Hi guys. It is just me, or more of you think that this product is advancing too slow? Main problem for me is, that I paid a lot for gold, expecting more features, but nothing except adding objects is now available. Its not very pleasing that we will be able to create games maybe in one year or more. Its too long and I think thats not good for the product. How about monthly updates? More frequent updates will do only good.

I reckon many are feeling the same way, but most know it's important to deal with the core issues first, otherwise features are useless and no point throwing them into an engine that doesn't perform well enough to handle them.



A monthly release with all new features was in fact going nowhere fast and causing more problems than was worth it, I for one would rather see it being released with working features than hacked in and half working, for that reason alone I can wait



It's not a good idea putting unneeded pressure on TGC to release Beta's before they are ready, it has caused them enough grief as it is by doing this and far more damaging to the product.



I am sure once performance work is completed you will see more of the features you are looking for on a more regular basis. Still you wouldn't be creating a finished game for some time even with a finished product, it takes a lot of work, specially for a single person, but you will be able to do it as development goes along



If you check out the Classic Showcase board, any game worth talking about wasn't done overnight. Same applies to the development of this product, you don't want to be jumping around getting everything half done and nothing finished.



Where have you been the last month?

totally agree with rolfy

and lets be honest - working on a game and creating for example all the assets and gameplay/ levels on your own is gonna take a long time and if we look at the speed of reloadeds developement... You might just be ready with your art when reloaded reaches a usable state - note when i say usable i mean

usable in actual game production.



Anyways it would be nice if ppl could just read thru the forums to get a better understanding where we are currently or well @TGC you guys could update the front page a bit? maybe

Quantity is not quality. But quality is what most pledgers want. And when I look the developmen costs of other game engines, the gold pledge was very cheap.

Quality needs time. A fully buggy product would help nobody.

I think it's best for everyone to try and be patient. Rushed releases cause unforseen problems.



Thanks to you all, we've indentified the core issues and have taken great strides in fixing them, but we still have much more to do before we move to a release for internal testing and finally, one for you the backers. We intend every beta from now on to be a big leap forward from the last. This may mean that backers have to wait a little longer between them, but I promise you the wait will be worth it.



SC

I know I'm making you wait a little longer for this one, but I am pretty sure you will think it worth it when you finally get your hands on the new version. I'm making it GDC proof so you are sure to get something substantial for the next release. I do agree that 'something every month' is a great service, and once we sort out the main engine I am sure we can release smaller feature updates with that kind of release cadence. While you wait for 'Lee', we have taken steps to make sure other things are going on such as the Reloaded model packs work, parallel module development and more strategic work going on in the background. Hopefully the weekly news bulletin helps you stay informed as to what we are getting up to, and my blog probably takes care of the low level nitty gritty.

I have been waiting over a year for most games stuff I have backed and had nothing to play with yet !!



I think im kind of spoilt here with the amount of releases here good or bad so waiting longer for the next isn't really a problem especially seeing the next one seems likely to be the best release yet

Indeed! This is always the case and I don't believe I've ever spoken against this principle

personally i think the team have shown great support and information on what is happening and being done... if they had simply stopped releasing updates and communication i may agree with you however as Lee (kinda) said all good work requires time and is worth waiting for.



i think you are expecting too much from a beta.

Lee,

Why can't you just whip it up over night? kinda like Brownies or something.



Slow poke!





PAIN!

THE TGC?? That's The The Game Creators

I'm not sure if a lot of people know exactly what they will potentially get with Reloaded. Some people might not understand the sheer power of this game creator.



There is nothing like it out there. I worked with CryEngine Free SDK. If you don't have a PHD in computer science you will burn your brain, like I did, trying to figure out how to use it. An experienced team is needed to make AAA games with it. CryEngine is full of bugs too, and features that don't work. It is still an amazing tool, but with a huge learning curve.



It is not Free either. You will have to pay a large percentage of your independent game profits.



Next there is the Unity engine. It costs $1500 just to use it.



Reloaded is offering intuitive, drop and drag, edit in real time game creation, with Rift support, and simple yet advanced model creation for almost nothing. Plus you get to keep all the profits. This is a game engine that will continue to be developed, which is paramount with todays ever changing GD environment, namely: Virtual Reality.



Reloaded is the only engine that will, indeed, let a single author create AAA games, although its best to have at least a small team.



I will wait a long time for this. On the other hand, I have no choice, no one else is taking on such an ambitious project. I would rather wait for something great, than settle for something half ass. And my intuition tells me this in going to be something great!

I dont think that the FPSC-R is advancing to slow or slowly. You cant expect that you see the Progress every week or every 3 weeks. Lee needs his time and im pretty sure he uses it well. Just be a little patience and get hyped for the new version

A game engine takes a lot of work and in fact you did not buy a product you made a Pledge to help fund the product and have a final version when its released so you can have beta versions.



When you pledge you have to wait until the product is done and a project this big is going take at least another year before we have something we can make a full game in.



I feel once Lee gets the core engine done the rest should fit in place a lot faster but this is a important time and must be right or we have a poor engine with a load of hacks and bad performance.



best s4real

Rolfy



Whilst I agree with the core of what you say I am concerned that we will now no longer be getting the Betas under the circumstances we agreed when parting with our cash. See my separate post if interested. The company is doing pretty well in getting its future customers to finance their development, or at least put up a fair proportion of the development costs. They should therefore not change the rules of play without at least consulting those that have put up cash. If nothing else its good manners, better still it would be good business practice.

Lee



This has probably been posted else where but I cannot find it. As an investor in Reloaded and a customer of your company since FPSC Adopter days could you supply the following information.



1. How many developers on the team?

2. What is the monthly allocated development hours?

3. What is the estimated development window?



I ask these questions for professional reasons as a developer of 3d models and programmer keen to get on the Reloaded third party sales bandwagon.

Happy to answer questions when not drinking lovely GDC beer:



1. How many developers on the team?

LEE: Me (performance), Ravey(occlusion) and Simon(construction kit) at the moment. We have some part-time help for small modules too which step in from time to time as well. As you can see, a relatively small team for such a large project



2. What is the monthly allocated development hours?

LEE: 520 hours per month (I do ten more hours per week due to madness).



3. What is the estimated development window?

LEE: It's a pretty huge window! At the start of the development, we had a simple enough mission to refine the existing Classic Edition. As we developed, we started rewriting whole chunks of the engine until very little of the original remained. We now need to squeeze all that work into a form factor that will run fast on minimal GPU power and also finish off the key core elements such as AI, scripting logic and overall stability. I would like to get things finished off well before Christmas 2014 but like a metaphorical ball of string it's very difficult to determine how long it is going to be. If your project depends on Reloaded for a client or fixed release date, I highly recommend you find an alternative solution and look upon Reloaded as a 'still in beta' development until our community starts to report favorable results and solid executables.

It's good to see you replying more often on the forums, Lee Good answers, too.







Really, Reloaded is alpha software, not beta, but I'm happy with the progress so far so no complaints