Age of Decadence - June Development Update

Couchpotato

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Age of Decadence has posted another development update on the games forum.

We're going to start beta-testing (closed test) in July, which means that we spent June tweaking and balancing questlines and don't really have anything interesting to say. The next month update will have first impressions and such, but this one will have to be pretty boring, unless you really like reading updates.

The focus is on the options, choices, and paths now. There is a truckload of them. If you thought that Teron had a lot of options, you're going to be overwhelmed with what we have in store for you now. More characters, more quests, more options, more scheming, more reactivity, more opportunities to fuck things up. I rarely speak with excitement about my own work, but I'm very proud of how everything turned out and came together.

The Abyss evolved into a great area. It's very different from what you've seen so far. Most locations have fairly 'realistic' atmosphere - people squabbling, scheming, plotting, and murdering each other over nothing. Not a lot of fantasy there. Now, the game IS a fantasy RPG and in the Abyss you'll get the first taste of it.

I asked Scott to go over the Abyss doc and breathe his magic into the words. He seemed to like it: "I really like this one, especially the end. It's a great idea, bringing together the history and the ultimate realization of a violent and amoral world. You've created the anti-Chosen One."
More information.
 
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… and? release date?

They are still shooting for the year, October I think is the hoped for deadline. My personal assessment: Since a lot of the fundamental technical problems are hopefully resolved after the lenghty demo tests and several rounds of improvments on that, and the team has gained a lot of experience in that time - so testing will hopefully go a little smoother. Still, its the majority of locations and lots of complex questlines with many branches, so it's probably still going to be hard to get by with 3 months of testing for this game, judging from how the demo beta tests - but 2013 is possible if they manage to just call it "done" at some point.
 
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They are still shooting for the year, October I think is the hoped for deadline. My personal assessment: Since a lot of the fundamental technical problems are hopefully resolved after the lenghty demo tests and several rounds of improvments on that, and the team has gained a lot of experience in that time - so testing will hopefully go a little smoother. Still, its the majority of locations and lots of complex questlines with many branches, so it's probably still going to be hard to get by with 3 months of testing for this game, judging from how the demo beta tests - but 2013 is possible if they manage to just call it "done" at some point.

Nothing can be made to perfection and there is always room for refinement, but they have to decide to stop some time soon otherwise their customers and audiance will find something better (at hand) to do instead of waiting.
 
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October?
Such a great month to release games. Especially a suspected vaporware.
I'm planning a game with beer that month.
 
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not a penny from me until release. derek smart, a one man narcissist army releases games faster then this.
 
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…they have to decide to stop some time soon otherwise their customers and audiance will find something better (at hand) to do instead of waiting.
That's a false dichotomy. I don't have to choose between:
(a) wait for Age of Decadence
(b) play other games

In fact, it looks like a ton of turn-based RPGs are going to be released this year, and I'm going to play them. At some point I will both have time to play a game and AoD will be released. Then I'll play it.
 
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Is it just me or does it feel like this game has released 10 times already?
 
I think the release date will be a close race between Age of Decadence and Grimoire … :roll:
 
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Isn't there a small team working on this game? No wonder it's going to take a whole. It takes large teams at Bethesda and other studios 3-5 years to release a game. Why do people think it should take the same amount of time with a small team?
 
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Well, the amount of C&C in this game is a looooot more than any AAA studio game, considering this they have been really fast!
 
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Isn't there a small team working on this game? No wonder it's going to take a whole. It takes large teams at Bethesda and other studios 3-5 years to release a game. Why do people think it should take the same amount of time with a small team?
4 people: programmer, animator, artist/designer, writer/designer. Bloated by indie standards, very small by any other standards.

As I said on the Codex:

I wish we could have done it in 3-4 years, but the reality is that the game was overly ambitious (7 different, branching questlines, over 120 hand-crafted, heavily scripted quests, etc) and required skills we didn't have when we started and a lot of time. There were only 3 outcomes: abandon, simplify, stick with it for as long as it takes. We decided to stick with it. It was probably a stupid decision and I wouldn't recommend following in our footsteps to anyone ("start small" is the best advice there is), but what's done is done.
 
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I think it will be am interesting game with so many choices & censequences - no need for apologies.

Release it someday -> I'll buy it - for sure.

I admire small dev teams that can think big and take the challenge of a multi-year-project. :thumbsup:
 
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Definitely, plus I admire the commitment to deliver and maintain momentum as well as learn new skills. Keep in mind the future, always.
 
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Your dead if you do and dead if you don't so just do whatever you want. If you would have made it small people would have complained, if you abandoned it people would have complained, and if you take a long time to release people will complain. The common factor is that it doesn't matter what you do people will complain about it.

PS. For me the only time I will complain about something is if it is absolute trash that deserves to be complained about and that doesn't happen very often.

PPS. I hope this gets released since I really liked the demo.
 
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