tain.totalcodex.net

Heyaz DA, long time no see

oogaBooga wrote: Me and renwood got ahold of them and within 6 months we had an HD multiplayer demo featuring classic m2 gameplay with revamped everything from ambient life to particle effects to every piece of scenery on every single map.

Dude... if you really think rendering a few *sprites* in higher resolutions and importing them is some godlike ability then I have a much better understanding of where your pitch is coming from now :S

oogaBooga wrote: We just wanted to work with you, but it's apparent that you have nothing to contribute to us that we cant already do with the exception of a coder (who will get far more done in a very short time than you ever will, especially because he'd be getting paid for it).

Uhuh. So that does get back to the basic question of why you're clearly talking about PM-implemented Myth features (even unreleased ones that have only been discussed) and even demoing them in your video, all the while implying that you are somehow responsible for them? What's the plan here - you're going to implement it all again from 1.3? Using the residual of money that you have left over after buying the license and whatever else? And developing and paying for a new metaserver and all the rewards? Good luck

oogaBooga wrote: You obviously don't understand even a single part of our game design plan if you think it's just the tagset with a few images spruced up.

We're calling it a plugin because it is a plugin, no matter how "total conversion" it ends up being. Unless you're talking about modifying and improving Myth itself in some way, in which case we go back to the former question... how do you intend to do that and what do you intend to do?

oogaBooga wrote: You are all apparently under the assumption we wont have access to change Myth's code.

Not at all, but you really think you're going to pull 1.3->1.8 level of updates out of your asses with some random coder in a few months? I think that you vastly underestimate the work that has gone into it over the years... go back and run 1.3 sometime to get some perspective.

oogaBooga wrote:and all with higher quality graphics than anything any of you combined have ever produced.

Ok, take a step back here. Since you're presenting this to the world now, you really have to stop thinking anything in the Myth 2 engine is ever going to be "amazing graphics" (and that comes from a graphics guy). It's sprites... just accept that they are never going to impress any modern gamer and - at most - concentrate on making them "less objectionable".

oogaBooga wrote: Sorry, i'm beyond that shit. This is actual game development.

Call it what you like, but realize that several of us work as or with "actual game developers" on a daily basis, so your pleas sound kind of childish.

Road wrote: I have pretty much gone from making mods to working on 3D animation and models as a hobby, regardless of whom I am making them for I hope you at least appreciate the effort I have put into the models. The models are more based on Juan ramirezs Concept art than the units that are actually used in M2. The video doesnt do them much credit, you can see them a little better at: http://s235.photobucket.com/albums/ee3/Roadwyrm/MythIV/

Great! As I mentioned, the Bungie models are extremely amateur and borderline useless - I'm glad to see you taking the better road of recreating them in much higher quality!

And that gets to the heart of the matter... I think it's great that you want to update the graphics, add a new solo campaign, etc. I can even get behind that idea financially! The issue is your portrayal of this as more than it is, and crazy assumptions about how everything is going to magically fall into place for you if you reach your funding goal, even when it involves several other parties with whom you have seemingly not even communicated (Take Two, MariusNet, Project Magma).

So why don't you just start with proposing a graphics update + campaign, and if you feel that you need more fundamental support in the engine or metaserver to accomplish what you want, come (ideally with some humility) and talk to the relevant parties?

Also I find it a bit odd that you're singling out this community when *every* place I've seen this posted that knows anything about the modern Myth scene has been equally skeptical. Why don't you go follow up on your MWC forum thread and see which gets nastier more quickly?

Well.

Skipping all the obvious politics and such, allow me to chime-in with a few perspectives.

While not getting too specific, this kind of stuff falls into my area of profession. So, I'll just toss a few items to whomever wants to see it. Do with it as you may. This is not intended as legal advice or guidance, in any way. Caveat emptor, and all that.

First, I have a great deal of respect for Ooga and his work, both in Marathon and Myth. That said, I think his Kickstarter has issues.

First and foremost is the rights issue. Sure, there's precedent in your world and mine for simply "doing something on spec" and hoping to obtain the rights afterwards. But note the words: "Doing Something On Spec".

