https://twitter.com/#!/GaslampGames/status/172083923457810433 I played Terraria off and on until 1.1 (feelings about that update aside). I still tro-er, browse the forums from time to time. So what's the story on this?
I wasn't sure what to make of it - I know that Gaslamp has had its' hands full lately, and Terraria is a long way off from Dredmor. Seriously serious for serious then. Humm, interesting.
Good luck with this. Seriously. Sounds badass if you can get the nod. Maybe someone can find a way around the stupid and utterly unnecessary dependence on Pixel Shader 2.0?
I fully support ya'll taking the reigns on that. I hope they consider it at least. Terraria and Dredmor are my top two indie games (and only games, since my netbook can't do much else, lol) and I've been rather disappointed with how Terraria has been handled for the last couple of updates. It needs mod support beyond TConfig and the other tedious forms it has now. Dredmor has been handled professionally in my opinion, which leads me to believe that ya'll could handle Terraria in the same manner. Seriously, this should happen.
It really should. I don't want to discourage Gaslamp though, but Terraria's community is a lot less nice than the awesome bunch we have here. You'd really have your work cut out for you, that's all I can say. In a hypothetical future where this does go further, of course.
Well, the Terraria site will remain the same, so the Terraria users will not have to come to these forums. I hope they let you continue it. I remember when they promised things like Server browsers, steam achievements, and DLCs. It's all smoke now. There's so much more this game could have, and for me at least server browsers, achievements and mod support would be enough before they leave, but it doesn't look like they will even do that, which is very disappointing. If anyone can do at least that, they'll have my support. I would even pay for it as an extra DLC instead expecting it to be added for free to the game. Let's hope anything can be done to at least give the final touches to the game, instead leaving it maimed like that. Terraria's community is not 'less nice'. It's just way bigger. And the more people you have crowded in one place, the bigger the chances are for you to get a jerk every now and then.
I'm not questioning Gaslamp here, but I've got to say I'm on the side of not thinking GLG should do it. Obviously, my feelings have no bearing, but still. I just don't see what GLG have to gain from doing it, beyond making their name more visible. There's two projects going as it is (Dredmor and the in-development game - codenamed Odin, I think?) and the status with the next patch would kind of suggest to me that a third project may spread resources a little thin unless GLG simply act as a sort of publisher for Terraria. I doubt GLG would make such an offer if they couldn't back it up, though. I would - personally - draw a line under Terraria, and add a lot of what's asked for in a sequel. I'd also bump up the character size (i.e. the humanoid characters), 'cos it's darned pointless to change the colour of things you can't even see properly :| In my own personal view, I just think GLG should concentrate on their own projects for now. Or at least, I'd like to see them concentrate on their own projects.
Either way, as of tonight it appears to be a moot point. Redigit said he wasn't handing it off to anyone.
Our offer concerning Terraria wasn't about making money off of it, although I'm pretty sure we could have made money on it. Really, though, it all started with us talking at our daily meeting about Terraria's sudden halt in development, seeing a project that was - seemingly? - being abandoned due to the creator having some kind of crisis/catharsis, and thinking, "Well, okay, that's pretty awful. Can we do something to help the community/Red/whoever?" We have a lot of advantages that they don't. We have a great deal of stability, owing to the patient and ceaseless work of the Business Acumen department. (You guys don't know what goes on behind the scenes, or what Daniel and Chris do to keep everything running smoothly, but it's impressive and involves a lot of time talking to lawyers and accountants.) Most of Gaslamp has professional development experience; both David and myself have multiple shipped titles. I have over a decade of experience as a programmer, and both math and computer science degrees; David and Chris are both very fast, very reliable, very creative pixel artists. Most of the things that the Terraria community wanted - mod support, dedicated servers, achievements and Cthulhu - are all fairly simple additions, and we could have had a beta patch out with these things in fairly short order. Dredmor and Odin would probably have suffered, but not by much. So it was the right thing to offer. We're not hurt by it, and it's the right thing to do. I like to joke that we want to be the Canadian Valve, but we really *do* want to be the Canadian Valve. What would Gabe have done?
