Forsaken Fortress - Game Status Update

Photon Productions has a new post on the kickstarter page for Forsaken Fortress that talks about the games recent release problems, and shares answers for backers.

Some answers

Thank you guys for your understanding and advises, we will keep doing what we can do. And since some people are interested in how the project look different from the original video, as the chief developer, I will explain it in detail.

It is a long story. First of all, it didn't happen in one night, the game went through almost one year and a half of development and changing. As you see the game is an experimental one which means both technical approach and designing approach are not matured. During the development, we experienced coming up with a new idea, implementing it, testing it and abandoning it almost everyday. This is not the best approach, a dangerous one, but our only choice which I believe gradually led the game off track. Another note is that the we did make a demo prototype during the kickstarter campaign.

That demo was only for the purpose of recording videos so it has absolutely no game mechanism in it whatsoever. What I can do in that demo is, I can walk, shoot and drive and of course we made the graphic look as good as possible(It is very easy to make the graphic look good if you don't have to worry about performance). And combined with video editing we made the original video look like the game that we are going to produce. However, we later found that we are unable to make the real game look like the video, especially in terms of graphics. Here is an example why.

In the demo version, there is no dynamic daylight cycle and weather system, so we used the baked global illumination lighting which has much better performance and rendering quality. However in the real game, we have to use dynamic lighting for the daylight/weather system(sunrise, nightfall, raining…) which is much slower and has worse graphical looking than baked global illumination(this is probably why open world games(skyrim) often have worse graphics than level based games(battlefield 3)). This could be one of the many reasons why you feel the game looks different now, the technical approach in reality doesn't match that in prototype. This is especially likely to happen on experimental projects which the technology has not been established yet.

How we spent our 121k? Brief breakdown,

60% for hiring(all staff, including composer fees)

20% for renting and equipment (We move to China for cheap labor cost so we have to get some whole new sets of equipment and an office)

15% preserved for rewards.

5% preserved for emergency. (such as legal actions)

The only reason why we could last this long is probably because we were in China, much cheaper labor rate and rent than NYC. And man, I didn't enjoy the polluted air in Beijing.

I agree that please don't stop supporting experimental indie projects just because one or two failed. Without that trying and failure there shall be no success whatsoever. And we indie developers are the pioneers who want to take the challenge. Your $15 bucks is much more than getting a product, it is supporting the progress of the gaming industry.

And a fun fact, at the end of the day no matter how bad your game is, there will still be people who enjoys it. So there is no good reason to stop making games

More information.

One more example of how much less promising a KS is if the creators have little experience in realizing projects of this scope.

Not that i backed the game but am i the only one slightly irritated by the moving to china for cheap larbor costs ? And putting it like a good thing.

Well, that's a matter of opinion and viewpoint.

For potential workers looking for a job and tax authorities in his home region it perhaps wasn't a good thing. For the workers in China he finally employed and chinese tax autorities it most likely was a good thing. For the customer it depends if he actually got a better product. For his health it wasn't a good thing fur sure.

As to now, the large majority of crowdfunded games show little capacity to bring progress to the game scene.

Most of them are poorly commanded projects that got sold on an appealing conception.

Innovation comes from the big business. Then they hand it down to the smaller businesses that copy them. And that is innovation, not even progress at most times.

Originally Posted by Thorwyn99
Not that i backed the game but am i the only one slightly irritated by the moving to china for cheap larbor costs ? And putting it like a good thing.

Bigger problem is the absolutely unhealthy Beijing SuperSmog, which negatively affects development - bad air, sickness and foggy mind - opposed to a rural area with clean air and water, happy developers and clearer mind.

Originally Posted by ChienAboyeur
As to now, the large majority of crowdfunded games show little capacity to bring progress to the game scene.

Most of them are poorly commanded projects that got sold on an appealing conception.

Innovation comes from the big business. Then they hand it down to the smaller businesses that copy them. And that is innovation, not even progress at most times.

Innovation in gaming is highly overrated. A better goal is creativity, and that is something Indies can bring to the scene. Big businesses are constrained by the need for profits, which hinders their choice in subject matter. Indies should be exploring interesting genres and subject matter that the big firms won't touch, while sticking to tried and true approaches for the most part. That way their limited budget isn't blown on inventing new techniques.

That's playing on words.

Innovation, creativity…

At the moment, a lot of indies are simply a rehash of genres that were brought by big business.

