KickStarter Shroud of the Avatar - Lord British's Not-Ultima Online 2

[Eggs is eggs]

The death spiral continues as according to steam charts, the average # of players is the lowest since it went persistent in 2016 and the peak players is lower than at some points pre-persistence. I don't think the game was set up as a scam from the beginning but they were so horribly incompetent during the early years of development that the only way to keep the lights on after a certain point was to essentially start scamming people and they kept digging themselves into a hole deeper and deeper until they got to where they are now.

 

[Grauken]

Think of what a nice Ultima-like you could have done with that money

btw. Demo for The Dark Unknown is out
https://darkunknown.org/demo/

 

[Infinitron]

http://ultimacodex.com/2019/07/shroud-of-the-avatar-physical-rewards-shipping-update/

Shroud of the Avatar: Physical Rewards Shipping Update
BY WTF DRAGON · PUBLISHED JULY 19, 2019 · UPDATED JULY 19, 2019

Normally, we only post Shroud of the Avatar-related news once every couple of weeks, but this recent forum post by Starr Long is worth highlighting all on its own. Portalarium are evidently in the midst of a big push to get outstanding physical rewards — maps, game boxes, but not, notably, books (more on that shortly) — shipped to those backers who have not yet received them.

Thank you everyone for your patience and please once again accept our deepest apologies for the horrible delays in getting the last of the pledge rewards delivered. Tens of thousands of you successfully got your boxes in the first couple of rounds but between the manufacturer incorrectly delivering packages, bugs in the address confirmation code, another former team member having to suddenly depart with back issues, and other problems there are still a few of you who are still owed your boxes. Fortunately this week the entire team got together and sent out all of the remaining boxes (that we had accurate information for)! You should receive your box in the next couple of weeks.

If you have not received your box by August 16 please message support@portalarium.com and we will figure out what the few remaining issues are. Please note that we do not have the bandwidth to reply to all of the customer support messages and that is why we have not sent out notices to those of you who messaged us already. Your notification will be the arrival of your boxes. Also note if you got a notification from “Lemonade Couture” about in incoming package that’s from us (it’s Chris’s wife’s clothing company and we are using her shipping account).​

#bandwidth

Let’s just pause for a moment and take note of the fact that they aren’t using their own shipping account here, but rather that of Chris Spears’ wife’s infant and children’s clothing online boutique. To be fair, because it’s an online-only (as far as I can tell) clothing boutique, Lemonade Couture probably — thanks to Umbrae for pointing this out on the UDIC Discord server — gets much better bulk shipping rates than Portalarium does. That said, I can’t help but have the feeling that this arrangement speaks to the very threadbare financial circumstances Portalarium may well be in at present.

At any rate, it was noted above that there’d be more about physical copies of books, specifically Blade of the Avatar. And from a certain point of view, there is:

Unfortunately we do not yet have an update on the physical book reward. We are still trying to work out something with the publisher. As noted in previous posts as soon as we have an update we will provide one.​

I’m beginning to suspect that the resolution of the book issue will take one of two forms:

1. Nobody gets a physical copy of Blade of the Avatar, except those who bought — separately — the expanded version published by TOR some years ago.
2. Portalarium buys a bunch of copies of the TOR-published version of the book, and ships these to backers.

At any rate, Long for his part is asking that further discussion about physical rewards be a) limited to just one thread on the forum, and b) be constructive in nature:

Also please note there are multiple threads on the forums about the box topic which makes it difficult to track where the actual issues are (and technically multi-posting is against community policy). So I’m going to close those other threads and point folks to this thread so we can consolidate feedback. Also note that repeated posting of memes and other unhelpful items will begin to be moderated. We understand everyone’s frustration but fanning the flames helps no one.

