Lets bash: G.R.U.N.T.S!

Sorry for playing the "badman". I really wish you all the best, high selling rates and a big bank account. I deeply respect your abilities, your scripting knowledge and all the effort to finish your projects.

But after all, I personally think that it is not fair to route the discussion in the above way.

G.R.U.N.T.S is a stylish game but after checking out the style (you can do this in a few seconds) there is simply a shooter. And this shooter must be compared with the genereal shooter genre. And I don´t want to discuss this out.

So I do not believe that G.R.U.N.T.S will raise up selling by choosing different prices. As long as you produce the genres of mass market - even with a few modifications like using stange shaders - your products will always be compared with other masses of genres.

Do something different as an independent who calculates with financial success.

... And please... correct me in a few months if I was totally wrong


edit...
by the way...
In the study of economics you will learn that a price is an indicator for quality. But this rule depends on market sectors. And products of the mass market don´t play after this rule. The only system to promote mass market products ist to advertise them hardly. So there must be a specific will to buy a product from the mass market. Like using some specific forms, colors.


Edit by JustSid: This actually comes from the hijacked "indie game price" thread in the game design forum.

No. its definitely not like your everday shooter at all. Its by far the fucking worst nightmare i have played in the last 10years.

Seriously. You dare to realease something like that. I havent played anything else but "Grunz", but expecting people to pay money for it is quite a stretch.
Its a perfect example to show of all the mistakes you must not do when creating a fps game:
+contorls are horrible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
+it awefuly slow for such a gfx and level design layout
+no ingame feedback whatsoever (tasks, enemies,...)
+while the gfx idea might look good on screens it creates massive headaches when playing
+all the funny talking bits....very anyoing very fast!
+.....endless list but not to go off topic here......

Pricing?
1.) Create a fucking game
2.) charge money for it

Bottom line; You dont sell much of this "thing" because its a horrible game.

You wont get any positive reviews because the game has soooooooooooooo many issues to be fixed first, it can hardly be called a game.


Before talking about funding, be sure who you are developing for. Find your market.
Different customers -> different funding and publishing.

A.) Chapter based games
Man, you dont have a stoty, no characters, no skills nothing to develop. Basicly there is no reason to play one episode. Why play two or more?!

B.) The humor
Some stuff said is funny, but the repeat cycle kills the joy very fast. Also its waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay not enough fun and humor in this game to make it a selling point.

c.) Mechanics
Every aspect of the game mechanics sucks. Controls, leveldesign, gameplay, motivation, feedback,.....
The bugs added to that are the games final head shot. (enemies disappear in the walls and floor and kill you, the get stuck everywhere, i can harldy tell if i hit something,....)


Another thing that bothers me a lot: The press and the pretaped press releases.
1.) the self created press releases are worth a dog poo
2.) The interviews with the developers are in no way informative or in any kind of journalistic nature.
At some point I had to read that gruntz has range combat and close combat enemies - unlike any other game. (WTF)
And therer are flying enemies - unlike in any other game (??????????????????)

This are the two main reasons why gamers dont give a shit about what these "journalists" write. If you are not even able to question such obvious bollocks - why bother listening to youre resume.

Getting back to selling and prizing: This kind of press is useless for you and the gamer.


The right prizing is the final piece of th product. IT should represent the work added into the game and the time and fun the gamer will have playing it.
For example: If you create a racing game with one car and one track you might sell it for one buck. If on the other hand the game features 200different cars and 20 tracks you might want to raise the price according to the content you offer.

For me this works well:
5-10euro -> a weekend of gaming fun
10-25 -> about 2 weeks
25-50 -> more then a month

The best price for indie games for me range between 10-20euros/dollars.

Also zero dollars doesnt mean the game has to be crap. Free to play or alternative funding methods (adverts, clicks aso) can work too quite well.


enough ranting.....this "game" has really pissed me off

for somebody who knows the game "so well" you make a great deal out of telling us all how much the game sucks. if you hate the controls so much and are not able to realize that you can adjust the controls to your liking, you just MIGHT want to re-think your aproach to gaming.

i enjoyed this rant alot. it made my day. obviously you dont like it very much. mayhaps this has something to do with personal issues with me? no? oh well. thanx for playing the demo and reading the interviews aswell as watching the trailers. you may dislike the game, but you surely took everything i released about it into account to form an educated review. you might want to work on your anger issues though

and now, back to the topic at hand, because once again, this isnt about my games anymore. it is a topic that should aid all of us.

i shall now proceed to copy the various helpful links some people posted into the original topic and edit the topic so that future visitors get some help.

I do not have any personal issues with you at all. I dont even know you.

The controls of the game suck because they dont work. I was not refering to button mapping or readjustments i could make ingame. Its about the fact, that i cant enter a room without being stuck into the doors and walls or that its a hercules task for the game character to climb a 3cm high teleporter platform or he gets stuck when running around in the "circle room" in level2 where he gets the key.
Its about control speed and mouse sensitivity changing depending on the frames per second. Its about jerky fps thanks to the level"design" and and and....

You MIGHT reconcider game development!


Sure, its a rant. I am fed up with "indie" game "developers" like you, that release tech demos as games and charge money for it, I am pissed at a community that has not the guts to tell you the truth and i hate such blindfolded "journalism" that swallows everything labeled "indie" without questioning it fair enough.

This does not help the indie game developer community at all. Its a wrong approach and a kick into the balls of the opportunity we might get as indies.
And i do dislike that a lot!

As said, prizing on the other hand depends on what you are offering.
Since you are offering nothing, you shouldnt charge anything.
Is your game too cheap? No, its way to expensive.

Can games be too cheap, so people wont buy it? No.
If that would be the case, we wouldnt have alternative software like Gimp, Painshop, Open Office, Blender, Gamestudio,....

Your game/demo sells your product. People that buy games are looking for entertainment and not how much they need to spend. If its too much, they might say "Nah", but they will never turn down a game they like because its cheap.

The price does not matter at all, when the product sucks!

cheers

I never played GRUNT, but I have to agree with Blattsalat about the massive headaches which I had after watching the video of it, and I really don't like it's design, but even so, this thread isn't about sPlKe's games, are they good or not. So guys, please stop this. Blattsalat@ if you really want to tell your oppinion about sPIke's games (or game) make a thread in Rants.

hmmm offtopic but i dont really know what to make of blattsalats post.... on one hand its blatantly offensive, but on the other hand did contain a large amount of good critique.... hmmm.

he does have some points, but some others are just bland ranting.
however i would REALLY appreciate it if we stop discussing my games and actually continue to discuss how to improve on game pricings and help everyone who sells their own games online...

I actually agree with blattsalat. His points were specific to the question and his tips were appropriate.

sid was kind enough to split the topics so bash away^^

You are going wrong when you think this is about bashing the game.

Its a fundemantal issue with indie games like yours and it fits perfectly into the "price discussion" going on. Because i think the whole discussion is wrong.

