway, there's only so much content that can be shown every week... If there's any implementations done on the coding side it'd be worth mentioning too. Whatever the team has been stuck on, or are currently developing.
Anyway, there's only so much content that can be shown every week... If there's any implementations done on the coding side it'd be worth mentioning too. Whatever the team has been stuck on, or are currently developing.
Likes:
Wyntyr and Pandagnome
@Grummz The videos are hard on you? You don't have a lot to show? I just don't get it.... The funds that were raised. The time that has already gone by. The only reason i was hyped about this game was because I thought Em-8er was going to be everything FireFall wasn't. And... the hype just doesn't seem to be there. We should already be in Demo mode. IMO. This is just starting to feel like a fail. To be honest, everything I've seen up to date has just been mediocre. Doesn't even smell like, "Firefall." I smell no flames. Just gas. People are really out here making games. People out here really trying with out the name. With out the fundings. We've all been here with you no matter how much we've pitched forth and it just seems to be going in one direction. Yours.... Non progressive. Non entertaining. No hype. No enthusiasm, specifically by you on camera. I'm not trying to be harsh. I'm not trying to be negative. Just being honest the way I've seen things develop. I check this site every single day. EVERY DAY. I know, I know... who the f am I. I've already gotten that impression by the selective response you give. I played Firefall for free. Bought a few things here and there. But when I heard about Ember.... The successor. I was willing to give everything I had at the time. Which I did. I'm now at a point where I want to give more. But...give me a reason... Right now there isn't any. Sorry to say. Just being completely honest. Just feels like a waste of time at this point.
Firefall Forever....
Firefall Forever....
Last edited:
I can very much understand how you feel, video game development progress can seem slow, too slow even. The problem here is that right now, Grummz himself is the only Full time worker for EM-8ER, all the other are part time volunteers (for the moment).
Last indiegogo was made to fund making the playable mockup and some of main things about EM-8ER, so far it's progressing really well considering the amount of work there is to do and the small amount of people able to work on this. Whenever the playable mockup is ready, The kickstarter should launch sometime around that time, said Kickstarter is going to be with the goal of getting the team Full time, significantly speeding up progress. (I would like to point out that some of our temporary volunteers, such as Joesolo, has been extremely busy the past months, again, part-time problem, those should not be a thing anymore after the kickstarter.)
All in all, I'd suggest sticking around until the Kickstarter and see how things go. But of course you are free to do as you like, I hope you have a great day either way!
Last indiegogo was made to fund making the playable mockup and some of main things about EM-8ER, so far it's progressing really well considering the amount of work there is to do and the small amount of people able to work on this. Whenever the playable mockup is ready, The kickstarter should launch sometime around that time, said Kickstarter is going to be with the goal of getting the team Full time, significantly speeding up progress. (I would like to point out that some of our temporary volunteers, such as Joesolo, has been extremely busy the past months, again, part-time problem, those should not be a thing anymore after the kickstarter.)
All in all, I'd suggest sticking around until the Kickstarter and see how things go. But of course you are free to do as you like, I hope you have a great day either way!
You say you want more hype and excitement.
Maybe you've got a point.
I've been really, really cautious about making promises for the game or what features it will have. I've kept it really, really narrow, even though I think we will be able to do more now that I understand the Unreal engine much better. It's hard to get people excited if you don't paint a vision of a fantastic game full of features. I can tip my hand a little here, I can let myself show you what I'm really excited to do here with Em-8ER. Maybe it's time.
Then we have to back that vision up with gameplay. I'm not sure what you mean when you say you feel things are not feeling life Firefall. We were never trying to copy that game, but to make a new one based on the principles and best parts of what I designed for Beta. I think what you mean is that you loved the gameplay of Firefall, and that Em-8ER doesn't show gameplay yet. It will come. To give you an example, the art to make the THMPR, back when it was just Joe part-time, took 6 months by itself, but the Unreal engine part of the THMPR patrolling and letting you drill and triggers its emotes only took myself 1 week. Once our art is in the game, you're going to see gameplay progress at much faster levels. Right now though, all I can do is try to help finish the art so we can get it into the game, then switch to coding up everything.