It's good that you guys knew what you were doing - I didn't mean to sound as if I was questioning you. But I - as someone who has your projects so far, and enjoys them - do not want to see you become Valve. I don't want to see you become a developer that consistently fails to provide properly-designed projects, I don't want to see you absorb developers and use them, I don't want to see you undermine the mod community by absorbing the teams. Valve might put out visibly polished products, but at what price? Over-long development times, ideas and resources that didn't originate from within Valve, no sense of internal choreography. Look at what they did to L4D. They absorbed Turtle Rock, they brought out L4D. Turtle Rock eventually got free, right? Valve released L4D2 a year later - and it was worse - and then proceeded to kill L4D by porting its assets to L4D2. Oh, and they couldn't even manage to release a tie-in comic on time. Not exactly confidence building, eh? I, personally, want to see you continue as you are. Perhaps tighten the feature creep thing with patches, but otherwise *I*, personally, see you guys as fine. I don't want to see you become Valve. I wish you their success, believe me in that, but I don't want to see you treading the same path. They've been lucky to survive as they have, largely due to them forcing use of Steam (and other publishers joining in on that).
That's an interesting analysis of the company, and not one I've particularly thought about - probably because I'm not a Left 4 Dead player.
That's fair enough. I'm just kind of trying to say I don't think Valve are a particularly great company to look up to. By all means want their success and aim for it - and we'll all be behind you guys - but don't tread the same path as Valve. Their development practices leave a lot to be desired, and chances are if any other company beyond them and Blizzard attempted to follow, they'd collapse. Blizz and Valve have millions of customers and a wide user base on the PC alone, and a much longer shelf-life for their products. They can act as they do and not feel the pain. Others aren't so lucky.
After reading Reds latest thread, I feel pretty bad for him. Though he did effectively make an awesome game that gained a cult following without expecting to, he's just a man. Boy oh boy did people say some nasty things before in the other threads... I've been modding the game just to help give it a little more life (for myself at least, I don't know if anyone else will like my rebalances and new low tier spells and utility spells). Nick offering a hand to help made me happy.
Being a game developer is really, really hard. Not gonna lie. It's worth it! But I think I've had about half a dozen moments since the start of Gaslamp (including a recent one from a week ago) that basically involved me crying *directly into* the tub of Haagen-Danz.
Salt and sugar go very well together despite north american cuisine often keeping them separate. It's part of the secret known informally to most folks as "delicious pad thai"! ...so uh, I guess what I'm trying to say is, next time that happens, try adding noodles and chili sauce. Or not.
Lol, I could replace my soy sauce with my own tears. That's a money saver. I imagine that being a developer these days is a high pressure position, especially with meeting the demands of your audience. Ya'll are almost like celebrities to gamers and everyone is looking to scrutinize and magnify every mistake you make (I used to do that until I understood what having a job was like...). I'm usually happy as long as I'm kept in the loop about development. I don't care much for local news because I move so much, so dev blogs are my new channels. Red says he has a new game in the works that will be far better than Terraria. I hope he can stick with it (and maybe include a mod kit from the start).
As someone from the Terraria community, and also happening to be the loudest protestor in the community, who then subsequently apologized (It's not that shocking, I said I would if he released a statement explaining himself) after Redigit released his statement, I have a unique perspective. For me, I bought the game after 1.1, and I enjoyed it for a while, but it was missing so much, particularly any form of multiplayer support. Like, I ended up using gameranger to play with friends, but then if someone joined in and started griefing, you couldn't do anything to ban them, just close the whole server down, kick them out of the room, and reload. Then I found TShock, which I couldn't get to work anyway, but it offered a bunch of enhanced admin permissions and privileges like kicking and banning players as an example. But why weren't features like these included in the original vanilla version anyway? It's rather sad that he would release 1.1 with all sorts of new content, and not at the least fix the useless multiplayer before he leaves (There's still one more patch to come, so we shall see.), instead he leaves it to the modding community to do themselves. To me, that's almost like buying a car, and then having the dealer tell you after you buy it "Oh yeah, btw, if you want to use that awesome stereo system I showed you, you have to wire the whole thing yourself or have a friend do it, ain't my problem." I am still a bit mad he's dropping the project, but as there's one more bugfix coming, he may yet fix multiplayer. I'll probably still play his next game, because Terraria was insanely fun and lasted me a long time, but my hopes and expectations will be far lower for it and I will expect to be let down a bit. At the least, Nicholas of this community seems far more personable and amiable, even if I despised all his games I'd probably buy them just because his positive attitude is just so damn infectious! What a contrast to the terraria devs, who struck gold with an idea, milked it, then left when the money well dried up a bit. What a contrast.
