Planets³, an Open-World Voxel-Based rpg | Hacker News Reader

Planets³, an Open-World Voxel-Based rpg

thepicrain.com

157 pointsnzonbi67 comments

This looks pretty cool as an idea.

The pseudonyms and cartoons for all the developers is somewhat concerning, as a naturally suspicious person. I've been happy when I funded game projects by known successful teams (UberEnt, Garriott), but I'd be reluctant to fund someone who didn't have a track record or a real identity.

(I just noticed if you dig into their FB page and such, you see stills from French TV interviews they did, so it's a bit less concerning, but still bad marketing IMO.)

If you are only happy to fund celebrities, then what advantage do they have to show more pictures of their non-celebrity selves?

I will fund a pseudonymous celebrity, or a pseudonym with a track record. I will fund a non-celebrity with no track record IFF the project is interesting, credible, and the team shows both a sufficient investment to date that I don't think it's a "scam", and understanding of the upcoming challenges so they'll finish it.

You are conflating "celebrity" and "somebody who is likely to deliver and not waste your backing money." As someone doing a Kickstarter fairly soon, this is an issue I'm working to alleviate, but not with cute pseudonyms.

I mean, WTF is this (from their Kickstarter page):

   Why should you trust us? The fate of our company and
   its team depends on the success of this game.

Well, of course, but that doesn't do anything to substantiate why they should trust the project owners. The project owners might be complete idiots laying their company on the line for something they can't do, what reason has been given to think they can do it?

Betting on people with a track record or demonstrable ability to finish a game is only smart.

I'm not conflating those things.

You don't have to be Richard Garriott to be credible. Why even mention the guy? The only way you can be him is if you have decades of published games, it's not useful advice for people who are relatively unknown.

You don't have to be Garriott to be credible, but he is credible. Because he has a track record. If they do have a track record of building quality projects (and they say they do), they aren't substantiating it. See the problem?

I don't have a shipped-product track record, so I'm going to have a playable vertical slice--not a complete game, not narrative-based, but a demonstration that our features are already working, that our game isn't just hype, and what we need a Kickstarter for is assets and content creation. Because I understand people do and should laugh at projects that handwave this stuff.

What platform?

Windows/Mac/Linux, for now. Using libgdx on the JVM, so Android and iOS (via RoboVM) are pretty easy, but I'm using Rhino for a scripting layer and that might not play so nicely with RoboVM or Dalvik.

Echo this 100%. I am in the same boat. Anybody can put up pretty pictures. If the project fails, it brings disrepute to the whole indie gamedev community. Life is already too hard.

Life is incredibly easy for indie game devs today. There are markets; it's reasonably transparent; and you have insanely good tools available for free or cheap (Unity 3D for goodness' sake -- in 1997 we paid $5k to rent a rudimentary 3d game engine to build an alpha demo, and it was C++ or go f--k yourself. Serious engines cost six figures plus a significant percentage of back end. Something not nearly as good as Blender cost $5000/seat in 2005.)

Because of this, competition is fierce. But competition is fierce for web developers too, and we all seem to be doing OK.

Suck it up, build a playable alpha, and then look for funding.

One: this post is insanely douchey. Chill.

Two: it's much harder for a game developer than a web developer. (I do both.) Game development is much, much more like doing a soup-to-nuts startup than it is "a web developer", the demand is in aggregate much lower than the supply, and with entire segments of the market you can't even seriously playtest something for viability until you've basically built the damn thing. (So if you don't care much about the social space or something easily done with a tool like Unity, I hope you like sunk costs.) I'm going to have spent over a full year building out a vertical slice of this game and I can do so because I both enjoy the genre and have that kind of time and money to throw around.

There is no good way to compare "a web developer" and an indie game developer and you should kind of be embarrassed for trying to light up the guy you replied to when you haven't the foggiest.

How long have you worked as A) a game developer and B) a web developer?

Purely curiosity.