Once again we are sorry for the delay but we should have this straightened out soon.​

You’ll probably all have noticed, by now, that there’s a third counter in the header now, counting down to 5:00 PM (Mountain Time) on August 16th. If my box hasn’t been delivered by then, I’m pretty sure it won’t ever be (but my hope is that it’s somewhere in the pile of boxes above, at least one stack of which is labeled with a K.

 

[taxalot]

The focus on physical good baffles me, considering they haven't delivered a finished game at all in the first place.

 

[FireKing]

What baffles me, is the number of idiots who still throw money at this game, given that it is a complete mess! Like Jaesun for example.

 

[Morkar Left]

The focus on physical good baffles me, considering they haven't delivered a finished game at all in the first place.

What's a "finished" software is debatable and subjective. Physical items not shipped aren't.

 

[Makabb]

The focus on physical good baffles me, considering they haven't delivered a finished game at all in the first place.

What's a "finished" software is debatable and subjective

Not realy, if this was true then the games in 80's and 90's and early 2000s would be never finished. There is a clear design goal, and if the goal is achieved then the game is finished....... it's just that today developers are spending more time posting updates to early access on internet than actualy working on the game.

 

[Morkar Left]

The focus on physical good baffles me, considering they haven't delivered a finished game at all in the first place.

What's a "finished" software is debatable and subjective

Not realy, if this was true then the games in 80's and 90's and early 2000s would be never finished. There is a clear design goal, and if the goal is achieved then the game is finished....... it's just that today developers are spending more time posting updates to early access on internet than actualy working on the game.

The design goal is always making the best [genre] game ever!
Sure you try to get a finished and polished product but especially games from the 80s and 90s are often extremely broken or underdeveloped. Because if there was a deadline you had to publish on that date.

 

[a Goat]

Didn't they go "nomadic" recently? As in stopped paying rent for their office and started developing remotely from their homes?

 

[taxalot]

Didn't they go "nomadic" recently? As in stopped paying rent for their office and started developing remotely from their homes?

They have been working from home for a while now. But the game has been dead for longer than that.
I was shocked to hear they have added a new sidequest in the latest patch. It's probably been months since that happened.

 

[Metro]

How is this still a thing?

 

[taxalot]

How is this still a thing?

Whales and autists.

 

[gurugeorge]

My experience of this game was buying early access, firing it up, thinking, Hmm, this looks promising but it needs a lot of work. Then every few months, downloading it again in the hopes that things have improved. I finally realized a couple of months ago that it's hopeless.

Despite some good ideas (I like the way abilities are implemented, and some of the art design and world-building is nice), it's just never been satisfying to actually play. There's always been that odd floaty feel in the way your character moves, and the fx are lacklustre. It just doesn't feel solid. It's kind of vaguely unpleasant to play out of the box, basically.

Reminds me of how janky Vanguard: Saga of Heroes felt when it first came out, but that was because I was using a toaster at the time, relative to its requirements - when I tried it later with a proper rig it was fine and fun. With this, even though I'm well beyond spec, it just feels awkward to play, still today, exactly like it's felt from day one.

Why do people keep trying to make games on Unity? The only game I think that's worked out well has been Pathfinder, and that's isometric. Other than that, games made in Unity that sport proper first or third person graphics just seem to have a crappy feel to them.

 

[grimace]

Imagine if Shroud of the Avatar had been isometric and much closer to a "modern" Ultima Online and Ultima 7 experience.

This was the impossible dream when Richard Garriot "listened" to the Kickstarter backers who asked for "modern" 3D graphics. Jumping was not going to be a feature. Swimming was added after jumping. The path finding had been planned around click to move to a tile gameplay.

Spoiler

I don't know if this would have been a better game than what we have now.

 

[taxalot]

I don't know if the game we got was a result of pandering to the backers or dubious intentions that were from the very start. I'm guessing a bit of both and backers furthermore enabled them in their plans. The backlash should have been from the very start.

Garriot made very good early Ultima games. I have no doubt he would have been able to deliver a decent game of the sort IF that's what he went for. But he didn't, and instead we got SOTA.