Lets start with the facts: The game is really bad. Not because of style issues, bad art and music or content or any other indy related problem (the lack of manpower or money), but because of one simple fact:
You didnot care to fix vital main problems of your game. Horrible control, none existent ai or gameplay, motivation or game mechanics,.....
Those are not issues you face because you lack time, money or manpower.
You just didnt care enough.

fact:
Noone would accept any of this bad and huge mistakes in any other AAA game.

The problem:
Right now indie game development is treated like a 8 year old kid showing a painting to its mother. Its nice but worthless. The AAA´s cant think less of us.
Every day the entire community has to fight for reputation.
We have to prove with every single release that we are game designers. Equally good and talanted, maybe lacking some bucks but compensating this with effort and ideas.
Games like grunz destroy this work. Not because they are just made but because of the way we treat those releases.

The press:
Does not critique us the way they are supposed to do. Hard and fair.
Being an indie game is no excuse for nothing. It should not grant us benefits nor should it cause negative effects.
But for this to happen we need to face the world as grown ups.

The huge issue now:
Now the part of the community and the thing that drives me really angry.
We have to stop acting like we are blindfolded when giving comments and critique.
If we want to be taken serious we have to be judged by the same parameters like the big ones. Not by ammount and quality but by the basic rules for games (controls, gameplay, ideas aso).
No matter if its the game, the producer or the magazine, we have to show that we wont allow broken standards, cheap bypasses and crap without pointing at them.


If you like it or not, all of us are part of the label "indie". And every game we release and create either helps this idea or hurts it.
It lowers or raises the prices we may charge and the reputation we get for being serious game designers.
Thanks to games like grunz anyone of us releasing another indie game wont be able to charge what its worth, but will have to pay a price for the tag "indie" and all the other grunz games, that we meassure and rate differently and that we dont criticize correct, honest and fair.


Its not about bashing games.
Its not about arguing if cheap prizes hurt your sales.

Its all about growing up from being that 8 year old kid and becoming independent game designers.

have a nice one

Hmm. You have some good arguments.

Have to say I was inititally confused when you called the game "grunz," though.

Honestly I am also constantly annoyed by the collision detection... I was quite vocal about that here on the forums. Unfortunately AABB doesn't work in A7 and up, JCL didn't want to put it back in, and I didn't have the time to do it myself. I've recently gained a lot of knowledge in that regard and could probably do it now, but unfortunately the game is already out.

Ah well. Better luck next time.

... Now that I think of it, a lot of major annoyances with the collision detection could have actually been resolved with more invisible blocks and better level design... spike, I blame you.

Also the game might not play well, but it still looks good. At least, it looks good on a portfolio. Lots of people I don't even know have complimented me for being involved in a game that looks as good as grunts, although they've never played the game themselves.

I've played demo yesterday, after I saw how Blattsalat was criticizing it (BTW that was a good advertisement ^^ which even made me download the demo, and may be not only me). Yeah, movement is sucks, player stucks nearly everywhere... In some places (for example doorways) which should be passable as I think, player can jump and hang on them, and after that, he falls as if he falled from the height... The ellipsoid problem is also annoying (yes Redeemer, I hate GS collusions as well, but who cares?)... Most of the problem (if even not all of them) could be really fixed by invisible models (at least thats what I do to workaround terrible GS collusios). The style (I never liked it to be trully speaking) gave me only headache, but I liked some of the jokes at the begging of the game. Combat... Well I didn't really see anything that could be called combat, shooting those viruses isn't really a combat... That was boring. sPIke I think you should listen all things which are mentioned in this thread in to account when you'll be realising the next part! Not getting offended, not getting rude, but really listen and fix those problems. I do really not want to offend you, just wanted to give my two cents. And criticizm is really useful thing, please don't think that this thread is about bashing you game (or games), alpha_strike should really change the name of the thread...

In all of this, I'm reminded how the greater part of us truly suck at making games. And in spike's own words:



EDIT: Seriously... the more I think about this rant the more I can't help laughing. Maybe I'm going insane but this is just like a rant from the angry video game nerd.

My bad, i thought it was called grunz not grunts.

The visuals are ok and i do like the black and white retro idea, but unfortunately its not about art portfolio work here.

I would like to see the designers on this board evolve.
And I think this needs to start with a good slap into the face.

cheese

In all honesty I really do think you're blowing this way out of proportion though. We didn't make a very good game. We know that. But we made a game, and that's an accomplishment, a growth. And although the game's price:quality ratio may have a .000000003% impact on the indie game market, we seriously doubt we will hurt anyone, least of all you.

This is a fine rant, but that's all it is, a rant. Now that I've pondered it somewhat, I think I'm done reading this.

Thanks for the honest feedback; I bear no hard feelings against you.

wow, a whole thread bashing it? i didnt actually play it, but i watched some video clips and it looked sort of fun. was it really that bad? I like the style.

I think the hype made a bashing thread inevitable. I wasn't here when Ambages was released, so I don't know how much it was hyped and how much feedback it got...

GRUNTS, gameplay-wise, isn't any better than one of the less polished games you might find in the projects forum. The differences, speaking relative to those projects:

1. It looks much nicer.
2. It's complete.
3. It's polished.

I think without the bashing thread the game would be dead already.
So I am awaiting my shares in liquor and little puppies

Again, that you realease and charge money for a project you think aint good, is not the reason for my complaints at all. I wouldnt do it, but its not my game.
I wont repeat myself since everything i wanted to say is written above but i would like to comment your statements.
You might be right that this game might have only a small impact on all other indie games. But grunts and all other grunts that get flipped out combine. And these tiny impacts combine and grow and grow and grow, till all indie effort is less worth then a pool filled with dog pooh because nobody will even try these games anymore.
You are sure not the cause of the problem. But you are part of it - as unfortunately am i and all of us here.
And as the .00000003% kick ass receiver that I will be thanks to you, I just wanted to state my rant and reasonable disllike to how you see indie game development:


You released a game that you find not that good yourself and call it an achievement.
And to top that you dont give the project away for free but you charge money for it - for the thing you dont think is made very well.
Can you see why this is questionable to me?

And to top all of that, spike opens a thread with the title "do you think the cheap price of my game is the reason it sells very bad".
And you get angry when someone tells you "no".

As I said, its time to get rid of the 8year old boy excuse.


I want to make this very clear. Although stated from spike (i didnt knew who else was involved till now) that this is some personal issue, it is absolutely not!
I roam this forum for a few days now and I have noticed a general degeneration of ambition or should i say drive, passion or force that should be the heart and spirit of good game design.
And the saddest part (the one why i ranted initially), was the community swallowing this latest release with nothing but "congrats" and "looks nice"..."end of input".

This attitude is poison. It spreads from games like grunts to the community and then back to the developers who then create another grunts.
This community is slowly but surly lowering its standards and this will have a huge impact on our part of the indie trip (in a lot of different ways).

I didnt just complained or ranted about the game alone (thats why making such a thread title is bs and bad), but i included all of us and the way we treat game making lately.


