Vapourware Unknown Realm: The Siege Perilous - an 8-bit RPG for PC and Commodore 64

[Saduj]

Kickstarter charged Stirring Dragon a 10% fee on money they raised on the Kickstarter platform. The fee was well known to Stirring Dragon before they launched their campaign. Without Kickstarter, they would be keeping 100% of nothing instead of 90% of the money they raised on Kickstarter.

Stirring Dragon abused the Kickstarter platform by not creating the product that was the focus of their campaign. This undermines public confidence in the entire business model. SD then went on to attack Kickstarter patrons as "evil", among other things, because people don't like to be scammed.

So of course, SD is the victim here.

I really hope these two are as entitled, manipulative, irrational, narcissistic and dishonest when dealing with each other as they are towards people who gave them money to fund their game. Because they certainly deserve no better.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

SEUCK -> RPG dev, no wonder their "1985 game" is on schedule to release well into the CD-ROM era.

I was just musing what coding skills were involved with these problem acts when it finally occurred to me with help that Corven's backer art were all AI generated based on a photo, and that was what they could show for progress.

This was supposedly to be natively developed in C64 but then years later Bruce was talking something about comments on C64 sites endangering the C64 port.

 

[fr0]

It looks like both Bruce and Laura set their Twitter/X accounts to private.

And the actual account for the Unknown Realms always posts with replies disabled.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Best SEUCK game I ever played was this:


Praise be the old Software of the Month Club and the weird shit on those disks.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Best SEUCK game I ever played was this:


Praise be the old Software of the Month Club and the weird shit on those disks.

Blue Lives Matter, you ignorant fuck!

 

[Eli_Havelock]

It looks like both Bruce and Laura set their Twitter/X accounts to private.

And the actual account for the Unknown Realms always posts with replies disabled.

Imagine the meltdown if these two ever tried to publish on Steam - potentially far more kilotonnage than Brian Mitsoda's post-nuclear blonde.


Of course that is being highly optimistic there is a game, for lack of discussion of the game's features and systems for all the years it has been featured on the side of a milk carton, 1985-style.

 

[adamantyr]

Backers should be good komrades who keep paying in solidarity for the utopian ideal overdue years ago as part of The Process! - SDG Guild

Anyone else remember this? Oh, how times have changed.

The 8-Bit Superstar - To reward our most elite backers, we've created a one of a kind reward tier where you can literally star in your own custom-designed C64/PC shoot em up style video game. We wanted to make sure this reward was all about you, the backer, because that is what it's all about for us. We don't want to run a company where we're the superstars, we want to run a company where YOU are the superstars so this reward is our way of expressing the ultimate level of thanks and gratitude to our most generous backers.

Just so you know, the only game Bruce ever made was a shooter for the C64 which he gave to a friend. He used SEUCK for that, which let kids whip up shooters back in the day. The key word here is "whip," because you don't need any coding skills. Just slap it together and voilà. That's probably what he had in mind with that backer tier, if anything at all.

Actually, Bruce does have credit on three games, which you can find here: https://www.mobygames.com/person/127623/bruce-gottlieb/
(That is, presuming that it's the same Bruce.)

SEUCK -> RPG dev, no wonder their "1985 game" is on schedule to release well into the CD-ROM era.

I was just musing what coding skills were involved with these problem acts when it finally occurred to me with help that Corven's backer art were all AI generated based on a photo, and that was what they could show for progress.

This was supposedly to be natively developed in C64 but then years later Bruce was talking something about comments on C64 sites endangering the C64 port.

That is one of the things we don't know, really, because information is inconsistent. He's complained about running out of memory a few times, and how he doesn't want to use any memory expansion options, which suggests he's still doing the 6502 version. But back in their last update they indicated they were moving forward with the PC version only.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Use firefox focus and maybe you can see their X account if you fiddle with the settings or HAX.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

I keep forgetting about those credits because there's been nothing to suggest any familiarity with reporting to a producer on a regular basis as a senior anything in gamedev would be required to. Or anything else we'd consider standard. Then again, those credits are mostly from 20+ years ago.

Now I wonder if they'll be able to C64 at all. It might be why there was this strange hype and then dismissal of others on Lemon64 by accounts that mirrored SDG's Twitter/X accounts' claims of relevance to C64 development, and then spurning it, back and forth like a menopausal housewife.

Oh, and there's this:

Something tells me that's not quite accurate.

Risks and challenges​

No project is risk free, but the good news is that any risks we foresee come from the “slight delay” column instead of the “failure to deliver” column.At this stage, the game itself is already in pre-alpha and most of the major technology hurdles have already been cleared. We have used our own funds to finance the development of the game engine and the PC platform so there are very few unknowns left in that respect.