 

[Grauken]

Garriott has lost interest in these kind of games long ago, all he cares for are online worlds, his platonic ideal for RPGs

 

[Fishy]

Why do people keep trying to make games on Unity? The only game I think that's worked out well has been Pathfinder, and that's isometric. Other than that, games made in Unity that sport proper first or third person graphics just seem to have a crappy feel to them.

There's been plenty of good/great games in various genres made with Unity: SR Dragonfall, SR Hong Kong, Endless Legend, Wasteland 2, Kerbal Space Program, Tyranny, Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator, Hollow Knight, Rimworld... I would blame minimal effort rather than the engine. Unity makes it easy to do the first 90%, but it can't do the rest of the polishing for you. Even the most basic 2d platformer can feel shit or awesome depending on how much effort you put into tuning the animations and physics, no matter the engine.

 

[grimace]

I don't know if the game we got was a result of pandering to the backers or dubious intentions that were from the very start. I'm guessing a bit of both and backers furthermore enabled them in their plans. The backlash should have been from the very start.

Garriot made very good early Ultima games. I have no doubt he would have been able to deliver a decent game of the sort IF that's what he went for. But he didn't, and instead we got SOTA.

I don't know if the game we got was a result of pandering to the backers or dubious intentions that were from the very start.

Top down decisions from Richard, Star, and Chris were justified by quoting users from the forums. It's the leaders making a decision and saying the followers wanted it. This led to disillusioned backers leaving with each release as their vision of the game was no longer being delivered.

The backlash should have been from the very start.

Every decision met with backlash and spllit the playerbase.

The full loot open world PVP everywhere crowd versus the "carebears" who only wanted to dress up dolls and decorate houses fought. Those interested in Ultima Online style PVP left to Playerunkownbattlegrounds, Fortnite, and other forced PVP style games.

 

[CaffeineConquistador]

Why do people keep trying to make games on Unity? The only game I think that's worked out well has been Pathfinder, and that's isometric. Other than that, games made in Unity that sport proper first or third person graphics just seem to have a crappy feel to them.

There's been plenty of good/great games in various genres made with Unity: SR Dragonfall, SR Hong Kong, Endless Legend, Wasteland 2, Kerbal Space Program, Tyranny, Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator, Hollow Knight, Rimworld... I would blame minimal effort rather than the engine. Unity makes it easy to do the first 90%, but it can't do the rest of the polishing for you. Even the most basic 2d platformer can feel shit or awesome depending on how much effort you put into tuning the animations and physics, no matter the engine.

Rimworld...? Loved that game and didn’t even know that. SR, and Wasteland I could tell cuz of that plastic look.

 

[Eggs is eggs]

Seems like the scope of the game was way too big for the developers. During the kickstarter, the game was promoted as both single player and multiplayer, with both a strong Ultima-style story and UO style online sandbox gameplay. They wanted to be all things to all people. And they kept adding in random stretch goals to increase the amount of money raised. There was even a stretch goal to make a VR version of the game.

 

[Tweed]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, it ain't no game, it's a magical LARPing fairyland where Richard's biggest fans get to frolic with him on down through the ages.

And pay for his retirement.

 

[Eggs is eggs]

And what was even going on in the Portalarium offices for most of the development cycle? They peaked at ~30 staff members, development began shortly before the 2013 kickstarter, it went persistent in 2016 and the massive layoffs didn't happen until mid-2018. So 30 staff members * 40 hrs a week * 52 weeks * 5 years = 10400 man hours. The game engine and most of the assets were even pre-made for them. How could they spend so much time accomplishing so little?

 

[taxalot]

And what was even going on in the Portalarium offices for most of the development cycle? They peaked at ~30 staff members, development began shortly before the 2013 kickstarter, it went persistent in 2016 and the massive layoffs didn't happen until mid-2018. So 30 staff members * 40 hrs a week * 52 weeks * 5 years = 10400 man hours. The game engine and most of the assets were even pre-made for them. How could they spend so much time accomplishing so little?