As far as i can tell "just creating a game" aint good enough for me anymore.
And i hope the one or other might share this oppinion as well.


cheers and a nice one

I don't think anybody's angry but you. :\


You said you wanted us to evolve. To evolve we can only make more games, and that's just what we did.


KarBOOM, Silas, and CSiS are all quality games that are setting a good standard for this community. It's not accurate to say that the community lacks ambition.


I hope you can lighten up a bit and see the bright side of this, because there is a big one.

not angry but concerned and dissapointed. thats a difference.
and no. to evolve you have to question yourself and the games you create. just creating them aint by far enough.

and yes, there are a few nice games around. but this doesnt change my concern about how the community deals with the projects and the whole direction the development is heading here.

and thanks. I really appreciate your wishes.


cheers

I thought that some of your points were not criticism but mere rudeness .... I think that they made a game that looked good ... Not without mistakes ... but good and interesting...
BTW I am not defending GRUNTS developers ...



to be honest ... I didn't read the whole topic but this quoted statement intrigued me ... So my question to u Blattsalat (No offense and I am not defending GRUNTS but just asking):
Have you ever looked at your showcased levels???
"I think this needs to start with a good slap into the face"
Aren't you trying to sell your levels ...
"You dare to release something like that"??


*** all the "" are quotes of what u said that applies to ur work....


"Cheese"

First of all I never argued about "art", "looks", "liking it". Thats something you either do or not. I for example like the artistic style of grunts. My point was that basic core elements didnt got fixed even though its not a matter of manpower or money (collision, movement, gameplay, mission design, repeatative "jokes", motivation, game mechanics,...).

But if you want to talk about looks i am ok with that too.

Second: None of my showcased level went commercial. The ones i did for comm. games and projects are not listed there.

Third: all of those level have been made with the A5-6 engine about 7-5 years ago
+I think the roman colloseum and the lab where even A4. the entire colloseum is made out of bsp blocks. try that with the a4 engine and no improter or exporter. Just the sun shades and the fence are models.
+the WW2 bunker was a speed task "Everything had to be finished in 4 days"
+the old prsion was a rework (you can see it on the first image what i got and how i changed it) the models and the structure shouldnt be changed
+the ancient landscape never got finished and should have been some kind of mmo facebook like project. never happend because the a5-6 couldnt handle the m in mmo.
+the stalingrad wip was a test range for the a7 movement code our coder made. you know we tested if the things we planned would work out ingeme...go figure that.
We even tested our first glass shader (in the video) as well as some basic weather and particle effects. Even a post rendered shadowmap was added, but never made it into the video.

And no. I never released them nor would i do so now (at least not for money).
I would give them away for free if i thought there would be any use for anyone.
But times where levedesigners spent weeks to fix concave and convex block elements to get the fricking level to run without leaks, may sound like fiction to the spoiled A8 generation.


The two that i am working on right now on the other hand: definitely.
But i neither face fps drops on them nor are they not playable because of the collision detection and the movement code.
They work. And i think thats the minimum someone could expect when BUYING a game, doesnt he.

And even after getting feedback (I did not make anything up at all) and comments, there is not even a glimp in the eyes of the developer to say "wait a minute. maybe i need to reconcider either the pricing or some kind of bugfix for MY product, since even I think its not that good".
Not at all. Basicly they where saying "we might not sell well because we are too cheap" and "lets see how the next episode will be. maybe you are lucky and we are going to fix one or two things then. we will see".

Making the customers of their games beta testing sheeps.

I do not support that!

I do somehow never played G.R.U.N.T.S myself, but reading 3run's review I do somehow get Blattsalat's points.
Released games, especially paid games, need to be bug free(The 'fun', 'well balanced', etc is obvious). That's where beta testers play the part. You can't beta test your game your self since you already know your game, what are the "do and don't" in your game. Instead ask your family or friends to play the game and watch them playing without saying any instruction(Will be better if you ask a real beta tester though). If you like, give a prize for those finding bugs in your game

From 100% of game development time, 90% would/should be spent on polishing and beta testing.

Which stupid fuck shit head motherfucker started this thread with my name??? I have never started a thread with "lets smash spikes game". Even if I do not identify myself with a crossover mario - spiderman - cementery - gothic - god hates us all - fanboy... I respect his work and don´t want to be the starter of ranting his shit. So fuck you mod. (Sorry for my childish attitude.. but we are in the rants forum)[/

I'm really curious, who is that might be ^^


This made me laugh, thanks

i'd be pissed too if someone put me as the sole creator of a whole bashing thread

Yeah, that guy should be punished for that...

Pussies.

Heh?

I second that..?

Just to point out, that's exactly what id Software did when they released Keen/Wolfenstein/Doom. They released the game as shareware after only a little beta testing, people tried it/bought it, and then they released a bug-free retail product based on the info people gave them.

In fact the first official public version of Doom was v0.99. It was littered with bugs.

Notch does something similar with Minecraft. It's perfectly fine...

As Joozey said. You can put my name as the starter - i dont mind.

@Redeemer:
Oh, my fault. I must have missed the shareware release of the game then and the massive feedback you got and fixed after that.
Though if this is the "fixed" version, i dont wannt know what your 0.99 shareware candidate looked a like.
Seriously man. You know that you cant compare those two things. Main reason is the fact, that you refuse one vital step of beta testing: the fixing.

And no. Its not perfectly fine to make customers beta testers without them knowing it. Thats a plain rip off and very very very unfair.


I know. Its hard for you and anybody else involved in the game to read the rants and to defend the game.
And you would need to trust me that i wouldnt be that angry if its just about some bugs, or the visual quality, or the lenght of the game aso.
We all here have been at least a few times part of this creation process and we know what the bottlenecks are and the limitations.

The reason why I "rant" is because this game in this state of production CAN NOT BE SOLD. There are quite a bit of reasons why, I mentioned why its unfair to your customers, to the community and how this stuff affects the indie game development movement.

For the sake of all of them I hope you are going to fix this.
Its not too late and the damage can be made undone (most of it), but this requires you to make the next step.

hope to see that happen
cheers

Sure it is fine, but only if you inform the user about that before he buys your stuff. And this should also come with the responsibility to the developer to fix the bugs that occour.


In this point I really disagree with spike, from where ever it was quoted. In my opinion, people like wolfire games, frictional games, dejobaan games and some others are professionals, even though their budget and manpower was and still is for sure quite restricted. What makes them professional for me is that they manage to create fun and successfull games and making a living out of it.

I actually haven't refused to fix the bugs, but actually 75% of them are design bugs.

I could go back and redo the AI of course, which is the one thing that I'm truly responsible for, but only if spike wants me to. I don't make these decisions myself.

Also just to point out, the AI is that bad mostly because of the crummy collision detection in Gamestudio, believe it or not. I did a *lot* of debugging and found that the enemies "teleport" due to a glitchy gliding system... Although as I said earlier, this could've all been worked around if the following two conditions were filled:

1. I had the knowledge that the GS collision system is as crummy as it is; and
2. I had the knowledge to make a better one myself.