Manufacturing hardware components always presents its own set of unique challenges such as testing and compatibility between supported systems. We're confident that we've developed our cartridge prototype to a point where we know there aren't any insurmountable obstacles to producing the final version.

Most of our physical components will be manufactured using local sources that we have already tested and established working relationships with. We'd be foolish to say there won't be any manufacturing challenges, but again, any issues that could arise at this point would be the kind that cause delay versus failure to deliver.

We're aware there's a possibility that having our expected delivery date in December may cause delays for some international backers due to holiday shipping volume. We'll do our best, but some factors are truly out of our control.

Bruce has worked in the game industry long enough to know that if a game ships “on time,” it probably shipped too early. However, we've been totally committed to this project full time since 2012 and we've taken on the risks ourselves by using our own money to make sure it's far enough along and proven before we took it to the Kickstarter community.

We love this game, and we think you'll love it too. Rest assured, we are dedicated to getting this game into your hands as soon as humanly possible because frankly, we haven't had a vacation in years and we won't take one until this game ships! We're looking forward to hearing your ideas and feedback and working together to bring back the classic RPG experience of the 80’s.

Full time since 2012, claimed it was in a decent state when they put it into KS (2016) for a release date a year later (2017) and now 6 years overdue it looks like they might have to eat their boasts for anything related to C64.

The memory requirements didn't become evident in the first five years of full time development? Looks like someone calculated their bandwidths like their Kickstarter and production schedule.

 

[adamantyr]

The Lemon thread had a LOT of trolls who were pretending to be zealots for SDG. It can get tough to follow after awhile.

They did have a working demo in 2012, but a scrolling engine isn't that much to implement.

I remember reading and re-reading that Risks and Challenges section... When it was brought up, Bruce would claim that "pre-alpha" didn't mean "almost done" in direct contradiction.

I'm also chuckling a bit at the "4%" for testing and QA... That's like $4800.

 

[adamantyr]

Also, just noticed today, both their websites (stirringdragon.games and unknownrealm64.com) are suspended.

Back up today. What's up with that?

 

[Eli_Havelock]

The Lemon thread had a LOT of trolls who were pretending to be zealots for SDG. It can get tough to follow after awhile.

They did have a working demo in 2012, but a scrolling engine isn't that much to implement.

I remember reading and re-reading that Risks and Challenges section... When it was brought up, Bruce would claim that "pre-alpha" didn't mean "almost done" in direct contradiction.

I'm also chuckling a bit at the "4%" for testing and QA... That's like $4800.

"most of the major technology hurdles have already been cleared" at time of the KS in 2016.

Bruce made it sound like there were just a few more features and then just content and testing left to do.

Otherwise, why a ~1y release date?

Also, just noticed today, both their websites (stirringdragon.games and unknownrealm64.com) are suspended.

The result of proudly using their own money (and then everyone else's) in San Franshitshow since 2012 up until they had to move to affordable living conditions.

 

[adamantyr]

The result of proudly using their own money (and then everyone else's) in San Franshitshow since 2012 up until they had to move to affordable living conditions.

Actually the hosting fees are caught up at least for the first one, so this is something else.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Oh, and there's this:

​

IS THAT A FUCKING RAT!

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I think some backers might feel SDG is like this:

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

The result of proudly using their own money (and then everyone else's) in San Franshitshow since 2012 up until they had to move to affordable living conditions.

 

[shilence]

Can't wait to see the fully working cartridge prototype for the C64 they had ready in 2016.

KeighnMcDeath that's fake news, they moved into a new house right after the Kickstarter campaign

 

[vitellus]

Can't wait to see the fully working cartridge prototype for the C64 they had ready in 2016.

"after long last, our demo"

 

[Atrachasis]

"most of the major technology hurdles have already been cleared" at time of the KS in 2016.

Bruce made it sound like there were just a few more features and then just content and testing left to do.

Well, to be fair, there is a tendency among would-be devs (and their fans) to overestimate the degree of completion of their work once they have an engine up and running. After all, it's already looking and sounding like the real thing, so it must be almost complete, right?

That's probably the same fate that befell Corven. "Just content" is a bigger, and less visible, hurdle to overcome, especially for an RPG. That's like saying that your breakthrough novel is almost complete once you have installed a word processor. Bruce may well have deceived himself at that point and believed in his optimistic estimate (especially seeing as his prior developer credits were not for RPGs).

 

[shilence]

"most of the major technology hurdles have already been cleared" at time of the KS in 2016.

Bruce made it sound like there were just a few more features and then just content and testing left to do.

Well, to be fair, there is a tendency among would-be devs (and their fans) to overestimate the degree of completion of their work once they have an engine up and running. After all, it's already looking and sounding like the real thing, so it must be almost complete, right?

Excuse me?! Would be dev?