Did you play the game ? I actually disagree with you here, you can tell it tries to look bigger budget than it actually is, hence all the Unity store looting. When I paralled to the ox and frog classical tale that features proeminently in books in the game I meant exactly that. You can tell it tries to. It sometimes even look good and great in places, if you take the right screenshot at the right moment. But it's all smoke and mirrors and the experience inside is shallow because they clearly couldn't keep up with the appearances they tried to maintain. It's like they built the infrastructure for an AAA looking game and then were left with the remnants of a budget.

My point is : the man hours actually show. They were just man hours spent in entirely wrong places.

 

[Infinitron]

All is good again! https://ultimacodex.com/2019/08/at-long-last-the-box-arrives/

At Long Last, The Box Arrives!
BY WTF DRAGON · PUBLISHED AUGUST 8, 2019 · UPDATED AUGUST 8, 2019

If you’ve been following the ongoing saga of my until-yesterday missing Shroud of the Avatar box – the physical reward for backing the game on Kickstarter some six years ago – then you’ll hopefully be happy to learn that the long wait is over. As of about 4:00 PM on August 7th, according to the Stamps.com tracking portal, the box has been in my hands…and I was quite happy to retrieve it from the post box as I took the Kidlets out for an evening bicycle ride.

Of course, I didn’t get a chance to open the package until today.

It’s worth noting that the package itself was in good shape. Inside, a boxed copy of the game and a hastily-“folded” cloth map were to be found.

Okay, it may be a tad too charitable to call the map “folded”, though it’s none the worse for wear. There’s also a note from Chris Spears offering an apology for the delay in getting the box mailed out.

Caught up in the folds of the map was the special collector’s coin.

And there’s the box in all its glory, with the Collectors Edition sticker.

I’m thinking I’m going to keep this box in its wrapping for now, so I can’t verify whether its contents are the same as what’s in the box that Dark Wraith Dragon sent me. But I am happy to remove the counters from the site header, and to finally come to a resolution of this long wait. For the record, the most interesting result from the counters was that this box arrived four weeks (to the day) after the box from Dark Wraith, and over a week shy of Portalarium’s self-defined deadline for backers to receive their rewards by.

Many thanks to the folks at Portalarium for making the effort to get outstanding physical rewards sent out, and to Chris Spears for the note of apology.

 

[Infinitron]

taxalot Oh my https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...p-games-acquires-shroud-of-the-avatar.159409/''

Catnip Games Acquires Shroud of the Avatar

As of October 2019 Austin-based production studio Catnip Games has acquired the operating assets of Portalarium, Inc.; primary of which is Shroud of the Avatar.

Portalarium was co-founded in 2009 by Hall of Fame videogame designer Richard Garriott (aka “Lord British”). Portalarium’s most recent game Shroud of the Avatar has a large global community of players which Catnip Games will continue to develop and expand.

Catnip Games was established by Chris Spears, who served as CTO of Portalarium for over 6 years and was appointed President of Portalarium in 2019.

Commenting about the acquisition, Richard Garriott noted “We’re immensely grateful to the community who has built this game with us. The community’s support and participation remains strong and growing, and Starr and I plan to continue being involved in the community and within the game.”

Starr Long, the executive producer of Shroud of the Avatar, also commented on the acquisition; noting that “Chris has successfully led the design and the team for many years, he is an all-star A player.”

Chris Spears added that “The development team remains with the project, and we plan to continue with the established patterns of regular releases, frequent live broadcasts, community events, release parties, and a development cadence focused on both constantly improving the core game, while also working towards Episode 2.”

Lowenstein Sandler provided legal counsel to Portalarium on this transaction. Deal terms were not disclosed. Any questions about the transaction should be directed to VLPC at tbailey@vlpc.com.