Game News Wasteland 2 Kickstarter Now Live!

[Vault Dweller]

Also, you guys need to keep in mind they've already got over a year's worth of development time put into this pre-Kickstarter.

Without an engine?

 

[curry]

Vince you're just butthurt that Fargo can actually finish a game in a reasonable time and you can't. Or maybe you're jealous that you don't get all the attention anymore? You have really become the joke of RPGCodex and should stop talking trash all the time.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Without an engine?

Ah, silly me. You're right. The creative process (i.e. brainstorming, writing, etc) doesn't take any time at all.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

I doubt that they've put in over a year's development time (of their whole studio?) into a project they didn't even have funding for.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I wish Fargo nothing but the best and I'm very excited about the game. It gives us hope and out of all KS projects, that's the one I'm interested in the most. My ONLY concern is the 18-month development time. It's just not enough and I hope that Fargo isn't planning to stick with it, because if he does, the quality will suffer, to say politely.

I've been following games for a long time and I can't think of a decent RPG (developed from scratch) that was made under 3 years. Games that can be done in 1.5 years or so are games like Kotor 2 - you have the engine, all systems (character, combat, inventory, maps, journal, etc), art assets, etc, but we all know what state Kotor 2 was shipped at.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Ah, silly me. You're right. The creative process (i.e. brainstorming, writing, etc) doesn't take any time at all.

Yeah. Silly you.

I doubt that they've put in over a year's development time (of their whole studio?) into a project they didn't even have funding for.

Pretty much.

I'm sure they talked about it for a while, threw some ideas around, especially since they've pitched the game a few times, have a story outline and such, but it won't affect development time. Obviously, we aren't talking about a year of proper work, because it costs money and nobody would invest that much without any guarantees that the game will be funded.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

I doubt that they've put in over a year's development time (of their whole studio?) into a project they didn't even have funding for.

Well, complete conjecture based on not much information...but the interviews Fargo did gave me the impression he and Anderson did a good deal of story-boarding for a good deal of time. So my point is still salient, re: they're not going into this empty-handed and blind.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Do you really think that story-boarding is a big chunk of work that's bound to reduce development time dramatically?

 

[Malakal]

Considering that most games nowadays dont have anything resembling a coherent story we can only assume its extremely time consuming and has to be cut first. Always.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

As an artist and musician myself, yes I believe the creative process can be long and time-consuming. I wouldn't imagine it would be insane to make the comparison here but I don't have the first-hand experience with game devlopment, no.

You can stop the patronizing attitude anytime, bro.

 

[Marquess Cornwallis]

Vault Dweller: I would trust BF to have enough experience with similar projects that he may well pull this off (especially given what he's said about iterating and task distribution -- after all, he is going to have quite a number of designers working on individual portions of the game), unless they overstretch and make the game too big, the combat too complex, etc. (which doesn't seem to be the case, note how careful they are to point out that people shouldn't expect anything like the JA2 level of complexity or to make any specific comparisons in terms of size, i.e. they say the world will be "deeper" at a certain amount of funding -- some extra dialogue, quests, maybe a location or two -- but never something like "it is now going to jump from Fallout to Fallout 2 size"). And, by "pull off" I mean that in 18 months he may have a playable alpha/beta ready to give (some of) his backers access to and help test and balance further (which should keep them happy as anyone else doesn't really care much about shifting release dates). In other words, I know you are probably right in that the risk is there (especially since they do not have the engine in place and will probably not be building on top of something they already know), but I want to trust Brian to know what he's doing. If you had to make a game like AoD from scratch, perhaps with a new (but not entirely unfamiliar) engine (and if I recall correctly, you have some experience with this, as you have switched several times during the development process), but had all the experience you have now, complete story/vision, five writers/designers and a budget of $2.5-3 million, do you think it'd be impossible to get to roughly the stage you are at now in 18 months, if you were careful not to overstretch?

 

[Vault Dweller]

Vault Dweller: I would trust BF to have enough experience with similar projects that he may well pull this off...

I wouldn't trust anyone blindly.. It took Fargo 2 years to make Bard's Tales, Hunted - 18 months. These are realistic, proven development schedules, hence my concern, since I certainly expect more from Wasteland 2.

If you had to make a game like AoD from scratch, perhaps with a new (but not entirely unfamiliar) engine (and if I recall correctly, you have some experience with this, as you have switched several times during the development process), but had all the experience you have now, complete story/vision, five writers/designers and a budget of $2.5-3 million, do you think it'd be impossible to get to roughly the stage you are at now in 18 months, if you were careful not to overstretch?

My honest opinion is that it's impossible and has nothing to do with being careful or having money (which isn't a lot by today's standards). I've noticed that people who have some development experience have raised similar concerns - link.

From what I've seen over the years and from my personal experience, if you want to make a non-action RPG and you're starting from scratch, you're looking at about 3 years (full-time). If you have the engine, systems, and assets (i.e. working on a sequel), you can do it in half the time.

 

[Alex_Steel]

Fallout 2 was created in ~1 year and Torment in ~2 years if I remember. With a dedicated team of experienced members, modern PCs, a modern game engine and no need for super graphics, 18 months doesn't sound too bad to me. Especially since it seems that they have done some work already.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Fallout 2 was a straight sequel - same engine, same systems, same assets. Torment was an Infinity Engine DnD game - same engine, same systems.

Edit: re: modern PC? You think that it took them longer to make games 5-10 years ago because their computers were too slow?