"Bruce is a software engineer and veteran game developer who’s worked with studios such as EA, Konami, Radical Entertainment, and Rocket Science Games as well as various technology startups"

He be veteran

 

[Eli_Havelock]

True, KS is lauded as the beginnier''s begging bowl, for those who often don't know of or have any better ways of fundraiising by previous sales or how to get the attention of a publisher or angel investors via far more equitable arrangements than KS and others taking a cut with no assurances of future contingency allowances of money. (Even publishers will be willing to work on that, as would backers, if there was something to show. Casually blowing milestones is not healthy development anywhere.)

Business newbs don't realize that KS is considered income, not personal donation, because of the backer rewards that make it binding that a product exchange is involved.

This means that not only does KS take a cut, but then there's also federal (21% on LLC) and state income tax (~9% IIRC for Cali) on what is left over after expenses for backer rewards fulfillment - expenses which have to be directly proven. (Making Macy's purchases from the same account as their KS funds drop was what got the Code Avarice kids.)

SDG haven't really shipped anything but everything else they've been fucking off on.

But the other main use for KS is for industry veterans, who have likely disgraced themselves from publisher graces and/or want claim ultimate creative freedom. Typically, the former hide their industry unmarketability by claiming the latter, and hate producers because they'd rather just sit around and play instead of put out the work/month that keeps their job and everyone else's. This is why all of their budget calculations are garbage, because they can't even keep track of their own workflow.

I honestly doubt these folks have even opened up a process modeler, probably the most versatile tool to use for plotting out all of your story forks and location paths (handy for deving metroidvania progression paths), to feature development dependencies. If you don't know how long it takes you on avg to make a location, it probably is incredibly stupid to say "Yeah, I'll get a whole RPG of content done in a year."

Corven and these idiots did just that.

We've just found anotther one like Chris Spears the "Tech Lord" of Shroud of the Avatar, of one who wasn't leading anything but the major problems for the rest of the team when they were in "senior" positions.

Just like Lord Goldbrick himself Ultima-tely proved useless to his own games' development, then absolute detriment.

Again, welcome to the shitty side of Ultima.

 

[adamantyr]

Content creation DOES take a lot more time than you'd expect.

When I was finishing my engine I had created roughly 25% of my game world for testing purposes while fine-tuning the mechanics and whatnot. Then I created the other 75%, which took nearly a year of work. I'd had a rough guideline of what was what but actually MAKING it is very different.

Probably the slowest part was just creating the maps. I had hand-drawn many of them on 10 squares per inch graph paper, but actually getting them in digital form took time. All my map editors run on the original hardware as well. If I'd taken the time I could have created a modern PC tool that would integrate maps, mobs, transactions, and everything to better manage it, but I didn't want to burn the time on a tool that complex.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

Content creation DOES take a lot more time than you'd expect.

When I was finishing my engine I had created roughly 25% of my game world for testing purposes while fine-tuning the mechanics and whatnot. Then I created the other 75%, which took nearly a year of work. I'd had a rough guideline of what was what but actually MAKING it is very different.

Probably the slowest part was just creating the maps. I had hand-drawn many of them on 10 squares per inch graph paper, but actually getting them in digital form took time. All my map editors run on the original hardware as well. If I'd taken the time I could have created a modern PC tool that would integrate maps, mobs, transactions, and everything to better manage it, but I didn't want to burn the time on a tool that complex.

This, along with one of SDG's claims, makes it clear they really fucked themselves with that ~1y release date. Which claim?

Grind-free Zone
Instead of spending 80% of your time in RPG grind and only 20% of time actually having fun, we designed Unknown Realm so you'll spend 80% of your time doing the things RPG lovers really enjoy such as exploration, uncovering secrets, interacting with interesting NPCs and the environment, and solving interesting quests and puzzles. But don't worry, there are still plenty of monsters to slay if that's your thing!

This kind of world design requires more than just bunging it together, requiring iteration with the assistane of playtesters - in particular, that claim of no grind in an era characteristic of grind because that was a corner often left unpolished for sake of padding play time.

And because of system resources. Palette swaps were for more than just art economy, it allowed you to make multiple tiers of the same enemy, to offfer a minute sense of progression while closing the distance from Enemy A to Enemy B with mini-variants, and to make boss tiers for equipment checks.

 

[Nikanuur]

You close your eyes and imagine a universe where games are created in the same manner you have always loved, but with 30 more years of collective-awareness worth of experiences.
It's the year 1988.
Hackerman just turned 17.
Nazi Germany is about to win the 3rd World War.
Your mom's basement with lockers chock full of Fluffy Ring-O's and countless gallons of blue and pink Gororrade has proven to be a good nuclear shelter. Twice.
Skip forward to 2023, different dimension; beta testing of time hacking with Hackerman didn't go out as planned. Again.
Though, you don't need to close your eyes anymore.

 

[taxalot]

She's locking her account, but be sure to ask a refund now.