"Life is already too hard"

Indie game development is like starting your own rock band. It's a hit-driven business. If you aren't doing it for fun then do something else. And it's easier to make games and make money from them today than at any time in the past. If you fail, it's because your game sucked or you were insufficiently lucky. The odds are against you, but hey, you can always make a living as a web developer.

I say this as someone who has developed and released multiple games soup-to-nuts and works as a web developer.

I think part of it in this team's case could be a language issue (their native language seems to be French, and there's a lot more content in French elsewhere; it just isn't translated or updated for the KS)

There was an interview (in french, sorry) of the developers on Clubic yesterday: http://www.clubic.com/internet/financement-participatif/actu...

Website: http://www.planets-cube.com/

Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1247991467/planets3

The budget does not look realistic. It's possible they have some incredibly talented coder who can build the damn thing single-handed (a la Minecraft) but this is unlikely, and failing that I just don't see this ever shipping.

Good luck though, it looks like a good idea and I like what I see thus far.

This sounds like most video game Kickstarters. Unfortunately backers often have different expectations of how much a game should cost than developers. There have been many Kickstarter projects where, if you realistically look at team size and development time you can figure out that the project doesn't have enough money to pay all team members a living wage, even if you're assuming they can live on minimum wage. I guess in those cases most of the team isn't getting paid or is working as part time contractors, and the people that are taking money are using it for subsistence. This is common with indie game projects.

In many cases Kickstarter is not the only source of funding.

I don't know about most game kickstarters because I tend to ignore them, but this one has some very good prep work done, good concept, nice tech demos (video, but whatever), and superb artwork. But then the initial funding goal of $250,000 makes no sense to me. The people involved are clearly capable enough to earn $75k/year in Massachusetts, probably a lot more. Given the costs of developing something like this you'd burn through $250k in nothing flat. What then?

Now if this were two guys saying they could get the game rough and ready in one year, I'd be more convinced. But they have a lot of mouths to feed.

Or maybe if they're all in art school or something.

They need to be more concrete about their plan. If it's "we will make this thing or die trying, and we'll ship in one year and we're eating ramen until we ship" then it might be convincing. But it seems too polished for that, so I'm thinking this is a hobby, and they'll take the $250k and diddle around for three years.

But they're not even going to get $250k at this rate so it's all academic.

Cool concept. But I think showing beautiful concept art is a big no when the actual gameplay looks like this: http://www.planets-cube.com/img/website/FR/ScreenIG_full_rez...

Now people will be disappointed.

As far as I know people go to kickstarter in order to kick start projects. Not every games are 100% complete when submitted to kickstarter.com . That is a simple prototype, right. And still it is an exciting one, as far as I am concerned.

So no, not disappointed at all.

Well it's a lot harder to sell a Minecraft clone than it is to sell the next generation of the genre.

Ah man what a beautiful looking idea. Too bad I've been burned so many times that I'll never pay for an 'alpha' or 'beta' game again, let alone a kickstarter for one.

What are some examples for Kickstarter vaporware you donated for?

I backed "Hadean Lands: Interactive Fiction for the iPhone" [1] in 2010. The project promised a text adventure game for iOS and open-source game framework. The game would become the author's "day job" and "might take six months; might take more." Based on the cool concept and the author's ludography of interactive fiction games, the $8,000 project was funded to $31,000.

Fast-forward four years and the author posts occasional Kickstarter updates about unrelated iOS games he's published and that the promised game is now "11% complete". His explanation is that the fine print of his Kickstarter proposal included "other IF work", but reading backers' comments [2] as early as 2011, you can tell that people felt mislead.

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zarf/hadean-lands-inter...

[2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zarf/hadean-lands-inter...

Here's one: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1735103142/conquest

Lots of pretty graphics from an unknown team that hasn't been tested.

From my experience, the difference between teams like this that failed and the other newcomer teams that succeeded are that the teams that eventually delivered had a working demo or prototype that was downloadable.

Sorry to sound cynical, but having seen the glacial pace of progress with Godus, thanks, but no thanks.