TRANSLATION: For free.

To expect people to hand you US$450K when you not only have *no* rights to the project, but do not even know if obtaining the rights is feasible...well, that just doesn't add up.

Think about it: What if you got your US$450K, and the rights holder said they wanted precisely that figure for the rights? Then what?

You'd be in a far more powerful position on the Kickstarter if you had, for example, a legal document from "whomever" guaranteeing you first dibs on the rights for "X" price, if and when you secure the funding.

Note that these kinds of "Deal Memo" documents often carry little weight in a formal arbitration, but they are also not worthless. Generally, if and when they carry little weight, it's due to the fact that they are often non-committal in nature, i.e., when those issuing the Memo (holder of the rights) intentionally use vague language like "if schedules permit," or "if the outcome is approved by management," and so on, making it easy for them to exit at any time (usually when you need them most).

On the other hand, if you had a bona fide and binding CONTRACT of some kind, that'd be different. Obviously, it would take an attorney to arrange for the contractual documents, on both sides. Legal fees of probably US$4K+ for each team, depending. But, you'd then have a CONTRACT and not just a flimsy Deal Memo or LOI ("Letter of Intent").

Contract should specify first dibs, a price (whether sliding scale or fixed), and approval triggers.

This is a very, very basic description of the arrangement, mind you. It's far more complicated than the above. That's why legal representation is critical in these matters. It's not a luxury, but a NECESSITY.

Long story short: You'd be in a better position to raise REAL bread if you could actually demonstrate via iron-clad legal paper that "whomever" *will*, in fact, give you first crack at the rights, for "x" amount, upon your Kickstarter coming through.

Next:

On a more practical note, only a fool would give money of this scale to a project that did not clearly articulate where the money was going to be spent, in what timeframe, by whom, and all the planned provisions for accounting the monies and schedules, including the executive personnel.

Long story short: Without a detailed budget and schedule, only the very naïve and/or idealistic (or super-wealthy idle rich) will contribute to something like this, at this scale.

It's not too much to ask for an ACCOUNTING of where, how, and when you'll spend every thin dime. It's a very rudimentary element of asking for money, my friend.

There's more I could say, but this is enough to get you thinking.

Let me be clear (and this much is subjective) that working out of a garage and being all "indie" and "torrent" and "Wikipedia" and stuff is cool, and all...but in the real world, where real business is conducted, there are minimums you must meet to be taken seriously. Damn fool idealistic crusades with no articulation of monies, legalities, and/or schedules does not a business plan make. Not even for a 12 year-old game, not even if you're OogaBooga.

I wish you well, and I know you have good intentions, but you really do lack professional polish, from a hard "business" perspective. Your Kickstarter has "fail" written all over it, as presented. It seems both unrealistic and unobtainable.

One final note: I understand that many artists have issues understanding hard business. Most suck at it. Somehow, I'm one who doesn't. I can execute my art at very high level, and still take care of the biz side like a mo-fo. Yet, I do have great empathy for artists who suck at business, because they so often screw themselves up by allowing others to take advantage of them, or by their sheer "garage band" naïveté that results in their getting nowhere.

My advice: If you really can't deal with the hard biz, get someone on board who can. Maybe a team player who sucks at the art, but who kicks ass in the biz. Preferably, one who understands the art, but cannot execute, nor has any desire to execute.

My two cents, for what it's worth. Understand that I do have some success in these matters, and do know what I'm talking about.

However, I'm not perfect, so you must, of course, decide your OWN path. Prove me wrong. It's possible. But I think you'll have a better chance if you take a more professional approach, articulate your budget down to the day, dime, and door (reference to the name on a person's door), not to mention at least having a FIGURE negotiated for the rights, BEFORE DOING ANYTHING.

Best...

Great post, Olong.

Olong2 wrote:First and foremost is the rights issue.

