KickStarter Underworld Ascendant is a disaster

[Comte]

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

They have no $$$$ for anything professional looking.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Something interesting
https://steamcommunity.com/app/692840/discussions/0/1742227264201826239/

 

[BEvers]

I suppose they'll hire some ostensibly "well-known" author to write the story, pay him a couple of million dollars and then have no money left to actually make the game.

They'll hire Chris Avellone

Too late:

 

[Gord]

Something interesting
https://steamcommunity.com/app/692840/discussions/0/1742227264201826239/

It doesn't really tell us anything, though.

 

[Metro]

This shit will be in the $1 tier of an indie bundle within a few months.

 

[Roguey]

Too late:

Imagine being so embarrassed of a project that you don't even advertise the fact that you did something for it.

 

[Infinitron]

Chris Avellone Tell us more.

 

[Max Damage]

This shit will be in the $1 tier of an indie bundle within a few months.

I wouldn't play this even if I got paid for it.

 

[Zep Zepo]

I wouldn't play this even if I got paid for it.

Apparently, by their paid testers, they thought the same thing...

Zep--

 

[Machocruz]

This guy used to host Gamespot live shows.

 

[Zep Zepo]

This guy used to host Gamespot live shows.

He's 2 or 3 steps below the Dorito Pope.

Maybe a Dorito Arch Bishop or something.

Zep--

 

[Big Wrangle]

Knowing Chris Avellone's recent credits pattern, we can safely conclude he wrote two sentences and called it a day.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Getting paid for your input is an immeasurably better gig than getting paid for your output. It's good to be the king.

 

[Chris Avellone]

I worked with them for a month in September to help the Creative Lead with the script and other writing. I did about 30 (?) days of work.

The 1st draft of the scripts and storyflow was already there when I arrived, I was mostly there to take some tasks off the Creative Director – part of my help was I rewrote the existing script for Cabirus (and then Joe rewrote it to match some elements he was looking for – the script structure didn’t change very much) and some of the faction Memora.

Originally, I’d come in for System Shock 3, but they indicated if I could help with Ascendant first, they’d welcome it (most of the studio was focused on it). I’m now back to helping on System Shock 3 (for that, that’s a very small assignment at the moment).

Paul Neurath, Warren Spector, and Joe Fielder and the devs were always pleasant to me – they genuinely cared about the game.

I rarely advertise the games I’m working on anymore because I just want to write in peace. I was grateful for the experience, though.

Other titles I’ve worked on that you may not know about include Omensight, Alaloth, The Walking Dead: Overkill, and Degrees of Separation (which will ship next year), all for different reasons. There’s other unannounced ones.

 

[LESS T_T]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/692840/announcements/detail/1715205666459397418

Dec 3 Weekly Update!

Hey guys!

It's the weekend after we pushed Hotfix 1.03, and I spent the majority of today combing through community-submitted reports and queueing them up for our QA team, as well as coordinating Kickstarter goods. (We got a new pass at Resherak in the office, but he's a little too big... sneak peek at the 4" figurines anyways, unpainted, for those curious![imgur.com])

Our priority for this week and the next is tackling bugs and larger issues that have been brought up since launch. This includes working on a save system (more details on this next week, since we're still testing a couple of potential systems right now), the inventory stacking bug, gameplay blockers, crashes, and potential redesigns in combat and the quest system. Today was a heavy meeting day as we hashed out how we'd like to tackle some of the riskier updates (save system, quests, and combat) while fending off bugs.

As liveops continues, I'd also like to introduce Rich Gallup, our new Executive Producer who's been steering our ship since launch day! He's been an incredible force to work with, and has been a lifesaver for keeping us organized and on track for the last few hotfixes. You may also recognize him from some of the dev videos we've been putting out with each hotfix update!

Hoping to have more Kickstarter updates as well, particularly on some of the digital goods that just need a final review. I'll continue to monitor community-submitted bugs throughout the week and keep those KS goods rolling... thank you to everyone who's been tirelessly submitting, particularly with output logs/screenshots/locations! Makes our jobs a lot easier for reproducing bugs and getting to the bottom of certain issues. (Such as some reports of arrows not working on aggro'd skeletons in Underswamp... we thought we fixed the overall arrow issue, but it seems arrows can still be inconsistent under particular circumstances. Looking forward to knocking this bug out, as a Stealth main myself!)

That's all for now, and we'll share more as we continue to work on the game.

 

[Curratum]

The absolute madmen are really doing DLC! :D

"The original plan was to have people start rolling on to DLC now and a few peel off for future project concepting that any developer would normally do. But given where the game is we feel it's more important to update and improve UA now, other stuff later. It's better for our fans, for our brand and for each of our own psyches."

 

[luj1]

Apropos MCA

If their vision is shit, they can resurrect Arthur Clarke and Isaac Assimov and pay them to write 2 quests and a companion, it wont matter anyway. This game is a laughing stock though. Excuse me for not paying for this sack of shit only to comb the game for sentences written by Chris fucking Avellone. Hell, may my fingers rot away if I'd even torrent this vomit.

 

[Jenkem]

I worked with them for a month in September to help the Creative Lead with the script and other writing. I did about 30 (?) days of work.

The 1st draft of the scripts and storyflow was already there when I arrived, I was mostly there to take some tasks off the Creative Director – part of my help was I rewrote the existing script for Cabirus (and then Joe rewrote it to match some elements he was looking for – the script structure didn’t change very much) and some of the faction Memora.

Originally, I’d come in for System Shock 3, but they indicated if I could help with Ascendant first, they’d welcome it (most of the studio was focused on it). I’m now back to helping on System Shock 3 (for that, that’s a very small assignment at the moment).

Paul Neurath, Warren Spector, and Joe Fielder and the devs were always pleasant to me – they genuinely cared about the game.

I rarely advertise the games I’m working on anymore because I just want to write in peace. I was grateful for the experience, though.

Other titles I’ve worked on that you may not know about include Omensight, Alaloth, The Walking Dead: Overkill, and Degrees of Separation (which will ship next year), all for different reasons. There’s other unannounced ones.

Why not just write shit on a piece of paper and throw it in the trash?

It's as effective and less time consuming.

 

[BEvers]

 

[Mustawd]

 

[Grimlorn]

Isn't it really easy to code monsters not to attack each other?

 

[Shackleton]

That cannot be true. Community Manager must just be trying to put a funny spin on why stuff isn't in the game, I refuse to believe that monsters got cut because they couldn't code them not to kill each other.

 

[Siveon]

Alaloth

This might be off-topic but I just recently heard about this game and they put your name in the features. How long would you say you worked with them? About a month, similarly?

 

[Grimlorn]

That cannot be true. Community Manager must just be trying to put a funny spin on why stuff isn't in the game, I refuse to believe that monsters got cut because they couldn't code them not to kill each other.

Well one of the responses from someone claims they're still coming across corpses of dead monsters in levels, even with ones they removed.

 

[Glic2000]

That picture of the plastic figures is a great visual metaphor for how badly managed this project was.

The figures they originally planned to make were based on characters that didn't even make it into the game. Why would you dedicate money to plastic figures when the game's development desperately needs money?* And if you were originally inspired by D&D, why wouldn't you make them the right scale for a miniatures game? Nobody uses 4" tall figures for gaming.

*I know that they had to produce the plastic figures because people paid for them during the Kickstarter, but that seems like the kind of thing you might want to branch out into only after you've got plenty of money raised to actually make the game. It's not like Sir Cabirus was some beloved character that needed to be immortalized in plastic.