Of course both conditions are filled now, so once again, if Spike wants me to redo the AI and/or collision I will do it.


Spike was speaking to the GS community regulars, not the known professionals like the ones you listed.

sid split the thread where the bashing began. i told him to name it lets bash grunts. end of story. now for something of more importance:

i apreciate tis thread. i really do. it shows me where to go as a developer and as a desiger. however, i ahve to tell you that some of your points throught this thread are compeltely and udderly (yes, udderly) wrong.

first off, that is a.) because you are a regular customer and i made the mistake of forgetting that and b.) because of that i havent made it clear enough. i might want to change that.

truth be told, you get PLENTY of information what to do in the game, hints to where the story will go from here. you have the option to shut off the pixelation effect inc ase your eyes hurt. you get alot of information regarding the various quirks of the game and furthermore the game was not developed to be bad. the mistkae here is that NONE of you (well, maybe one or two of you) cared to read the wiki. i packed in three links to the wiki for you to read before playing the game, and you didnt care.
furthermore, NONE of you (and believe me, i know that, i keep track of who buys the game) bought the final game that has not only the story explained, some bugs fixed AND hints at what to do next).

so what i get from your rants, and frankly, those are rants, is that you would not buy quake nowadays because it plays like crap. and donÄt tell me that quake played better than grutns because it didn't. i have just recently played it and it es far worse than grunts.

you tell me i have no idea what i a doing and frankly, that is simply wrong. i know perfectly well what i am doing. you are coming here, bashing a game NONE of you has bought. none of you has taken the time to actually read the provided information regarding the game and none of you has taken the time to at least examine the options screen. i know that, because if you would have, some of your rants would simply not be here.

see, what I learned from all of this, and that is the part that counts really, is that i simply expect too much from my customers. i expect them to actually think for a second before they start playing. i expect them to read the provided information and just think about what the game delivers. that is the biggest mistake i made. i made the mistake of thinking my customers actually have a brain. and you can be sure i will fix this as good as possible in the enxt version.

oh and ps.: i care about the game. i care about the story, the graphics, the elvel design (which is, by the way, a direct homage to an earleir zelda title, so basically you have been bashing the level design of links awakening here for a while. nintendo thanks you) and the music. i care about the presentation and the game in general. the fact that gamestudio refuses to have a good collision system bugs me, but i have to live with that.

and one last word: i respect your criticism. i really do. i am grateful for this thread, as we all can learn something from it. no hard feelings for anyone, on the contrary, i really apreciate it. just try to stay on a formal and nice level okay?

pps.: slin that was from the aum interview

Now that I think of it, this thread reminds me of the Daikatana scandal...

If i had the time to reply but i have to keep it very short:

Blaming the user for your lack of design knowledge is as pathetic as it can be.
Shame on you!

cheers

Sorry for not bashing G.R.U.N.T.S! or any one participating in this "argument". But I think the commentary mode of the Half Life 2 games/episodes is pretty interesting for any game developer, because they tell alot about different parts of game creation/design (in my humble opinion)

I played the Demo too and can subscribe all of the critics.
I was very disappointed of how so many elements that showed potential were not or just barely (and badly executed) used, such as the humor, (only the third time in my long lasting gamingtime, that I turned off the sound, because the speakers voice was scouring unconvincing and fastly annoying, and to concentrate on the other elements of the game) the graphicstyle (The downloadreason and still a great idea) is too repetive and plain in execution, the sound in general sounding cheap,
and most annoying: enemies penetrating walls (and killing me this way), enemies resistant to attacks some rare times and being unescapeable stuck.

Long thing in short: I was hot to buy it, but after playing the Demo (several times) I will never do.

Also some attitude makes me wondering...

Quote:"you have the option to shut off the pixelation effect inc ase your eyes hurt."
A: Its all the Whiteout, thats cause the irritation and tireing of the eyes (and headache of others, I had none)

Quote:"the mistkae here is that NONE of you (well, maybe one or two of you) cared to read the wiki. i packed in three links to the wiki for you to read before playing the game, and you didnt care."
A: I think it is the wrong way of speaking of "mistake" to someone, who just wants to play a game. Only the desinger makes the mistakes to not make it accessible and simple enough. I (A little simple I-play-in-my-rare-spare-time-player)dont want to read a wiki. I dont even want to read a phoukheoun Manual (except for more complex games as roleplay or RTS-Games). I want the game to take me by the hand and show me, where the fun begins, where it evolves, where it reach its peak, and finally ends. A complete Whole, a satisfying experience, worth to go throug a second time just because of the pure and accessible Joy.
Everything else wastes the players time and does rarely much for the game or the experience itself.

Besides, many AAA-titles also lack the descripted above (sadly).

Quote:"furthermore, NONE of you (and believe me, i know that, i keep track of who buys the game) bought the final game that has not only the story explained, some bugs fixed AND hints at what to do next)."
A:The Demo should show the Games full potential, not vice versa...

Quote:"so what i get from your rants, and frankly, those are rants, is that you would not buy quake nowadays because it plays like crap. and donÄt tell me that quake played better than grutns because it didn't. i have just recently played it and it es far worse than grunts."
A: Well, I wouldnt call it a very questionable statemant, but for me, Quake 1 and II was one of the best well-oiled Controls-Leveldesing-Gameplay-Machines until Half-Life 2 raised the max-level.
You cant never compare GRUNTS with Quake except for that you shoot at something egoperspectively.

Quote:"see, what I learned from all of this,"..."is that i simply expect too much from my customers. i expect them to actually think for a second before they start playing. i expect them to read the provided information and just think about what the game delivers. that is the biggest mistake i made."
A:Its not about, what you expect from the player (or costumer, if more valuable for you), its again vice versa.
Its what a player expects from you. It is your task as a designer to find excatly that out and create a media, that combines your personal ideas with concepts fitted and adapted to the expectation of the audiences of whatever kind of media.
And at the very front of everything, the player wants to be entertained, and good entertained.
Everything else has a secundary grade and must be "smuggled" to the player, WHILE he is playing the game, even if it is, to let the player start question things to think about them and make them change their point of view on different or even fundamental things the game brings up to the player.
But saying nothing else as thats the player is too stupid to see the goodness\greatness of a game is... not as good as a lot of sales.

Quote:"i made the mistake of thinking my customers actually have a brain."
A:Well, after all I wrote, I think this statement is quite self explaining. I doubt that this would be a wise strategy to treat (potential) costumers and increase the sales.
Respect for the Audience is fundamental and the only thing thats even higher than the priority to entertain.


This is meant constructive and free of any negative emotions.

The existence of proper feedback received from a direct hit may be questionable at times but the player's attacks are never "resisted." Aside from that comment, though, I pretty much agree with what you say.

