KickStarter Underworld Ascendant is a disaster

[Viata]

I used to think that Unity was a shit engine. I still think it is, but at this point I'm pretty sure 99% of the problems with the engine is the dev's fault, not Unity's.

 

[TemplarGR]

I used to think that Unity was a shit engine. I still think it is, but at this point I'm pretty sure 99% of the problems with the engine is the dev's fault, not Unity's.

Like with most engines...

 

[Curratum]

Because they can't. They really just cannot code in a normal save system because their engine is a heap of garbage

Untrue, nothing wrong with the engine. Unity has no issues with saving, it's just they are really fucking incompetent and want to be cool gaym designors and be ~different~

I'm not saying Unity can't do it, I'm saying their shitty, ham-fisted implementation can't do it.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Because they can't. They really just cannot code in a normal save system because their engine is a heap of garbage

Untrue, nothing wrong with the engine. Unity has no issues with saving, it's just they are really fucking incompetent and want to be cool gaym designors and be ~different~

Unity comes with no builtin features to facilitate saving. I'd assume that many games are simply using an off the shelf solution from the asset store for serialization.

A lot of the hate Unity gets is due to it being used by less-than-competent developers. It's really not that bad at all.

 

[sk2k]

Whyyy?! Just make a normal save system! Really seems like they're overthinking it.

This is all i want.

To reduce data can't they just remove the physics for unimportant stuff that is not needed?

 

[Hines]

An "avoid" from Eurogamer.

The game’s current bug list is so grand, varied and hideous it deserves to be bound in crocodile skin and hidden away in a mausoleum, as a kind of Necronomicon for QA testers.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...ew-a-strangely-essential-development-disaster

 

[Infinitron]

An "avoid" from Eurogamer.

The game’s current bug list is so grand, varied and hideous it deserves to be bound in crocodile skin and hidden away in a mausoleum, as a kind of Necronomicon for QA testers.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...ew-a-strangely-essential-development-disaster

Given another year in production, ideas like that might eclipse the ragged edges. But then again, perhaps there's something to the notion of an immersive sim that's palpably unfinished. One of the genre's recurring conceits is the idea of the designer as the player's ultimate antagonist, checking your movements while proposing to free you of constraint. All games can be read in these terms, of course, but immersive sims make a principle of it: they are games that define defeat not merely as failing a task or dying, but as doing what you're supposed to, following the cues. Many of them give the unbridled exercise of the player's will a decided political inflexion: Thief's cynicism about its own society, for instance, is right there in the title.

The trouble is, while immersive sim developers want you to do things with their tools they haven't planned for, the majority also want their worlds to be consistent, plausible, bendable but not actually breakable. This contradiction infests the Dishonored games, especially, which host some of gaming's richest and most storied urban settings, squalid places where you can feel the rot dripping from every gable, while all but telling you throughout that every street corner is a mechanistic fiction toyed with by a capricious god. These games want you to take their tales of greed, disease and vengeance seriously, casting the player as witness and judge, but they also want you to see their worlds as the Outsider would - as a videogame designer would - a lazy spiral of props and textures, floating in void. It's this irresolution, explored in fretful structural metaphors like Dishonored 2's Clockwork Mansion, that for me gives Arkane's work its power.

That was a way more thoughtful article than this game deserves, but I guess you take inspiration where you can find it.

In other news, the butthurt on the OtherSide forums is becoming amusing: https://www.othersideentertainment.com/forum/index.php?topic=6555.msg36556#msg36556

 

[rusty_shackleford]

A developer shouldn't have a forum for things other than feedback and technical issues. The echo chamber will always end badly.

 

[Big Wrangle]

the butthurt on the OtherSide forums is becoming amusing

That's not butthurt anymore, it's madness.

 

[vota DC]

Maybe the guy in otherside forum is Sandro of Homm, this explain why so many skellies in UA compared to UW. He is a secret agent, now that he sabotaged ultima world next homm game will feature mellow goblins and the return of lizardmen!

 

[Cael]

Welp... Back to my old copy of UW, then

One thing I didn't like about UW2 is that you are supposed to be the Avatar from U7 but my Avatar stats from near the beginning of U7 was 60/30/30. Gimme back mah stats, damn you, Origin Systems!

 

[Sonus]

The art director left the company earlier this year.

Nate Wells and Robb Waters, both former Looking Glass employees, joined Otherside's UA team late, after Irrational downsized, and Nate left nearly a year ago to go to Arkane.

 

[BEvers]

Torches may come back!

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Coming from this project, “smoke issues” implies a whole new source of meme-worthy hilarity. Hope torches get reimplemented for that reason alone.

 

[Dodo1610]

So these "developers" who could not code working torches thought they could make a complete video game?

 

[fantadomat]

A developer shouldn't have a forum for things other than feedback and technical issues. The echo chamber will always end badly.

Nothing wrong with having a forum,the problems arise from taking the shit in it seriously.

 

[Glic2000]

The guy who made the levels entirely out of wood didn't know there was a game mechanic that allowed setting things on fire, I guess.

 

[Nyast]

Framerate issues due to a all the wooden part of a level taking on fire ? Easy Otherside fix: disable fire spreading.

That's how they "fixed" water and many other things for the "release", actually, so it's totally in line with their development philosophy.

 

[BEvers]

 

[Infinitron]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/692840/announcements/detail/1715205666441472450

Hotfix 1.03 & Dev Video
30 NOVEMBER - QUESTION_505

Here are the fixes included in the most recent hotfix 1.03.

• Added "Swimming" (Crouch while in water to sink)
  
• Walking through shallow water has been improved
  
• Arrows now function as expected
  
• More magic runes are now in Aelita's rotation for sale
  
• Fullscreen exclusive graphics option is now preserved between gameplay sessions
  
• When the player collects the final Abyssal Key, the gate to the Midnight Forum now opens as expected
  
• Fixed a rare bug when The Vault of Nyx did not open when the player had all 8 keys
  
• Saurians are now less chatty
  
• The secret shortcut to the Vault of Nyx has been sealed
  
• Infinite loading screen crash for the opening level has been fixed
  
• Subtitles can be now toggled On or Off (See: Options->Gameplay)
  
• Graffiti language in-level now changes when the player changes their language settings
  
• Tuned movement controls for stopping and starting. The controls now respond faster to player input
  
• Kickstarter backers will receive 8 dire berries instead of 1
  
• General movement fixes
  
• Various rare crash fixes

We are still working on adding more updates to the game. Thank you for your patience!

 

[LESS T_T]

This guy literally joined Otherside the month this game released. I wonder how much he knew about the disaster in the making before joining.

 

[BEvers]

Old video got taken down, and I can't edit the post. Apparently they put out a video that was shot last week instead of uploading the correct version from this week:

 

[Nyast]

Only in UA can you see a dev "excited" about fixing an arrow bug.

Which all backers had reported 6 months ago when the alpha got released, shall I add.

 

[BEvers]

At least they seem to be self aware:

 

[glass blackbird]

Why does he have to draw the patch notes on a whiteboard? They couldn't make a video real quick or something? I could make something more professional looking in like half an hour and I just make stupid shit for youtube