Kickstarted, drip-fed games, are not my cup of tea.

Godus is certainly not the odd one out, but at the same time the lead behind it is quite well known for under delivering as opposed to those guys who are unknown.

This is why it's not worth Kickstarter-type donating to non-FLOSS projects. In that case if original development had stagnated, community can at least have half-working product (except for naming trademark, but that's fine) to continue with. At least modders won't have to hack their way or wait aeons until they're allowed to tinker with the functionality they need.

I like the 16bit ascii art impressionism with a modern rendering feel. Finally.

What I find really interesting is how boxel games immediately get a lot of attention: it effectively comes down to a lot of a lot of solid material you get to dig through (and place). Crafting etc. is honestly flavor because Minecraft's creative mode does as well as its survival mode. Combine that with the notion of wide expanses of nothing (space) and people really start paying attention. Add a treadmill (RPG) to that and you get even more attention.

I wonder what psychology is behind the seemingly guaranteed success of these games - even if it's only initial (pre-order) success; people seem to naturally want to play around with this type of stuff.

They are the epitome of open world. Honestly, though, I haven't found one that gets the immersion right. Minecraft is too schizophrenic and sparse on features, Terraria was really good about this but only 2D and also more of an RPG. King Athur's Gold is purely about environment interaction.

I'd like to see a game that properly develops the non-block mechanics for the world in a consistent fashion.

Dwarf Fortress? http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

Sidebar; I have never seen super script in URL before. Didnt even think it was possible.

URL parsing is done by the page server after the domain is forwarded. You could put any kind of data you want in the url (assuming the server can handle it).

A few years ago there was even a small "gold rush" for emoji domains.

http://www.panic.com/blog/the-worlds-first-emoji-domain/

I haven't checked, but I think it isn't a superscript, but an Unicode superscript character (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_subscripts_and_superscr...)

http://thepicrain.com/planets%C2%B3-an-open-world-voxel-base...

I think it is bad practice - users cannot type it out if needed

I'm curious how gravity will work when tunneling through a planet.

I don't know how they plan to handle it. In a similar game I've worked on (unpublished) gravity is handled like our universe, but with a bias toward the three orthogonal axis. This leaves you feeling like a 2d world on the faces, but as you approach to edges you begin to lean into them until you are "standing on the peak of the roof" at the edge, continuing brings you upright on the next face. A coefficient governs the strength of the bias, which I adjusted to trade off the width of the "funny" zones and the gravity direction gradient.

At the center of the planets, there is a singularity (which if you screw up the math can catapult you into space, game debugging has lots of fun to it) but is actually a non-issue because the strength of the gravity approaches zero, so the fact that it flips around in directions doesn't really matter, after you debug it.

You could probably avoid bugs at the center of planets by simply having an small cube of unmineable material surrounding them (like minecraft's bedrock).

Or a molten core: one idea I was messing around with for a boxel game I never found the time to make.

My prediction,( the game comes out in two years :s, this will be forgotten ).

( assuming a cube ) The gravity works orthogonal to the side you are on( 6 sides ), no matter your position. There are 4 imaginary planes for every side. You need 3 point to get a plane in 3d space. Those points for the 4 planes are made from the center of the cube and 2 points of the side you are on( the planes are rotated 45 degrees relative to the sides ). So for one plane that would be center of the cube and top-left and top-right sides. For another that would be center and top-left and bottom-left, and so on. If you cross one plane the gravity changes 90 degrees, depending which one you crossed.

There are interesting thing about this model. For instance; for larger distances, you don't fall in a straight line towards the planet, but in a sine wave like curve.

Orbits will remain circular with inclination changes, so the square orbits in the video are not physically correct.

---

Also, you will not be able to reach the center of the planet. At most you will be able to reach about 80% of depth, where the cube sides are still large enough to not constantly switch directions.

"10% done" -> 0.1% done.

If any of you guys have any questions about the game, feel free to ask. I'm PR for the team, so I'm more than happy for you to ask as many Qs as you want!