@spike: I do agree with much of the criticism in this thread. 80% of it is good advice. I had very little control over the design of this game but it is a fact that I did question it at times. At the least I remember agreeing with Rondidon when he said the dialogue should be trigger based rather than a looping track, and I remember telling you to streamline your levels and apply lots of invisible blocks to optimize and smooth the player's movement.

I have also taken responsibility for the last two big problems, the AI and the collision, but that was an innocent lack of ability than anything else. Honestly, I was led into believing that the GS collision code actually worked, and when I realized it really didn't, I personally fretted a lot about it and I always looked for ways to improve it. I rewrote the player's movement code multiple times to streamline it as best I could, and although I now have the ability to actually perfect it, the greater part of the GRUNTS code is more than a year old and at the time of writing I simply didn't have that ability.

Anyway those are my two cents.

The GS collision system works "flawlessly". The fact that USE_BOX (and thus c_move) uses ellipsoids instead of boxes takes a little to get used to (and I often wish we had AABB again), but it does not make anything impossible or exaggeratedly hard to achieve.
Some time ago I've had problems with my movement code and I blamed the OBB sytem, so I wrote a full (2D) AABB movement function. It has worked fine, but it did not really solve any of my issues, so I thought again and finally (it's approx. my 8th gravity code for the same game) came up with a very easy (OBB) solution.

In general, this is not directed at you, Redeemer, I don't get it why people think a good movement code can be achieved with a few lines of code in a few hours/ days.

Hmmm... Expressed myself a bit bad.
It was a Bug when it occured, you was able to shot
the enemy infinite without killing it.
I suppose it was a Bug in the way, the Hitpoints were taken.
Probably they were compared to zero rather >= zero, so that
the enemy health became negative values in rare occasions.
Or the trigger for the get-killed sequence was programmed to allow some situations to not be activated when enemyhealth was >= zero... Dont know the code, so dont really matter...
Anyway, in rare situations an (always different) enemy became immortal.

Collusions are working right (even if it's tricky to get it to work stable). The problem is, that ellipsoid thing doesn't really fit most cases! It really looks terrible when player can move in a little bit in hole which is a little bit smaller than his bbox! Yeah, you can put invisible block or model there, so player wont be able to move in it, but what if player should be able to crawl under that hole? He'll be still able to walk in it a little bit! Or an other problem that when player stands near the end of the edge and he starts slowly sliding and hanging near the end of the edge, in the position, which should make player fall down already... But well, jcl doesn't care about that... He thinks that all problems could have a workaround... But not all of them should be fixed... That is really sad, at least for me. I'm pretty sure, that there wont be any of those bugs (problems) in grunts with movement, if there were possibility to choose between box and ellipsoid, not for c_move only, but for c_trace as well... Sorry for huge off-topic...

Oh, sPIKe. Where to begin?

First, I'm pretty sure that maybe after some time, when you've calmed down, you may regret some of what you wrote, and then wish to edit it all out. I'll quote you in the following, but I'll remove it if you actually decide to edit your previous post. Just let me know (via PM), alright?