 

[Marquess Cornwallis]

My honest opinion is that it's impossible and has nothing to do with being careful or having money (which isn't a lot by today's standards). I've noticed that people who have some development experience have raised similar concerns - link.

From what I've seen over the years and from my personal experience, if you want to make a non-action RPG and you're starting from scratch, you're looking at about 3 years (full-time). If you have the engine, systems, and assets (i.e. working on a sequel), you can do it in half the time.

Fair enough, you certainly have more experience than I do. I still think that a solid public beta in 18 months and a full release in under 2.5 years is optimistic, but not impossible (and that scope does play a role, i.e. it's possible to deliver a game of around Fallout size and complexity in that time frame, but not an Arcanum, lest it have even worse issues than the actual Troika's product). We'll see how it works out.

 

[Spectacle]

How are they going to fund development for 2,5 years if they're budgeting for an 18 month project though? Once the kickstarter money is spent there won't be any more serious income until the game goes on sale, and while Fargo himself may be willing to work without a salary, I suspect most of his team have bills to pay, and are unable to work for a year without getting paid.

 

[Infinitron]

How are they going to fund development for 2,5 years if they're budgeting for an 18 month project though?

 

[Brother None]

My honest opinion is that it's impossible and has nothing to do with being careful or having money (which isn't a lot by today's standards). I've noticed that people who have some development experience have raised similar concerns - link.

Both of you come from the independent scene, though.

I gotta say, videogame development's constantly changing, and it doesn't seem right to me to give an absolute 3-year scope for a full-sized RPG without voice acting, cutscenes or advanced graphics when we don't really have any test case for this that's still relevant. Other than long investment in graphical and presentation polish, the main thing seems to be iteration of the RPG systems, character system, etc, but for that they're going to use a lot of the basis of what Wasteland did, and add Obsidian's tools.

So, I dunno. But your conclusion that it's impossible to do an RPG like this within this timescope seems to be based on too little information, and too many assumptions.

 

[Stabwound]

How are they going to fund development for 2,5 years if they're budgeting for an 18 month project though? Once the kickstarter money is spent there won't be any more serious income until the game goes on sale, and while Fargo himself may be willing to work without a salary, I suspect most of his team have bills to pay, and are unable to work for a year without getting paid.

They wanted $900,000 for an 18-month development period and got 3x that. As long as Fargo isn't a complete moron, and he's been in this business for 30 years so I doubt it, I don't see the problem.

 

[Marquess Cornwallis]

How are they going to fund development for 2,5 years if they're budgeting for an 18 month project though? Once the kickstarter money is spent there won't be any more serious income until the game goes on sale, and while Fargo himself may be willing to work without a salary, I suspect most of his team have bills to pay, and are unable to work for a year without getting paid.

That is venturing a bit too far into the realm of the hypothetical, as my point was basically "they probably know what they're doing", but: a combination of foresight/contingency planning (even if you discount VD's assumption that they might be counting on a longer development period than they let on, they are hardly planning for the best case scenario only), and further pre-orders (both ongoing and based on the playable beta release), to name just the most obvious options.

 

[Zed]

InXile Ent. gets a ton of money from that mobile port of Bard's Tale. It's been a top seller for a long fucking time.

 

[Executer]

... Maybe they'll wind up using the aurora engine to speed up development.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

They're not giving up iOS and grunt work development either.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Both of you come from the independent scene, though.

My opinion is based on what I've seen over the years and what some developers said (like Tim Cain's quote I posted earlier). Like I said, I can't think of a quality RPG (made from scratch) released in the last 15 years that took less than 3 years to make. Fargo's recent games seem to support this theory - if it takes him 1.5-2 years to make second-rate (no offense) action RPGs what makes you think that he can do a proper RPG in 1.5 years?

I gotta say, videogame development's constantly changing, and it doesn't seem right to me to give an absolute 3-year scope for a full-sized RPG without voice acting, cutscenes or advanced graphics when we don't really have any test case for this that's still relevant.

Tim Cain gave it, not me. I just happen to agree with him, based on my own observations. As for your points, when it comes to voice-acting and cutscenes, the factor is money not time. Advanced graphics - not sure how much time they take, but we aren't talking about shooters here.

Other than long investment in graphical and presentation polish, the main thing seems to be iteration of the RPG systems, character system, etc, but for that they're going to use a lot of the basis of what Wasteland did, and add Obsidian's tools.

Obsidian tools would have to be integrated into an engine they don't have yet. Actually, at first I thought that he was getting the Onyx engine when he got Obsidian on-board, which would have been a smart move - a well polished RPG engine, isometric-friendly, with already built-in systems and tools. Btw, since you're close to them, any idea why they didn't go for it?

Btw, just look at how long it took them to develop and polish the Onyx engine. It *is* a crucial and very time-consuming component. Remember Lithtech? Sure, things are a bit different today, but I'm sure you can recall various issues Obsidian had with Bioware and Bethesda engines.

As for iterations, the challenge isn't to come up with systems, but to make everything work. Besides, as I understand, they won't be using the WL combat system and would have to come up with, implement, and balance something different.

So, I dunno. But your conclusion that it's impossible to do an RPG like this within this timescope seems to be based on too little information, and too many assumptions.

Name me a quality RPG that was made in 1.5 years.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Name me a quality RPG that was made in 1.5 years.

Well, "Fart Party A.D." for one.