If you have any questions about the game, feel free to ask. I'm working the publicity side of the title, so more than happy to answer any Qs you may have.

This looks like a better version of Minecraft. Probably the final product won't be on the same level of polish and constant updates.

It looks like a better version of minecraft that will probably melt my computer down into slag. Hopefully they keep low system requirements in mind during development; minecraft has benefited greatly from that.

Having assisted some friends in building something similar in technical scope, I'd be pretty surprised if they managed to pare it down to run reasonably. It's a really hard problem.

Minecraft's system requirements remain low because the engine doesn't do a hell of a lot, which is good because it really...can't.

Cubical planet ? I wonder how they plan to handle gravity :].

The thought of jumping off the end of the world and then gravity switching 90 degrees is pretty cool.

Check the third video on the Kickstarter campaign - it shows the player walking over the 'edge' of the planet and what happens when they do:)

I like these game posts. I wish there were more on [Y].

No OSX port until the surpass their initial goal. Meh.

Agreed. Not funding until they get there. :/ Looks like an interesting game though.

Look at the 'Technology' part: Ogre3D is used for the rendering. It should then be technically possible for a port given enough interest is shown.

Plus in the 'Kickstarter Stretch Goals' Category you can see that they plan a Mac version before a Linux version: https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets/001/661/480/bfb68577b1e9...

I can't seem to figure out which PC platforms they're targeting, they just say "PC".

Well you didn't searched :)

https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets/001/661/480/bfb68577b1e9...

Beefsack, PC means....PC ;)

Well, in my 30ish years of using computers, the PC has run the following operating systems (not a complete list):

CP/M

DOS versions 1 through 7ish

Windows 16bit on top of DOS

Windows 32bit on top of DOS

OS/2

SCO UNIX

Linux

Minix

Mac OS

QNX

Windows NT

Windows 2000

Mac OSX

Windows XP

Windows Vista

Windows 7

Windows 8

All of the above run on a PC, so... Please take off your marketing hat and put on your hat that allows rational thought and answer without the smarm.

when the game launches?

Looks pretty cool

Another "look at this awesome game" which is really "there's really no game, but Kickstarter!".

I was thinking that kick starter was all about helping in project to "kick start". So obviously for me, I find it normal that's there is still no game at this early stage of development. Or rather: 10% complete development so far.

It looks like people get "wrongly" used to dev studios submitting projects nearly completed. But those are more like the exception than the rule. If look closely to the list of kickstart submission I think that's the case most of the time for software development, that is they are far from completed. And the lead developer has an idea and needs fund to work full-time on his idea and/or hire folks for helping him out. For instance: lighttable of Chris Granger. And I think that's what is thrilling about kick starter and launching a startup. That's all about taking risks.

I get your point, but I think you're identifying the wrong problem. Kickstarter backers being averse to "here's my idea, give me money" pitches is rational. Most professional game developers are pretty bad at estimation, pretty bad at risk forecasting, and just generally aren't great at bringing stuff to market on time and on budget. Kickstarters with a bunch of people with no real personal credibility or track record (individually or as a group) are serious risks and it's perfectly understandable that they'd be treated as such by potential backers.

As I noted upthread, I have a Kickstarter coming up sooner rather than later (like, May-ish) and a lot of my time right now is building out my engine to have a workable hands-on demo for people to play with. It won't be designed to be "fun" yet, but rather a synthetic demo where I can go "these features will be used for X, Y, and Z, and you can see them already basically done". I need money to pay my artists to build assets more than I need money to write the damn game.

You can call it "wrongly" if you want, but I think there's a pretty big difference between "look at my cool game (that doesn't exist)" and "look at my cool idea for a game, that I need Kickstarter to fund". The OP isn't 10% done...they're 1% done, and while they look better than most of the folks at the same level of development, it still gives me precisely zero confidence in their ability to deliver when they overstate so obviously what they're bringing to the table.

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