As a disclaimer, I haven't played the game. Whoops. In turn, I'll only comment on your post.

~~~



You may feel this way, but understand that people may need different amounts of hints. Not only that, but also keep in mind that you're the one who created the game. Obviously, you'll need less information and hints, and things that may seem like totally clear hints to you may end up as cryptic nonsense for anyone else.
If this piece of criticism comes up more than once (and actually even then), this should be a sign for you to think of ways to fix that. Add more hints that only play after a certain while, perhaps?




I really doubt no "real" project was ever intentionally designed to be bad. This should be no excuse, then. I also don't think anyone implied this.



But that doesn't make it their fault. The job of a gamedesigner nowadays includes explaining the game. Yeah, that wasn't done in the Atari-days, but who cares? It is done nowadays, so it is expected. And why not? It's good practice, and it helps the player. Expecting them to read a wiki of all things isn't the way to go. Its great if you have one, and its a neat way for people to find out more - but it shouldn't be mandatory.

The same criticism can be applied to some other Indiegames out there (terraria comes to mind), and it's equally as bad there. It is also a common point of criticism for those games.



If it is true that your final version is so much better and has so many bugfixes, then why don't you update your demo? As you've seen here, it is used as an indicator to the quality of the full game. And since you're planning to use it as a demo for all other episodes, too, it is in your best interest to absolutely blow them away with your demo. It must be polished, it must be exciting, and it must be self-explanatory (be honest, how often do you read manuals, wikis or tutorials when playing the demo of a game? I never do that).



Listen, I'm not saying anything about the game here, because, again, I haven't played it. I'm really just observing from the sidelines here. I don't think you've improved your situation with your last post - quite the contrary, it makes you look childish, and, as Blattsalat puts it, pathetic, too.
Do you really feel the need to blame the customer/player in such a way? I mean, you cannot honestly think that accusing your customers (!) to be dumb and without a brain could ever be considered a good idea.


I don't feel like "bashing", and I do hope this post doesn't come across like it, since it is not intended to be. Just, you know, my two cents on this situation as it appears to me right now.
Carry on.

obvisously you all didnt understand what i said. let me quote that for you:





so there it is. i already told you that i havent made it clear enough. is it really so hard to understand me? and to tell you the truth, i am as calm as one can be, in fact there is zero emotion towards this thread for me at the moment.
you all get lost in the bashing, which is fine but none of you ever took the time to actually sit back, let it all sink in and then think about it again.
i do. thats why i have so much time between my posts.

i got e-mails from three customers today. they are forum users and bought the game, read the thread and actually found the time to offer constructive criticsim instead of just bashing out emotions. and while their points are similar to some of the more often read points here, they were presented in a helpful and calm manner.

the point is, i am not oblivious to the issues with the game. that would be silly. i am also not ignoring any of you. that would also be silly. i am however too nice of a person. and yes, that does sound silly, but its true. i am the kind of guy who rather lives with a buggy enemy code than ask his coder who charged me wayyyyyyyy to little for his work to re-write it.
i am the guy who sits down and writes a wiki so that everyone has enough help at understanding the game and the quest only to be yelled at because some people chose not to read it.
i am the guy who sits here, calmly responding to posts full of rage and emotion instead of just ignoring you all like some of you do so well.

so pray tell me dear people, what actually are you mad about? blattsalat is mad at the general indie situation and found an ideal target in me and my game. fine. but the rest of you? where exactly is your problem? because you all hate grunts obviously, some even for reasons that dont apply to the game anyway but nobody made it clear what you want now? do you even want anything? because clearly nobody of you bought the game, so the bugfixing patch that will come eventually doesnt concern you. most people here havent even played the game so where is your problem exactly?
is it that you just like to bash other people? and if so, why? nobody here cares about my game obviously. but you all bash without even knowing why.

excuse me for not taking most of you guys seriously at all...

ps.: error: no it doesnt. dont worry^^ and who said i dont update my demo? i havent updated it YET, true but that doesnt mean that i wont ever...
pps.: redeemer: i listen to you all the time. sometimes i just cant do some things.

Having now written my own accurate 3D collision systems from scratch in pure C, I understand perfectly how complex they can be. Nonetheless, I am extremely displeased with the way this system works. It is inaccurate and unreliable, and as stated, it is buggy as well. The enemies teleport not because I am moving them through any external method at all, but simply because I have added the GLIDE flag to my c_move call, which somehow causes them to "end up in unexpected places" just as the manual describes.


That is utterly impossible, and I will go so far as to say it is your imagination. I am aware of such simple yet fatal logical mistakes and made sure to implement safe logic in these potentially volatile situations. I have thoroughly tested and debugged my logic and your statement is both unfounded and untrue, as well as damaging to my reputation as a programmer.

... you do realize of course that the enemy begins flashing as it gets more damaged? You have to keep shooting it for it to die, you know.

I am not mad at you. I just think that developers (indies especially because thats who we are) that release bug infested games, call their audicence "too stuptid to understand their game" and have the guts to ignore massive gameplay and gamemachanics flaws (basicly selling a none working game) should get kicked in their balls.
Just my personal opinion as a customer and as a daveloper.
I do not care if you are MassEffect3 or Grunts. This is not acceptable.

Redeemer I dont understand you. Why didnt you call for help in the community when facing such troubles. There are workaround for every single issue in the game. Some of them being easy and fast to implement.
The pitty of it all is that none of this was necessary in the first place.

And to address this childish "you havent bought the game so you cant judge it" crap:
You state yourself on your webpage that episode one includes pretty much most of the game.
I have played the demo for several hours again and again.
So you can clearly explain to me how "buying it" would raise my judgment qualifications here.

Furthermore is charging money for a unknown beta test basicly a fraud.
Its like telling your customer after the accident that the brakes for the car he bought from you might be added later on.


And to be bring it down to one simple formula:
You wouldnt buy your own game because of the same reasons I wouldnt.

.... Do you now get a slight idea why i dont like how the project has turned out..

im gonna stick up for redeemer on that last comment blatt. he did call on the community. Im not fully aware of the issue because i havent done much 3d work with acknex in a bit (programming wise) so i havent really got much use out of the new collision yet, but i have seen him post and go through long threads about this very issue.

Thanks, LC.

And you still did not find a sollution? (hard to believe for me to be honest)
Did anyobdy thought of fixing (or at least minimizing) this with level design?
Did you reconcider the gameplay since you couldnt find a workaround?
Did you concider a free release since you could not achieve what was necessary?

Dont get me wrong Redeemer. I am not blaming you or any other person. Neither do i blame spike for the entire game.

I find it just unacceptable that you SELL this game. A game you admit (nothing wrong with that) is not that good and has quite a few issues.
I blame the "press" and "review" that dont point at the flaws of the game. And i dislike the community that basicly ignores all of this and acts like everything is alright and fine. I do not like how spike deals with critique, I do not like him blaming your customers for his faults, and i dont like how he tries to find cheap excuses and strange logical constructs for a mistake he made.

And what i hate most is the fact that still nothing has changed. After all of the rants, critique, talking aso there is absolutely nothing.

If this stays as it does, I do hope two things:
a.) You, Redeemer and all the others involved will find "better" projects and producers in the future.
b.) Not one more copy of this game gets sold. This behaviour should require learning and reflection first, before it grants income. (I know this hurts the wrong people too, but I am afraid there is no other way)

cheers and have a nice day

The only solution we were given was to place invisible blocks over "trouble spots" which both me and spike eventually agreed was the only solution. However it was spike's job to do that, and he only did it in a few of the places I listed, so I really don't deserve any more attention in this matter.


It makes no difference to me one way or the other, but once again that's spike's decision.

Funny how everything i say gets blatantly ignored here. oh well, i have better things to do with my time anyway. and even if i wouldnt have, id still quit this nonsense. this thread is over for me.

It is very interesting how the community discuss finish projects. As long as developers are on the same stage as the majority of the com members... everything is okay.