I'm giving Ooga and Ren the benefit of the doubt here in saying that I assume they've contacted Take 2 and they've been given a figure. That said, the figure really should have been stated in the video or Kickstarter description (or even just tell us that you have a figure; it's ridiculous that we have to guess if you've done something so basic to the project).

If they DON'T have a figure from Take 2, well then... just stick to free plugins like everyone else.

Olong,

Deep words, above all " ... First, I have a great deal of respect for Ooga and his work, both in Marathon and Myth."
If I was of staff M.K.P I would accept that advice.
Ah... and also a something : this lad (R.W) stop walking in the forum with another nick name, like a Mahir, leaving a dark corner coming scare us. by the time I understood that he has a moral debt with staff the forum, and this he has to repair alone and apart, and not ask for other do. show us responsibility.

Julio

New post on their thing says "don't worry, trust us, the candy's in our van"

Maybe I should start a project for Myth III - M2 or my own Myth IV I still have the cliff notes from mumbo jumbo/bungie of their planned story that I can steal ideas from

Punkuser - you asked how the ORR team expects to get 1.8 features without Magma's help. Although ORR team members have been dismissive of magma's attempts to follow the original Take2-MythDev agreement, I have to wonder if they are working under the assumption that Magma's changes to Myth2 belong to TakeTwo, so if they buy the rights from takeTwo then they will then 'own' Magma's changes (i.e. v1.8 ) too?

A general thought prompted by oolongs well written post. I wonder if the resistance to providing _any_ details about how the money will be spent is because the projectteam is looking at other successful vaguely defined projects and thinking "they didn't say how they were going to spend the money, why should we?" The unaccountability of kickstarter projects once they are funded is a topic with a lot of buzz lately - some really big ones have gotten a lot of flak for not being more transparent. If ORR aren't familiar with the blowback these projects are getting, that might explain why they feel it's so unreasonable to be asked to provide details. (ex. of a completely funded kickstarter project PR disaster: Amanda Palmer (an independant label-free musician) started a project to raise 100,000 to pay for a tour. She raised 1.2 million. She then had the audacity to post ads asking for musicians who would be willing to play in her 'orchestra' for free on said tour. Along with the "You aren't going to pay musicians to play in your band?" came angry complaints of "You raised 10x the money you were asking for and you don't have enough money to pay a band? What did you do with all that money?" )

vinylrake wrote:Although ORR team members have been dismissive of magma's attempts to follow the original Take2-MythDev agreement, I have to wonder if they are working under the assumption that Magma's changes to Myth2 belong to TakeTwo, so if they buy the rights from takeTwo then they will then 'own' Magma's changes (i.e. v1.8 ) too?

I do indeed wonder if that's their assumption as well, but if they claim there never was any original agreement then that obviously makes no sense. So they have to choose one camp or another

And they also describe stuff that has just been "ideas" or in active development, so I'm curious how they plan to accomplish that. My guess is that in their minds they vaguely think that they are going to get ahold of the latest PM code (forcefully or otherwise) and that they can then easily develop it from there by hiring a coder. Well, I suppose that certainly isn't any *more* delusional than thinking they are going to just buy the license from Take Two without chatting with them first Or similar with MariusNet...

But their lack of approaching any of the relevant parties before throwing this thing up on Kickstarter and asking for money really is at the root of the problems here.

punkUser wrote:... Or similar with MariusNet...

I would say that if they are at all serious, they do not even think about considering MariusNet. It was written in a 'dead' language (Delphi), modifications and/or support is rather difficult. I know PPE was talking about rewriting everything but I don't know how far he ever got on it.

MariusNet is good for a 15 year old game to use with a small user base, and it was never stress tested even at MariusNet's peak, but for a new game, with thousands or more users online all at once? Seriously - you want to start from scratch, the game server is the *easiest* part of everything they're talking about. The hardest part of developing MariusNet was the reverse engineering part of the project since the Myth TFL server was not running during development, which isn't the case if you're developing it with a new game.

Conner wrote:I would say that if they are at all serious, they do not even think about considering MariusNet. It was written in a 'dead' language (Delphi), modifications and/or support is rather difficult. I know PPE was talking about rewriting everything but I don't know how far he ever got on it.