Minus the gameplay, most of the times, because the gameplay was the result of a demanding approach that was often based on thousands of playtest hours with analytic feedback.
Indies usually pass that stage to bring a shell of what old games were.

Originally Posted by ChienAboyeur
That's playing on words.

Innovation, creativity…

At the moment, a lot of indies are simply a rehash of genres that were brought by big business.

Minus the gameplay, most of the times, because the gameplay was the result of a demanding approach that was often based on thousands of playtest hours with analytic feedback.
Indies usually pass that stage to bring a shell of what old games were.

No it's not. By definition, innovation is a fix for a problem. It usually involves creativity, but the one is certainly not a subset of the other. You can be very creative without being innovative.

This guy frankly sounds disingenuous, inept and clueless at managing anything. Astonishing people actually pledged that much.

Been able to sink a few hours to test this product.

Usually, KS like projects stop at producing a game engine, they do not step into making a game.

This project made it even clearer: they failed at assembling the game engine.

Amazing how they failed to secure the most basic functions in their game engine.

The inventory is the closest thing to a reliable function but even that, it is bugged when giving a few test rounds.

Everything else is non functional: save/load function, map dynamic loading, path finding, NPC AI, collision detection etc

The basic functions were not secure. So it is not even a matter of wanting to delve into game design when the base is so shaky.

The disturbing side was they kept sending updates as if some features were reliably implemented.

The tactical combat was out of question from the beginning. A game like Jagged Alliance 3 gave out a good tactical combat engine but it soaked all the developpment money and it was impossible to wrap the tactical engine with a strategical layer. The game suffered from that and sank. Too bad because they were on something.

Even though Forsaken Fortress kept sending updates video showing combat, it was out of the cards from the beginning.

The other sides of the expected game could have been delivered in some sort of way.

The tower defense side with enemy cramming the base was not out of reach at the beginning.
You could have thought to see it in the final product. The impossibility to implement path finding reliably destroyed the opportunity though as enemies cant find the base.
So showing a video update including that side as functional was deceitful.

The doll house side, when you lay out your base, build up walls to make sleeping quarters, a cantina, a living quarter etc was also in reach. Showing a video displaying the features was also deceitful.
In the end, you can do nothing of that, houses are prebuilt. The collision detection lack of quality, coupled to the path finding issue, probably sank the effort.

All these updates featuring elements that were not there probably helped them to collect some extra funds through paypall as they kept showing progress going on in their developpment.

In the end, it might be something like 4,000 people who received that product and there is no fuss about what must be considered as a software in a pre alpha stage.

KS comes with no accountability.
Players welcome the fact or are apathic to it.

Originally Posted by rjshae
No it's not. By definition, innovation is a fix for a problem. It usually involves creativity, but the one is certainly not a subset of the other. You can be very creative without being innovative.

Innovation: bringing something new,

Creation: bringing something that did not already exist.

Innovation is not a fix for a problem. That is what progress is. Innovation is not forcefully progress.

"I agree that please don't stop supporting experimental indie projects just because one or two failed. "

Is it a way to say that you consider you have failed developping this game ?

"And a fun fact, at the end of the day no matter how bad your game is, there will still be people who enjoys it. So there is no good reason to stop making games"

Once again "no matter how bad your game is" is not very reassuring.

Anyway, I totaly agree. I've just tried build 1.0.4 and enjoyed playing may be a total of 15 hours with it, and I'm going to continue because I'm far from having explored the map (and I'm not talking about the 2 other maps available).

So, I'd say it's far from perfect (there are still some bugs especialy related to the save which can be really annoying when you lose part of your inventory or even sometimes all your inventory when you load a save) but it's really not as bad as what a previous commentator who tried build 1.0.0 was saying (the game engine is not broken, the fight work, the scavenging/exploration works, the base building works, and so on).

For me, Build 1.0.4 is not at usual release quality but is playable and you can enjoy it. I know I have and I will continue .

Of course I would love to see the bugs fixed and see new improvements in the game (may be new weapons, like machine gun nest to protect the base, and so on) but even as it is, it's a game you can enjoy, and that is really unique (the concept is really great and is exactly what I've been looking for for years) and that is well worth the 15$ I've paid.

If only a bigger studio would buy the sources and resume the work to improve it I'm pretty sure it could be a successfull game… it was mainly missing enough founding to buy more dev time.