We discuss shit work in the way of "do a little bit that and then don´t forget this". But as soon as one go over this stage, like finish a project / get a deal... there starts a witch hunting. This could be the reason why guys like oliver2s simply delete their showcases or others like fogman just don´t make some of their commercial work public. Don´t bother. I stoped playing grunts after 2 Minutes, because I don´t like the style... but I don´t know why to fuck spike in this crude way. No, please don´t get me wrong, I still have no identification with spiderman-gothic-cementery boys... it is just interesing how we talk with eachother.

Why would he change all what you rant about, blattsalat? I wouldn't listen too much either to someone who shows little respect to ones work. And spike already said he'll consider all advise. Not every programmer can magically appear working code within a day, week or even month. Finishing work within a given time isn't one of your best abilities either, isn't it? You should understand that it doesn't all go that fast and immediate.

He is perfectly able to sell more copies. Sales are 80% about marketing and 20% about looks. Keeping your players playing (and buying a sequel) is a different story, but for the first sales it doesn't matter. And whatever Big Riggs can...

If that is true, it turns the quotes



which are implying that you think very, very lowly of your customers (accusing them of "not having a brain", even) from a regrettable and stupid act done in the heat of the moment to an absolutely baffling statement that speaks so highly of disrespect and outright arrogance that it's sickening.


I agree mostly with Blattsalat. While it's probably true that bad games may damage the "indie"-label (which is pretty nebulous anyhow), I don't think that this has been the case here, as this game doesn't seem to be popular in the sense of it being discussed everywhere.



Alpha_strike, you may be right in that some of these comments speak of bitterness or jealousy. This doesn't change at all that most of the criticism brought up here is fair, and as such, those posts still hold value (much value, even, as criticism is a valuable good).
Is it, however, really unfair to hold free hobby projects to a different standard as commercial products that are sold? At the very least, I'd expect the latter to work*.



* - not saying that grunts does not work - again, I haven't played it.

I dont know how to understand the last part of your statement, but I can tell you, that I play First-Person since the first releases of Doom and know perfectly well how to shoot something ingame. So I will see it as unknowing assumption rather than an try of an insult.

And to the thing above, I NEVER was to meant to harm the reputation of ANYONE here in general. Im not with my nose high to the sky to degrade someones work just for own fun or destructive jealousy.
And I stay at what I have seen (several times).
When an regular enemy (a meleefighter) can take over 60 shots without showing any difference, then yes, this looks like a Bug to me.
And indirectly write, that i am a liar doesnt help much anyway. I would have no gain or any interest to do such things anyway.
I played it approx. 12 times through (for analyzing purposes) so I dont think all the other enemies exploded just by looking at them.
Further is it interesting to mention, that this Bug only occoured in the white level, and never in the dark level and only with the pistol, at least the times, I encountered it.
I would be careful with the expression "Impossible".
You are not Carmack. Even he produces Bugs (and I assume I could guess they are not few).
I developed a game over 2 Years, after finishing it I had 6 months intense testing of the completed project with bughunting\fixing. I thought it was completely bugfree, but after 2 years after a release I encountered a showstopper-bug, that required a very rare combined constellation of states and situations, that I thought I had programmed logic-proof.
Today I would never again call a project of mine bugfree, today I would state they have just hid well.
No one is perfect nor any code is. And even any engine is, nor any pc-configuration or hardwarecombination.
Maybe it was my System or a hardwarecomponent or a driver or Acknex, or maybe Spike changed something.
I dont get, why you directly take that bugsight as an personal attack to your skills and reputation.
I had Acknex-"bugs" that turned out to be my DVD-drive.
Acknex was fine all the time, and worked after replacing the DVD-drive with another one.
Regarding this, I am very disappointed by your reaction.
I never intended anything that you are assuming,
but I have seen, what I have seen.

I am very disappointed about this thread. Honestly, I share much thoughts with Blattsalat, but I am deeply shocked how you treat each other.

Professionality can be judged twofold. On the one hand side you can say someone is a professional, when he earns money for his work. On the other hand side professionality divides expert/competent work from ragged/amateurish work. I think most of you critize Spike for the latter and that he claims actually money for it. Question: what if he would release it as freeware? Would you start such a thread as well?? I don't think so!

I think we collected a lot of arguments why Spike's game(s) are not pleasing everyone and I am sure he will rethink this in the future. If he does not update Grunts or if he doesnt care about this: stop ranting! If there was a message, it has been carried out.

Everyone has his or her own oppinion how a game should feel and how much quality it should serve. And YES, almost all so called indie games disappoint me, too. But, I can tell you: It is a brutal, sleepless and totally un-human amount work to polish a game to fit the mainstream expectations in all certain aspects and degrees of quality. Maybe Spike was a bit tired and thought that the game was alright. Crunchtime is not enjoyable and there are certain times where you simply think: Shit fuck, fuck it!!!111

That is no excuse. No doubt. I have also very high hopes, expectations and my very own vision how a quality game should feel like (everything between Pong and Crysis 3001 super extreme edition for quantum computers). And if anyone tries to excuse himself with that I will haunt you to hell. Seriously. But, even if you try a lot and put lots of effort into it, as to share my experiences, you always get at least one guy who is complaining so much like our Blattsalat did here

The reason why I wrote this post was also another one:

Keep in mind that there are a lot of other users which could be distracted by your talk. They could be hesitated by you to post anything. Because they could fear that they will be bashed to death. Please keep that in mind.

[EDIT] I am still angry, I would like to close it, so please calm down, little HeelX and hope that the others do so as well...

@alpha: I am not criticizing that they made a game, nor am i criticizing that the game is not perfect or has tons of bugs and flaws.
I am criticizing that he SELLs it the way its right now . And frankly i dont care if its EA or icevalk, this aint ok to me. But i am repeating myself here.
The difference between a work in progress and the comments towards it is the fact that its work in progress and not a finished product.
The state this game is now is the one its sold!


@Joozey:
1.) I would never charge you anything before you get what your asked for. Taking more time or less is a matter of the case, but no official statement about bugfixes on the website, not stoping the sales till a working version is up and ready,....
Dont tell me that if you ordered some kind of model, got only the mesh but not the skin and no comment from the modeler and you already paid for it, that this would be "fine" for you. Nor would you accept the refuse of rework from the modeler if something doesnt fit your needs.

2.) Respect: statements like "too dumb customers", "i am too nice to ask my coder to fix stuff" and "we might fix that in the second episode", do not create any respect on my side either.
The comments from me might be harsh but none of this stuff is made up.
I have not started this to make him like me nor to get his respect. This is all about how to treat your customers with respect.

3.) why to change: he does not have to change anything. But this wont help him sell more since all of the people who played the demo wont buy the game anymore. And all the users that bought games like grunts (its just one of many) will begin to avoid indie labeled games because we aint very customer oriented. I dont have to like that, do I?


Its easy to label someting as rant or jelousy or whatever if you dont want to hear whats said.

But on the other hand, the easy path seems to be the path to pick here.
And franky I hope that I am not the only one here that doeant agree with that.

cheers

@miez: Perhaps you are right, and I should not have gotten so angry. Now that I know you're using the pistol, I can clarify for you what's going on: it is sometimes difficult to hit things with the pistol, but that is just the nature of the gun. It performs polygon collision detection to detect hits and the worms, which are rather small, can be difficult to hit sometimes with a slow projectile weapon. So I say again: they are not invincible. You just have to aim a little better. The collision hull on the fist is actually smaller than the fist model to ensure that you do not miss your target by hitting the floor/wall next to it.

It's interesting why do people insist on pushing their opinion to someone's work
I mean, it's sPike's game, sPike and his team working on it, it's up to Spike on what he will do with his game, whether he want to sell his game to anyone else or he want to email it to NASA, it's all his choice You can give him suggestion, of course, but it's up to him to accept it and follow it or not, you can't force him do what you want him to do.

Ok, so his game got lot of bug, so what? I've seen AAA games sold with worse bug. Some of them don't even bother on releasing a fix/patch. Maybe he just didn't notice those bug, maybe he was too excited about his completed game so he missed those bug.


What if I say "Compared to John Carmack, I am no one"

I'm going to go ahead and say that the movement generally felt very smooth and comfortable on my machine. Perhaps there are framerate-dependent issues, but the framerate didn't vary here, so it wasn't an issue for me. That's not to say the bugs other people mentioned weren't there -- those were indeed bothersome, and I hope they aren't there in the final version.