I don't imagine they were considering trying to use mariusnet (Renwood's lifetime ban being one reason), from ooga's reply it sounds like they are "planning" (and I use the word somewhat loosely ) on using the bungie.net codebase. Since the bnet code is "free" I think they think this is already done so haven't really planned out the work involved. ( I am of course happy to be disabused of any misconceptions or assumptions I am making about their planning or lack thereof.)

vinylrake wrote:I don't imagine they were considering trying to use mariusnet (Renwood's lifetime ban being one reason), from ooga's reply it sounds like they are "planning" (and I use the word somewhat loosely ) on using the bungie.net codebase. Since the bnet code is "free" I think they think this is already done so haven't really planned out the work involved. ( I am of course happy to be disabused of any misconceptions or assumptions I am making about their planning or lack thereof.)

I don't know what would be worse, using the MariusNet code - or the released bungie.net code. If they could get the modified code that playmyth was running, it would at least be a better starting point than the original bnet code. But I can't stress this enough - they should just start from scratch.

and I will say this - I see near zero chance for any community group to get the 'rights' to Myth - but I also saw zero chance that anyone would give Blades the Myth 2/3 source code. But they did - so I've been wrong before (:

Conner wrote: I don't know what would be worse, using the MariusNet code - or the released bungie.net code. If they could get the modified code that playmyth was running, it would at least be a better starting point than the original bnet code. But I can't stress this enough - they should just start from scratch.

Completely agreed, but while this definitely the easiest path and you can largely crib from libraries and cut corners these days, that's still not a trivial amount of work (especially if you want to support ranking too, as they seem to). Is the coder time for that coming out of the 450k (minus taxes, minus rewards, minutes license, etc) too? It's just yet another thing that it doesn't seem like they have planned through, or at the very least they haven't laid out a budget for how they intend to accomplish any of this.

Sorry to be beating a dead horse into the ground, but I am just fascinated by this project. I've been re-reading the kickstarter project page and just realized what an incredible volume of swag they would need to create and ship if all their levels of support were filled up. (I'll only list physical merchandise and in-game elements they will need to create since digital soundtracks/books don't require much effort once the thing is done)

here's what they would have to create and ship as actual physical items to supporters:

over 2,000 3D physical maps of a myth level
over 2000 physical unit stat books
over 6,000 satchel pillows
over 11,000 t-shirts
over 10,000+ full color posters
another 6800 full color SIGNED posters

for a grand total of over 35,000 physical items. even with donator paying shipping can you imagine how much time and effor it would take to produce those 35,000 items, package them and mail them to at least 16,000 different physical addresses? I hope they have budgeted for a sweatshop to produce and ship this stuff because if their donation levels get met they'll be to busy fulfilling rewards to have any time to work on the project itself.

and for IN-GAME rewards they would have to create the following items:

ANY number of donators will be listed in the credits. Even if no one donated under $80 and just the levels above $80 were filled that would mean the in-game credits could contain 35,000+ names!

35,000+ custom player icons (Any number of contributors can create their own custom player icons to be included in the game)

35,000 custom warrior names. (Any number of donators can have their name added to the pool of warrior names)

2000+ custom gravestones (Over 2000 contributors can have their names on gravestones in game. That means the solo campaign will have over 2000 gravestones each with it's own custom graphic. I guess several levels must take place in vast graveyards)

300+ in-game shrines dedicated to contributors

100+ unique artifacts designed by contributors

2 player designed (or partially player designed) in-game levels

1 player-designed character to be included in the solo and multiplayer maps.

I know it's pie in the sky dreaming, and it's important to dream big, but what if the levels were actually maxed out - how would they ever be able to produce and ship that much swag?

I (no joke) would like to hear an answer from the guys on some of these questions. *shrug*

Ditto.

Last I heard there was to be an updated video soon. Ren and Ooga came over to my place to shoot some footage for the project. That was like three days ago but I know they where going to try to cover more on there end.

The video was to answer many questions people had on the KS site.