Let me tell you a story. Back when we were starting to make World of Warcraft, the team had to do weekly presentations. Every week the team had to give a demo to the whole company of the progress of the game. To try to impress the company, the team produced huge mockups of gameplay and functionality. They shoved it in and then gussied it up with a lot of temp art. But it wasn't real progress, and all the shoe-horned and hacked features and art had to be thrown away and was unusable for the final game. And despite all that, all of Blizzard remained unimpressed and said the project was doomed to fail. They called openly for it's cancellation and a meeting was called with the founders of Blizzard, the (former) team lead of WoW, and myself. They all voted to cancel World of Warcraft.
Then I came in. I was overseeing production for all of Blizzard's titles as manager of product development back then. But they were going to cancel WoW and I said "no, don't do it, this is the most important project for the company and we can do this." I personally guaranteed the project and joined them full time as team lead.
You know the first thing I did? I immediately cancelled the "gold plating" efforts of the weekly demos. "Just show them what we have, no matter how little, just show progress, no matter how small, each step, but make it REAL." We were no longer going to do a mountain of work just to make an "exciting" video, that we would just have to throw away and redo again for next week. Instead, we did the real work, the ugly work, the unexciting looking work of making the REAL game.
And when the weekly demo came around, we just showed what we had, without trying to make it look uber spectacular each time with a lot of fake stuff. In fact, our first demo was just the human male, walking around an Elwynn forest without tress or buildings...and it wasn't much different each week after that. But then of course, as we had more and more REAL systems to build on, the demos grew exponentially more exciting. But it took many weeks and months to reach that point. The team had turned around, and we gradually went from the biggest "failure" inside Blizzard (despite their fancy weekly demos), to a respected team, and then a major internal project, and then...well, you know the story here.
So, I'm going to continue to do these videos. Many of which are not going to be exciting at first, but over time, you're going to see more and more and more, as we BUILD the foundation with real things, not faked up stuff from the Unreal marketplace, or temp code and white cube art and anims we have to throw away after the video is done.
We're going to do the videos this way because..well, I know it worked. It worked when I helped save WoW and turn in around inside the company. And I know it DIDN'T work to do a lot of hyped up fake stuff just to look good for a demo and then throw it all away and do it again next week.
I know you're a fan, and are still a fan. Bear with me on this. It's going to get better and better. Nobody will remember the videos we do today, but one day, looking back, I think people will say "look how far we've come."
Meanwhile, we're going to keep making progress, no matter how boring, or incremental, or slow it may seem, and SHOW you, instead of hiding it.
Thanks for listening, and keep holding the torch. We're not stopping here until we've got a great game.
- Markus
Maybe you've got a point.
I've been really, really cautious about making promises for the game or what features it will have. I've kept it really, really narrow, even though I think we will be able to do more now that I understand the Unreal engine much better. It's hard to get people excited if you don't paint a vision of a fantastic game full of features. I can tip my hand a little here, I can let myself show you what I'm really excited to do here with Em-8ER. Maybe it's time.
Then we have to back that vision up with gameplay. I'm not sure what you mean when you say you feel things are not feeling life Firefall. We were never trying to copy that game, but to make a new one based on the principles and best parts of what I designed for Beta. I think what you mean is that you loved the gameplay of Firefall, and that Em-8ER doesn't show gameplay yet. It will come. To give you an example, the art to make the THMPR, back when it was just Joe part-time, took 6 months by itself, but the Unreal engine part of the THMPR patrolling and letting you drill and triggers its emotes only took myself 1 week. Once our art is in the game, you're going to see gameplay progress at much faster levels. Right now though, all I can do is try to help finish the art so we can get it into the game, then switch to coding up everything.