I liked the visual style, but soon found myself wondering if it should've been abandoned on the grounds that it's impractical for the type of game it is. It is good design for a player to be able to tell one place from another at a glance. This helps them build a mental progression of rooms, which is particularly important when rooms need to be revisited. The visual style in GRUNTS is not conducive to such familiarity and exploration.

Also, the relative lack of variety may make it hard for some players to motivate themselves to keep exploring. For me, after finishing the first section and entering the second, I lost all motivation to find every key and shoot every enemy enough times to kill it (enemies seemed to take a lot of shots to kill). I didn't feel like I'd be rewarded with anything: no interesting narrative, no exciting locales, no new weapons or characters, no development of my own competitive ability -- not even the sense of accomplishment that many puzzle games rely on. With those things absent, the only thing left to consider is whether or not the gameplay itself is entertaining, and for me it wasn't.

Was ist deutsch für "That's just my two cents!"?

Jibb

@Redeemer: No bad blood at all. :-)

@Bart_the_13th:

Then I would say: "Good, why not. So you are able to contribute great things to the public, that will evolve and improve gaming experience and fun. Why not."
If you have the skills, then they are your skills.
I would be the last to have any problem with that.
Get one or two Artists, a soundguy and probably a Leveldesinger that jumps around in different tasks and create some freetime project for fun.
Maybe it will result in something great.

Das ist nur meine eigene bescheidene Meinung.

We don't really have a nice phrase for this... However, we have the opposite so if you want to say that anothers opinion isn't really worth anything you can say "das ist keine fünf Pfennig wert".

Danke! Außerdum, "deutsch" oder "Deutsch"?

Jibb

bart makes a good point... many bigger companies in the industry have titles with well known issues... so it isnt really unique to indies

In your case its "deutsch". Btw, its probably just a typo, but: Its "Außerdem" not "Außerdum" (sounds a bit like "außer dumm" -> "except dumb").
Btw, yay, off-topic, are you currently trying to learn german?

Außerdem! Cheers. Yes, it's a typo. I'm not doing any lessons or anything, but I am trying to get to the point where I can get the gist of most german topics on the forums, and then hopefully to be able to be involved in them. Thanks for the help

Jibb

I really wish I had learned Latin instead of german through highschool. Latin is good for nothing.

I wonder if I could learn german in college...

Ah, my fault. I forgot that wrong+wrong=right.
Sorry for that.

cheers

I dont want to force him to do anything, but I am allowed to have my own oppinion.



Please name 3 AAA titles released this year with obvious and none playable main game mechanic + that did not got fixed.

And please add what effect this had on a)the publisher of the game and b)the developer of the game.

Also I would like to hear how the user reacted to this games.

...maybe we will see a pattern, why this attitude is bad and wrong.



So its ok to run over a couple of school kids because you are too excited about your new drivers license? SOme might not agree with that.

According to Redeemer he knew about those issues (if you bother reading all the posts before posting yourself), he was in charge of it and he did not fix it. Spike also never denied it.
We will see if a bugfix will ever come.
One thing is for sure: Without this comments here, there woulndt be bug fix for sure.

Grunts would be dead, forgotten and in a few months another user would release the same kind of game, because nobody cares enough to tell him his honest oppinion and that its not ok to sell unfinished and bug infested games.

cheese

Oh i am not saying its right at all. again i havent even played the demo. I'm just saying i think the effect on the market is for games in general not just indies. I think it might go hand in hand as well though with his last topic, if it is in fact that buggy, that would have an affect on the budget games market. Interesting tone you took with your reply, as if somehow emotionally affected....

I can't name any games this year or even three for that matter, but I can list both Fallout 3 and Oblivion off the top of my head. Both games had lots of issues that are really unacceptable considering the game's ultimate presentation. Ultimately this didn't deter both games from racking up enormous sales, but there are plenty of complainers out there...


Also remember that I tried my hardest to fix it but ultimately failed due to a lack of ability, not a lack of passion/ambition/drive like you said. Maybe that sounds a little defensive (and of course it doesn't make a difference in the game's ultimate presentation) but I don't like being labelled as someone who only gives a half-assed effort...


Me and spike are actually grateful for the honest feedback and I will begin R&D on a new custom built collision system soon, as well as a patch for both the demo and the retail version. So thanks again.

EDIT: Had something to say about Jibb's post:

I wonder if for the next episode we introduced color into the Uroboros? Not too many colors, just the standard EGA palette. It wouldn't hurt the style much at all and would allow spike to create more interesting scenes, like weird digital forests and stuff...

@lostclimate:
I am sorry if the last post sounded rude. This was not on purpose.
I just wanted to point out that its not an excuse because others do it was well.
Its just not acceptable no matter how big the budget is.

@Redeemer:
Havent played fallout3 so I cant say much about it, though Oblivion worked and I am sure both games have at least been patched. At least oblivion must have been since i finished the game twice.

First of all I want to make clear that i do not think you coded this desultory.
Furthermore I do like and respect it a lot that you stand up here and try to defend/explain it. This takes some balls and I am sure everything would be a lot different if you were in charge here.

And I am very pleased that you are honestly trying to fix stuff. So maybe the whole "bashing" might have even helped....

I wish you good luck.

Seriously. I would like to know what makes Fallout 3 comparable with Grunts. I played Fallout 3 a year ago (after my PS3 patched it to the latest version) and I had no troubles and I enjoyed every buck that I spent on it. Never got a game like that for that price. It is really outstanding.

@majority of thread posts:

- hmm, well i played grunts, the demo atleast, i didnt have much movement problems on my end actually, seemed ok.

- the style is ok but repetitive and useless after a while, i really think you can add colours, dont go colouring the whole game now but it could be used for contrast of important geometry or setting the mood.

- i got lost a few places i wont lie and as Julz [jibb but i prefer julz ] said, i didnt have much motivation to finish anything, felt like i was playing it for the sake of playing it

- is it worth selling? well i really dont know, the devs seem to put alot of work in, silly for them to start a thread about increasing the price though, makes no sense in any way but if they can get the game interesting to play through then i dont see why they shouldnt sell, again, i didnt get any movement errors

- hate alot of the responses i'm seeing from the devs though:
"we tried" , "brainless customers" , "aim better to kill whatever"

honestly i know what its like to be riddled with faulty systems but at the end of the day, noone cares for you, the dev, they care for the project, if so many people are complaining then simply fix it or have you given up on yourself and decided that gruntz is dead? if not, then i dont see why you cant revise both the game and the demo and reupload it.

Would I be mistaken in my understanding that you played it on your PS3? I was speaking of the PC version, which is a really unstable piece of garbage. There have been numerous counts of random crashes, big memory leaks, and gameplay bugs, and having owned and played both this game and Oblivion on a very recently built, top-of-the-line, and stable computer I can testify to all of these problems. Like I said though these things certainly didn't harm sales...


I don't approve of the second statement, but the third statement was a valid explanation for a bug that just doesn't exist. I wholly agree that all the real bugs need to be fixed, and if you have been reading all of the posts, you will see that we are both happy to get the honest feedback and to fix the bugs. So I don't understand what you're complaining about at this point...

Actually I player Fallout 3 on PC, movement is suck, but I wont call it garbage. Story and battle systems are pretty nice. I enjoyed game a lot while playing it.

The game's definitely not garbage, but the engine is.

"Please name 3 AAA titles released this year with obvious and none playable main game mechanic + that did not got fixed."

Nice statement, since the majority of games is mostly released at the end of year.

Not this year But:
Civ5: Savesystem for multiplayer is a huge fail. You can save to the steam cloud, but never load again. You can save a custom save during game by Ctrl+s(there is no menu button), but you cant load the save unless you copied it into the autosave folder and prefix the savename with autosave.

BadCompany2: Messed up engine. PatchbyPatch it changed completely: Working on Dualcore, not working on dualcore, working on dualcore....last patch long long time ago: NOT working (properly) on dualcore.

Knifing still not properly implemented. still possible to knife a camping sniper into the back multiple times without hitting hime o.O(though its less frequent)

"complaining" ? me ? naah , i actually dont care much, i hate the responses such as: "he was told to place blocks and didnt"

personally as said, it worked for me, i played it for a while and stopped because i got lost and lost interest, i actually tried finishing it and no i wont read some silly wiki

also fallout pc version operated perfectly fine for me also

- anyways, am out so no longer checking this thread