The Elephant-sized Obeliskian in the Room

I still check this forum daily because I've been hardwired to do so for over two years now. It's the only gaming community I'm a part of, and I owe a great deal of thanks to all the amazing people who have made it so much fun. I think most of us regulars, old and new, are wondering what's going on now that the devs have been absent for over a month. I'm hoping we can have a respectful chat about it.

Possibilities?

• Self-imposed burnout recovery ointment:. These guys have been going non-stop for years and need an extended break to lick their wounds. Totally understandable, but maybe give us a hint at their return?
  
• Gaslamp going through a major transition: Nicholas mentioned the build machines were being moved to a new location back in November. Daynab is leaving. Maybe they don't want to publicly announce anything until they know exactly what's going to happen. It's painful to imagine the band might be breaking up, but it's a real possibility. I do think they'd push at least one or two more patches.
• Legal issues. Well, this is pure speculation based on nothing... and kinda scary, so I won't go down that rabbit-hole.

Anyway, I could be jumping the gun on all this, and maybe everything is perfectly fine. I wanted see some of your thoughts about it. The forum is too eerily quiet now that even the community colony has stalled.

I guess I'm just preparing for the possibility of... transitioning out of The Gaslamp and CE universe and moving on. If that's what must happen, it's been a hell of a ride and I enjoyed every minute of it.

 

They were "just" talking about a new experimental build or something.

It's the roads, isn't it?

 

True, but that was announced back in November, and all dev forum activity has stopped since around December 6th. Granted we've had a holiday break since, but we're getting deeper into January now and this much silence is very uncharacteristic.

Or I'm just being impatient.

 

Given that the ceo talked on twitter about the end of a project at the beginning of december and seeing a quite frustrated posting by dbaumgart on gamedev.net my opinion is that the game has been abandoned.

It is kind of sad that even the last bugfixes haven't been made available but seeing the sales figures on steamspy i can understand that no further work is put into this. So although i will continue to look into the forums my expectation to see further updates is very low.

 

I'd like to comment that as much as I love Dredmor and Gaslamp, CE is more or less a failed project based on sales figures. Having played the game, at first I was hoping for bug fixes and content updates. No longer. The issues which hold CE from being great are bigger than mere bug fixes and content; the overall design is largely to blame. Now I just hope Gaslamp will move on to new projects which hopefully will be more successful.

 

During this period last year they had 6 blog posts and a new build of CE come out.

Its quite clear that the game fell short of expectations, both critically and financially, and that is Not Good for Gaslamp as a company. Throwing good money after bad is not a business decision that will help them prosper, so I don't blame them for taking a step back to regroup at the very least - or abandoning development at worst.

Which is a friggin' shame, as the game concept was great, and the final product feels like it just needs a few more passes of spit and polish to get itself to a stable, usable state (ignoring UI design).

Problem is that they just fell behind their schedule by too much - and that had to burn a lot of cash. They had to know that CE was not ready for release, that it needed more time to shake the bugs out. Maybe if they had stuck with their simpler original vision from 2011-12 (higher level like Settlers, Children of The Nile, or Tropico, with complex characters but not a Sims like focus on environmental or building details), they would've had a product out on-budget and on-time... but that's not what happened.

 

Although a newcomer to the forums, I've been with GLG since early Dredmor..

Regardless of what happens with CE, (which I am enjoying quite a lot) I wish them the best, and plan on supporting whatever projects they've got in the future.

Really, I just hope everyone is healthy and reasonably happy and secure.

 

i don't see much point in speculating, personally, but we are well past the point where someone from Gaslamp needs to post something on the web site and/or forums, even if it's just to say "We didn't die!"

 

I really believe they'll do whatever they can to push at least one final patch - unless, like I said, there's some kind of legal issue going on that prevents it.

I'm not familiar with typical abandonment protocol (if there is such a thing), but these devs certainly have integrity. Even if it takes a little longer and falls a little short, I think they'll get that last one out if humanly possible.

 

I'm a speculator, can't help myself. And yes I agree, it's time to make some kind of appearance. I think most of us understand the frustration and setbacks they've endured after so much hard work, but it would be nice for the community to know if it's time for closure. Put it another way... Don't leave us hangin'

 

After someone remarked about gamedev.net I had to go find out what that was about.

Here it is if anyone is interested: https://www.gamedev.net/blog/644/entry-2262484-a-review-of-works-from-2011-2016/

 

Yeah, confirmation, closure or anything of the sort would be nice for sure.

 

sad another good abandoned game

 

quite sad that he has the time to post on gamedev.net, but not a word to those that have bought his game.

 

I strongly suspect it has nothing to do with time. The current silence from GLG implies to me that they are getting their house in order before saying anything official. That makes sense - it's not looking like there is good news in the pipeline for Clockwork Empires and possibly even Gaslamp Games as a company, so it's more than understandable they'd want to work things out before making an official announcement.

 

This is probably the most likely scenario, yes. I think I've been denial with ideas about an "extended vacation" or temporary setbacks. Now I'm regretting being so pushy here, no doubt they've gone through hell dealing with all this and figuring out how to proceed. They'll let us know when they're ready, and that's fine.

 

Eeeeexactly.

 

Have been following the blog for years now. A quick look at these threads convinced me to stop waiting and go buy the game at cost, despite the poor reviews. Hope it'll run on my system...

Interesting to see that David is (and has been) working on Starsector now, another project I've been following for years.

 

What?!?! I come back after some months off from the game only to hear the bad news

I had plenty of fun play testing the game and reporting bugs when I could and was looking forward to another round, sadly this game is actually (in my opinion at least) almost complete as a base game. It needs a few more bugs to be worked out but so far the dang thing is more than playable! I've only had 1 crash after 3 or 4 games so I was hoping for more bug fixes

 

There isn't really any official word on what is, or isn't happening at this point, as far as I (or anyone?) know(s).

Even with how things are, I think it's early for anyone to jump to conclusions.

I would think the best thing to do is to continue on as normal and wait and see if there are any updates on these forums, and be ready to offer our support to GLG, if we wish to do so.