Let me tell you a story. Back when we were starting to make World of Warcraft, the team had to do weekly presentations. Every week the team had to give a demo to the whole company of the progress of the game. To try to impress the company, the team produced huge mockups of gameplay and functionality. They shoved it in and then gussied it up with a lot of temp art. But it wasn't real progress, and all the shoe-horned and hacked features and art had to be thrown away and was unusable for the final game. And despite all that, all of Blizzard remained unimpressed and said the project was doomed to fail. They called openly for it's cancellation and a meeting was called with the founders of Blizzard, the (former) team lead of WoW, and myself. They all voted to cancel World of Warcraft.
Then I came in. I was overseeing production for all of Blizzard's titles as manager of product development back then. But they were going to cancel WoW and I said "no, don't do it, this is the most important project for the company and we can do this." I personally guaranteed the project and joined them full time as team lead.
You know the first thing I did? I immediately cancelled the "gold plating" efforts of the weekly demos. "Just show them what we have, no matter how little, just show progress, no matter how small, each step, but make it REAL." We were no longer going to do a mountain of work just to make an "exciting" video, that we would just have to throw away and redo again for next week. Instead, we did the real work, the ugly work, the unexciting looking work of making the REAL game.
And when the weekly demo came around, we just showed what we had, without trying to make it look uber spectacular each time with a lot of fake stuff. In fact, our first demo was just the human male, walking around an Elwynn forest without tress or buildings...and it wasn't much different each week after that. But then of course, as we had more and more REAL systems to build on, the demos grew exponentially more exciting. But it took many weeks and months to reach that point. The team had turned around, and we gradually went from the biggest "failure" inside Blizzard (despite their fancy weekly demos), to a respected team, and then a major internal project, and then...well, you know the story here.
So, I'm going to continue to do these videos. Many of which are not going to be exciting at first, but over time, you're going to see more and more and more, as we BUILD the foundation with real things, not faked up stuff from the Unreal marketplace, or temp code and white cube art and anims we have to throw away after the video is done.
We're going to do the videos this way because..well, I know it worked. It worked when I helped save WoW and turn in around inside the company. And I know it DIDN'T work to do a lot of hyped up fake stuff just to look good for a demo and then throw it all away and do it again next week.
I know you're a fan, and are still a fan. Bear with me on this. It's going to get better and better. Nobody will remember the videos we do today, but one day, looking back, I think people will say "look how far we've come."
Meanwhile, we're going to keep making progress, no matter how boring, or incremental, or slow it may seem, and SHOW you, instead of hiding it.
Thanks for listening, and keep holding the torch. We're not stopping here until we've got a great game.
- Markus
Last edited:
I like watching how the team progress !
Just one thing, will you make beautifull landascape like Copacabana were in Firefall ?
Just one thing, will you make beautifull landascape like Copacabana were in Firefall ?
Likes:
Pandagnome and Grummz
TY. I'm looking at 4 levels of terraforming. 1st is ice/lava with dark skies and lighting. Then, as you terraform the atmosphere you get ice/lava with clear skies. Then you get 2 stages of whatever biome the zone is destined for. I hope that one will be lush like Copa, but Kaiju need a lot of room to move around, so trying to figure out how spread out we have to make stuff to allow for that.
Maybe, you can make a part of the map which looks like Copacabana or an area with sun, nature and exploration !
KaiJu doesn't need to be everywhere aha
KaiJu doesn't need to be everywhere aha
Likes:
Pandagnome
No place is safe. Would be cool if after terraforming a zone some wildlife was added...not sure if it should be dangerous tho...special events could be interesting as could be from Em-8ER's past/future or even some space oddity that happens across the planet in the present and decides to be one helluva mean beach.
Likes:
Faeryl, Pandagnome and Mahdi
Will the effects of blast and destruction be permanent or the terrain refreshes itself in time?
Likes:
Pandagnome and Torgue_Joey
Cannot get any real than that!
Appreciate you not being a fake hyper buttuckus
I had to re-watch pacific rim and noticed a black market for kaiju parts would there be such a thing in em8er for tech or specific items?
Appreciate you not being a fake hyper buttuckus
I had to re-watch pacific rim and noticed a black market for kaiju parts would there be such a thing in em8er for tech or specific items?
Likes:
Mahdi and Wyntyr
- Status